[ I don’t accept the metaphor of the biological machine. Organisms are self organizing in a way no machine can be. Aside from that, I see your point.

A thought-experiment i started a thread with, on this very same topic.

There is a sentry in a watchtower, looking through a telescope. The watchtower stands on top of a headland which forms the northern entrance to a harbour. The sentry’s job is to keep a lookout.

When the sentry sees a ship on the horizon, he sends a signal about the impending arrival. The signal is sent via a code - a semaphore, comprising a set of flags.

One flag is for the number of masts the ship has, which provides an indication of the class, and size, of the vessel; another indicates its nationality; and the third indicates its expected time of arrival - before or after noon.

When he has made this identification he hoists his flags, and then tugs on a rope which sounds a steam-horn. The horn alerts the shipping clerk who resides in an office on the dockside about a mile away. He comes out of his office and looks at the flags through his telescope. Then he writes down what they tell him - three-masted ship is on the horizon; Greek; arriving this afternoon.

He goes back inside and transmits this piece of information to the harbourmaster’s cottage via Morse code, where it is written in a log-book by another shipping clerk, under ‘Arrivals’.

In this transaction, a single item of information has been relayed by various means. First, by semaphore; second, by Morse code; and finally, in writing. The physical forms and the nature of the symbolic code is completely different in each step: the flags are visual, the morse code auditory, the log book entry written text. But the same information is represented in each step of the sequence.

The question I want to explore is: in such a case, what stays the same, and what changes?

It was an epic thread, but my view is that the physical form changes, while the meaning stays the same, which says something important about the nature of information.

I am intrinsically conscious of my conscious acts - otherwise they wouldn’t be conscious acts. — Esse Quam Videri

Not an impasse but a misunderstanding.

Of course I am aware of my seeing, and I know that I am knowing, but that is not the point at issue.

The point is categorical, not psychological. There is a difference between reflexive awareness and object-awareness. By way of analogy: just as the eye is present in every act of seeing without ever appearing as a seen thing, subjective consciousness is present in every experience without itself appearing as an object of experience.

This is precisely what “transcendental” means in both Kant and Husserl: that which makes experience possible without itself being given in experience. Accordingly, the way the mind constructs or constitutes the world cannot itself appear as an item within experience, because it is the condition of experience as such.

We are therefore not normally aware of the mind’s world-constituting activity. Becoming aware of it requires a reflective shift that is conceptually and phenomenologically difficult—precisely because it concerns the enabling conditions of experience, not one more experience among others. It is that which makes self-knowledge so difficult.

I think you’re still attributing to me a denial of self-awareness, which I haven’t made. Unless that distinction is accepted, we’re talking past one another.

But, do forms exist in the world? If they are only grasped by intellect, in what sense do they exist?
— Wayfarer

Recall that in the Aristotelian tradition material substance is a compound of matter, form and existence. Form is what actualizes matter and doesn’t exist independently of matter. So yes, in that tradition, forms exist in the world in a mind-independent way as immanent to material substance - not in the mind of God, nor in a Platonic “third-realm” — Esse Quam Videri

Forms are real in Aristotle’s sense, but their reality is not the reality of an object of perception. Their mode of being is inseparable from intelligibility itself. And if that is the case, how could they 'exist in the world in a mind-independent way'? In Aristotle, form is real, but its reality is not the reality of an object. Since form exists only as intelligible principle of actualiszation, saying that it exists “in a mind-independent way” already presumes a notion of existence I think is foreign to Aristotle. Aristotle rejects a separate transcendent 'realm of Forms', but that doesn’t entail that forms are what we would understand as phenomenal existents. Their mode of being is formal and intelligible, not material. So while forms are in particulars, they do not exist in the same sense that way that particulars do.

I don’t agree with the idea that the subject is forever hidden behind a veil of representation — Esse Quam Videri

I didn't say that. I said, the subject is not an object, except to another subject. When i look at you, I see another subject as object, although the fact that we use personal pronouns acknowledges the fact that you are another subject, and not an object. First-person subjectivity is real, but it is not something that can appear to itself as an object. That’s a categorical point, not a skeptical one.

I would argue that consciousness is intrinsically reflexive such that we can experience our experiencing, understand our understanding, reason about our reasoning, etc. — Esse Quam Videri

We can obviously think about our own thinking, but it remains the fact that although we can see our eye in the mirror, we cannot see our own act of seeing. Also a categorical distinction.

Yes, form can only be grasped by nous - the very same forms that also exist in the world independently of nous. — Esse Quam Videri

But, do forms exist in the world? If they are only grasped by intellect, in what sense do they exist? That is a very large question, of course, and one that I by no means expect to be able to resolve. But if they are intelligible objects, then their existence is by definition intelligible.

In the pre-modern tradition this was expressed by saying that forms exist “in the divine intellect.” That wasn’t meant as a theological add-on, but as a way of saying that intelligibility has a transcendental ground. The intellect's grasp of an intelligible is what makes objectivity possible. They were said to be 'truly so', in a way that overflows even the objective reality, in that they were the form that the particular strived to become.

The late medieval rejection of transcendentals marks a decisive shift: intelligibility is no longer treated as foundational, but is increasingly reduced to what can be abstracted from empirical particulars (which is nominalism). That shift ultimately culminates in modern empiricism and the contemporary “immanent frame” (Charles Taylor).

