The key thing to understand here is that semiosis - as I am using the term - is all about information regulating physics. — apokrisis

Interesting. You don't think that term is suitable for generalising into the virtual? ie: simulated physicality?

Could fRMI reveal the meaning of a state? Maybe. Quite probably, after sufficient technological advances. If it is correct that all conscious state is a result of neuronal firings.

Is that inhumane? Forgive me if I'm reading too much into your statement, but I felt like you were coming from a perspective of hoping/assuming that there is something more to our existence than just the physical/material structures of brain/bones/blood/neurons/etc. — Malcolm Lett

Could fMRI reveal the meaning of a sentence? I suggest not. One of the dogmas of materialism is that 'brain states' purportedly 'correspond' or 'correlate' with 'states of being'. But this can be shot down in terms of semiosis. All kinds of strings of characters, represented in different types of media, can represent the same things. So there is no 1:1 correspondence between 'states' and 'meaning'. Materialism doesn’t see this.

I think it's the physicalist that is 'hoping and assuming' - hoping and assuming that science can solve the unbearably pressing mystery of being. We would love to outsource that to some expert, then we wouldn't have to bother with the underlying ambiguity and dread.

As inhumane as it feels to many, and to myself, I've slowly come to think that there isn't any inherent meaning to life beyond the physical.. — Malcolm Lett

In that case, what does it matter what you write? If nothing has meaning beyond the physical, what does your writing mean? Might as well bark or shout.

I am curious, but I suspect you're probably a Christian steeped in Norte Dame idealism. — JerseyFlight

Do you know Thomas Nagel?

an American philosopher. He is a University Professor of Philosophy and Law, Emeritus, at New York University,[3] where he taught from 1980 to 2016. His main areas of philosophical interest are legal philosophy, political philosophy, and ethics.

Nagel is well known for his critique of material reductionist accounts of the mind, particularly in his essay "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" (1974), and for his contributions to deontological and liberal moral and political theory in The Possibility of Altruism (1970) and subsequent writings. He continued the critique of reductionism in Mind and Cosmos (2012), in which he argues against the neo-Darwinian view of the emergence of consciousness.

I have transcribed what I consider to be an important essay of his, Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion. Have a read of that, it's only about 5,00 words. The passage on the fear of religion is particularly relevant to you, I feel.

Yes, I know who Nagel is. I cannot look at this until tomorrow, but am honestly looking forward to it. Credentials do not make the man, thought makes the man.

You should check Pattee’s “epistemic cut”. In a way, the mind is a state of information. It is virtual in being a model of the world. But it only stands apart from the world so as to regulate that world. And regulating the world is what it is all about.

I gave this detailed account of how life closes its own “explanatory gap” - https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/105999

The mystery for biosemiosis is how the information - stuck in its virtual world - could in fact control physical processes. The mind-body problem in a nutshell. It is only in the past decade or so that biophysics and the science of molecular machinery has been able to deliver the surprising answer.

The key is making the physics so finely balanced that “immaterial” information can muster just enough of a nudge to switch it one way or the other.

Grasp this as also the fundamental principle of cognition and how “minds” can causally connect to the world is easy to see.

That’s easy for you to say. :wink: — apokrisis

Don't be too sure... :smile:

I'm simply referring to the fact that different systems/individuals can have differing degrees of understanding. eg: my calculator has zero of understanding of chinese; I understand about enough to sometimes recognise chinese characters vs not chinese characters; which is significantly less understanding than someone who can read chinese characters. — Malcolm Lett

In what sense are you using "degrees" here? In a fuzzy logic sense where a continuum of values exists OR in a discrete sense in which case the notion of "degrees" is a category mistake?

