Interesting paper, thanks, though I lack the background for some of the science. Still, I think I get the point. But I don't understand how anything Anderson says refutes a potentially physicalist understanding of the world. He refutes reductionism very well, but my attempt to invent a "best we can do now" version of physicalism was not meant to affirm reductionism, quite the contrary. Maybe the question I should be asking is, What is there in Anderson's paper that introduces a non-physical level of construction, or implies that there's anything "beyond the physical"?

There are many, many diverse voices in that 'systems science' and biosemiosis field, and not all of them are beholden to any kind of physicalism. As you well know, there is a pretty free-wheeling form of scientific idealism associated with physics and variants of the Copenhagen interpretation, and many of them take mind to be fundamental, in an epistemological if not ontological sense. Same too with biosemiotics. Check out Søren Brier's academic homepage (and I was alerted to him by Apokrisis) - titles like 'Information and consciousness: A critique of the mechanistic concept of information', 'Bateson and Peirce on the pattern that connects and the sacred'. I also found a paper by Marcello Barbieri on the history of biosemiosis and it's very wide-ranging.

On the whole, I think physicalism is on the wane. It's real heyday was actually the late 19th century, I think the scientific justification for it was demolished by the introduction of quantum physics in 1927.

Check out Søren Brier's academic homepage (and I was alerted to him by Apokrisis) - titles like 'Information and consciousness: A critique of the mechanistic concept of information', 'Bateson and Peirce on the pattern that connects and the sacred'. I also found a paper by Marcello Barbieri on the history of biosemiosis and it's very wide-ranging. — Wayfarer

I'll take a look..

On the whole, I think physicalism is on the wane. It's real heyday was actually the late 19th century, I think the scientific justification for it was demolished by the introduction of quantum physics in 1927. — Wayfarer

:up:

As Baden was indicating, if you provide physicalism with the baggage of every phenonemon, it loses its explanatory power as to what "physical" even means.. However, a lot of the metaphysical questions belie the framework needed for physicalism. What does "perspective" even mean for a physicalist? The view from a place (somewhere/nowhere/everywhere) doesn't matter to physicalism, but it is important to us, the conscious human who knows there are perspectives. And then what does an a-perspectival philosophy entail? If it is math, forces, and energy/matter, what are we talking about without perspective really? Then we are back to things like panpsychism, object-oriented philosophy, process philosophy, and information theory.. all things that would stretch the concept of "physical" beyond what we often mean by a naive physicalism.

if you provide physicalism with the baggage of every phenonemon, it loses its explanatory power as to what "physical" even means. — schopenhauer1

Quite! The sources I've been reading and listening to of late - these include Bernardo Kastrup, Evan Thompson and John Vervaeke - are open to perspectives more often associated with religious philosophies. They're not formally religious - Thompson has a book called Why I am not a Buddhist - but they're open to considering those perspectives. And I think much of the motivation for physicalism has been based on the delineating it from anything that might be associated with such perspectives. It's like an implicit prohibition, or even a taboo (as Alan Watts said). That is one of the main points of the Thomas Nagel essay mentioned above, Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion, resulting, he says, in 'the ludicrous overuse of evolutionary biology to explain everything about life, including everything about the human mind. Darwin enabled modern secular culture to heave a great collective sigh of relief, by apparently providing a way to eliminate purpose, meaning, and design as fundamental features of the world. Instead they become epiphenomena, generated incidentally by a process that can be entirely explained by the operation of the non-teleological laws of physics on the material of which we and our environments are all composed.' And that is the default for a lot of people and questioning it often results in accusations of 'supporting creationism' (one which was actually levelled at Nagel!) So that's a fault line, like a cultural tectonic plate.

But there has been a sea change in culture since the 1960's, what with the growth of ecological awareness, ideas relating to higher consciousness (mainly originating from the East) and a kind of scientically-informed idealism which you can find even in relatively hard-headed popular intellectuals like Paul Davies. Tao of Physics was another pop milestone. The times they are a'changing.

The alternative is a view of science which opens the door to the soft sciences, including theology. If the repeatability requirement is softened then interpersonal realities can be the subject of scientific study, because repeated interpersonal interactions do yield true and reliable knowledge, even though the repeatability is not as strict as that of the lab scientist who deals with a passive and subordinate substance. — Leontiskos

Quite agree. As a resident idealist, I'm often challenged to prove my claim that there can be such a thing as 'higher knowledge', beyond merely subjective conviction or faith. The argument is there is no method of inter-subjective validation for such claims, in the way there is for peer-reviewed, objective science.

I will often answer that there is indeed a kind of peer-review and 'quality control' method, if you like, in spiritual cultures, such as Zen Buddhism, and I'm sure there have been analogies in other cultural settings. These provide an environment where there is instruction, execution and judgement by higher authorities, in lineages that have persisted for centuries, millenia even. (The Buddhist Sangha is arguably the oldest social organisation still in existence.)

The real problem with the idea of higher knowledge is the lack of a vertical axis against which the term 'higher' is meaningful. But that is the very thing that physicalism has undermined. Physicalism has a 'flat ontology', with matter (or nowadays, matter-energy-space-time) being the sole constituent of existence. This was the point of Robert M. Pirsig's book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance which recognised the lack of a 'metaphysics of quality' in Western culture. Another of those 'consciousness raising' books from that era.

I will often answer that there is indeed a kind of peer-review and 'quality control' method, if you like, in spiritual cultures, such as Zen Buddhism... — Wayfarer

Yep, and intersubjective validation/confirmation.

The real problem with the idea of higher knowledge is the lack of a vertical axis against which the term 'higher' is meaningful. But that is the very thing that physicalism has undermined. Physicalism has a 'flat ontology', with matter (or nowadays, matter-energy-space-time) being the sole constituent of existence. — Wayfarer

Yes, that's a good point. What's curious is that often higher knowledge is called "wisdom," and I would think that the physicalist would admit that a physicalist possesses wisdom that a non-physicalist does not possess. That is, the ability to know and understand the metaphysical basis of reality constitutes wisdom. Then enters the age-old question of how to account for reason or intellect in terms of the physical.

That is, the ability to know and understand the metaphysical basis of reality constitutes wisdom. — Leontiskos

There's a nice term you encounter in the writings of some of those who advocate for a philosophia perennis, the perennial philosophy. That is, sapiential, as distinct from (but not necessarily in opposition to) scientific. Hence, the 'sapiential traditions.' In my case, those that I know at least something about are Christian Platonism, Vedanta, and Mahāyāna Buddhism.

In all of them, there is the implicit idea of the 'philosophical ascent', and that knowledge of the real is contingent upon qualities of character - which is something different to 'scientific detachment' even if you can trace how the latter developed out of the former (James Hannam's 'God's Philosophers' is really good on that.) That what is 'higher' is also possessed of a greater reality. You find that also in the German idealists (ref).

But I think the key thing is, all of those traditions emphasise self negation and the requirement of transcending egoic consciousness ('he who looses his life for My sake'), whereas science and liberal individualism is grounded very much in the individual's self -awareness. I'm not wishing to present that as a value judgement or to dissapprove of it, but as a philosophical perspective.