I haven't found a single thing to "save" myself, but helping and uplifting others is a whole new world to me now. Being good for society is interesting. Since I can't help myself, I'll help others. — GreekSkeptic

Stick with that! Can't go wrong with it, unless you put unrealistic expectations on it (like seeing to gain from it.)

You can defeat this only by providing an alternative that better explains the facts. — 180 Proof

Well spotted, 180! And the only fact that the physicalist doesn't come to terms with, is the reality of her own existenz. But, I get it, people need something to hang on to.

There's nothing in what I say that is 'anti-science' or 'opposed to science'. The only thing I'm opposing, is the application of scientific method to philosophical problems.

Why can't our individual worlds all share in the public world? — Ludwig V

I'm reminded of a powerful quote I read in novelist John Fowles ('The Magus') excursion into philosophy, The Aristos. I read that book in my 20's and have never looked at it since, but it contains a compendium of quotes from Heraclitus, one of which was:

There is but one world common for those who are awake, but when men are asleep, each turns away into a world of his own — Heraclitus

Interpretation: Awake = awake to the Logos, the shared reality, the unity-in-difference of nature.
Sleeping = enclosed in private illusion, a subjective world made of projections and habits.

It is a classical 'axial age' declaration that might easily have been found in the Upaniṣads or the early Buddhist texts.

But is is nothing like 'scientific objectivity', even though that is arguably descended from it. It is more thorough-going, pertaining to the entire life of the individual, not simply to the exercise of rational powers in respect of a specific scientific question.

So the reason our individual worlds do not automatically converge on the public world is that our ordinary state is one of confinement within a narrow, self-referential viewpoint (described in phenomenology as the egological or natural state). Awakening, for Heraclitus, means breaking out of that confinement and aligning oneself with the deeper order that is common to all (although in his case, that consisted of severe asceticism and seclusion from society.)

It's odd that you rule out the possibility I'm right. — Relativist

It's not a personal issue. It is physicalism that I'm critical of, not you in particular. See response above.

The physicalist wants to claim that when you zoom-in on the world and un-mix the convoluted causal structures, then you will find that everything is grounded in more fundamental events or structures describable and predictable by physics, and you will find no additional stuff behaving according to different principles. — Apustimelogist

I well aware of physicalist claims, and that is a good description of it.

One of Charles Pinter's central arguments in Mind and the Cosmic Order is that science explains the world by decomposing it into simples—the smallest, causally interacting constituents: particles, fields, molecules, neurons. (This can be traced back to atoms and atomism, although the idea of a physical atom has since been displaced.) This method has delivered enormous explanatory power , but it also commits us to a very specific kind of explanation: one where wholes are derivative, and the only truly fundamental realities are the constituents and their interactions.

Charles Pinter highlights fundamental issue with this attitude. Organisms don’t perceive the world in terms of simples. The human and animal sensorium (the manifold of sensory impressions which constitute 'things' for animals and humans) works in terms of gestalts—unified, meaningful wholes: faces, trajectories, melodies, intentions, beings, and so on. These are not assembled bottom-up from atomic sensory “bits”; rather, they are the primary mode in which the world is disclosed to a subject. When we identify something, we identify a gestalt, not an assembly of simples. This is a basic fact of cognition.

A gestalt has properties that no list of constituent parts captures: unity, salience, meaning, intentional relevance. A melody is not found in the individual notes; a face is not found in the luminosity patches; a perceived threat is not found in isolated pixels or shapes. These features belong to the organization of the whole, not to the micro-level items. They, more than atomic simples, are the basic constituents of the 'life-world', the world of lived meaning. And Pinter demonstrates this is so, not just for humans, but even for insects.

The tension is this:

* Science’s ontology is formulated in terms of simples.

* Mind and perception operate in terms of gestalts.

(Hence you can see why I'm not appealing to 'non-physical substances'.)

A physicalist can say that gestalts somehow “emerge” from simples, but the challenge is to show how the features distinctive of gestalts—coherence, meaningfulness, aboutness—follow as a matter of explanation from the properties of the physical parts. Simply asserting neural correlates doesn’t do the philosophical work, because correlates explain when something occurs, not why its distinctive features exist at all.

The point is that the reductive strategy that works for chemistry or planetary motion is not obviously suited to phenomena whose defining characteristics are holistic, structured, and inherently perspectival. If explanation bottoms out in simples, yet consciousness and cognition are inherently gestalt-like, then either:

* the reductive framework is incomplete, or

* gestalts possess explanatory features not captured by simples, or

* a richer conception of nature is needed, in which organization, form, and perspective are not treated as secondary or derivative

This isn’t an argument against physics. It’s an argument that a scientific metaphysics based solely on simples faces a structural mismatch with the phenomena of mind, whose basic units are wholes rather than parts.

So while it may be true that 'we don't know the intrinsic nature of anything' that is far from the only problem with physicalism. As an explanatory paradigm, it methodically excludes the basis of meaning in cognition.

All description and explanation occurs in some kind of context where there are limitations or constraints, ultimately shaped by how brains process and use information. — Apustimelogist

Here, you're committing the 'mereological fallacy'. This is central to an infliuential book, The Philosophical Foundations of Neurosciences, Hacker and Bennett (philosopher and neuroscientist, respectively):

In Chap 3 of Part I - “The Mereological Fallacy in Neuroscience” - Bennett and Hacker set out a critical framework that is the pivot of the book. They argue that for some neuroscientists, the brain does all manner of things: it believes (Crick); interprets (Edelman); knows (Blakemore); poses questions to itself (Young); makes decisions (Damasio); contains symbols (Gregory) and represents information (Marr). Implicit in these assertions is a philosophical mistake, insofar as it unreasonably inflates the conception of the 'brain' by assigning to it powers and activities that are normally reserved for sentient beings. It is the degree to which these assertions depart from the norms of linguistic practice that sends up a red flag. The reason for objection is this: it is one thing to suggest on empirical grounds correlations between a subjective, complex whole (say, the activity of deciding and some particular physical part of that capacity, say, neural firings) but there is considerable objection to concluding that the part just is the whole. These claims are not false; rather, they are devoid of sense.

Wittgenstein remarked that it is only of a human being that it makes sense to say “it has sensations; it sees, is blind; hears, is deaf; is conscious or unconscious.” (Philosophical Investigations, § 281). The question whether brains think “is a philosophical question, not a scientific one” (p. 71). To attribute such capacities to brains is to commit what Bennett and Hacker identify as “the mereological fallacy”, that is, the fallacy of attributing to parts of an animal attributes that are properties of the whole being. Moreover, merely replacing the mind by the brain leaves intact the misguided Cartesian conception of the relationship between the mind and behavior, merely replacing the ethereal by grey glutinous matter.

You see, I think your approach is undermined by this reductionism, the conviction that basic physical level is the only real one, to the extent that you can't even consider any alternative. You simply assume that philosophy must defer to physics, as if that can't even be in question.

Pinter, Charles C. Mind and the Cosmic Order: How the Mind Creates the Features & Structure of All Things, and Why This Insight Transforms Physics. Cham (Switzerland): Springer, 2020

Say what you will about Mamdani. but he must a world class ass kisser.

I do see your point and there is a sense in which the brain is a physical organ which can be physically damaged, But in context the implication was that it is ‘just another physical thing’ which is what I’m calling into question. And I think you would find the physicalist would not allow that the mind and brain are conceptually seperable as that would imply dualism,

As always :wink:

The inexicability of qualia is not specifically anything to do with physics — Apustimelogist

Need I point out that this is not the Physics Forum?

The most fundamental problem in metaphysics is whether metaphysics exists" — Ludwig V

Well asked. :up:

Yes, I'm aware that you believe the mind is not physical, and therefore not on par with physics and chemistry. But the extent of what you told me you believe about mind is just this negative (supposed) fact: it's not physical. — Relativist

You keep telling me what I'm not grasping, so I'll return the favour. The reason that the mind is not an object like those of physics or chemistry is because it is what we are. Cogito ergo sum, as Descartes correctly observed, is the one indubitable fact of existence. The mind (observer, subject, consciousness) is the one utterly indbuitable fact of existence because it is that to whom all experience occurs. So, of course it's not in the frame, part of the picture, nor a 'mysterious entity' nor 'non-physical thing'. Now the entire phenomenological, idealist, Indian, and most contiental philosophy understands this in a way that Anglo physicalism cannot.

And for you, that's just an inconvenient detail, somethingt that doesn't fit with your otherwise 'best explanation for all the facts'. Whereas, to me, that invalidates the entire point of philosophy, as it excludes the very subject to whom philosophy is meaningful.

Martin Heidegger is a difficult philosopher and one who's books I have not read in full, But he does point to what he calls the 'forgetfulness of Being', saying that this is a deficiency or an absence at the centre of modern philosophy. And that this is not a matter of propostiional knowledge, but an fact about existence (therefore, 'existential'.)

I mostly agree with it — Relativist

(Armstrong quote) Do you know why I would not agree? I’ll recap - because it treats ‘mind’ as being on par with ‘the objects of physics and chemistry’. Do you know why I fault that?

I embrace physicalism (generally, not just as a theory of mind) as an Inference to Best Explanation for all facts. — Relativist

Except for the nature of mind and the felt nature of experience, right? You’ve acknowledged that in various places as I understand it.

You aren't even in position to justifiably disagree, because you don't embrace any particular theory of mind (much less, a metaphysical theory). — Relativist

That is a virtue as far as I’m concerned.

I may not be an idealist, but I've come to terms with 'existence' being an ideal, which is awfully dang close to being an idealist I guess. — noAxioms

Keep coming! You're getting close!

Very different subject matter but a well - regarded book. Out of print, I Iuckily found an online copy - it ought to download properly book-marked, which helps in navigating it.

I think most people don't take that view, even people who think of the world as fundamentally physical. — Apustimelogist

What about the boxed quote above in support of materialist theory of mind. Do you think it is basically correct? Or if not what’s wrong with it?

And, you haven't countered the argument I put to you, only re-stated your conviction that 'whatever exists must be physical'.

For what it's worth, I don't think the language used in the OP is idiosyncatic or the words have been misused in any way. As noted above, I dropped the text into gemini and it had no trouble interpreting it and summarizing it with 100% accuracy.

Actually I'll own up, I didn't watch that whole video, but I briefly reviewed it and also his other materials and I'm sure it's bona fide. (Not that I won't watch it.)

But as for 'super-human knowledge' - this is a delicate question. There are hints in Aristotle and other ancient sources, of the experience of higher states of awareness in which something vital about truth is grasped. You find allusions to it in the writings of St Augustine. It is also encountered in Eastern sources (Hindu and Buddhist) that refer to samadhi states. A lof of ancient metaphysics have these references but they're very difficult to interpret. And also, the subject is prone to a lot of sensationalism by popular writers who are seeking to exploit them.

In today's culture, because these insights are categorised along with religion then they're generally disregarded or deprecated.

Actually now that I think of it, I have a .pdf of a very good, recent textbook on metaphysics. It's not that big of a book, but well worth reading if only the intro section, and the section on Plato. Any questions, please feel free to bring them up here, as it's on-topic.

Thinking Being: An Introduction to Metaphysics in the Classical Tradition, Eric Perl.

You'll have gathered that it is a contentious question, and that there are people who think metaphysics doesn't exist or is an illusion — Ludwig V

The claim that metaphysics is empty (‘otiose’ was Ayer’s term) is itself a metaphysical claim. That’s basically what sunk the positivists. I think some of the bad rap metaphysics gets is because of its repetition by those who repeat it in slogan form without really grasping it.

Logical reasoning is guided by dispositions (beliefs) about entailments, conjunctions, disjunctions, etc — Relativist

But being disposed to do or say something merely describes what someone ls likely to do. It doesn't describe what they ought to do. And it also reduces logic to psychology.

This comes off as arguments from incredulity. — Relativist

That definitely cuts both ways.

As I've admitted, feelings are not algorithmic- they are the sole, legitimate issue — Relativist

'This dam is a perfectly satisfactory, save for the hole in it.'

Comment on the Armstrong passage above. If you think it's right, what is right about it? If you think not, what is wrong with it?

The fact that language can be interpreted by AI is sufficient to demonstrate that language is consistent with physicalism. — Relativist

Not according to AI https://claude.ai/share/d20fdc96-dfad-44a1-9ef5-cbef895a5819

For clarity’s sake do agree with this depiction of materialism by D M Armstrong?



Might help to understand what is meant by physicalism.

(pressed for time will come back later)

Maths is not about brains, it is about abstract structure inferred in what we see in the world, the rules of math are about that abstract structure; that does not mean that how we use maths and the reason we are able to do math is not instantiated in brains. Logical necessity is not about neural tissue, it is part of abilities to talk about abstract structure we see in the world. But this does not mean that this ability and why it comes about, how it works, is not instantiated by, realized by neural tissue and physical stuff using descriptions which themselves invoke different levels of explanation and abstraction. — Apustimelogist

An instantiation is an instance of something; a rule book is an instantiation of the rules which it describes. A chess game is an instantiation of the game of chess. But that doesn't entail that what is instantiated is material or physical, even if the pieces are. For that matter, chess can be played without any physical pieces (indeed I recall reading in a James Michener book that Arabs used to play mental chess crossing the desert on camels with no board, although I find that ability unfathomable even though I know how to play chess. Chess masters such as Magnus Carlson play simutaneous blindfold games, even more astonishing.)

What you're arguing is, look, we have ideas, we can grasp numbers and logical laws, but the brain is physical, these ideas are 'instantiated' in the physical brain - therefore ideas have a physical basis or cause or dependency. Even if we can't really grasp how neurological activities give rise to ideas because of the brain's complexity, you think this allows you to say that they're still physical in principle. This is 'neural reductionism'.

"Neural Reductionism is the philosophical position that mental states, processes, and events (such as thoughts, feelings, memories, and consciousness) can be fully explained by, or reduced to, physical neural states and processes in the brain. In its simplest form, it posits that the mind is the brain." (Web definition.)

We can have descriptions, explanations of structure at various levels of abstraction about what we see, but they are all instantiated by and inferred by brains which are things in physical space-time. — Apustimelogist

But the living brain is not a physical thing in space and time. Material objects fit that description - balls, bullets, pencils, computer screens, an endless category of things. And I agree that if you were a neuro-anatomist examining an extracted brain, or a neurosurgeon performing an operation on one, then you're legitimately treating a brain as an object in those contexts. But the brain in lived experience - your brain - is not an object. The brain-as-object is something posited from outside the field of experience. Consciousness never encounters its own brain. Rather it is a vital centre of the living, embodied subject of experience, embodied in a biological and cultural network of meaning and symbolic relationships. It in no way can be described in solely physical terms.

The reductionist view basically abstracts the brain as a physical object, tractable to neuroscience, because that is the way that neural reductionism has to see it. That is why it is 'reducing!' It wants to reduce the rich, multi-dimensional reality of lived experience to the equations of physics, which have provided so much mastery over the world of things. But in so doing, it has forgotten or lost the subject for whom it is meaningful.

Furthermore, there's a sound argument for the fact that space and time themselves are manufactured by the brain, as part of the means by which sensory data can be navigated by us. So to say the brain is 'in' space and time, is probably less accurate than to say that space and time are 'in' the brain.

Fair enough. If you could be more specific, I might be able to address your concerns.

A good question — but notice something subtle. The objection is framed from an imagined “view from nowhere,” as if we could somehow step outside all perspectives to compare them. But that very move is itself a construction within our world.

When we speak of a cat’s world or a bunny’s world, we’re not multiplying worlds in any real sense. We’re pointing to the fact that every organism lives in its own Lebenswelt—a lived world structured by its own embodied capacities, needs, and modes of attention. That’s exactly the point enactivism makes: worldhood is always enacted from within a perspective and can never be surveyed from outside.

So the worry about “many worlds” arises only when we tacitly assume an external vantage point ‘outside’ our actual perspective from which to count them—yet that vantage point is itself just another construction in the human life-world. It’s that taken-for-granted constructive activity that the OP is about.

Your burden is to show that some aspect of mental processing cannot possibly be grounded in the physical. In this instance, you were suggesting that logical reasoning cannot be accounted for under physicalism. I was merely explaining why I think it can. If you think this inadequate, then explain what you think I've overlooked. If there's insufficient detail, I can explain a bit more deeply. — Relativist

What you’re overlooking is the distinction between causal explanation and normative explanation.

Physicalism gives you causal accounts of how neurons fire, how circuits activate, how information gets processed. None of that touches the normative structure of logical reasoning—the “oughts” built into validity, soundness, and necessity.

A physical description can tell you why a system outputs a certain conclusion (because certain neurons fired, or certain physical states occurred), but it can’t tell you whether that conclusion is valid, follows, or is logically required. Those are not causal properties; they’re normative relations between propositions.

And the point is that the science of determining causal relations relies on normative judgements.

I was simply giving an example of how meaning is attached to experience, in this case: a sensory experience. In this particular case, pain is clearly linked to intentional behavior: it's an experience to be avoided. — Relativist

I understand that, but it is too simplistic an example to support the contention. The simple association of words with sensations hardly amounts to a model of language.

It seems Trump’s betrayal of Ukraine is finally about to materialize. He is forcing them to adopt a ‘peace plan’ that basically capitulates to Russian demands. Zelenskyy is left facing a choice between an unfavorable treaty v an unwinnable war.

Worth doing. You don’t have to drill down to all the details for it to be useful.

Right! The role of epigenetics.

So, each of us cause the world to exist? — Ciceronianus

If you read the OP you will see it says no such thing.


‘Let me address an obvious objection. ‘Surely “the world” is what is there all along, what is there anyway, regardless of whether you perceive it or not! Science has shown that h. sapiens only evolved in the last hundred thousand years or so, and we know Planet Earth is billions of years older than that! So how can you say that the mind ‘‘creates the world”’?’

The original post provides ample justification for basic argument, as does a related On Purpose.

Although I will grant that 'create' carries connotations that are perhaps a bit too strong. 'Mind constructed world' would be nearer the real intent, but it doesn't have the same ring to it.

There is no point here unless you can give an example of where these things are not being realized by physical systems. — Apustimelogist

Well, I could say pure mathematics. That’s the obvious case where what is grasped is not “realised” by a physical system in the way you mean. Nevertheless, we can be wrong about a mathematical result, so there is something to be wrong about. But the reason you don’t see the force of such examples is that materialism doesn’t allow you to see it. If you begin with the axiom that only what is physically instantiated can be real, then of course logical necessity will appear to you as just another contingent pattern — “the way things work,” nothing more.

So when you say the examples I’m giving are “not interesting,” that simply means you’re not seeing the point — and you’re not seeing it because the philosophical framework you’re committed to screens the distinction out in advance. A view that cannot recognise the difference between physical causation and logical necessity will always brush the issue aside, because it has no conceptual space for reason as anything other than physical. So of course anything that doesn’t fit into that particular Procrustean bed is dismissed as “not interesting" (speaking of "patterns"....)

This isn’t my invention. The distinction has deep roots in the history of philosophy. And speaking of pure maths, see for example this Aeon essay: The Patterns of Reality. It makes exactly the point I’m pressing: logical necessity isn’t a physical process. Physical causation is contingent; logical relations hold by necessity. The two belong to different orders — and treating one as the other is precisely the category mistake that materialism cannot see.

Philosophy is in large part learning to look at your spectacles rather than just through them. You’re reasoning about this right now, and reasoning is more than, or other than, a physical process. Of course you need a healthy brain to think logically, but the law of the excluded middle didn’t come into existence when brains evolved, and it doesn’t disappear when a brain dies. Logical necessity doesn’t depend on neural tissue — neural tissue depends on logic to be intelligible.

According to 'Clarendon'.

Thanks, but I choose my sources carefully.

What I mean is - 'what is a "thing?" What does "exist" mean? Does "exist" and "real" have the same meaning? - and so on. These are metaphysical questions, that sound straightforward, but they need a framework in which to be discussed. That is provided by the literature.

1. If <Truth claims are always context dependent> then <Every truth claim, in every context, is context dependent> — Leontiskos

Thomas Nagel's 'The Last Word' is devoted to this topic.

Yes, well, you asked a question, I answered it. Anything else?

No. If I said the meaning of metaphysics was restricted to the meaning in Aristotle's texts, and that it had no other meaning, then it would be. I'm just saying Aristotle is an important starting-point for getting your head around the question, as it's a difficult question. If you look at the way the question it posed in the OP, it is clear that the poster really has no idea what the word means. So, reading at least something about Aristotle's Metaphysics is a good start.

Words change their meaning over time. — Clarendon

It's not 'the etymological fallacy'. Certainly the word 'metaphysics' has acquired many meanings over time but, especially in this case, it's important to have a clear grasp of what it originally meant, as it's a highly complex subject. Which means that a very large percentage of what is written in popular sources about metaphysics is mush.

There's another way into the subject also, which is that certain philosophica and scientific issues raise metaphysical questions. Classics include the interpretation of the wave-function in quantum physics, and whether abstract entities like numbers are real and if so in what sense. But those questions provide a specific focus, which poorly formed 'what is metaphysic?' questions do not.

When you play with little kittens who have never seen a mouse, have never hunted for anything, and never been threatened because they were born in your closet a couple months ago, they have the instincts. — Patterner

When I did a unit in cog sci we were told of an experiment where kittens were brought up in an environment where all the obstacles were vertical. They became adept at navigating them, but when after some period of time horizontal obstacles were introduced they would run into them, until they were able to assimilate the new information. I'm hazy on the details (it was a long time ago) but googling it, it was the Blakemore and Cooper experiments.

Agree. I believe the Joe Sachs edition is highly regarded. (I had a look - the Joe Sachs edition is not the Penguin Classics edition, which is less expensive, and still probably worthwhile.) https://amzn.asia/d/9c4U6ok https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-metaphysics-9780140446197

The key thing to understand is that it starts with Aristotle. One of the later editors of Aristotle's texts applied the term 'metaphysics' meaning 'after' of 'over and above' the Physics, which he had edited previously (although in Aristotle's works there are considerable common threads that appear in each of his separate topics.)

But it's really important to grasp the Aristotelian origin - which is not easy to do as Aristotle is a very big subject. But the reason it's necessary, is because metaphysics is not just anyone's 'theory about what is real' or 'anything which isn't explainable in terms of physics'. It starts out with Aristotle's efforts to define terms and basic concepts rigorously. These were then laid out in a number of books (14 volumes in all!) Not that we can be expected to plough through all this content. But it's important to get some idea of where it started, otherwise talk of metaphysics easily degenates into vacuous phrases.

Maybe check out this lecture or the entries on Aristotle: Metaphysics at the Internet and Stanford Encyclopedias of Philosophy.

isn't talk of our "creating" the world just hyperbole or metaphor? — Ciceronianus

It could also be noted that the derivation of 'world' is from the old Dutch 'werold' meaning 'age or time of man.'

Do the minds of other other organisms "create" the world as well? Is there a human world, and also a cat world and bunny world, and on and on? — Ciceronianus

They create their world - meaning, they enact or bring forth a meaningful environment through their embodied activity. That is a fundamental point of enactivism, 'a theory of cognition that emphasizes the dynamic interaction between an organism and its environment, positing that cognition arises from the organism's actions, not just from internal brain processes. It posits that the mind is not separate from the body but is fundamentally constituted by the brain, body, and environment interacting in dynamic ways, a concept known as the "embodied mind". Instead of passively representing the world, enactivism argues that organisms actively "enact" their world through their sensorimotor activity and that their subjective experience is shaped by these embodied actions.' (definition.)

The linked version of the essay on which the OP is based also mentions the 'lebenswelt' concept derived from phenomenology. Lebenswelt means life-world: the world as it is lived, experienced, and made meaningful by embodied, language-using beings like ourselves. Meaning is not a layer added on top of a neutral, value-free physical world, nor do words function by “corresponding” piece-by-piece to ready-made objects. Rather, meaning arises within the whole fabric of practices, situations, skills, expectations, and shared forms of life that constitute our lived world.

A word has meaning not because it mirrors a thing, but because it plays a role in this life-world — in the ways we perceive, act, communicate, and make sense of what matters to us. That’s why Husserl, and later Wittgenstein and Merleau-Ponty, insist that understanding is rooted in our participation in the life-world, not in some point-for-point mapping between language and “objects out there.”

So, surely there are cat worlds and bunny worlds. This does not mean there are multiple separate physical universes, but that each kind of organism inhabits a differently structured field of significance (also known as a 'salience landscape'), determined by its embodied capacities. But 'if a lion could speak, we wouldn't understand him' (Wittgenstein) and we'll never know what it's like to be a bat (Nagel.)