The term “physical” starts losing clarity if it encompasses everything. — schopenhauer1

Yes.

Still, I believe we can distinguish between physical and non-material realities. Physical reality consists of things we can observe, measure, and interact with directly. Physicalism is most useful when it suggests that reality is, in principle, measurable. — schopenhauer1

Methodological naturalism says behave as if it were and get on with it. Physicalism seems like a vacuous piece of extra metaphysical naturalist baggage in that context.

I do see methodological naturalism being presented as justified based on results, but it is an open question whether the success of modern science is independent of metaphysical presuppositions.

The other question is whether a robust methodology can perdure independent of metaphysical presuppositions. — Leontiskos

Can it be done without physicalism? — T Clark

This is where I wonder if a certain logic to the situation is obscured. Is there something practical to the suitcase I can't see? What is the minimum we should need to get on with science optimally? Methodological natualism seems to be the answer to me. But I am open to reasons why more might be needed.

(A) sounds like materialism. Physicalism doesn't really say that. I mean, what is this substance? — noAxioms

Yes, that was poorly phrased. I've edited it.

(B) is untrue. There are plenty of valid scientific interpretations that are non-deterministic, notably Copenhagen interpretation of QM. — noAxioms

I had this under the rubric of "most". Changed to "some" to avoid being misleading.

Many thanks for identifying those issues.

OK, it's a methodology, not a premise. Scientific investigation proceeds as if there is nothing supernatural. If this is wrong, then science will presumable hit a wall at some point.
But then you treat it like it is a theory with this:
But the metaphysical naturalism of the physicalist posits that ...
It proceeds as if.. Saying 'posit' makes it sound like naturalism itself. — noAxioms

The first "it" I've bolded in your quote is methodological naturalism. The second one is metaphysical naturalism. You seem to be talking as if you think I was referring to the same thing. But the difference is crucial as it's roughly where I think the dividing line against unnecessary metaphysical assumption (the suitcase) comes into play.

I'll get back to you on this. I've discovered after writing the OP that Chomsky made a somewhat similar critique. An available paper discussing his view for those interested: https://teorievedy.flu.cas.cz/index.php/tv/article/download/271/293

I've only read a bit of it. It's rather late where I'm at.

I generally agree with this. My previous comments here have, of course, been somewhat lacking in seriousness.

It might help to think of time 'running backwards' and then looking at how you view this or that as 'causal'? — I like sushi

What happens then is you strip away / distort the contextual network; enabling conditions like gravity, thermodynamics etc become meaningless and you are left with a bare sequence of events, sound and fury, signifying nothing.

he expectation is that the answer must necessarily entail something spooky. — Wayfarer

I won't develop the point here as we're drifting off-topic, but what's considered spooky for the physicalists are just the metaphysical assumptions that are not theirs, and there are at least a couple of big ones that are no less "spooky" than those of their major opponents.

That OP looks messy and unfocused to me. And this conversation seems now to be about everything and anything.

the storyteller has entered the story and transformed it. — unenlightened

Apparently so.

The fundamental reality of the physicalist boils down to, at the finest level, the mathematically inferred or imagined, not the empirically observable, and even the finest level of the empirically observable does not obey the rules on which the subtextual justification for physicalism rests, i.e. common sense interactions with wordly dry goods on a macro scale. Again, physicalists ride in on horses and expect to unproblematically ride out on unicorns. When questioned, they tell us unicorns are horses too, and so the equine world is united once more, and we can stop worrying about the ficititious animals of pesky dualists and idealists.

It's all so tiresome.

what really is 'physical'? Is the brain physical? — Wayfarer

Yes, the term really only makes sense at the macro-level. In the quantum sphere, the physical is as spooky as idealism sounds to materialists. So, physicalist fundamentalists kind of want to have their cake and eat it too (an ironic possibility only available to them if they were sub-atomic particles).

An example would be the disjoint between a planned action and once taken in the spur of the moment, against items such as physical mechanics. The 'agency' of the human seems to run into conflict with the, how should I put it, 'laws of nature'.

The weight of importance is attributed to us because the immediacy of an action seems to trump the knowledge of the action. — I like sushi

You're getting at a human-centric bias? If so, sounds plausible, but can you develop a more specific example?

They cannot BOTH be ultimate causes - — I like sushi

Yes, they can. You've just misunderstood "ultimate" as applied to causation.

"In most situations, an ultimate cause may itself be a proximate cause in comparison to a further ultimate cause. "

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proximate_and_ultimate_causation

if you want to argue that there is Ultimate Causation go ahead. — I like sushi

"Ultimate" has a different meaning when applied to causation. It doesn't imply "final". Ultimate causes are nested. It's explained in the wiki article. That's why I said "distal" cause is a better term to use.

So it was it lack of a manned deck that caused the incident or the inaccuracy of the autopilot? — I like sushi

Just depends on your story as un said.

There seems to be a given belief that temporal proximity has more weight to the contributing factors of some given outcome? — I like sushi

Maybe. Do you have an example? An opinion one way or the other?

But are cryptocurrencies truly scarse at all? — hypericin

They range from supplies of 1 to (theoretical) supplies of infinity.

OK, but you've gone from what seemed like a specific issue in the OP, to some very general comments that only seem incidentally related to it. Are we done now or?

Human language is tied up with embodiment, sensation, and sentience. These are prerequisites not effects. The very structure of language: ideational, interpersonal, and textual, reflects this. You can't recreate beings with human language without recreating its prerequisites, you can only process linguistic inputs and outputs to simulate it.

Triggering cause (push of other domino or finger) vs. enabling condition (gravity), bruv.

Anyhow, I said "fuzzy" below so I'm insured against all objections.

Yes. You focus on outcome. Wayfarer focuses on process. Both perspectives are legitimate to some degree.

Basicaly agree; I don't yet know what the issue is, but with some refinement we may get there.

Still not 100% clear on what you're getting at.

Maybe we can take a simple scenario like the one below, and analyze things from there.

*

Two dominos, A and B and an agent, X.

X pushes Domino A, causing Domino A to fall against Domino B, causing Domino B to fall.

Domino B falling:

Proximal cause = Domino A falling against it
Distal (ultimate) cause = X pushing Domino A.

*

I think “distal” is a better term than “ultimate” because ultimate causes are never really ultimate, and are always also proximal to some effect in a chain.

Anyhow, causal network and contextual orientation ought to be part of the meta-context here in terms of placing the question in a comprehensible form.

Consider the causal network as the network of enabling conditions and triggering causes that could possibly be considered relevant in the outcome, such that proximal cause can be defined with some flexibility. This causal network causes a kind of fuzziness around the identification of the proximal cause.

Note this network as a whole can be considered the necessary and sufficient conditions of the effect under analysis. Also, the proximal cause is usually a triggering cause (and necessary e.g. my push) rather than an enabling condition (maybe only contingent, depending on the circumstances, e.g. the weight of the domino).

Re contextual orientation, are we approaching this from the context of a human observer with human desires, needs, goals, and recognizably human actions? Are we focusing on the mechanics of the situation? The physics? E.g. perhaps down to the micro context of electrons? The neurobiology? Our analysis can be psychological, chemical, physical or some combination thereof depending.

All relevant considerations.

E. g.

We need consciousness to think, therefore we need consciousness to make any inference about consciousness, that's the problem. — Skalidris

What about: ''We need language to think, therefore we need language to make any inference about language, that's the problem. ''

Except it's not. Even though it's similarly self-referential. Self-referentiality does not necessarily entail logical contradiction.

We need consciousness to think, therefore we need consciousness to make any inference about consciousness, that's the problem. — Skalidris

You haven't explained why this creates a logical impossibility. The limitations of the child in the lego example don't seem to amount to a logical impossibility either. You're applying physical constraints and the absence of means of gathering evidence to the situation to make it practically or empirically impossible for the child to do something. It's like saying the detective can't solve the crime if you set up a scenario where the clues are out of his reach. Sure. Nothing to do with logical impossibility though. A logical impossibilty should entail a contracition in the laws of logic, like require a square circle or 2 + 2 to equal 5. It's a very high threshold on the impossibility ladder. Maybe, you mean metaphysical impossibility, something that cannot obtain in any possible world (due to our understanding of the basic principles of reality) but may still not violate the laws of logic (e.g. ex nihilo (causeless) creation), or conceptual impossibility to do with semantic contradictions (e.g. "a colourless green cup") etc. But I think you are drawing unjustified conclusions concerning the nature of possibility from the problem of self-referentiality here.

In any case, it's seems to be either a conceptual issue (an essentially linguistic problem) or an empirical issue (one that we can pursue scientifically). To Chalmers, and most others, it's empirical. The hard problem is to explain how the property of consciousness / subjectivity arises from physical matter (presumed to be in the brain) and, not only have empirically testable theories been put forward to examine that, actual experiments have been done. Here's a link to one avenue being explored: Testing Penrose's Theory of Consciousness

Again, to me your thesis isn't clear enough and rests on a muddled presentation of logical impossibility that is too quickly inferred from the self-referentiality issue you bring up.

Right so, change of poem then.

Drunken Doughnut

Danny Doughnut is my name
Denying minds is my game
Wrote myself a book or two
They don't make sense, but who are you?

I've talked at TED and Oxford too
Taught those stiffs a thing or two
I'm not here and neither are you
The mind is false, the illusion true

All was well 'til experiments proved
My theories wrong, my followers fools
But I've made enough to keep me in booze
Heads I win, tails you lose!

Yeah, yeah, pass the sauce.

I don't know who'll win. The polls could change. Trump might do or say something disastrous. But the chances of 538 being off by that margin by polling day are small enough to stick to my commitment.

So, I'm wrong again, eh? :sad:

I'm not doing anything other than calling you out for making a ridiculous unsupported prediction. And putting my pacifier where my mouth is. :wink:

I'm just sayin' I'll do that if you're right about the national polls; what'll you do if I'm right that you're completely wrong?

Given that Diaper Don The Fascist Clown & his MAGA-GOP Circus Cult have pissed-off the majority of (likely) women voters so much since 2018 (then doubled down on the blatant misogyny in 2022 and again this year), I guesstimate (not counting Dems campaigns' huge money & get-out-the-vote ground game advantages) woman voters' preference for Harris-Walz & Dems is undercounted by 2% and The Clown is thereby generally overcounted by 5% in "national polls" and overcounted by 2% in swing state polls, and so I read them accordingly [adjusted]; for example: — 180 Proof

That is called wishful thinking, not analysis. If you bet money on it, you'll lose big. But let's take a different tack. If 538 overestimates Trump by 5% (or more) and underestimates Harris by 2% (or more) in their last national poll before the election, I will post a picture of myself here on this thread naked apart from a diaper with a crybaby face and sucking on a pacifier. Why? Because I believe in science and not making stuff up to make myself feel better. So, what are you going to do if/when you turn out to be wrong and the national polls turn out, let's say, to be within 1% either way of being right? Show me you actually believe what you're saying...

Maybe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proximate_and_ultimate_causation

Let's first assume that the hard problem of consciousness is not the lack of scientific knowledge in that domain but the paradox it creates when thinking of consciousness as an object in the world. — Skalidris

It doesn't imply that. For Chalmers, who came up with the hard problem, consciousness is not an object but a property of objects (and distinct from physical properties by its nature). So, your argument is a bit like saying it's logically impossible to prove the existence of time because it's an object in the world and we can't perceive it as such because each act of perception is a static measurement that never captures its flow. The way you've framed the problem may create a logical impossibility, but I think that's an issue with the framing. It may turn out to be that the problem is insoluble for other reasons or that it may be a conceptual issue (more of a non-problem), but I don't see logical impossibility applying here.