The critique presented in the “mind-created world” is not an attempt to revive the doctrine of the divine intellect, but to show that mind can still be understood as foundational even within the immanent frame, once we abandon the assumption that reality can be grasped solely in terms of objects.

AI systems can be fully described and specified in terms of information science. They are not in the least conscious. A microbe has a higher degree of consciousness than does a multi-billion dollar data processing centre running the most up-to-date AI system. At the same time, because of the enormous amounts of information they have absorbed, and the ability they have to cross reference and infer meanings, they very well emulate what conscious beings such as ourselves might say.

One of the things that comes to my mind is a discussion I read years ago about 'thick terms' in philosophy. Most of those are those terms with great depth of meaning, such as the examples you provide - goodness, existence, reality, consciousness, mind, and so on. Looking it up, it was Bernard Williams, another philosopher I believe you have mentioned. Thick terms are both descriptive and evaluative (or normative). He situated the discussion in the context of the fact/value distinction, and whether the descriptive and evaluative aspects of the terms can be separated. (Examples included courageous, brutal, kind, etc).

Seems to me that Sider is doing something different - he is trying to come up with a kind of meta-philosophical framework against which the incommensurability of divergent explanatory paradigms can be interpreted. It is, tongue-in-cheek, post Tower of Babel - a situation where the fragmentation of discourse has become all-pervading. We need a kind of Rosetta Stone to enable analytic philosophers to make sense of what existentialists are saying.

Do you think that’s what it is about?

There is something I'll add, as a long-time forum habitué. There is an unspoken prohibition in much of modern philosophy against expressions and ideas that can be associated with religion, even if tenuously.

When I did undergrad philosophy, I formed the view that a great deal of modern English-language philosophy is deliberately couched in terms which exclude anything associated with classical metaphysics. That reached its sharpest expression with logical positivism (in which I did a unit), but it also animates many of the debates here.

There's also the matter of temperament. Some are temperamentally drawn to religious ideas, others are temperamentally averse to them.

So there are several dynamics at play in many of these debates, often revolving around unstated premises and beliefs.

I've got two of Thomas Nagel's essays online which are relevant, Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament and Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion. Thomas Nagel is important, because he's no religious apologist, indeed he says he is atheist with no 'sensus divinatus', and he's well regarded in analytic philosophy. (Although since his 2012 Mind and Cosmos, he is routinely accused of giving 'aid and comfort to creationists', but to me that just signifies the close-mindedness of his detractors,)

↪180 Proof asserts that Formal (mathematical) Logic is the arbiter of true/false questions. — Gnomon

I'm not interested in being drawn into comments about debates with 180proof. From time to time I may respond to his comments directed at me.

As for AI - I recommend spending some time with one of the AI systems, they're freely available. Claude.ai is as good as any. Their model is such that they are time-limited - they will limit the number of responses unless you sign up for a subscription. But you will find them vastly superior to random search results generated by Google (a fact that Google itself is well aware of.) I think you would be surprised by the depth and nuance of the responses they're capable of giving.

How else do we know "what is true"? — Gnomon

Notice that in the context of science, this is usually limited to a specific question or subject matter, but can also then be expanded to include general theories and hypotheses. Philosophical questions are much more open-ended and often not nearly so specific. That is the subject of another thread, The Predicament of Modernity.

The Galilean division. This marks a major turning point in the history of ideas. In seeking to render nature mathematically intelligible, Galileo distinguished between primary and secondary qualities: the former—extension, shape, motion, and number—belong to objects themselves and are therefore measurable; the latter—colour, taste, sound, and all that pertains to sense or value—were deemed to exist only in the perceiving mind. This move, later assumed by the British Empiricists, established the framework of modern science but also quietly redefined reality as whatever could be expressed in quantitative terms. The world thus became a domain of pure objectivity, stripped of meaning, while meaning itself was relegated to the interior realm of subjective experience.

That accounts for a lot of what is going on here.

Meaning requires a Me. A digital computer has no self-concept to serve as the Subject to interpret incoming data relative to Self-interest. Does AI know itself? — Gnomon

I tossed this to Claude. Read on if you wish.

So we have three things:

*A subject
*An object
*A relation between subject and object — Esse Quam Videri

But surely this construction is made from a perspective outside all three of them! Look, you say, on the one side, the proverbial chair, on the other, the subject, and between them, the act of cognition. But that observation can only be made from third person perspective. Which is fine, as far as it goes, but it is, again, an abstraction. The subject whom you are here designating an object, is only object from a third-person or external perspective. So the entire construction still remains 'vorstellung', representation, in Schopenhauer's terms.

This line of thought has been greatly elaborated by later phenomenology and existentialism.

what I am skeptical of is the notion that the entirety of the contents of the lebenswelt exists only in the mind. — Esse Quam Videri

Recall a key claim from the mind-created world OP:

it is empirically true that the Universe exists independently of any particular mind.

So I am acknowledging the empirical facts of the matter. I say at the outset that the claim is not that 'the world is all in the mind' in a naive sense. But that

what we know of its existence is inextricably bound by and to the mind we have, and so, in that sense, reality is not straightforwardly objective. It is not solely constituted by objects and their relations. Reality has an inextricably mental aspect, which itself is never revealed in empirical analysis.

This is the fulcrum of the entire argument, and where it is most indebted to Kant. I'm not saying that 'the object' ceases to exist sans observer, but that it neither exists, nor doesn't exist. Either claim rests on an inherent notion of what it means for something to exist. ('Neither existent nor non-existent' is what I take the 'in-itself' to denote.)

The natural sciences will proceed entirely in terms of what is objectively so, with no regard for this point. The discoveries of quantum physics, however, have obliged science to reckon with 'the observer' - which is the impact of 'the observer problem'.

A great deal of the dialectic of modern philosophy has vacillated between 'the object alone is real', materialism, and 'the subject alone is real', Berkelian idealism. Kant threads the needle between those two extremes. He doesn't deny the empirical reality of the objective domain but notes that the mind provides the context within which the sense of the objective world is intelligible:

If we take away the subject or even only the subjective constitution of the senses in general, then not only the nature and relations of objects in space and time, but even space and time themselves would disappear, and as appearances they cannot exist in themselves, but only in us. — COPR, B59

As Paul Davies notes (The Goldilocks Enigma, p. 271), cosmologist Andrei Linde argues—on the basis of quantum cosmology—that time disappears when the universe is treated as a whole, and can only be recovered by partitioning the universe into an observer-with-a-clock and the rest. In that precise sense, the observer plays a constitutive role: without it, the universe is “dead,” i.e. non-temporal. Linde develops the technical basis of this claim in Inflation, Quantum Cosmology and the Anthropic Principle (hep-th/0211048), while expressing its philosophical implications more explicitly in talks and interviews (including this Closer to Truth interview with Robert Lawrence Kuhn).

I think he's trying to convey precisely the same point as Kant.

As for the unknowable nature of the in-itself. Kant has been criticized for this suggestion from the time it was made, but I don't think it's nearly so radical as it is often depicted. I'd endorse this:

Bottom line is we don’t know how we know stuff, but we’re at a complete loss if we then say we really don’t know anything. — Mww

I will happily concede that some readings of Kant seem to leave us completely separated from an unknowable reality. But on the other hand, a sense of the 'unknowability of existence' is a fundamental philosophical virtue in my book.

A form existing in a mind-independent way (esse naturale) is always potentially intelligible. When the intellect grasps the form it becomes actually intelligible (esse intentionale). However, it is still one-and-the-same form now instantiated in two different ways. — Esse Quam Videri

It is nevertheless the case that the form can only be grasped by nous. That is what rationality enables, it is the faculty that makes us 'the rational animal'. The philosophical question is, in what sense do forms exist? Again, they're not phenomenal existents (unless you accept the D M Armstrong definition which equates forms with attributes of particulars, which I don't.) They are, as per the classical tradition, intelligibles - not dependent on the mind, but only perceptible to the intellect.

What do the characteristics of objecthood apply to if not to an object? I think we can (probably) both agree that objecthood must apply to an object, but notice that so far we have said nothing about whether the object is or is not dependent on the mind. In my opinion, this is as it should be. The question of whether a given object is mind-independent is a question that should be asked about specific objects, it’s not something to be settled ahead of time when inquiring into the nature of objects in general. If we stipulate that the characteristics of objecthood apply only to mind-dependent objects from the outset, then we’ve simply ruled out realism by fiat. This is fine - there’s nothing wrong with building one’s philosophy on top of such assumptions, but it doesn’t constitute an argument against realism. — Esse Quam Videri

I’m not claiming that objects are mind-dependent entities. I’m claiming that objecthood is not a property that pre-existing things have independently of cognition. The object is the result of apperceptive synthesis. Your objection presupposes that objects are already there as objects prior to that synthesis, which is exactly the assumption I’m questioning. Otherwise you'd have the absurd situation of differentiating objects from 'things which aren't objects' independently of any act of identification or synthesis. The whole point of the argument is to protest the notion that we're passive recipients of an already-existing world. In reality we are cognitive agents who's mind is always actively constructing our experienced world - the lebenswelt, the world of lived meanings.

From a classical realist perspective this makes sense because in all cases the mind is grasping form. You’ll recall that in the Aristotelian tradition substance is interpreted as a metaphysical compound of matter, form (and later also existence). — Esse Quam Videri

I agree that for Aristotle the intellect grasps form, not representations. But for Aristotle, that is precisely why the form is not mind-independent in the empiricist sense. In knowing, the intellect becomes the form; the form exists as intelligible only in being apprehended. So while the thing may exist independently as a composite of matter and form, objecthood and intelligibility are not properties it has apart from cognition. That is why Aristotle does not treat knowledge as the passive reception of a ready-made object, but as the actualisation of form in νοῦς.

The point of the 'idealism in context' argument, is that idealism arose because of the loss of the sense of 'participatory knowing' that is found in Aristotelian Thomism, which preserved the sense of the 'union of knower and known' that later empiricism replaces with a spectator theory of knowledge, the sense of being apart from or outside of reality. And that is more than just an epistemological difference, it's a profound existential re-orientation.

This post. You’re treating “the experiment” or “the state of affairs” as the object that perdures, so objecthood on this context is not in question. But, as you already acknowledged, the 'true ontology' is unknown. What this means is that there is not some 'actual state of affairs' or 'object with determinate properties' at the fundamental level. And this is something broadly acknowledged about quantum theory. It is why Roger Penrose is always saying that it must be false or incomplete - because, he says, it should - again, stipulative - provide a true description of what is really there, prior to any act of measurement.

I'm not going to continue to argue this point, which is simply this: that 'the thesis that everything that exists has a common ontological structure: a particular with intrinsic properties' cannot be sustained on the basis of physics.

----------------

After this post, I'll be offline a couple of days.

You can’t stipulate your way out of the uncertainty principle.

I further narrow it down to the thesis that everything that exists has a common ontological structure: a particular with intrinsic properties — Relativist

However

The true ontology is unknown, — Relativist

It's one of those ideas that kind of straddles philosophy and science, that we can say.

Depending on how you look at it :rofl:

The title of this thread was intentionally chosen to evoke some relationship between the Universe, as a whole system, and human consciousness as a part (and maybe participant) in that system. In Federico Faggin's book Irreducible, he tends to use Plotinus' notion of The One (ultimate source of reality) instead of the Platonic notion of Cosmos (the universe conceived as a beautiful, harmonious, and well-ordered system). But some people prefer the religious term “God” in their discussions of Ontology (what we can know about our existence). — Gnomon

I appreciate the careful thought you've put into this post. But it has to be acknowledged that in these discussions, we're touching on deep questions of philosophy which have occupied great minds for millenia. And also we're in an unprecedented cultural situation where knowledge of these ideas has been widely (almost indiscriminately!) circulated first through mass media and now through interactive media. So it is possible for us all to pick up fragments of these ideas and combine them in various ways. It's a complete melting-pot. But then there's also the element of crisis, a civillisational, environment and political.

So there's a lot going on here.

Federico Fagin

Fagin, as I said, I respect. Actually I saw him speak at the last Science and Nonduality conference I went to, in 2013, in San Jose. (I did know the way there, fortunately.) He's an open sort of fellow, doesn't come across at all pretentious. This book of his, I'm sure, has been many decades in incubation, he too has gathered all these bits and pieces from world wisdom literature, and combined them with his particular philosophical outlook. That is informed both by his background as a phycisist, inventor and technologist, and also by the overwhelming spiritual awakening he had at Lake Tahoe many years ago.

But a problem I detect with it is that he hasn't been obliged to defend his thesis, which he would have done, had he come up through higher education. I've discussing the book with ChatGPT, who observed that, had his work been presented as a thesis, he would have had to have fielded questions such as:

“This is no longer physics but philosophy — please indicate the grounds for the shift.”
“You are making an ontological claim here. On what basis?”
“Is this inference licensed by the formalism, or is it a metaphysical choice?”

All these questions would oblige Fagin to justify some of the assertions he makes. And he well might be able to answer them - but they have never been asked. So he comes across as something of a maveric or a dark horse. So though he draws on many sources, it is difficult to map his ideas against those of his possible peers in consciousness studies. I don't think his writing is in the least harmful or pernicious, and I overwhelmingly agree with at least the aim of his project, but I don't think it's going to get a lot of traction for these reasons. The fact that it was published by Kastrup's Essential Foundation is not also necessarily a point in its favour. But all that said, I still think Irreducible is an important and serious book, and it's not my aim to dissuade you or anyone from reading it.


Non-dualism in Culture and Society

Getting back to that point about the 'melting pot' - one of Kastrup's frequent interlocutors is Swami Sarvapriyananda of the New York Vedanta Society. That organisation was founded by Swami Vivekananda in the 19th century, as part of Vivekananda's whistle-stop tour of the USA after the World Parliament of Religions (1889 from memory). So it's a venerable institution, and the Swami is an erudite and learned speaker (indeed I recommend his online lectures.)

But notice the context of Advaita Vedanta: it is an orthodox school of Hinduism, which observes the strict and traditional code of ethics (not that the Swami exaggerates that in his talks). These are the 'restraints and observances' common to yogic schools:

• Yama (moral discipline)
• Niyama (observances)
• Asana (physical postures)
• Pranayama (breathing techniques)
• Pratyahara (sense withdrawal)
• Dharana (concentration)
• Dhyana (absorption or meditation)
  Samadhi (enlightenment or bliss)

That is "cultural context" (although Advaita, in particular, tends to be among the more radical of the orthodox Hindu schools). It is in that context that the principles of Advaita (non-dualism) are conveyed to students (chela). The meaning of Upaniṣads, the core texts of Vedanta, is 'sitting closely' - the idea being that these teachings are conveyed teacher-to-student in a religious context around a strick ethical discipline. Which is why I suspect much of the popular literature on nondualism fails as it doesn't embody the existential transformation which the genuine teaching entails (there's a British Vedanta teacher who has written extensively on this, see https://www.advaita-vision.org/traditional-versus-neo-advaita/)

I'm not trying to be moralistic in saying this, as I myself am not a celibate vegetarian yogi. But I mention it, because this background is often not conveyed in philosophical discussions of non-dualism. (I think Bernardo Kastrup would probably appreciate that point, but again, it doesn't necessarily come across in his dialogues with the Swami.)

Metaphysical Realism

Another difficult subject. Suffice to say, I think it's the understanding, taken as obvious by a lot of our contemporaries, that science is the arbiter of what is truly the case. But scientific method embodies certain characteristic attitudes and procedures which are problematic in a philosophical context. First and foremost is the implicit acceptance of empirical experience or sense-data, subjected to mathematical analysis and extrapolation, as the sole source of valid insight. There's an implicit acceptance that the sensory experience of the world conveys what is truly the case, so long as it is interpreted correctly in light of scientific standards of evidence. But as I often say, I think the discovery of the uncertainty principle by Werner Heisenberg 100 years ago, holes that kind of scientific realism below the waterline. Learning how to think about and cope with that is one of the chalenges we face.

You’re treating the wavefunction as if it were the state of an object with determinate properties, and then explaining measurement as a change in those properties. Basically declaring that the experiment itself is an object. But the fundamental object in question remains undetermined. The formal role of the wavefunction doesn’t, by itself, supply a foundational ontology.

a particular with intrinsic properties and extrinsic (relational) properties to other existents. — Relativist

If you mean this is the model, then it is falsified by physics. So this:

At exactly one point in your path, a distance relation of 5km emerged — Relativist

Is post measurement. The point at issue is what exists prior to the act of measurement. Prior to measurement there’s no determinate object with intrinsic properties.

With what model?

thanks for that clear-sighted analysis :clap:

I further narrow it down to the thesis that everything that exists has a common ontological structure: a particular with intrinsic properties and extrinsic (relational) properties to other existents. This implies everything is the same kind of thing, which I label, "physical". — Relativist

I've said before, quantum physics demolishes such a Newtonian conception of reality. At the fundamental level, the properties of sub-atomic primitives are indeterminate until measured. But of course, that can be swept aside, because 'physicalism doesn't depend on physics'. It's more a kind of 'language game'.

Classical Newtonian physics was compatible with the Bible God, who creates a world, like a wind-up toy, and sets it on a straight & narrow path in a specific direction. But non-linear & probabilistic Quantum physics is more like the erratic & random ancient religions based on natural cycles. — Gnomon

Well, Tao of Physics (1974) is a cultural landmark, notwithstanding that it is written around many weak analogies. But it is a matter of fact that Neils Bohr, on being awarded Imperial Honors by the Danish Crown for his discoveries, had a familial coat-of-arms designed which had the Taost Ying-Yang symbol at its centre. He regarded the 'complementarity principle' as the most important philosophical discovery of his life.

I think the more salient point is the emergence of the 'division of mind and matter' that originates with Descartes and Galileo. The objective world comprising measurable properties (the 'primary qualities') is said to be the ground of reality as far as science is concerned, while how things appear is relegated to the mind of the observer. That is the 'cartesian division' which is still very influential in life and culture. Hence the belief that the Universe is devoid of meaning, as meaning has been subjectivised. So whatever meaning there is, is a matter for the individual. Faggin says in his introduction:

If we start from consciousness, free will, and creativity as irreducible properties of nature, the whole scientific conception of reality is overturned. In this new vision, the emotional and intuitive parts of life—ignored by materialism—return to play a central role. Aristotle said: “To educate the mind without educating the heart means not educating at all.” We cannot let physicalism and reductionism define human nature and leave consciousness out from the description of the universe. The physicalist and reductionist premises are perfect for describing the mechanical and symbolic-informational aspects of reality, but they are inadequate to explain its semantic aspects. If we insist that these assumptions describe all of reality, we eliminate a priori what distinguishes us from our machines and we erase our consciousness, our freedom and, above all, our humanity from the face of the universe. — Faggin, Federico. Irreducible: Consciousness, Life, Computers, and Human Nature (p. 14) Kindle Edition.

But I know from experience, many will respond, 'OK if consciousness is so important, where is it! Show it to me!'

Yājñavalkya says: "You tell me that I have to point out the Self (i.e. 'consciousness') as if it is a cow or a horse. Not possible! It is not an object like a horse or a cow. I cannot say, 'here is the Ātman; here is the Self'. It is not possible because you cannot see the seer of seeing. The seer can see that which is other than the Seer, or the act of seeing. An object outside the seer can be beheld by the seer. How can the seer see himself? How is it possible? You cannot see the seer of seeing. You cannot hear the hearer of hearing. You cannot think the Thinker of thinking. You cannot understand the Understander of understanding. That is Ātman." — Brihadaranyaka Upaniṣad

Whereas what you are doing is defining 'object' as 'mind-dependent' from the outset, so that no matter what we learn about the object through the process of inquiry this knowledge always only applies to a mind-dependent object by definition. You are deciding the ontological status of the object in advance of the inquiry, which just begs the question. — Esse Quam Videri

I don’t think I’m assigning an ontological status to objects. I’m not saying that objects depend for their existence on minds. I’m saying that objecthood — identity, determinacy, intelligibility — is a cognitive status, not an ontological primitive. That’s a claim about the conditions under which inquiry is possible, not a stipulation about what exists prior to inquiry. It is an epistemological rather than ontological argument.

From the mind-created world op:

I will concentrate less on arguments about the nature of the constituents of objective reality, and focus instead on understanding the mental processes that shape our judgment of what they comprise.

... there is no need for me to deny that the Universe is real independently of your mind or mine, or of any specific, individual mind. Put another way, it is empirically true that the Universe exists independently of any particular mind. But what we know of its existence is inextricably bound by and to the mind we have, and so, in that sense, reality is not straightforwardly objective. It is not solely constituted by objects and their relations. Reality has an inextricably mental aspect, which itself is never revealed in empirical analysis ¹. Whatever experience we have or knowledge we possess, it always occurs to a subject — a subject which only ever appears as us, as subject, not to us, as object.

So I'm not saying that objects don't exist in the absence of the observer, but that their ontological status is indeterminate.

This is an ontology. Noumena exist. The transcendental subject exists. However, their existence is inferred rather than experienced. If they didn't exist, then empirical experience itself would not be possible. — Esse Quam Videri

But what kind of existence do they have? You can't show them to me, only explain them to me. Anything that has to be explained is conceptual, not phenomenal.

In a previous exchange, I mentioned this passage from a review of a book on Husserl:

We can maintain that mathematical objects are mind-independent, self-subsistent and in every sense real, and we can also explain how we are cognitively related to them: they are invariants in our experience, given fulfillments of mathematical intentions. ...

We can evidently say, for example, that mathematical objects are mind-independent and unchanging, but now we always add that they are constituted in consciousness in this manner, or that they are constituted by consciousness as having this sense … . They are constituted in consciousness, nonarbitrarily, in such a way that it is unnecessary to their existence that there be expressions for them or that there ever be awareness of them.[/i[ (p. 13).
— — Phenomenology, Logic, and the Philosophy of Mathematics (review)

The reason I mention this again, is that it says, on the one hand, that mathematical objects are "mind-independent", but, on the other, that they are "constituted in consciousness, nonarbitrarily."

They are "mind independent" in that mathematical proofs are not dependent on any particular mind. But they are "constituted in consciousness" in that they can only be known by a rational intelligence. So here, I'm advocating a form of logical realism: that numbers, scientific laws, and logical principles are real in this same sense. They're not existent as phenomena, but are inherent in the way consciousness constitutes meaning, through rational inference and the like.

I don’t deny that noumena or transcendental conditions exist, (or rather: are real) but existence is not a single category. What exists phenomenally can be shown; what exists formally or logically can only be explained. Mathematical objects, logical laws, and transcendental conditions are real without being phenomenal — objective without being mind-independent in the sense of existing as items in the empirical world. That is the sense in which reality has an inherently mental aspect, without collapsing into subjectivism.

Again, even though dark matter is undetectable, the putative effects are detectable. A lot of people think it means there’s something really wrong with current physics, but then, those who defend the idea have considerable expertise, so I’m loath to pass judgement. Nevertheless it is, shall we say, portentous, that according to current science, 96% of the mass of the universe can’t be accounted for by known physics…. :yikes:

It might help for me to explain what my argument is against. I’m arguing against the scientistic view, swallowed wholesale by a great many intelligent people, that the vast universe which modern science has discovered is a greater reality within which h.sapiens appears as a mere blip, the metaphorical striking of a match. The habit of objectivity holds such sway with us that we overlook that the ‘vast universe’ itself knows nothing of its vastness, nor of anything else for that matter. I know perfectly well that the cosmological story of the ‘big bang’ and the evolutionary story of human evolution is basically true, even if subject to modification. But to view ourselves against that background is implicitly to view ourselves from outside of our lives, to loose sight of the significance of the fact that as intelligent subjects, we are in some vital sense the way that whole process has come to begin to understand itself. And that is not a thought that is novel to me. To view ourselves simply as a species, or as phenomena, is really an artifice. It is not actually a philosophy. I believe Immanuel Kant saw this also, which is why his arguments are writ large in my essay about the matter, even if I have by no means assimilated all of his writings.

I’ve accessed the original article via Apple News, and it’s an excellent piece of longform journalism. Sacks comes across as a fascinating if tortured kind of character. I particularly liked this paragraph:

He rejected what he called “pallid, abstract knowing,” and pushed medicine to engage more deeply with patients’ interiority and how it interacted with their diseases. Medical schools began creating programs in medical humanities and “narrative medicine,” and a new belief took hold: that an ill person has lost narrative coherence, and that doctors, if they attend to their patients’ private struggles, could help them reconstruct a new story of their lives. At Harvard Medical School, for a time, students were assigned to write a “book” about a patient. Stories of illness written by physicians (and by patients) began proliferating, to the point that the medical sociologist Arthur Frank noted, “ ‘Oliver Sacks’ now designates not only a specific physician author but also a . . . genre—a distinctively recognizable form of storytelling.”

I’d never read a lot of Sacks, although I have read the actual anecdote about the man who mistook his wife for a hat. It seems clear he was a ‘fabulist’ but then he’s that kind of mind, an obsessive writer who in in younger days filled journals in a couple of days. I don’t think much the worse of him for the fact that some of what he wrote was embellishment or exaggeration.

But again I think you are still "smuggling" an ontology into your premises - namely, the ontology of the Kantian transcendental subject. — Esse Quam Videri

I don't believe that the transcendental subject is a being in a sense other than the indexical. We can't single out the transcendental subject and say what it is. I don't think that Kant thought that the transcendental subject was something we could know.

What the mind doesn't know about the object is the object as it is in-itself. Therefore, the object as it is in-itself is in excess of the object as it is for-consciousness. Furthermore, the act of asking a question presupposes that what the mind doesn't yet know about the object (the in-itself) is knowable because, again, otherwise it wouldn't ask the question. Therefore, the act of asking a question about an object presupposes that the object as it is in-itself is knowable. — Esse Quam Videri

Certainly there may be many objects or kinds of thing that I don't understand. There might also be much more to an object than meets the eye, or is apparent from a cursory inspection. But nevertheless, at every stage of coming to know more about the object, the mind is surely forming ideas as to what it is, in terms of identity, likeness, attributes and so on. The “excess” disclosed in inquiry is not an object standing outside cognition, but the open-endedness of meaning itself. And notice I'm not saying there is nothing outside of or apart from the cognized object - that would be to assert its non-existence - but that, whatever we make of the object, is through that process of assimilation, whereby it becomes incorporated into the network that comprises the world of lived meanings (the 'lebenswelt'). Were it totally outside that, then we couldn't even cognize it.

I did want to circle back to the original issue for a moment, which was the claim that metaphysical realism is incoherent. The line of reasoning goes something like this: when the mind posits the existence of a mind-independent object (the in-itself) it is actually just generating yet another idea. Since ideas are mind-dependent, any knowledge of mind-independent objects just reduces to knowledge of mind-dependent ideas. Ergo, knowledge of the in-itself is a contradiction in terms.

But this argument already assumes an ontology in which the direct objects of the mind are ideas. In other words, it simply assumes idealism and then proceeds to deduce that realism is self-contradictory. This is illicit. Ontology cannot be the starting point for an argument against realism without begging the question. — Esse Quam Videri

My claim is not that cognition knows only ideas, but that “objecthood” itself is a cognitive status — not something that can be meaningfully ascribed prior to recognition. Take any object - the proverbial 'apple' or 'chair' or 'tree' familiar from philosophy lessons. If you and I see it, or I show it to you, what will you say? You will name it accordingly, presuming you are of sound mind etc. That process of recognition and naming is what I'm referring to. If you didn't know what the thing was, you could at least give a description of it in terms of something else - the kind of shape or colour or some other attributes. These too rely on your cognitive system.

You will notice that a large part of the essay draws from quite a recent book by Chales Pinter, Mind and the Cosmic Order. His theory is that cognition (and not only human cognition) naturally operates in terms of gestalts. Gestalts are the meaningful basic units of cogniton. And I'm claiming that this is fundamental to the cognitive process by which we know what exists. Cognition is as Kantian philosophy (including Schopenhauer) says: an active process whereby the mind constructs or builds a synthesis of the various sensory data that it receives into meaningful wholes.

Now, I'm not saying that the world is ontologically dependent on our cognitive acts, but that outside cognition, it means nothing to us. That is what I take the 'in-itself' to mean: that the object (or world) as it is, outside of or prior to our assimilation of it, has no identity. By identifying it as a meaningful whole, we can say it exists, or doesn't exist.

So I don't mean 'idea' in the sense of representative realism, that the idea represents a thing. There is the thing, here the idea of it. Rather that 'the apple' *is* idea. That is nearer to Schopenhauer's 'vorstellung'.

So the world that realism thinks is 'there anyway', is not really so - because 'there' is also a cognitive construction. Hence my point - any idea of an 'empty universe' or 'the world prior to the advent of humankind' still relies on an implied perspective, which is supplied by the mind as basic to sense-making. We can't think outside of that.

I only brought these up to answer your question. — Relativist

And I only wanted to make it clear that I don't think you have. But, sure, let's take them up elsewhere.

a natural (evolutionary) basis of morality, the nature of abstractions (including mathematics), a theory of truth. — Relativist

I don’t recognise the cogency of “evolutionary morality.” Evolutionary theory explains how biological traits are selected and propagated; it does not generate norms or obligations. Even Richard Dawkins has been explicit on this point: “survival of the fittest” is not, and must not be treated as, a moral maxim.

Likewise, I hold that mathematical entities such as numbers are real but not physical. They are not located in space-time, do not enter into causal relations, and are not products of evolutionary history, yet they retain objective necessity and normative force.

These are not peripheral disagreements but principled objections to the claim that physicalism explains morality, mathematics, or truth rather than redescribing them in ways that vitiate their real attributes.

I don't expect them to be recognised, however.

And after all these months of conversations, I'm still at a loss to understand what you think physicalism explains, other than in its role as a methodological assumption in science.

The being would have experiences... — Relativist

Wouldn't it have to be a subject, to be considered 'a being that has experiences'? Experiences are not standalone events. They are experiences for someone. If there is no subject, then at best there are internal state transitions, information processing, memory registration, and behavioral dispositions — none of which by themselves amount to experience in the first-person sense.

Isn't the whole point of the 'philosophical zombie' argument that there would be no objective way of determining whether it really was a subject, as distinct from merely emulating subjectivity? Thereby showing that subjective awareness is not something objectively discernable.

I'm in agreement with your 'both-and' type of attitude. The 'either-or' dilemma is something stamped firmly into Western consciousness, for mainly historical reasons, which seems to want to force everybody into one 'side' or another. Unpicking the history and psychodynamics behind that has been one of my major interests.

Not wanting to pre-empt Relativist's response, but given the current theoretical understanding of cosmology and physics, dark matter and dark energy are presumed to exist, due to the large-scale behavour of galaxies (the former) and the expansion of the Universe (the latter). So as far as dark matter is concerned, there is a 'detectable effect', first found by Franz Zwicky and elaborated by Vera Rubin. This is that galaxies don't rotate at a rate which is commensurable with their observable mass, so something undetectable must be an influence. Either there is some un-detectable matter, or something is the matter with the understanding of physics at galactic scales (the approach known as Modified Newtonian Dynamics). Jury is still out but the majority opinion seems to favour dark matter.

I had a look at your 'Right Stuff' essay. (As it happens, I wrote an undergrad term paper on Lucretius, under the able tutelage of one Professor Keith Campell, who's 'Philosophy of Matter' course was one of the very best units I completed, which was given a High Distinction :blush: )

The way I see it is that modern culture, generally, is still labouring in the shadow cast by René Descartes' dualism, which posited Mind and Matter as separate kinds. Ever since then, philosophy and culture have tended to vacillate between them, with the scientifically-inclined seeking knowledge through the analysis of physical matter and energy, and the spiritually-inclined seeking understanding through ideas and the nature of mind. So since then philosophy has tended to adopt either materialism (matter is everything), idealism (mind is everything) or dualism (it is both), across a range of forms.

(Then of course there's Darwinian biology, which occupied the cultural vacuum left by the retreat of theology to become more or less an article of secular faith. The motif of evolutionary development is nowadays a kind of 'theory of everything' - that what is simple and elementary becomes complex and sophisticated through the course of time by being better adapted. There's even a theory of 'quantum darwinism.')

I think that your essay is attempting to fashion a theory out of these ingredients.

Where I stand - I'm sceptical of the Cartesian division in the first place - both mind and matter are abstractions. It is more like an economic model than a scientific theory as such. In reality, organisms are both physical and cognitive in nature (and then, in h.sapiens, there's reason and symbolic imagination as well). I'm more drawn to modernised versions of Aristotelian 'matter-form' philosophy, because the Aristotelian idea of form as 'formative principle' is considerably more subtle than that of 'res cogitans' (thinking substance. You will notice that Terrence Deacon, whom we have both read, references Aristotle.)

As regards Faggin - I sense that the One resonates with the One of Plotinus' philosophy. He has taken ideas from a variety of sources, and also developed his own using metaphors from quantum physics and computing. But still see him as rather idiosyncratic. He's not going to get noticed much in the 'consciousness studies' ecosystem for that reason.

you have given me no reason to change my view. — Relativist

No, and I fully expect that nothing ever will. It’s not the kind of view which is amendable to falsification, as it is a metaphysical belief.

You will notice, incidentally, that I do not advance a ‘theory of mind’.

it makes a lot more sense to me to think of consciousness and its (intentional) objects as co-arising. — Ludwig V

Exactly what he would say. Phenomenology 101

As I said, feelings are the only thing problematic. — Relativist

You say 'feelings are the only thing problematic' as if that's a minor footnote, but feelings - qualia, first-person experience - is the whole point at issue! So, why keep saying I'm the one 'missing the point', when this is the point? The very thing you constantly minimize, deprecate, even while acknowledging that it can't be explained - central to the entire debate. 'Oh, that doesn't matter. It's only a minor detail.' Like, 'hey, nice dog you got there!' 'Yeah, shame it's dead' :rofl:

Good essay!

So, we don't do consciousness; consciousness does us — PoeticUniverse

Thanks! But I'd be very careful with interpretation. That essay took quite a lot of reading of Bitbol, and he's very careful in the way he expresses himself. The expression 'the primacy of consciousness' doesn't really imply that consciousness is causal. It's more that before anything can be given, there must be a subject to whom it is disclosed. The resemblance to Descartes is clear, although in a footnote I point out that Husserl and Bitbol break with the 'substance' idea of Descartes.

The problem isn’t that some mental states are hard to describe, or that brains are complicated. What’s at issue is something much simpler and deeper:

Every third-person account you appeal to is already framed from a first-person point of view.

A description of the brain is still a description to a conscious subject. Nothing in that description — however detailed or computable — entails that there is anything subjectively real arising from the material facts.

That’s the point physicalism doesn’t touch. It doesn’t matter how much complexity you add or how programmable the processes may be. A functional specification is not the same thing as the reality of existence — and existence is the philosopher’s concern, not the engineer’s abstraction.

So this isn’t a “Mary’s room” or communicability issue. It’s the basic fact that:
• third-person descriptions are always about objects
• consciousness is the condition for any object to appear

Until that is accounted for, saying physicalism “best explains all the facts” simply assumes what is in question. And as a software guy, you must recognise the impossibility of writing a true functional specification for the unconscious and preconscious dimensions of mind — without which consciousness would not be what it is. As Penrose notes, subjective understanding is not algorithmically compressible.

But since you continue to defer to your preferred “best explanation,” this will be my final word to you on the subject. At least we’ve made it clear where the difference lies.

I suppose Faggin's notion of Seity is another attempt to define Cosmic Consciousness in scientific and non-anthropomorphic terms. — Gnomon

Wait until you read it. I don’t think that term is used anywhere in the book. (I’d love to see a discussion between Faggin and Glattenfelder. They’re both kinds of ‘techno mystics’.)