If the explanation you are considering is a physical one then there is nothing wrong with it, — Janus

What kind of bias is that? If we are seeking the cause of physical existence, obviously the answer cannot be something physical.

That kind of question is not answerable in any verifiable or falsifiable manner in principle.. — Janus

I don't see how you would justify this claim.

How could a non-physical explanation ever be tested?

Yes.

Then again, we don't know much about creativity at all and we can say it's as real as anything else. I mean, we all have it to an extent and it leads to discoveries on some occasions.

I suppose the surprising thing is that we even manage to have theories that "connect" us to the world at all. There's no reason to suspect any advantage in terms of survival based on science creation.

We have not (all of us, or most of us) agreed as to what metaphysics even is.

Your idea of "meta-physics" may have value in philosophical discussions, but it isn't "metaphysics" as we normally use the word. We've been through all this before. I don't think we'll get anywhere going through it again. — T Clark

The topic of this "philosophical discussion" is "what IS metaphysics", not "what is the correct or conventional definition of an obsolete Aristotelian concept". We agreed earlier that your definition and mine are different. And that's OK. I'm not arguing over conventional usage of the term, but attempting to show that there is a different interpretation of Aristotle's usage, with a practical application to 21st century Reality.

If I insisted that mine is the correct definition, that would be the One Word One Meaning Fallacy. Instead, I am trying to show you a different-way-to-think-about-the-philosophical-concept of Metaphysics. If you have a problem with the neo-Greek word itself, ask yourself if there is something Non-Physical about our mutual Reality. If so, that's what I'm talking about. :smile:


Non-Physical : 2. not tangible or concrete ; 3. immaterial ; incorporeal.
Examples : digital money (cryptocurrency ; bitcoin) ; abstractions ; culture ;

How can something non-physical exist? :
The mind can conceive of objects that clearly have no physical counterpart. Such objects include concepts such as numbers, mathematical sets and functions, and philosophical relations and properties. If such objects are indeed entities, they are entities that exist only mind itself, not within space and time.

Metaphysical Causation : Ideas are abstractions and have no material form. But they can be Causal, as in the Aryan Myth that motivated millions of people to join in a world war, and a holocaust, with devastating physical effects. The ideas and Ideals of Jesus, an insignificant Jewish preacher, motivated millions of minds to convert the pagan Roman Empire into the Christian Church. Some insist that anything Real must interact with the physical world in some way. But they tend to ignore the mediation of minds in real-world Causation.

We have not (all of us, or most of us) agreed as to what metaphysics even is. — Manuel

That may be true; but then in light of my last reply to MU, why couldn't we say that anything that is testable is a physical, not a metaphysical, hypothesis? On the other hand don't we know what traditional or classical metaphysics is, because it is canonized in texts which are recognized as being concerned with metaphysical questions?

So, as to the idea that metaphysical ideas are untestable ideas this not to say that every untestable idea would be a metaphysical idea, but if an idea is an aesthetical, anthropological, economical, psychological or ethical one, then wouldn't that be kind of obvious? This is not to say that all hypotheses in the other disciplines I mentioned would be untestable in principle like metaphysical speculations are; I think some ideas in those other areas of inquiry are testable in principle, but very difficult or even impossible to definitively test in practice.

Ideas are abstractions and have no material form. But they can be Causal, as in the Aryan Myth that motivated millions of people to join in a world war, and a holocaust, with devastating physical effects. — Gnomon

It may seem that an idea is definitely non-physical and yet causal (this is Descartes' problem). As Spinoza, solving this problem, would have it, I think that physical and non-physical (mental) are not two substances, but two kinds of perspective or ways of thinking about (some) things. So we can look at ideas as being non-physical (mental, semantic and so on) or physical (neural). Insofar as ideas are physical (neural) then they can of course be causative.

Absent evidence, we resort to reasons. Someone can give you a reason for thinking that idealism is better than panpsychism, you weigh those reasons based on your experience and proceed to adopt either view, or you can reject them both.