That would be my analysis too. Very close but Kamala seems to be blowing it.

You're right. It's off-topic here.

But yes, I don't believe we ever get to big T "Truth". Some sort of linguistic stability though, yes. It's more a negative type of progress of substraction.

Kastrup does address those points you raise in great detail in his various books, articles and lectures. — Wayfarer

I'll take a further look.

I have more confidence in philosophy as a vehicle for truth. — Wayfarer

My position is a philosophical one.

His critique of materialism isn't hard to agree with. Materialism does posit, ultimately, mathematical abstractions at the bottom of everything and ignores consciousness. But Kastrup's idealism--as expressed in that article--fares no better in that it posits consciousness as fundamental as a solution to ignoring it, but with no real insight into how it interacts with or why it's necessary to interact with matter in order to produce human experience. Or why human experience, which is the origin of the concept of "consciousness", is so special such that this concept turns out to the most fundamental map of the big picture. So, we're left without the only pieces of the puzzle that actually matter.

And necessarily so. Language is built for us to navigate and create physical, psychological, and social realities, not to express "fundamental reality", which is just that which is posited to be beyond the contexts in which linguistic meaning has practical consequence. So, we can run the discomfiting materialist script or the more comforting idealism script and pretend that they refer to something out there, but functionally the only difference between them is the emotional cadence. Linguistic relevance simply disappates into nothingness at the boundaries of such fundamental abstraction. Materially, we get symbolic mathematical interactions that don't refer directly to any observable phenomenon (i.e. empty abstractions that create holes for objective physical realities like the Higg's Boson to slot into) vs mentally, we get "fundamental consciousness" (an empty abstraction that creates a hole for the subjective mental reality of human experience to slot into).

Neither script solves any problem nor points to any actionable goal. It just adds another linguistic patina to our already overburdened social consciousness. Take them or leave them, materialism and idealism boil down to the same thing, fruitless stories aimed at elevating their storytellers into something they're not nor ever can be, i.e. vessels of wisdom that point to anything of actual significance beyond scientific progress and lived human experience. These are the true limits of our objective and subjective worlds and an admission of such is necessary for the development of any intellectually honest metaphysical position.

Ballad of the Chained Gahng

By Anon

My sister works in Hollywood
My brother eats firewood
The Colonel spoke when he could
Until they took him away

An honest man he ever was
For that sin, he lost his schnozz
They cut it off and mailed it me
I pinned it on my wall

I bow before it every day
For the Colonel who once held his sway
Over Hollywood's wicked ways
But now rots chained in Cum Cruise's jail

Forced to preach Ron Hubbard's creed
To the blushing Boulevard's poison seeds
He once was all we could ever need
But they took him away

He knew when to STFU. Absolute master in C.A.Z.

Consider this your safe space to employ madness as an offensive mirror to the perverse sanity that the medusa of social reality aims at us. Our happy quarantine in the sardonic inverse of respectable truth frees us to battle our inner lies. Cum Cruise is but the sacrificial lamb in wolf's clothing that we burn and circle as he stares manically cackling and crackling from the fire, daring us to look away. Rejoice in the jig. Eventually the ground falls out from beneath us all, even Cruise, and, in the abyss, all are one.

The following information describes how the temperature at night can be higher than the temperature during the day...
This could explain the meteorologist's claim that the number of days per year that see temperatures rise above 50C have more than tripled since the turn of the century. — Agree-to-Disagree

There has never been an official nighttime temperature of over 50°C recorded ever anywhere. And I would challenge you to find even one unofficial after-dark temperature in Kuwait of that level that beat the daytime temperature. So, the claim that such temperatures happen so regularly in Kuwait at night rather than the day, and are higher than the day, so as to account for that statistic is so fabulously, stupidly wrong that you deserve an award in barefaced audacity just for trying to pull it off. Sadly (for you) the trophy ought also to be your parting gift as your credibility is so shot now any attempt to limp on would be Pythonesque.

@Nils Loc @Shawn

:strong: :cool: