According to many reliable sources, life in the Hermit Kingdom is a dystopian nightmare where you can be sent to a prison camp for expressing dissent. It has poor living standards. frequent shortages of food and no freedom of travel. I think it can be assumed that very few. other than the privileged elite, would want to live under such a regime.

What if we assume that they themselves simply like being who they are? — Astorre

Why would we assume that? They are given no choice at all in the matter. It’s a complete totalitarian dictatorship with an appalling human rights record under the thumb of a dangerous megalomaniac who has nuclear weapons. I see nothing good about it whatever.

the issue here is that the evidence is too sparse for most people to take it seriously as a falsification of the most successful paradigms of knowledge in human history. — Apustimelogist

:chin: What knowledge would the veracity of near-death experience falsify?



What’s an NPC?

I read an analogy, recently - imagine you’re one of millions of displaced people after a war. You find a large bulletin board in the city you used to live in, with photographs of faces on it. One of them is your mother. You know this with complete certainty - but in the circumstances, with all of the civilian bureaucracies destroyed, no records anywhere - you can’t prove it.

:100: MAGA plays that card very well.

‘Wanting a dictatorship’ is surely the abdication of freedom. And even if I agreed that sexual and identity politics has been taken too far in western culture, abandoning democracy is not a solution. It would be a case of the cure being worse than the disease.

Is the West prepared to coexist with ideological and civilizational alternatives that do not necessarily aspire to Western liberalism? — Astorre

Sure - provided they’re not imposed, but chosen by democratic means. The big parade in China today starred Xi Jin Pin, Modi, Putin and Kim Jong Un - only one of whom is a democratically-elected leader. Russia and China are both authoritarian dictatorships, as is North Korea. I don’t see them as any kind of alternative.

Of course it is also true, and tragic, that America of all nations is now hurtling towards totalitarianism, but that is not the fault of Western Liberalism except insofar as it has thus far been able to prevent it.

It seems quite possible to me that China will eclipse the USA as the dominant world hegemon in the near future but that gives me no joy.

+1 :up:

It is rather consumerist neoliberalism that educates us in vice, and so deprives us of liberty. That is, you don't automatically become self-determining and self-governing by turning 18 and avoiding severe misfortune. It is rather, considerable work, and involves a sort of habit formation and training — Count Timothy von Icarus

Totally. And I'm not holding myself up as an exemplar of one who has managed to accomplish that - in fact I'm rather driven by the gloomy awareness of the extent to which I am susceptible to being corrupted by the culture I've been born into. The 'inability to step outside the frame' is what I mean by learning to look at your spectacles and not just through them.

Incidentally as I introduced Vervaeke to the conversation, I will do him the courtesy of providing his statement of the problem in the introduction to the series:

We are in the midst of a mental health crisis. There are increases in anxiety disorders, depression, despair, suicide rates are going up in North America, parts of Europe, other parts of the world. And that mental health crisis is itself due to and engaged with crises in the environment and the political system. And those in turn are immeshed within a deeper cultural historical crisis. I called the meaning crisis. So the meaning crisis expresses itself and many people are giving voice to this in many different ways, is this increasing sense of bullshit. Bullshit is on the increase. It's more and more pervasive throughout our lives and there's this sense of drowning in this old ocean of bullshit. And we have to understand why is this the case and what can we do about it? So today there is an increase of people feeling very disconnected from themselves, from each other, from the world, from a viable and foreseeable future.

Let's discuss this. Let's work on it together. Let's rationally reflect on it. What can we do about the meaning crisis? These problems are deep problems that we're facing. Many people are talking about the meaning crisis, but what I want to argue is that these problems are deeper than just social media problems, political problems, even economic problems. They're deeply historical, cultural, cognitive problems, and we need to, we need to penetrate into them carefully and rigorously. Getting out of this problem is going to be tremendously difficult. It's going to require significant transformations in our cognition, our culture, our communities, and in order to move forward in such a difficult manner, we have to reach more deeply into our past to salvage the resources we can for such an amazing challenge.

I'll be talking about a lot of people who have spoken in in ways that will provide us the resources we need. We'll talk about ancient figures like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, Jesus of Nazareth, Siddhartha, Gautama, the Buddha, but we'll also talk about modern pivotal figures. We'll talk about people like Carl Jung. We'll talk about Nietzsche. We'll talk about Heidegger. We'll talk about current work being done by psychologists, cognitive scientists, neuroscientists. We're going to cover a broad range of topics. We're going to talk about shamanism and altered States of consciousness related a modern things like psychedelic experience, mystical experience. But we'll also talk about existentialism, nihilism. We'll talk about AI, artificial intelligence. What's that telling us? But also what can our evolutionary past tell us about how we wrestle with the meaning crisis. So this is a complex and difficult problem. There are no easy answers. We need to go through this very carefully and rigorously. We got to get clear about what the problem is and clear about what our answer could be. So I want to bring all of this together in a coherent and clear fashion so that we together can discover how to awaken from the meaning crisis. — Awakening from the Meaning Crisis (YouTube)

Jung isn’t collapsing truth into belief. He’s pointing out the phenomenological fact that “world” always means world-for-us. The stone on Mars is there whether or not we know it, but the very notion of “there being a stone on Mars unbeknownst to us” is already an act of consciousness. So the distinction between truth and belief itself only arises within consciousness. That’s what Jung means by consciousness as a precondition of being.

But it would be a mistake to think that therefore the rock could not fall unless there is a mind present - that the rock's fall is inherently a mental phenomena.

That we cannot talk about the way the world is without thereby conceptualising it with our minds does not imply that there is no such world without our so conceptualising it. — Banno

You’re right that it would be a mistake to claim the rock literally can’t fall unless a mind is present. But the point is subtler: in order to say “the rock falls when no one is around,” you’ve already had to call it out, to mark it as “that rock.” You’re implicitly comparing the object with your idea of it. But from where can you make that comparison, if not within experience?

Kant explains the dilemma: to check whether cognition agrees with the object, you’d need access to the object apart from cognition — which is impossible, since you only ever have the object as cognized.

Truth, it is said, consists in the agreement of cognition with its object. In consequence of this mere nominal definition, my cognition, to count as true, is supposed to agree with its object. Now I can compare the object with my cognition, however, only by cognizing it. Hence my cognition is supposed to confirm itself, which is far short of being sufficient for truth. For since the object is outside me, the cognition in me, all I can ever pass judgement on is whether my cognition of the object agrees with my cognition of the object. — Kant, 1801. The Jasche Logic, in Lectures on Logic

So yes, there may well be a world beyond our conceptualisation, but it’s not the world we can ever talk about. Which is what I mean by trying to 'stand outside experience'.

Claims are made by minds, so of course claims involve minds. What is not justified here is the further step that says mind is a requirement for there to be a world at all. — Banno

Without consciousness there would, practically speaking, be no world, for the world exists for us only in so far as it is consciously reflected and considered by a psyche. Consciousness is a precondition of being. — C G Jung

Your reply to the novelty argument admits that there is something "external" to mind, conceding the point. — Banno

It's not conceding the point. In the very first paragraphs of the mind-created world I spell it out: 'First is the criticism that ‘idealism says that the world is all in the mind’ — the implication being that, were there no mind to be aware of an object, then the object would cease to exist. Even very eminent philosophers have (mis)understood idealism in this way.' I will include you in that august company. I never claimed to reduce the world to the individual's mind, nor to show that the mind is a constituent of the natural world, but to show that any claims about the nature of the world contain an ineliminably subjective element, which itself is not revealed in the empirical data.

Well, yes, but that is not idealism. — Banno

I say that the point is that cognitive science, and the Charles Pinter's book Mind and the Cosmic Order, have validated some essential insights from philosophical idealism.

I notice you frequently use the fallacious tactic of refusing to use a word for anything nonhuman or at least nonbiological, as if a definition proves anything. — noAxioms

A definition 'proves' how the word is used. If you wish to re-define memory as 'the past', then the onus is on you to justify it.

Memory: the faculty by which the mind stores and remembers information.
"I've a great memory for faces"
2. something remembered from the past.
"one of my earliest memories is of sitting on his knee

When I say memory is characteristic of life, I mean it in the strong sense: not just a trace of the past, but the active retention of previous experience for the sake of survival and adaptation. To equate memory with anything in the past—erosion marks or planetary orbits —dilutes the meaning of the word until it just means “the past.” But organisms, in contrast to geological or crystal structures, must retain and carry their past forward in order to continue existing; without the ability to capture memory in this special sense, there is no life. Artificial systems such as RAM only “remember” as extensions of the organisms that do (those organisms being us). That’s why I argue memory as such is one of the defining marks of life and is generally absent in non-living matter. I suggest that the reason you find that unacceptable is that it represents an ontological distinction which your philosophy can't accomodate.