The issue I see with your use of "physical" here, is that it stands in for publicly observable phenomena, that is a thing many people can point to and see.

That leaves out an awful lot. But, this specific issue aside, you can say that metaphysical ideas are not subject to testing, only reasons.

I agree that some metaphysical ideas certainly seem more plausible than others; but then what one finds plausible will depend on one's culturally inculcated presuppositions. We may be able to alter those, to an extent, but I think scientifically educated people will find it very difficult to honestly believe in things for which there can be no definitive evidence.

So, it is more a matter of being true to your intellect, and trying to avoid being swayed by wishful thinking (which would be a form of intellectual dishonesty for us educated moderns). This allows that those who have been inculcated with more traditional beliefs can be true to their intellects without demanding empirical evidence for their beliefs..

Well, in a sense. I mean, everybody has a metaphysics, scientists included. They just don't have a particularly good metaphysics.

So take a scientists who believes in only what the evidence shows. The world is made of quantum fields. That's what the evidence says exists at bottom. It's a fluctuating space that vibrates. It's a physical thing that we'll never see, can only get at thorough (physical) mathematical equations and offers no hints that a rock, much less an organism would ever arise.

That is a metaphysical view. That's a strange belief to anybody, even if it has evidence.

The topic of this "philosophical discussion" is "what IS metaphysics", not "what is the correct or conventional definition of an obsolete Aristotelian concept". — Gnomon

You can define words any way you want. You can define a dog turd a large breed of poultry, but please don't invite me to Thanksgiving dinner at your house.

How could a non-physical explanation ever be tested? — Janus

you do know why Karl Popper introduced the criterion of testability? And that he himself was not a materialist?

How can something non-physical exist? :
The mind can conceive of objects that clearly have no physical counterpart. Such objects include concepts such as numbers, mathematical sets and functions, and philosophical relations and properties. If such objects are indeed entities, they are entities that exist only mind itself, not within space and time. — Gnomon

Agree, but this doesn't account for the uncanny effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences. Saying that something exists 'in the mind' subjectivises it - but mathematical truths are true for all minds, not for a particular mind. So their reality transcends the subjective domain.

How could a non-physical explanation ever be tested? — Janus

Non-physical explanations are tested logically. That's what logic gives us, non-physical explanations. Are you familiar with mathematics for example? Some people however, still do not trust logic, they have no faith in the non-physical, and so they must fall back onto the comfort and illusory security provided by their senses.

I think scientifically educated people will find it very difficult to honestly believe in things for which there can be no definitive evidence. — Janus

The problem with this statement is that you define "definitive evidence" as physical evidence. If you would allow that logic provides evidence which is just as "definitive", or even more so, than your senses, you would allow for "non-physical evidence".

I think you're mistaken and have bought into the pop-science hype ofter promulgated by philosophically illiterate / negligent scientists and academic idealists and other latterday woo-woo sophists. — 180 Proof

You are mistaken, my friend. As I noted in my previous post, I don't do woo. So your prejudice against Metaphysics causes you to mis-interpret the meaning of my words. But that's OK. We'd have no use for philosophy if people didn't disagree on the applicable meaning of words in different contexts. But our good intentions keep us dialoging toward a meeting of minds. :cool:

Insofar as "information" has causal efficacy, it is physical (i.e. not "immaterial" or merely abstract/formal). — 180 Proof

From reply to above :
Metaphysical Causation : Ideas are abstractions and have no material form. But they can be Causal, as in the Aryan Myth that motivated millions of people to join in a world war, and a holocaust, with devastating physical effects. The ideas and Ideals of Jesus, an insignificant Jewish preacher, motivated millions of minds to convert the pagan Roman Empire into the Christian Church. Some insist that anything Real must interact with the physical world in some way. But they tend to ignore the mediation of minds in real-world Causation.

tell me succinctly, Gnomon, how "work" differs significantly from "change". — 180 Proof

Physical change is called "Work". Mental change is called "Information". In the human brain, Mental Work burns a lot of energy, even though the Brain does not change its physical form. The mental "difference" is in the abstract meaning of the Information. But hey, It's all the same to me : EnFormAction is transformation, which is Change, whether mental or physical. :smile:

The novel concept of Enformation is also a synthesis of both Energy and Information. So I invented a new portmanteu word to more precisely encapsulate that two-in-one meaning : “EnFormAction”. In this case though, the neologism contains three parts : “En” for Energy, “Form” for Shape or Structure or Design, and “Action” for Change or Causation. But Energy & Causation are basically the same thing.
http://bothandblog2.enformationism.info/page29.html

"Doing work" and "change ... both physical and mental" is, in my mind, a distinction without a difference. — 180 Proof

In my world, there are physical differences (ratios ; numerical values) and there are mental distinctions (meanings ; reasons). But your worldview doesn't seem to have a place for a Meta-physical Mind. So, you look for physical analogues to such "nonsense" (woo) notions as : Betrayal, Charity, Courage, Cowardice, Cruelty, Forgiveness, Truth, Love, Anger, Fear, Grief, Happiness, Jealously, Sympathy, Insanity, Knowledge, Wisdom, Right/Wrong, Duty, Fame, Justice, Liberty, Friendship, Greed, Innocence, Rules, Social Norm, and Religion. If they are not physical, they don't exist, hence have no importance to a "Physicalist Mind" (an oxymoron) :joke:

In philosophy, physicalism is the metaphysical thesis that "everything is physical"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physicalism

Information :
Knowledge and the ability to know. It’s also what you know. But technically, it's the ratio of order to disorder, of positive to negative, of knowledge to ignorance. It's measured in degrees of uncertainty. Those ratios are also called "differences". So Gregory Bateson defined Information as "the difference that makes a difference". The latter distinction refers to "value" or "meaning". Babbage called his prototype computer a "difference engine". Difference is the cause or agent of Change. In Physics it’s called "Thermo-dynamics" or "Energy". In Sociology it’s called "Conflict".
http://bothandblog6.enformationism.info/page16.html




The BothAnd principle is a corollary of the Enformationism thesis. It views the world as a process motivated and guided by antagonistic-yet-complementary powers. For example, Energy is the motive force for all physical actions, but it is offset & moderated by the, less well known, antithetical force of Enformy in the great dialectical process of evolution. The overall effect of energy in the universe is destructive, as encapsulated in the concept of Entropy. Yet, by balancing destructive Entropy with constructive Enformy, evolution has proven to be a creative process. However, since the existence of Enformy has not yet been accepted by mainstream science --- except in the crude concept of “negentropy” --- any worldview based on such a flimsy foundation is likely to be dismissed by either/or empiricists as a bunch of Woo. Yet, all scientific & philosophical speculation inevitably begins with a leap of imagination. And this hybrid world-view is one such leap into the unknown.

you do know why Karl Popper introduced the criterion of testability? And that he himself was not a materialist? — Wayfarer

Yes, I've read a fair bit of Popper's work many years ago. He introduced the criterion of falsifiability, as a corrective to the Logical Positivists idea of verifiability. He clearly identified metaphysical ideas, in distinction from scientific ideas, as being untestable. He rejected Kant's noumena. It's true he wasn't a strict materialsit, as he posited "three worlds" if I remember right. Since my memory of this is a bit vague I just searched that and found this on Wikipedia. Note that Popper thinks world 2 and 3 are emergent, not primordial; they are exclusively human phenomena for Popper.

All true, but the point about falsifiability is to be able to differentiate scientific or empirical hypotheses from those that are not. Examples that he gave were psychoanalysis and communism which can't be falsified as they're so loosely defined they can accomodate all kinds of counter-factuals (ergo not really 'scientific' although that is hardly news by now.) But the fact that an idea is not 'falsifiable' doesn't mean it's automatically invalid, that anything that can't be empirically falsified is empty. That's very close to positivism or verificationism.