I assumed this was in HTML. I was not able to read it. Nevertheless, I don't think it will lessen the weight of what is happening here. Your position is becoming quite clear. You are not simply on a quest for truth, you are on a quest for God. You can deny it all you like, but this is the conclusion of your position. This would be fine and well if you had a valid approach, but your approach is the same moth-eaten attempt, "science cannot explain everything, therefore God must stand in the gap." I have no doubt you resent a thinker like myself putting it in such clear terms. You are very good at framing your theism, but it doesn't matter, at the end of the day the result is the same impossible leap: use a standard of radical skepticism to attack positive knowledge, and then assert your God into the gap created by the skepticism. The problem with this, as is always the problem, is that you try to exempt your own positive knowledge from the standard. This is why you did not answer my questions, even calling them "nonsense," namely because you cannot pass the test of your own standard. This is dishonest and hypocritical.

Your position is becoming quite clear. — JerseyFlight

The document I linked to is a PDF but the passage it contains which I feel is relevant to you is an often-quoted passage where Nagel, who is a professed atheist himself, describes 'the fear of religion':

In speaking of the fear of religion, I don't mean to refer to the entirely reasonable hostility toward certain established religions and religious institutions, in virtue of their objectionable moral doctrines, social policies, and political influence. Nor am I referring to the association of many religious beliefs with superstition and the acceptance of evident empirical falsehoods. I am talking about something much deeper - namely, the fear of religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself. I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that!

My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and that it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time. One of the tendencies it supports is 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 nonteleological laws of physics on the material of which we and our environments are all composed. — Thomas Nagel

This is writ large in virtually everything you have said since you joined up with this forum. It would be worth your while to read the rest of that essay.

I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. — Thomas Nagel

Thank you for extracting the citation. I am not interesting in derailing this thread, but I cannot stand idly by while you try to sneak in some kind of theism, so I will call it out.

I agree that I don't want the abominable Gods of Christianity or Islam to be true, this would be quite horrific, nevertheless, if either of these deities really do exist then I will swallow the bitter reality whole. As a serious thinker I am not concerned with comfort, I am concerned with comprehending reality, and if that means comprehending the existence of a real God, so be it!

I don't have a problem with deism, pantheism or other kinds of vague theism, just so long as they are not false postures for monotheism or organized religion. If one is a consistent deist or pantheist they are not and cannot be a Christian or Muslim. Deists, Pantheists and Atheists all live in the same world.

One of the tendencies it supports is the ludicrous overuse of evolutionary biology to explain everything about life, including everything about the human mind. — Thomas Nagel

I think I agree with this, but that also depends on what one tries to do with the premise.

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. — Thomas Nagel

This is exceedingly poor reasoning. Nagel is defending delusion in place of reality. This merely shows that he's the kind of thinker who is seeking comfort as opposed to truth. The so-called, "elimination of purpose, meaning and design," of which he here speaks "as fundamental features of the world," are in fact delusions that man projects onto the world. These metaphysical constructs are just that, man's constructs, the real error arises when people like yourself then jump to the conclusion of Nihilism. The absence of these constructs doesn't eliminate value! This Nihilism is itself generated by the false premise that claims these constructs are necessary for the cultivation of quality. This is a lie of idealism!

Nagel is defending delusion in place of reality — JerseyFlight

I think your atheist convictions are so overpowering as to make discussion with you pointless. Life is to short.

We're no closer to a solution to the mind/body problem than we were during Descartes' time. We've discovered a lot of neural correlates, but as to the question of how consciousness arises from non-conscious stuff, and why we're conscious at all...¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Which, of course, presents a problem for materialism. Eventually, this lack of progress will doom materialism/physicalism. The problem is immediately solved if one ditches the supposition that physical matter exists and sticks strictly with reality "building blocks" that are known to exist for certain: mind and thought.

This is exceedingly suspect, further, you did not answer my last valid question for which you bear the burden of proof. What I mean about this being suspect is that it's exceedingly clear to me that you are trying to create a gap that you can fill with mysticism. The statement "not all-knowing," reminds me of God-of-the-Gaps reasoning. You are searching for a hole, why? Be transparent. It's hard to see that you are simply trying to follow noble thought where it leads in this sense. For my part, I would never argue that science is all-knowing, is this really a valid premise of science or a straw-man?

There's already a giant hole: how does consciousness arise from matter? If materialism/physicalism can't answer such a fundamental question, people will eventually turn to other "isms". That's not mystical, it's logical. If one has adopted a certain foundational viewpoint/axiom (e.g., physical matter exists and consciousness comes from it. Somehow), and one keeps running into a brick wall trying to explain something, then the foundational viewpoint/axiom will eventually be questioned.

It matters not at all what a person's motives/beliefs are in a debate/discussion. Arguments are judged on their merits. Statements are either true or false.

I'm pointing this out to you not because you don't know it (you obviously do), but because you have interesting ideas, however your tangents into other posters' belief systems (or, more accurately, what you assume their belief systems are) is very oft-putting.

What on earth? Matter is what we find existing, this is not an "attitude," or "postulate." — JerseyFlight

Perhaps you are not stopping long enough to understand what is being said here.

@Wayfarer is correct to point out that "the physical" is itself a socially constructed term. It posits certain metaphysical commitments. We never get to see the world "as it is". We only construct an understanding based on the models that seem to work.

So science took a big turn towards a certain notion of the physical when it moved from an Aristotelean doctrine of substantial being and adopted a view based purely on material and efficient cause. The new idea of brute matter in an a-causal void was formed. And to go with that re-purposing of ancient atomism, there had to be a rather religious take on the accompanying "mathematical laws of nature" that now animated this "base matter".

Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Descartes, etc, could only posit immutable and universal laws as the complement to brute material being because that made sense in the context of a creating God. Everything could only be controlled and regulated if there was a divine mind acting behind the scenes to give physical reality its mechanical form.

It is the big irony of the Scientific Revolution. Organised religion made uber-materialism thinkable because the whole question of what moves dumb matter could be shoved into the cupboard marked "mathematical necessity".

It was only with time that the divine mind underpinning this new metaphysics got side-lined. Scientific materialism then became the sound of one hand clapping so far as metaphysics went.

But of course, scroll forward to the various shocks and revisions of 20th C physics, and even materialists have stopped thinking of matter being so material. Matter is energy. Energy is spacetime curvature, quantum temporal uncertainty, information entropy, or some other "shit" now.

Aristotelean form and finality are causes having to be smuggled back into the scientific discourse.

However anyway, you went off at the deep end without seeming to think that @Wayfarer might be doing his usual thing of criticising Scientism - a particular brand of scientific metaphysics which wants to reduce reality to just material/efficient cause.

I don't have a problem with deism, pantheism or other kinds of vague theism, just so long as they are not false postures for monotheism or organized religion. — JerseyFlight

This seems like a vote for the more Aristotelean brand of physicalism then. Immanence rather than transcendence.

@Wayfarer likewise is always citing Buddhism, never Christianity, as far as I remember. So I think you have read his own metaphysical commitments quite wrong - even if I would place him on the idealist side of the immanence camp.

I would say that you also immediately tried to pigeon hole me the first (and only) time I replied to a post of yours. I don't mind that. It was funny. But it might be worth knowing just how far off the mark you seem to be in guessing people's backgrounds and hobby horses.

:up:

I am indeed on the 'idealist' side of the ledger. But there many suppressed premisses lurking underneath this debate. Basically, if you question the mainstream scientific-secular acocunt, then you must be some type of creationist, right? That's how Thomas Nagel was categorised when Mind and Cosmos was published - as giving 'aid and succour' to the (creationist) enemy. Likewise when Lord Martin Rees - the Astonomer General - was awarded the Templeton Prize, Richard Dawkins called him 'a Quisling'!

It's no coincidence, for instance, that the main public face for materialist theory of mind, Daniel Dennett, is also an evangelical atheist. (And that's no straw-man accusation.)

Ultimately, I fault ecclesiastical religion for this - the emphasis on orthodoxy, on 'right belief', and the way heretics were treated, is what drove the dichotomy between faith and science in the first place. In other words, religious dogmatism drove the secular backlash that is one of the major strands of Enlightenment thought.

But it's a very deep and many-sided story, and from a philosophical perspective you have to consider the whole issue in the light of hermneutics and history of ideas - the symbolic meanings encoded in religion, for instance - which is not at all the same as simply swallowing religious dogma.

That is the perspective I try and bring to it.

Organised religion made uber-materialism thinkable because the whole question of what moves dumb matter could be shoved into the cupboard marked "mathematical necessity". — apokrisis

Great point. This is all grounded in the history of philosophy in the West. Early modern science, as a commitment to the discovery of universal truths, was very much a product of the monotheist tradition, which, in some ways, it wants to replace - hence the 'religion of science'. It still has some proponents, particularly in popular culture, but as you point out, there are alternative models, and besides many actual scientists never really bought into it - they're a diverse group with a huge range of ideas and perspectives.

I think your atheist convictions are so overpowering as to make discussion with you pointless. — Wayfarer

On the contrary, I will not assume your metaphysical categories as default reality, if you want them you will have to defend them.

Look at what Nagel is saying, think about it.

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 nonteleological laws of physics on the material of which we and our environments are all composed. — Thomas Nagel

Here Nagel is assuming too much. To begin with, he is referring to idealist categories, this is why they are mentioned in contrast to physics. I do not believe Nagel can sustain the ideas he here puts forth. It matters not, the point is that we don't get to pick and choose the nature of reality (the same point I was making above about God). If observation leads to the conclusion that there are no grand metaphysics, this does not make our observation false, but it does tell us a great deal about thinkers like Nagel. I don't see how he can escape the charge of Nihilism, precisely because he seems to be demanding an absolute negativity in the absence of his positive categories. This is simply an admission that one cannot handle reality without delusion.

Early modern science, as a commitment to the discovery of universal truths, was very much a product of the monotheist tradition, — Wayfarer

Peter Harrison wrote this great summary...
https://www.academia.edu/16420900/The_development_of_the_concept_of_laws_of_nature

His account shows just how socially constructed our notions of reality are - even as "objective science". And exactly where immanence got replaced with transcendence.

Study of mechanical processes was considered to be about the manipulation of nature, not nature itself. This was consistent with the Aristotelian tendency to regard the operations of nature as analogous to that of an organism rather than a machine, and was also in keeping with Aristotle's assumption that the cosmos was eternal - that is to say, not a created artefact.

As we shall see, the early modern conception of nature as a machine and a divine artefact would make possible a novel union of physics as the study of nature with mechanics as the study of artificially induced motions

What is interesting about this passage is the manner in which Kepler invokes the divine will and his belief in a creator as the justification for, and indeed the foundation of, his realist mathematical astronomy. The reality of mathematical relations in the universe is asserted on the basis that God has instantiated these relations in the created order. In fact Kepler attributed Aristotle's inability to conceptualise a world founded on mathematical principles to the fact that the Greek philosopher had not believed that the world had been created.

A mathematical natural philosophy that was unacceptable to Aristotle, Kepler wrote, is "acceptable to me and to all Christians, since our faith holds that the World, which had no previous existence, was created by God in weight, measure, and number, that is in accordance with ideas coeternal with Him."

All of this makes possible the conviction that mathematical laws are not just human constructions and devices for calculation, but rather describe the real relations that obtain between physical objects in the universe.

A key characteristic of the notion of laws of nature was the idea of an external imposition of order onto the world. Such a perspective contrasted with theAristotelian view that attributed order to the intrinsic properties of natural things.

So not only was this new conception at odds with Aristotle's idea that mathematics be kept separate from natural philosophy and his insistence on maintaining a distinction between artificial and natural motions, it was also inconsistent with the Aristotelian view of matter and causation. The idea of divinely imposed laws was more consistent with the recently revived matter theory of the ancient atomists and with its modern modification, the corpuscular hypothesis.

Unlike the ontologically rich Aristotelian world, the sparse world of atoms or corpuscles was unpopulated by the qualities, virtues, active principles, and substantial forms that had once invested nature with significant causal agency. This was a causally vacant cosmos that would be receptive to the direct volitions of the Deity. It was also a world that required constant creative attention.

His account shows just how socially constructed our notions of reality are — apokrisis

If there is an admission of construction, then how do you get from this to transcendence? If you are arriving at it through construction then please demonstrate the process. Seems to me you begin with it as an emotive premise.

Ultimately, I fault ecclesiastical religion for this - the emphasis on orthodoxy, on 'right belief', and the way heretics were treated, is what drove the dichotomy between faith and science in the first place. In other words, religious dogmatism drove the secular backlash that is one of the major strands of Enlightenment thought. — Wayfarer

apokrisis is desperately trying to save you from your own dogmatism, he thinks you might be a Buddhist. My hunch is that you are an undercover Christian. What's clear is that you have tried to pretend to be concerned with truth since the beginning of this thread, as time went on it became clear that you are an undercover metaphysician. Are you a Christian?

"...whoever shall deny Me before men, I also will deny him before My Father in the heavens." Matt 10:33

You seem very cranky. It doesn't dispose me to responding to your raves.


I've noticed Peter Harrison's books, he seems a good scholar, and that is a very interesting passage. I've got a book from Amazon on Kepler that I've never got around to, might find time for that.

Your ad hominem is but another desperate attempt at evasion.

Strange you will not tell the truth here. I am indeed an atheist. But you know the moment you confess to your Christianity you are in a bit of a dilemma. Your dishonestly and secretiveness is disappointing, it is not conducive of intellectual integrity.

Hey you're the one quoting the Bible!

There is something else that must be said here to clarify the context of what's going on. Where you have the upper intellectual hand against your opponent, you would no doubt pounce on his ignorance. This is not deserving of respect, it is the technique of all Christian apologetics. However, you no doubt find it very hard to pass off your idealism on a thinker like myself, and this is because I can discern that the polemic you leverage is itself constructed of sophistical, abstract precepts that merely give the appearance of progress in the direction of mysticism, but in reality, it is just a special pleading exercise in the absolute negative. Your own fantastical precepts, as an anti-philosophical tactic, are not even disclosed, and even if they were you would fallaciously exempt them from your negative criteria. This is not philosophy, this is modern sophistry.

If there is an admission of construction, then how do you get from this to transcendence? — JerseyFlight

What kind of a question is that? Immanence and transcendence are logically derived as the dichotomous alternatives. Either the causes of being are internal to that being, or they are external.

A choice of views that are arrived at by reasoning and not due to some emotional attachment.

There is something else that must be said here to clarify the context of what's going on. Where you have the upper intellectual hand against your opponent, you would no doubt pounce on his ignorance. This is not deserving of respect, it is the technique of all Christian apologetics. However, you no doubt find it very hard to pass off your idealism on a thinker like myself, and this is because I can discern that the polemic you leverage is itself constructed of sophistical, abstract precepts that merely give the appearance of progress in the direction of mysticism, but in reality, it is just a special pleading exercise in the absolute negative. Your own fantastical precepts, as an anti-philosophical tactic, are not even disclosed, and even if they were you would fallaciously exempt them from your negative criteria. This is not philosophy, this is modern sophistry. — JerseyFlight

Someone's not taking their meds again. :razz:

Immanence and transcendence are logically derived as the dichotomous alternatives. — apokrisis

This is very close to an argument from ignorance. Further, it is a mere assertion, you are simply demanding that you have the right to invent transcendence and assign being to it from the premise of matter. Where then does such a logic end, how does one deny the existence of the most fantastic antithesis? The dichotomy here is false, a mere abstract derivation, it is not found in nature.

The point I made was based on your own premises. If you accept the premise that reality is constructed, then you must submit to the conclusion that your idea of transcendence is a construction, which negates its being. To avoid this conclusion I offered you the chance to connect the dots and show how you escape the dilemma of your own logic. Your reply was merely to appeal to idealism, this is not a solution.

This is very close to an argument from ignorance. — JerseyFlight

It is nothing like that.

Further, it is a mere assertion, you are simply demanding that you have the right to invent transcendence and assign being to it from the premise of matter. — JerseyFlight

Nothing like what I said.

The dichotomy here is false, a mere abstract derivation, it is not found in nature. — JerseyFlight

Right. That is why I say it is a way to sharpen our models of nature in a rational fashion. If we don't set up our arguments counterfactually, they can only ever produce vague conclusions - no matter how decisively we may reject or accept either alternative.

You seem to have an awful lot to learn about epistemology.

If you accept the premise that reality is constructed, then you must submit to the conclusion that your idea of transcendence is a construction — JerseyFlight

You seem to have an awful lot to learn about reading comprehension. I never said reality is constructed. I said our models of reality are socially constructed.

Are you that unfamiliar with epistemology?

To avoid this conclusion I offered you the chance to connect the dots and show how you escape the dilemma of your own logic. Your reply was merely to appeal to idealism, this is not a solution. — JerseyFlight

Again, I never said anything remotely like that.

You are dealing with the figments of your own imagination as seems to be the usual case.

If we don't set up our arguments counterfactually, they can only ever produce vague conclusions - no matter how decisively we may reject or accept either alternative. — apokrisis

What makes the supernatural, religious dichotomy, which you have admitted is just a technique, an actual alternative?

I never said reality is constructed. I said our models of reality are socially constructed. — apokrisis

One can produce all the models they want, but models, abstractions, only matter insofar as they can be tested or verified, otherwise they never make it past the level of speculation. So how do you go about verifying or testing your so-called, transcendent models? 

It will be one of the most bizarre things I will have ever heard if you try to tell me that precision is the result of the projection of spiritual being, which it sounds very much like you are saying? My understanding is that it's the result of empirical observation coupled with dialectical comprehension. The interjection of supernaturalism into the process is unnecessary.   

What makes the supernatural, religious dichotomy, which you have admitted is just a technique, an actual alternative? — JerseyFlight

You're speaking gobbledygook.

So how do you go about verifying or testing your so-called, transcendent models? — JerseyFlight

Try focusing on the fact that my commitment is to an ontology of immanent causality, not a transcendent one. I'm not another of your closet god-botherers that you seem so curiously desperate to confront.

I believe transcendence fails, for a wide variety of reasons. And I am impressed by how well immanent approaches are doing.

And the fact that we can say anything meaningful at all about Being is the surprise here.

But just because one can promote the success of one's ontology, doesn't mean one fails to recognise the epistemic fact that one is always "just modelling".

Is this all too complicated for you?

It will be one of the most bizarre things I will have ever heard if you try to tell me that precision is the result of the projection of spiritual being, which it sounds very much like you are saying? — JerseyFlight

Nothing like what I was saying.

The interjection of supernaturalism into the process is unnecessary. — JerseyFlight

So why do you keep interjecting that hopefully into every discussion?

I believe transcendence fails — apokrisis

There is no disagreement between us here.

But just because one can promote the success of one's ontology, doesn't mean one fails to recognise the epistemic fact that one is always "just modelling". — apokrisis

Well, one is, as a matter of fact, not "just modeling," correct? There are empirical considerations. The problem I have with this way of speaking is that you make it sound like all approaches are equal, they are not. Some do their best to draw from reality others do their best to impose on reality. One cannot say that all models are equal, I understand that you did not specifically say this, but this would seem to be a possible implication of your statement. "Success" is not the same as failure. Success in this context implies an advantage in accuracy... I just want to be clear, you are not saying we should "recognize" the validity of all models? You agree that some models are so divorced from the premises of reality that they offer no value to reality? In fact, some models are so abstract that they actually serve the purpose of negating reality.