Yet there is a different sense of philosophy as a developing discipline -- or if that's too biased, at least an evolving, changing one. I do think we've made progress, in the last 100 years or so, in understanding what can be meaningfully discussed within philosophy. It's a good thing that we've been able to set limits on our attempts to wrestle experience into the rational language of analytic philosophy — J

Sure, I'd agree with that. I'm constantly on the lookout for new ideas, and the general tenor of academic philosophy changes constantly. There's a huge sea-change going on, with 'consciousness studies' and Robert Lawrence Kuhn's 'Closer to Truth' and John Vervaeke's endeavours (plus the infinite backlog of things I haven't read yet.)

But I'll try and re-state the aim of the OP. It was prompted by an assertion that Scholastic philosophy was 'realist' and would have been critical of what we now call 'idealism' (although I can't even recall where I read that now!) But I felt it was an anachronistic criticism, because Scholastic philosophy was not at all 'realist' in the sense we now understand the word. They were realist with respect to universals, whereas nowadays, realism concerning universals is categorised as Aristotelian or Platonic and basically relegated to the margins of debate. Realism nowadays usually means objective realism. I am trying to argue that idealism, both in Berkeley and Kant, was a reaction against the emerging nominalist-empiricist framework that now dominates philosophy and culture.

As the topic of wisdom is being discussed, it may be worth adding a note about Peirce’s philosophy of agapē, or selfless love. Peirce objected to the perceived selfishness implicit in Darwin’s account of the “struggle for existence.” While he accepted evolution, he argued that it could not be adequately explained by chance variation and competition alone. For Peirce, the larger cosmic order bore the mark of agapē—a creative, self-giving love that fosters growth and harmony. He drew this term from the Christian gospels, though he was not himself a denominational Christian, and recast it as a metaphysical principle. In his view, just as wisdom unites knowing with right action, so too does agapē unite being with a purposive direction—evolution not merely as struggle, but as participation in a love that brings novelty into being.

Evolutionary Love is that development of Mind which is the great business of the universe. It is not self-seeking; it is not law-bound; it is not fortuitous. It is the impulse toward perfect sympathy, toward the creation of continuity of feeling, toward the welding together of hearts.

The doctrine of evolution by the struggle for life seems to suppose a natural selection of selfishness. But evolution by love — by sympathy, by kindness, by the desire to make others happy — proves that growth comes by the self-giving of each to the other.

And in frustration at your lack of clarity my responses become increasingly uncharitable. — Banno

Here are your objections to idealism, and my response to them:

Firstly, how is it that there are novelties? How is it that we come across things that are unexpected? A novelty is something that was not imagined, that was not in one's "particular cognitive apparatus". If the world is a creation of the mind, whence something that is not a product of that mind?

Second, how is it that someone can be wrong? To be wrong is to have a belief that is different to how the world is, but if the world is their creation, that would require someone to create a world different to how they believe the world to be. How can we make sense of this?

Finally, How is it that if we each create the world with our particular cognitive apparatus, we happen to overwhelmingly agree as to what that construction is like? So much so that we can participate on a forum together, or buy cars made in Korea. — Banno

Novelty emerges from new external data interacting with our fixed frameworks. In the Kantian view, while the mind supplies the framework for experience, it must work in tandem with the manifold of sensory impressions. The unexpected quality of new data is what we call “novelty.” It doesn’t imply that the mind conjured it from nothing—it simply had to update its organization in response to an input that wasn’t fully anticipated.

Error occurs when our interpretations fail to match that data. When someone holds a belief that is incorrect, it is because there's a mismatch between their mental constructs and what is going on. Although our experience is structured by the mind, it still emanates from the external world. A belief is in error when that mental structure misrepresents or fails to adequately capture the sensible data. This can sometimes result in cognitive dissonance and there are a multitude of opportunities for that in today's world.

Consensus arises because we all operate with fundamentally similar mental structures. This preserves the objectivity of the external world while acknowledging the active role our minds play in organizing experience.

Remember my argument is that what we regard as mind-independent has an ineluctably subjective element or ground, which itself is never revealed in empirical analysis (that is the Kantian aspect). Not that the world is 'all in the mind' in the simplistic sense in which you are inclined to interpret it. I'm arguing against 'objectivism' in the sense propogated by scientific materialism which is very influential in today's culture.

anyway enough out of me for now, I have mundane duties to attend to, bye.

Perhaps we might proceed by looking for points of agreement. We both reject reductionism and scientism and those metaphysics that deny a place for mind at all. — Banno

Right. I am basically arguing against the popular view, or myth, of mankind as the 'accidental outcome of the collocation of atoms' (Bertrand Russell), a 'mere blip in the vastness of space-time' (Hawkings), and so on. Within that view, the mind is indeed the product of impersonal material forces, basically an accident. But that extends into popular culture as well. Some of the responses to the original post express that: what is real is what existed long before us and will continue after our extinction. Humans appear within that as mere epiphenomena. These are the roots of nihilism but they appear perfectly natural to a great many people nowadays. That is what I call the 'outside view': taking the attitude grounded in science as being normative, as if we see ourselves as objects from 'outside'. It is not realising that all of science itself is a human activity that relies on the human perspective, as phenomenology realises.

From my perspective, fact that people decided to try to interpret it as the physical particle is misplaced. They could have decided to interpret it differently from the beginning and no measurement problem would have existed. — Apustimelogist

But don't you see how momentous that decision would be? The admission that the fundamental particles of physics are not themselves physical? That you choose not to see this, is not any kind of argument.

You’re sounding like a phenomenologist. — Joshs

Yes, I noticed that. I'm sure it was a slip. ;-)

the chip, the theory, and all of the componentry of that experiment, are products of the mind. — Wayfarer

Just explain to me what about this statement was incorrect? And the fact that data is not information until it is interpreted? I'm simply stating that you can't see the world from some position external to your own being-in-the-world. You will find plenty of analogies for that idea in Wittgenstein, whom you know far better than I.

I never claimed it was a religious dogma — Janus

Your own words:

It's not a blindness but a sensible intellectual humility. All we know is this world. We can have no way of knowing if there is more. I think your assertion that most of the population think this world is all there is unsupported by the data: It is estimated that more than 85 percent of the global population identifies with a religious group.

I'd say those who want to believe in something that cannot be known to be true are the ones wearing blinkers. They see only through their own confirmation bias. I have no problem with people believing whatever they like provided they can be honest that it is all about faith, not knowledge — Janus

Here, you are directly equating the argument in the original post with religious dogma - and now, you're denying you said it. Just as you constantly appeal to positivism, and then deny you're doing so. Doesn't warrant any further response.

When, in the guts of the chip on which you are typing, a quantum tunnel sets off a current in a transistor, you are not aware of it. No one is. And yet the measurement has been made. You claim is false — Banno

You have a too narrow an interpretation of consciousness. You think it something inside your head, looking out. But the chip, the theory, and all of the componentry of that experiment, are products of the mind.

Well, I endorse an interpretation that has a measurment problem so this is solved for me, personally. — Apustimelogist

Hey, good for you!

the measurement problem is a result of the fact that when quantum theory was first created, people's first and perhaps natural inclination (considering the predecessors to quantum theory) was to interpret the wavefunction as the physical particle itself — Apustimelogist

But surely this was linked to the fact that science was in search of a or the 'fundamental particle', the basic componentry of the atom. So it is natural that this would amount to a search for a physical particle. The fact that this ended up with the uncertainty principle just is the measurement problem. And most of what i know about it comes from three books on the subject:

Kumar, Manjit. 2008. Quantum: Einstein, Bohr and the Great Debate about the Nature of Reality. London: Icon Books.
Lindley, David. 2007. Uncertainty: Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr, and the Struggle for the Soul of Science. New York: Anchor Books.
Becker, Adam. 2018. What Is Real? The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics. New York: Basic Books.

Why the sub-titles? What was 'the great debate about'? Why 'the struggle for the soul of science?' 'Oh, nothing really' is not an answer.

The Quantum Measurement Problem* seems to be similar to Bergson's Clock. Mechanisms move one tick at a time, but humans measure Time as duration : the space between ticks. Hence, for 10 billion solar years, the expanding universe ticked along, with no one to measure that change in terms of duration (Time) or expansion (space) or importance (events) — Gnomon

The problem of including the observer in our description of physical reality arises most insistently when it comes to the subject of quantum cosmology - the application of quantum mechanics to the universe as a whole - because, by definition, 'the universe' must include any observers.

Andrei Linde has given a deep reason for why observers enter into quantum cosmology in a fundamental way. It has to do with the nature of time. The passage of time is not absolute; it always involves a change of one physical system relative to another, for example, how many times the hands of the clock go around relative to the rotation of the Earth. When it comes to the Universe as a whole, time looses its meaning, for there is nothing else relative to which the universe may be said to change. This 'vanishing' of time for the entire universe becomes very explicit in quantum cosmology, where the time variable simply drops out of the quantum description. It may readily be restored by considering the Universe to be separated into two subsystems: an observer with a clock, and the rest of the Universe.

So the observer plays an absolutely crucial role in this respect. Linde expresses it graphically: 'thus we see that without introducing an observer, we have a dead universe, which does not evolve in time', and, 'we are together, the Universe and us. The moment you say the Universe exists without any observers, I cannot make any sense out of that. I cannot imagine a consistent theory of everything that ignores consciousness...in the absence of observers, our universe is dead'. — Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life, p 271

An important report from CAP, a democratic-leaning think tank, on Trump’s First 100 Days. Table of Contents:

• Trump’s game plan for establishing an imperial presidency
• Trump’s steps to achieving an imperial presidency
• Weaponizing the Department of Justice for political purposes
• Ending the independence of independent agencies
• Replacing expert civil servants with political loyalists
• Circumventing Congress’ power to decide how to spend federal funds via impoundment
• Weakening the independent media and news reporting
• Misusing the Insurrection Act against Americans to stifle dissent
• Neutralizing the Senate’s role of confirming executive branch nominees
• Attacking the rule of law
• Threatening elections and serving a third term
• Launching government attacks on civil society and perceived enemies

So we're seeing the march of the United States into an authoritarian dictatorship, day by day.

Read on for the details.

You would jump from "measurement involves interaction between observer and observed" to "consciousness creates reality". — Banno

I don't use the phrase 'consciousness creates reality' and you won't find it in the mind-created world OP, as it would be misreading the point.

What I will say is that measurement is a conscious act. You might say that an instrument can record data in the absence of an observer, but until that data is actually observed, it is not yet a measurement. Consciousness “creates reality” only in the sense that it constitutes our experience of the world. To talk of things “outside” or “apart from” that experience assumes a false perspective, as if we could stand outside experience itself. This is something I think Wittgenstein also understood.

How? If you're going to make a point, then make it. Otherwise, you're just taking potshots.

The world is our successful interpretation and communication within our forms of life. — Banno

You see, that line could be taken from 'the mind-created world'. But it seems in conflict with:

That we cannot talk about the way the world is without thereby conceptualising it with our minds does not imply that there is no such world without our so conceptualising it. — Banno

The whole argument between Bohr and Einstein in respect of quantum physics, was Bohr's declaration that physics does not describe the world as it is, but only as it appears to us. This is what Einstein (and now, Penrose), could not accept. And point which is surely Kantian in spirit.

What 'more'?

Indeed. So we have the question, Is there anything to guide us in choosing between these different senses? The question lends itself to special pleading, as I'm sure you're aware: It's tempting, and convenient, to say, "Oh, when it comes to what is scientifically real, the pre-moderns were hopelessly wrong, but with spiritual reality the reverse is true; it's we who don't understand." — J

There was plenty wrong about the pre-modern world, no question. But there's a definite historical trajectory. In the forum environment it's impossible to go into all of the details. For instance, I only discovered John Vervaeke's lectures in 2022, but his original 'Awakening from the Meaning Crisis' series comprises 52 hours of material! And that there really is such a crisis, I have no doubt, although it's never hard for the naysayers to say 'prove it' and then shoot at anything that's offered by way of argument. I understand that the kind of argument I'm presenting is an attempt to describe an aspect of this historical trajectory as it developed over centuries, but I'm trying to retrace the steps, so to speak.

As for 'pushing the boundaries of what philosophy can talk about', I do agree. But consider this passage from Thomas Nagel:

Plato was clearly concerned not only with the state of his soul, but also with his relation to the universe at the deepest level. Plato’s metaphysics was not intended to produce merely a detached understanding of reality. His motivation in philosophy was in part to achieve a kind of understanding that would connect him (and therefore every human being) to the whole of reality – intelligibly and if possible satisfyingly. — Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament

One of the aspects of the 'meaning crisis' is this sharp but often tacit division between religion and science. This manifests frequently as criticism of idealist arguments on the grounds that they're basically appeals to religious faith. But many of these criticisms are in turn grounded on a stereotyped model of religion, which in turn is based on the very history that produced 'the meaning crisis' in the first place.

The Copenhagen interpretation denies that we need to explain the mechanism of collapse, that there's some deeper level of reality beneath the quantum description and that the measurement problem requires a solution. — Banno

Bohr wasn't saying "don't ask deeper questions" or "physics should only describe observations." His complementarity principle was a sophisticated attempt to understand what quantum mechanics reveals about the nature of physical reality itself. Bohr argued that quantum phenomena demonstrate fundamental limits to classical concepts like "particle" and "wave" - not because we can't measure precisely enough, but because reality itself doesn't conform to these classical categories.

I have to mention the family Coat of Arms that was bestowed on Neils Bohr by the Danish Crown in recognition of his services to science. Bohr designed it himself, and it included the taoist Ying-Yang symbol, representing his discovery of complementarity, which he regarded as his most important philosophical insight.

The positivist reading - which you're advocating here - treats Bohr as an anti-realist who wanted to avoid metaphysics entirely. But Bohr was actually making a profound metaphysical claim: that the classical subject-object distinction breaks down at the quantum level, and that phenomena only exist in relation to experimental contexts. This isn't avoiding the measurement problem - it's proposing that the problem reveals something fundamental about the nature of physical reality.

Bohr's "no deeper level" claim wasn't anti-explanatory positivism but rather the view that quantum mechanics reveals the deepest level - that reality is inherently relational and contextual rather than consisting of objects with intrinsic properties.

You're conflating the copenhagen view with the later "shut up and calculate" attitude - just leave those questions aside and do the work. Bohr was deeply concerned with interpretation and meaning - he just thought quantum mechanics was telling us something revolutionary about the nature of reality itself.

John Wheeler: “The dependence of what is observed upon the choice of experimental arrangement made Einstein unhappy, It conflicts with the view that the universe exists “out there” independent of all acts of observation. In contrast Bohr stressed that we confront here an inescapable new feature of nature, to be welcomed because of the understanding it gives us. In struggling to make clear to Einstein the central point as he saw it, Bohr found himself forced to introduce the word “phenomenon”. In today’s words, Bohr’s point — and the central point of quantum theory — can be put into a single, simple sentence. “No elementary phenomenon is a phenomenon until it is a registered (observed) phenomenon”.

Werner Heisenberg: “What we observe is not nature herself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.”

Neils Bohr: “Physics is not about how the world is, it is about what we can say about the world”.

It's common for folk with idealist tendencies to confuse what they believe, understand, think etc. with what is true. — Banno

I do not argue against the existence of any one thing that we can apprehend, either by sense or reflection. That the things I see with my eyes and touch with my hands do exist, really exist, I make not the least question. The only thing whose existence we deny is that which philosophers call ‘matter’ or ‘corporeal substance’. — George Berkeley

So - let's solve that problem! Demonstrate to Bishop Berkeley that matter is composed of absolute and indivisible particles that exist entirely independently of anyone's observation or say-so. Get to it!

I appreciate the response, but I think it sidesteps the core issues rather than addressing them directly.

While there may be broad agreement that consciousness isn't necessarily special in quantum mechanics, this doesn't resolve the deeper puzzle. Even if consciousness plays no unique role, the measurement problem remains: something distinguishes measurement interactions from non-measurement interactions, and standard quantum theory doesn't specify what that 'something' is. We still need to explain why certain physical interactions produce definite outcomes while others maintain superposition.

Second, your comment that "if your preferred interpretation does not have..." is circular. You're essentially saying that if we choose an interpretation that claims to solve the measurement problem, then there's no problem! But the measurement problem is precisely why interpretations were needed in the first place. The various interpretations exist precisely because the theory leaves this fundamental question unanswered.

Third, saying that "quantum theory does not suggest consciousness is required" misses the point. The measurement problem doesn't arise because the theory positively suggests consciousness is involved - it arises because the theory is silent about what actually happens during measurement. Quantum mechanics works perfectly for making predictions, but it doesn't tell us what's really occurring when superpositions become definite outcomes, or what was really the case prior to measurement except by way of probabilities.

The hard question remains: given that quantum systems evolve unitarily according to the Schrödinger equation, why do we observe definite measurement results rather than experiencing superpositions? This puzzle can't be dissolved simply by adopting interpretations that claim it doesn't exist.

And what way do you think I suppose?

I think I could say that the act of observation seems inextricably connected with an experimental result in quantum physics, and this is what has given rise to the well-known interpretive problems. As observers are conscious, some will say that it is inferred from that fact that consciousness is involved, although there is still debate about whether registration by an instrument that is not observed amounts to a measurement. But one can always say that any such registration must itself be validated by observation before it has been brought to completion.

84% of physicists reject the idea that consciousness is necessary for measurement. — Banno

Physicists are not trained in theories of consciousness. There’s probably precious little agreement amongst them about what the word even refers to. (Good article, BTW.)

It's not a blindness but a sensible intellectual humility. All we know is this world. We can have no way of knowing if there is more. I think your assertion that most of the population think this world is all there is unsupported by the data: It is estimated that more than 85 percent of the global population identifies with a religious group.

I'd say those who want to believe in something that cannot be known to be true are the ones wearing blinkers. — Janus

You think the Kant's description of the unknowability of the in itself is a religious dogma, because you don't understand it. You think he's projecting an unknowable something. Meanwhile, 'the world', which you so confidently proclaim our knowledge of, is itself not the knowable, familiar and determinate realm which you so casually believe it to be. So you categorise this kind of argument, and that of the original post, as being kind of religious, which is why you think them dogmatic. It's just completely transparent, and it's the opposite of intellectual humility.

verificationism is a theory in the philosophy of science — Janus

It is not! Verificationism is not specific to philosophy of science. It is a central tenet of positivism and was associated with the Vienna Circle and A J Ayer (reference).

So this statement:

I said that only in the case of statements whose assertions are either self-evident or demonstrable by observation can the truth or falsity be determined. — Janus

is verificationism, plain and simple. And if you add

even though the truth of metaphysical theses cannot be determined by either verification or falsification, they can provide a stimulus that may lead to important scientific results. — Janus

Then you're still saying the only criterion of factuality is science, again.

I keep asking you to explain how the truth of any metaphysical thesis could be determined, and you never even attempt to answer the question, which is telling; it seems to show that you are in a kind of denial — Janus

I spend lot of time addressing your objections. I write, publish and defend opinion pieces here and on Medium and will always attempt to address questions and criticisms. I have about the second most number of posts on this forum and a very large proportion of them are responses to criticisms.

What I observe of your modus operandi is that there are many questions in philosophy about which you will say there are no determinable facts. Then you'll say, because they're incapable of being determined, therefore nobody can answer them, therefore empiricism is the most plausible attitude.

How to test a 'metaphysical theory'? Just now Kastrup was interviewed by Robert Lawrence Kuhn, he suggests internal consistency, explanatory power, and parsimony would be good starting points. I would concur with that.

But as Karen Armstrong says, spiritual truth is a species of practical knowledge. Like swimming, we can't learn it in the abstract; we have take the plunge. We have to make it meaningful by engaging with it. And that can only be done first person.

How would you determine the truth of "consciousness is fundamental to reality"? I am not even sure what it means — Janus

Plainly!

Instead I said that only in the case of statements whose assertions are either self-evident or demonstrable by observation can the truth or falsity be determined. — Janus

Which is verificationism in a nutshell . I know you resent being described as positivist, but then you go ahead and make statements right out of the Ayer/Carnap playbook, so how else ought they to be described? The web definition of positivism is 'a philosophical system recognizing only that which can be scientifically verified or which is capable of logical or mathematical proof, and therefore rejecting metaphysics and theism', which you frequently re-state.

There is no religious truth in any propositional sense. — Janus

The four ways of knowing: propositional knowing (knowing that facts are true), procedural knowing (knowing how to do something), perspectival knowing (knowing through a viewpoint), and participatory knowing (knowing through acting and being in an environment).

Every so often, MU, you hit upon a vein. Anyway, I'm reading that Heidegger essay ('What is a Thing?') this morning, with able assistance from my friend Chuck, and it's really very interesting.

That is the whole point of the Heidegger essay, which I've been re-reading.

If one takes everyday representation as the sole standard of all things, then philosophy is always something deranged. — Heidegger

Like the OP, right?

So, did the clock on your wall keep moving while you slept, or was there a leap from when you closed your eyes to when you opened them again, no time passing - nothing exists, just things leaping ahead as if time had passed? — Banno

To examine the measurements involved in clock time, (Henri) Bergson considers an oscillating pendulum, moving back and forth. At each moment, the pendulum occupies a different position in space, like the points on a line or the moving hands on a clockface. In the case of a clock, the current state – the current time – is what we call ‘now’. Each successive ‘now’ of the clock contains nothing of the past because each moment, each unit, is separate and distinct. But this is not how we experience time. Instead, we hold these separate moments together in our memory. We unify them. A physical clock measures a succession of moments, but only experiencing duration allows us to recognise these seemingly separate moments as a succession. Clocks don’t measure time; we do. This is why Bergson believed that clock time presupposes lived time.

Bergson appreciated that we need the exactitude of clock time for natural science. For example, to measure the path that an object in motion follows in space over a specific time interval, we need to be able measure time precisely. What he objected to was the surreptitious substitution of clock time for duration in our metaphysics of time. His crucial point in Time and Free Will was that measurement presupposes duration, but duration ultimately eludes measurement. — Clock time contra lived time

Idealism has a great deal of difficulty avoiding solipsism. — Banno

At least your version of it does.

I could say that a mystical experience is about something objective -- God or Divine Reality or whatever phrasing you like -- but only occurs subjectively. But the problem is how a subjective experience could provide evidence for sorting out the difference between some genuine objective reality and a mere psychological event, however powerful. In other words, my asserting the objective existence of what I'm experiencing doesn't make it so. How many such assertions would make it so? That's a complicated question, focusing on the blurred line between objectivity and intersubjectivity — J

You may recall that this is the subject of my essay Scientific Objectivity and Philosophical Detachment. It is also a point made in this OP, that the word 'objectivity' only came into use in the early modern period. The background idea is that the pre-moderns had a very different sense of what is real. Their way-of-being in the world was participatory. The world was experienced as a living presence rather than a domain of impersonal objects and forces. In that context, the standard of truth was veritas - rather than objective validation. This state was realised through the emulation of the sacred archetypes rather than made the subject to propositional knowledge (per Hadot's Philosophy as Way of Life).

what prompted its emergence is found in Kant, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, the Greeks, Hegel, etc., and what THIS is all about is, even prior to Husserl, the reduction-to-metaphysics discovered in an authentic analytic of what stands right before one's waking eyes. — Constance

Thanks for your insightful comments! One of the books I've been studying the last couple of years is Thinking Being, Eric Perl. It helped me understand the sense in which metaphysics could be a living realisation, not the static religious dogma it has become. I've read parts of Heidegger's critique of metaphysics, but I'm not completely on board with his analysis. I think the flaw that he detects is that of 'objectification' - that philosophy errs in trying to arrive at an objective description of metaphysics, when its entire veracity rests on it being a state of lived realisation. (This is the subject of Perl's introductory chapter in the above book.)

The problem is that the truth (or falsity) of such intuitions is not in any way definitively decidable. — Janus

You say this repeatedly, as if it were revealed truth, when in fact it’s simply the dogma of positivism: that only what can be scientifically validated can be stated definitively.

Religious orders have existed for millennia, during which countless aspirants have practiced and realized their principles. From the outside this may look like hearsay or anecdote, but that is because truths of this kind are first-person. They are not propositional or hypothetical, nor can they serve as scientific predictions.

As Karen Armstrong said

Religious truth is, therefore, a species of practical knowledge. Like swimming, we cannot learn it in the abstract; we have to plunge into the pool and acquire the knack by dedicated practice. Religious doctrines are a product of ritual and ethical observance, and make no sense unless they are accompanied by such spiritual exercises as yoga, prayer, liturgy and a consistently compassionate lifestyle. Skilled practice in these disciplines can lead to intimations of the transcendence we call God, Nirvana, Brahman or Dao. Without such dedicated practice, these concepts remain incoherent, incredible and even absurd.

The point isn’t that spiritual truths are “indecidable” in principle, but that they are not decidable by the methods of science. Their test is existential: whether practice transforms the one who undertakes it.

The fact is, if noumena do not represent, in an abstract phrasing, actual physical objects the system falls apart. That much is sound. — AmadeusD

I'm going to agree with in this regard. I don't think there is a phrase that translates as 'physical object' in the COPR. Kant is clear that noumena cannot be equated with physical objects. Physicality, for him, already belongs to the phenomenal realm (governed by space, time, and causality). Noumenon functions as a boundary concept (as you say), marking the limit of experience (or: hypothetically as an object of intellectual intuition). To say “noumena must be physical objects” is to import a post-Kantian usage of “physical” that he explicitly brackets out. The better way to put it is: noumena are required for the system, but precisely as non-physical and unknowable.

What I am saying is that the idea that there is "a thing" which is perceived is a faulty idea. So, I'm saying that all these supposed "things", forest fires, balls, and clouds, could be better understood if we simply accept that the perception of them as things is mistaken and misleading. — Metaphysician Undercover

Fascinating line of thought. It reminded me of Heidegger's essay on the topic What is a Thing? where he says that our very notion of 'thing’ is not given once and for all but always interpreted in accordance with the domain of discourse in which it is understood.

(Incidentally, a line from the introductory paragraph of that essay: “If one takes everyday representation as the sole standard of all things, then philosophy is always something deranged.” Something which participants in this thread would be well advised to contemplate.)