I'm trying to trace the origin of metaphysics back to Parmenides, as he is traditionally believed to be the originator of that stream of thought. I've been reading up on it, but it's a very taxing subject, because he's very hard to understand, and because there's been literally millenia of commentary about it, so the whole field is littered with enormously elaborated arguments about the exact meaning of some phrase or word. But I think the general gist is that as he was an axial age philosopher, his outlook and mentality is closer to that of Vedanta and Buddhism than to anything in modern philosophy. I've found a couple of interesting papers on that idea (plus McEvilly's book The Shape of Ancient Thought.)

Photons are a good source of information in our macro world; light peels information off of an object for us to receive. — PoeticUniverse

Yes, but physical Photons are not the Information (meaning ; difference) itself. They are, like the 1s & 0s of computers, merely empty carriers of cargo (meaning). So, the physical Effects of photons are due to the non-physical contents, not the container. As a metaphor, imagine that an empty brass shell becomes a bomb when it is filled with potential energy. Besides, a Potential photon is barely physical, and it only becomes Actual when it slows down to "macro" speeds at which its potential condenses into Matter. So, the "source of Information" (meaning) is always a differentiating Mind of some kind. :cool:

Photons have no charge, no resting mass, and travel at the speed of light.
That's about as close to nothing as you can imagine. But modern physicists have become grudgingly resigned to treating nothingness as-if it is a physical (material) object. Photons, Fields, & Quarks would have been dismissed by Aristotle as Platonic Ideals. :nerd:

Photons, Fields, & Quarks would have been dismissed by Aristotle as Platonic Ideals. — Gnomon

The mathematically formulated laws of quantum theory show clearly that our ordinary intuitive concepts cannot be unambiguously applied to the smallest particles. All the words or concepts we use to describe ordinary physical objects, such as position, velocity, color, size, and so on, become indefinite and problematic if we try to use then of elementary particles. ... it is important to realize that, while the behavior of the smallest particles cannot be unambiguously described in ordinary language, the language of mathematics is still adequate for a clear-cut account of what is going on.

During the coming years [i.e. after the 1950's], the high-energy accelerators will bring to light many further interesting details about the behavior of elementary particles. But I am inclined to think that the answer just considered to the old philosophical problems will turn out to be final. If this is so, does this answer confirm the views of Democritus or Plato?

I think that on this point modern physics has definitely decided for Plato. For the smallest units of matter are, in fact, not physical objects in the ordinary sense of the word; they are forms, structures or—in Plato's sense—Ideas, which can be unambiguously spoken of only in the language of mathematics. — Werner Heisenberg, The Debate between Plato and Democritus

Plato gets the last laugh.

Note that Popper thinks world 2 and 3 are emergent, not primordial; they are exclusively human phenomena for Popper. — Janus

Yes. Popper made the same kind of distinction that I am making to distinguish Meta-Physics (world 2 &3) from Physics (world 1). Even though they like to quote Popper's Falsifiability rule for unconscious physical World 1, they deny the "emergent human phenomena" of conscious minds, that mysteriously evolved from insentient matter by a hypothetical phase change that left a record in fossils in the form of a gap (insert unknown cause here). :smile:

World 1 : the realm of states and processes as typically studied by the natural sciences.
World 2 : the realm of mental states and processes.
World 3 : the realm of the 'products of thought' when considered as objects in their own right.

You can define words any way you want. You can define a dog turd a large breed of poultry, but please don't invite me to Thanksgiving dinner at your house. — T Clark

Now, you're just getting nasty. So, I'll back-off the stinky word "Metaphysics", and present my aromatic turkey dinner in the form of Karl Popper's notion of non-falsifiable Worlds 2 &3 as noted in the reply to Janus below. Now, would you accept my invitation? :smile:

Physics --
World 1 : the realm of states and processes as typically studied by the natural sciences.
non-physical Meta-Physics --
World 2 : the realm of mental states and processes.
World 3 : the realm of the 'products of thought' when considered as objects in their own right.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popper%27s_three_worlds
Note -- as typically studied by the philosophical sciences

Karl Popper is generally regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of science of the twentieth century.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/

PS___I don't know about you, but I'm learning a lot about this topic. But it's all in the form of Ideas and Information, not Physics.

Besides, a Potential photon is barely physical, and it only becomes Actual when it slows down to "macro" speeds at which its potential condenses into Matter. So, the "source of Information" (meaning) is always a differentiating Mind of some kind. — Gnomon

It is thought that two photons colliding can produce an electron and a positron, if this is what you mean by them slowing down, and this is under study. Photons don't decay on their own, which is why they will be left at the end of the universe. Also, "barely physical" is still physical.

I see that you have Mind's information operating a photon.

It may seem that an idea is definitely non-physical and yet causal (this is Descartes' problem). As Spinoza, solving this problem, would have it, I think that physical and non-physical (mental) are not two substances, but two kinds of perspective or ways of thinking about (some) things. So we can look at ideas as being non-physical (mental, semantic and so on) or physical (neural). Insofar as ideas are physical (neural) then they can of course be causative. — Janus

I agree. I am not a Cartesian Dualist. but an Information Monist. :smile:

Information already has this monist/dualist BothAnd property, which could explain how metaphysical minds emerge from the functioning of material brains. It might also suggest how a physical universe could emerge from a mathematical Singularity consisting of nothing but the information for constructing a universe from scratch : a program for creation.
http://bothandblog.enformationism.info/page14.html

Like Spinoza's Pantheistic "God", Information appears to be the single substance of the whole World.
http://bothandblog2.enformationism.info/page29.html

Both/And Principle :
My coinage for the holistic principle of Complementarity, as illustrated in the Yin/Yang symbol. Opposing or contrasting concepts are always part of a greater whole. Conflicts between parts can be reconciled or harmonized by putting them into the context of a whole system.

Photons have no charge, no resting mass, and travel at the speed of light.
That's about as close to nothing as you can imagine. But modern physicists have become grudgingly resigned to treating nothingness as-if it is a physical (material) object. Photons, Fields, & Quarks would have been dismissed by Aristotle as Platonic Ideals — Gnomon

Indeed, they are all close to nothing, as expected, being so minuscule, but 'close' is not nothing and so there is no "nothingness" to treat…

It is thought that two photons colliding can produce an electron and a positron, if this is what you mean by them slowing down, and this is under study. Photons don't decay on their own, which is why they will be left at the end of the universe. Also, "barely physical" is still physical.
I see that you have Mind's information operating a photon. — PoeticUniverse

It is imagined that two photons colliding is like a standing wave in a continuous Field of mathematical "substance". No one has ever observed such a collision of massless particles, they only see it's effects on massive matter as tracks in a fog chamber. Anyway, it's that hypothetical "standing wave" that I refer to as stable Matter. But, as I imagine it, the wavey Field of Energy (the power to Enform) exists only in the Mind of the Enformer (the Operator), who is able to transform nothing (or near nothing) into something. :smile:

PS__A massless Photon at rest (energy & momentum but no mass) qualifies as Meta-Physical in my usage of the term -- Potential but not Actual. No mass, no matter. It's a metaphor for a particle.

The Enformer :
AKA, the Creator. The presumed eternal source of all information, as encoded in the Big Bang Sing-ularity. That ability to convert conceptual Forms into actual Things, to transform infinite possibilities into finite actualities, and to create space & time, matter & energy from essentially no-thing is called the power of EnFormAction. Due to our ignorance of anything beyond space-time though, the postulated enforming agent remains undefined. I simply label it ambiguously as "G*D".
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html

Indeed, they are all close to nothing, as expected, being so minuscule, but 'close' is not nothing and so there is no "nothingness" to treat… — PoeticUniverse

Close only counts in horseshoes and hand-grenades. A Quark is invisible and un-measurable, so in scientific terms it's only a theory (information) in a mind. Since it only exists as three-in-one, it's only as real as the Holy Trinity. :joke:

Quarks are probably not made of anything more fundamental. The idea that everything has to be made of something else is not true. Light is not made of anything else, neither is gravity.
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/16048/what-are-quarks-made-of
Note -- all those "nothings" are "made" of Information (the power to enform, to create forms).i.e, Intentional Energy. Is that such a crazy notion?

A Quark is invisible and un-measurable, so in scientific terms it exists only as a theory in a mind. — Gnomon

Yet quarks are supposed to be the constituent parts of massive objects. Where does all that mass actually come from?

the higgs boson, we're told.

I think that the Higgs mechanism only accounts for a very small percentage of mass that is known to us.

It is worth noting that the Higgs field does not "create" mass out of nothing (which would violate the law of conservation of energy), nor is the Higgs field responsible for the mass of all particles. For example, approximately 99% of the mass of baryons (composite particles such as the proton and neutron), is due instead to quantum chromodynamic binding energy, which is the sum of the kinetic energies of quarks and the energies of the massless gluons mediating the strong interaction inside the baryons.[28] In Higgs-based theories, the property of "mass" is a manifestation of potential energy transferred to fundamental particles when they interact ("couple") with the Higgs field, which had contained that mass in the form of energy.[29] — Wikipedia

As I noted in my previous post, I don't do woo — Gnomon

In my previous post I did not claim you did. I said it seems you've been taken-in by pop-science hype about "materialism".

So your prejudice against Metaphysics causes you to mis-interpret the meaning of my words.

What "prejudice"? I've proposed an alternative method of metaphysical speculation to the mainstream (i.e. Platonic) method you've undertaken. I've not "mis-interpreted" you but have taken your self-described "idealism / essentialism" at face value as pseudo-science masquerading as philosophy ("Meta-physics"). Criticism, Gnomon, is not "prejudice against". I'm always open to being persuaded otherwise. I'm familiar enough with digital physics, information theory, Bohmian QM, black hole entropy, etc, however, to recognize pseudo-scientific misappropriations of those theoretical constructs and interpretations when I encounter them (e.g. "Enformationism", etc)

Metaphysical Causation

Then it would be physical, not "metaphysical". :roll:

Physical change is called "Work". Mental change is called "Information". In the human brain, Mental Work burns a lot of energy, even though the Brain does not change its physical form

Explain why a physical brain physically "burns a lot of" physical "energy" (i.e. calories) if, as you suggest, "Information" is not "Work". Oh, btw, the human brain functions by constantly changing its neuronal configurations (re: neuroplasticity) that encode *wait for it, wait for it* new information (i.e. updating current information —> memories, expectations, predictions, feelings, learning-conditioning, etc).

... "everything is physical" ...

Strawman. I've only obliquely made empirical (and more directly analytical) objections to your 'idealist / essentialist claims' – you're peddling sophistical pseudo-science, Gnomon! – not "metaphysical" (e.g. physicalist or positivist) counter-claims. Btw, anti-idealism isn't necessarily physicalism (e.g. Kant wasn't a physicalist), so even your strawman consists of a strawman. :sweat:

Pedantic to the last ... :mask:

Like Spinoza's Pantheistic "God" ... — Gnomon

Acosmist.

Non-physical explanations are tested logically. That's what logic gives us, non-physical explanations — Metaphysician Undercover

Logic, though, doesn't tell us anything about an inference other than whether it is consistent with its premises (validity); it cannot tell us whether the premises are true.

The only way to test the truth of any premise is by empirical evidence.

:up: