In any case, I'm definitely cooling on Hoffman. One idea that really threw me in the long article Banno pinned, was that 'conscious agents' are not necessarily human beings, but might be completely unknown to us. :yikes: Myself, not being wedded to materialism, am quite prepared to accept that there might be immaterial intelligences, but I don't know if this is what Hoffman has in mind, in fact I don't know if he knows what he means.

One weakness in the 'desktop metaphor' is that at least a computer scientist will understand exactly the real operations that are being performed by the user interface, right down to the machine code and micro-electronics that underlie it. A scientist could explain comprehensively what the icons really are and how they work to achieve the user's purposes. I don't know if Hoffman can have any corresponding ontology of what the real connections are between perceiving subjects and objects that correspond to his metaphor of creatures manipulating icons. He says it's not real - compared to what?

In classical philosophy and theology, you will frequently encounter the notion of The One or The Good as 'beyond being'. What I think this actually means is 'beyond the vicissitudes of existence' - all material phenomena - everything that exists - is compounded, conditioned, and subject to change and decay. The search was always for that which is not subject to change and decay (which is also characteristic of mathematical knowledge in some degree as it is not subject to fluctuation or change.) The unconditoned was represented in Plato by the Ideas or the Form of the Good, which was 'beyond existence' in that sense - not coming into or passing out of being, but always so. Very much the subject of later and neo-platonism, and subsequently assimilated into Platonic Christianity. This is articulated very clearly (for such an abstruse topic!) in the SEP entry on Scotus Eriugena in a discussion of levels or planes of reality. Completely separate topic to this thread, however.

Existence is not a predicate — green flag

Kant's criticism of the ontological argument.

Next court appearance for DJT for the NY case is currently listed for 4th December. Quite possibly several other indictments will have been unsealed in the meanwhile.

Comment from today's SMH put the finger on what the NY indictment is actually about, which is more than falsification of business records:

What Bragg [said] was that this case is not a garden-variety fiddling with the books. Bragg made that clear in two sentences in the indictment and one sentence in his media conference:

“The defendant Donald J. Trump repeatedly and fraudulently falsified New York business records to conceal criminal conduct that hid damaging information from the voting public during the 2016 presidential election. From August 2015 to December 2017, the defendant orchestrated a scheme with others to influence the 2016 presidential election by identifying and purchasing negative information about him to suppress its publication and benefit the defendant’s electoral prospects.”

Addressing the media, Bragg said that under New York law it is a crime to “conspire to promote a candidacy by unlawful means. That is exactly what this case is about.”

In other words, says Bragg, Trump was criminally messing with the 2016 presidential election. Much bigger than bad bookkeeping. ...The Bragg indictment presents a credible case of an unlawful attempt to decisively affect the outcome of the presidential election.

It’s the same alleged modus operandi in the 2020 campaign. Trump is vulnerable to being indicted for committing the same class of crimes in Georgia. (“I just want to find 11,780 votes!”) — Bruce Wolpe

( 6 ) What it feels like to be in a reflexive, ongoing, intentional, historicising, projective, story telling and unitary affective state. What is it like.

I imagine much of the dispute regarding whether neuroscience and its philosophical analysis suffices for an explanation concerns whether ( 6 ) should be included in the list. — fdrake

What is awkwardly referred to as 'what it is like' is actually just describing 'being'. It is what 'being' refers to, when we use the term 'human being'. The human being is the subject who makes judgements, conducts scientific experiments, devises hypotheses and so on. But at the same time, the subject is never within the frame, so to speak, on the obvious grounds of not being among the objects of analysis. This was the basic thrust of Husserl's critique of naturalism, and one of the reasons phenomenology is most often cited as the basis for an alternative approach to objective analysis.

First of all we not only analyze first person experience.... — Nickolasgaspar

Mental is just a label we place on properties produced by specific physical processes in the brain. — Nickolasgaspar

You have a blind spot in respect of the issue at hand. 'Facing up to the hard problem of consciousness' is not trivial or redundant, but a statement about the inherent limitations of objective, third-person science with respect to the nature of first-person experience.

There's some scientific validation of the fact that this really is a hard problem. As it is relevant to the topic, I'll quote at length from The neural binding problem(s), Jerome Feldman. There's a section on 'the subjective unity of perception' which begins as follows:

There are intractable problems in all branches of science; for Neuroscience a major one is the mystery of subjective personal experience. This is one instance of the famous mind–body problem (Chalmers 1996) concerning the relation of our subjective experience (aka qualia) to neural function. Different visual features (color, size, shape, motion, etc.) are computed by largely distinct neural circuits, but we experience an integrated whole. This is closely related to the problem known as the illusion of a stable visual world (Martinez-Conde et al. 2008).

The reference to Chalmers is to the 'facing up to the hard problem' paper. He continues:

There is now overwhelming biological and behavioral evidence that the brain contains no stable, high-resolution, full field representation of a visual scene, even though that is what we subjectively experience (Martinez-Conde et al. 2008). The structure of the primate visual system has been mapped in detail (Kaas and Collins 2003) and there is no area that could encode this detailed information. The subjective experience is thus inconsistent with the neural circuitry. ....

Traditionally, the Neural Binding Problem concerns instantaneous perception and does not consider integration over saccades (rapid movement of the eye between fixation points). But in both cases the hard problem is explaining why we experience the world the way we do. As is well known, current science has nothing to say about subjective (phenomenal) experience and this discrepancy between science and experience is also called the “explanatory gap” and “the hard problem” (Chalmers 1996). There is continuing effort to elucidate the neural correlates of conscious experience; these often invoke some version of temporal synchrony as discussed above.

There is a plausible functional story for the stable world illusion. First of all, we do have a (top-down) sense of the space around us that we cannot currently see, based on memory and other sense data—primarily hearing, touch, and smell. Also, since we are heavily visual, it is adaptive to use vision as broadly as possible. Our illusion of a full field, high resolution image depends on peripheral vision—to see this, just block part of your peripheral field with one hand. Immediately, you lose the illusion that you are seeing the blocked sector. When we also consider change blindness, a simple and plausible story emerges. Our visual system (somehow) relies on the fact that the periphery is very sensitive to change. As long as no change is detected it is safe to assume that nothing is significantly altered in the parts of the visual field not currently attended.

But this functional story tells nothing about the neural mechanisms that support this magic. What we do know is that there is no place in the brain where there could be a direct neural encoding of the illusory detailed scene (Kaas and Collins 2003).

So, contrary to all of the journal articles that you continue to cite, the subjective unity of perception, which is a major aspect of the 'hard problem', remains unexplained, and indeed inexplicable, according to this paper, which essentially provides scientific validation for the argument made in Chalmer's original article.

Essentially your approach is both 'scientistic' and positivist. You claim that if something cannot be made subject to scientific analysis, then it amounts to 'special pleading' or 'making excuses' or 'introducing red herrings'. But many of the philosophical objections to scientism - which is basically the belief that all that can be known, can be known by means of science - are cogent and well documented. If you spent a bit more time reading philosophy, and a bit less evangalising neuroscientific reductionism, you might begin to appreciate that.

OK, science geeks, how do we determine whether an AI is conscious? — RogueAI

If you ran a simulation of kidney function on your cloud computer network, would you expect it to produce urine?

What is in the teachings of Jesus that are not in the teaching of Jewish scriptures and works of the rabbis? — Fooloso4

Jesus often spoke with the authority of someone who had direct knowledge of God, whereas the rabbis tended to rely on the authority of the Torah and the interpretations of previous rabbis.

He challenged the traditional interpretations of the Jewish Law, emphasizing the spirit rather than the letter. For example, Jesus taught that love for God and love for one's neighbor were the most important commandments, rather than scrupulous adherence to the Law.

He welcomed all people, regardless of their social status or background, whereas the rabbis tended to maintain the social heirarchy.

He emphasized the importance of a personal relationship with God, rather than relying solely on religious practices or following the teachings of religious leaders.

Jesus performed miracles, such as healing the sick and raising the dead, which were not part of traditional Jewish teachings, and which the Rabbis didn't or couldn't do.

Not much, apart from that.

It's not unreasonable to assume that there is some organism in the world that has some sense that we don't. — Michael

Yeah, you sometimes wonder what it would be like to be a bat.

How conscious are the latest famous bots ? Do they have selves ? — green flag

Let's ask:

Q: Are you, ChatGPT, conscious? Are you a self?

A: As an artificial intelligence language model, I am not conscious in the same way that humans are, nor do I have a sense of self. I am a collection of algorithms and data structures that process input and generate output based on that input. While I can simulate conversation and provide helpful responses, I do not have the ability to experience consciousness or self-awareness.

Also discussed extensively in Pierre Normand's thread on GPT4.

He’s a cognitive scientist but as he doesn’t subscribe to materialism so it seems suggestive of idealism. I’m going to read that critical review Banno posted.

There's definitely a Pythagorean flavour to it. But then, Russell says in HWP that the mathematical mysticism of Pythagoreanism is one of the key differentiators of the Western cultural tradition from the Asiatic. So I don't think it is something to be belittled.

Also recall that in Platonism, knowledge of arithmetic and geometry was 'dianoia', which is higher than opinion concerning appearances, but not the highest level, which is 'noesis'.

Don't see it. — Banno

Having said that, there's an awful lot of awfully idealist-sounding prose scattered throughout, e.g. 'Conscious realism, in direct contradiction to physicalism, takes our conscious experiences as ontologically fundamental.' If it walks like an idealist, and quacks like an idealist, then.....

Top of p100. The thing I'm suspicious about is that we don't know what is real outside our desktop metaphor. I thought a scientist would at least have a shot at it. A shrug just doesn't cut it.

He puts paid to my idealist gloss on his work in a couple of paragraphs:

Ideas similar to MUI theory are found in various forms of idealism. But, as Searle (2004, p. 48) says:

idealism had a prodigious influence in philosophy, literally for centuries, but as far as I can tell it has been as dead as a doornail among nearly all the philosophers whose opinions I respect, for many decades, so I will not say much about it.

This is a simple misunderstanding. MUI theory is not idealism. It does not claim that all that exists are conscious perceptions. It claims that our conscious perceptions need not resemble the objective world, whatever its nature is. — Donald Hoffman

Thanks. Lots of homework there.

I've learned that platonism in mathematics is regarded as highly non-PC - presumably because of its challenge to philosophical naturalism. Have a look at this article, which is in my current bookmarks list What is Math? Smithsonian Magazine

I tracked down and bought the (expensive!) textbook of the platonist Professor mentioned in that article, James Robert Brown (although you'd probably be able to make more sense of it than me). But note this passage from the essay:

Other scholars—especially those working in other branches of science—view Platonism with skepticism. Scientists tend to be empiricists; they imagine the universe to be made up of things we can touch and taste and so on; things we can learn about through observation and experiment. The idea of something existing “outside of space and time” makes empiricists nervous: It sounds embarrassingly like the way religious believers talk about God, and God was banished from respectable scientific discourse a long time ago.

Platonism, as mathematician Brian Davies has put it, “has more in common with mystical religions than it does with modern science.” The fear is that if mathematicians give Plato an inch, he’ll take a mile. If the truth of mathematical statements can be confirmed just by thinking about them, then why not ethical problems, or even religious questions? Why bother with empiricism at all?

Something which I would describe as 'inadvertantly revealing'.

Why do people create sock puppets? What are they for? — Tom Storm

Typically it's a moderator slang referring to a banned user who re-joins under a different ID - hence the whole kerfuffle in this case.

:lol:

So now we have 20 'translations' which contain the 'same' idea. Do we think perfect translation is possible ? Is a perfect paraphrase in the same language even possible ? — green flag

If you were dealing with a recipe, or a formula, or design blueprints, you'd better be damned sure they're accurate. (Remember that European Mars Lander that failed because an engineer confused imperial and metric?)

This is a long-standing interest of mine. Consider this question: if you have a string of text of the type mentioned above, it can be translated, not only into other languages, but completely different symbolic systems, like binary. In such cases, what changes, and what stays the same? I think the answer is, the symbolic form changes, but the meaning is constant. Same with number: we can invent all kinds of symbolic systems and relationships, but the meaning of '7' must remain invariant. That is what *I* think 'platonism' is intuiting, although I accept it's very much a minority view.

What exactly do you take the claims of metaphysical naturalism to be? — Janus

Pretty much as per the encyclopedia entries:

According to Steven Schafersman, geologist and president of Texas Citizens for Science, metaphysical naturalism is a philosophy that proposes that: 1. Nature encompasses all that exists throughout space and time; 2. Nature (the universe or cosmos) consists only of natural elements, that is, of spatiotemporal physical substance—mass–energy. Non-physical or quasi-physical substance, such as information, ideas, values, logic, mathematics, intellect, and other emergent phenomena, either supervene upon the physical or can be reduced to a physical account; 3. Nature operates by the laws of physics and in principle, can be explained and understood by science and philosophy; and 4. the supernatural does not exist, i.e., only nature is real. — WIkipedia

This is what results if you take the Christian worldview and replace religion with science, and the divine commandments with the laws of physics. As I said before 'the Jealous God dies hard'.

if you are referring to naive realism — Janus

More metaphysical naturalism, which is naive realism on steroids :rofl:

I am a Methodological Naturalist, — Nickolasgaspar

That's what I meant.

there aren't any real conflicts between Darwinian Naturalism and reason. — Nickolasgaspar

Have you ever read anything about that topic? Because it seems to me closely connected to the hard problem argument.

wise claims about the world (philosophy). — Nickolasgaspar

You will always reflexively equate philosophy with naturalism.

reason was not the mind property in question here. — Nickolasgaspar

I mention it because of the very well-known arguments about the apparent conflicts between Darwinian naturalism and the faculty of reason, although if you're not familiar with them, I won't go to the trouble of trying to explain them.

Evolution IS a theory so by definition its a philosophical narrative (natural philosophy)about observable facts. — Nickolasgaspar

But it doesn't provide criteria for judgement of epistemelogical or existential or metaphysical questions, because that is not the problem it is addressing. It is addressing the issue of 'how species evolve'. And it does so quite successfully, although it is continually being modified to deal with varoius evolutionary facts.

But the bottom line of evolutionary biology has to do with survival, reproduction, mutation and evolution.. When those criteria are applied to the use of reason, then it's reductionist, because it is reducing reason to an adaptation for the purposes of survival (when the vast bulk of evolved species have gotten along perfectly well without it.)

A theory has a specific place in science....its not for boosting our petty agendas — Nickolasgaspar

Indeed - but that's pretty well all you do here. You basically barge into every philosophical discussion with Look! Science! Can't you see, fools! That's exactly how you responded to me.

How do we explain this if our minds are not somehow collectively coordinated or it is not the mind-independent nature of the physical ? Are there any other explanations you can think of? — Janus

I don't really see the problem. I fully accept the naturalist account of evolution. All organic life is related, as evolutionary theory demonstrates.

What I'm rejecting is a philosophical stance which attributes a kind absolute value to the objective domain. Actually the insight I had goes back to my first Honours thesis on Emerson and the transcendentalists. It is that we're not actually outside of, or other to, reality as such. But that awareness of ourselves as separate individuals is very much the hallmark of modern individualism, and also the condition of the separated individual. That is what gives rise to the 'Cartesian anxiety' which is the kind of metaphysical angst ofmodernity.

As for the world as we have never known it - what could be said? I mean, even if we study the cosmos right back to nanoseconds after the big bang, it is the observing mind that brings order and perspective to that analysis. From a naturalistic perspective, sure, h. sapiens only came along in the last ten minutes (speaking metaphorically) but it is in that form that all of this becomes somewhat intelligible, But science itself has come to realise the role the mind has in orchestrating the order we perceive, hence Wheeler's 'it from bit' and 'participatory cosmos'.

If there is no objective ground, if we all mold our own realities, then how do we explain the fact that we all see the same things? — Janus

What I already said about the collective nature of mind. Besides, the laws of physics still hold at micro-levels, but they're probabalistic, there is no 'absolute object', therefore no absolute objectivity. Do have a read of that Conversations article on QBism that I linked.

According to QBism, an approach developed by Christopher Fuchs and me, the great lesson of quantum mechanics is that the usual starting point of the philosophers is simply wrong. Quantum mechanics does not describe reality as it is by itself. Instead, it is a tool that helps guide agents immersed in the world when they contemplate taking actions on parts of it external to themselves. — Ruediger Schack

Would there be anything at all if there were no human minds according to you? — Janus

The answer to that could only be silence.

Science itself doesn't need qualia or direct experience — green flag

That is the way post-Cartesian science is constructed - the individual subject confronting a world of material objects directed by mechanical laws.

This is being broken down by e.g. embodied cognition, enactivism, and cognitive science. The assumed absolute barrier between subject and object, so characteristic of post-Cartesian science, is being found to comprise a porous boundary.

- you clearly don't understand Evolution or Science — Nickolasgaspar

So you don't accept that science has a cultural role? That evolutionary theory is often used as a guide to how we should think or what we are? Have you ever studied philosophy of science? Do the names Kuhn, Feyerabend, Polanyi mean anything to you?

Culture can determine the forms in which we understand things, but it cannot account for the everyday fact that we don't only see things in the same general ways, but see exactly the same things in detail at the same places at the same times. — Janus

This is where the non-objectivity of quantum mechanics enters the picture. When you seek the underlying, objective ground from which all of the objects of everyday experience are supposedly derived, it is found to be different for every observer (e.g. https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a40460495/objective-reality-may-not-exist/)

All of that is not sufficient to explain the simple facts of everyday experience. — Janus

Again, not saying the world is 'only in your mind'.

As I see it, there's a weird logical blind spot in the hard problem of consciousness singular — green flag

The blind spot is a great subject of study. It is grounded in the Upaniṣadic philosophy, 'the eye cannot see itself.' Google The Blind Spot, Michel Bitbol.

Well its turns out that being conscious offers survival advantages, — Nickolasgaspar

However, human beings are past the point of doing what every other creature does - the four F's of feeding, fleeing, fighting, and reproducing. Human beings actually stop and ask the question: WHY AM I DOING THIS? And for that matter, what am I? What is this thing that thinks?

Because of the cultural role of science, Darwinism has tended to fill the vacuum caused by the collapse of religion in secular culture. But evolutionary theory may not be up to the task, simply because it was never intended as a philosophy as such, or the basis for an epistemology and metaphysic. And if you try to adapt it to that purpose, it's very hard to avoid something like social darwinism or scientism.

By the way, in return for all the neuroscience articles, I will offer only one, a NY Times review prompted by the replication crisis with a particular eye on fMRI scans, Do You Believe in God, or is That a Software Glitch?

By the 'species mind', I mean, rather than positing a 'universal mind', realising that as members of both a species and a culture, we live in a world of collective understandings and conventions of meaning. That's a theme in Hegel, who said that the ideas we have of the world are social, which is to say that the ideas that we possess individually are shaped by the ideas that other people possess. Our minds have been shaped by the thoughts of our culture and society through the language we speak, their traditions and mores and the cultural and religious institutions of which we are a part (what Hegel means by 'geist'). This is also reflected in constructivist philosophies and in sociology, like Berger's 'Social Construction of Reality'. That is at the basis of what is called in phenomenology the 'lebenswelt' - the meaning-world of humanity.

The question will remain, how then can you say the world existed before humans, if it's a collective construct? Isn't a 'universal mind', or a being assigned the role of God in Berkeley's philosophy, required to account for its apparent permanency even in the absence of any human mind whatever

Consider this. All of the vast amounts of data being nowadays collected about the universe by our incredibly powerful telescopes and particle colliders is still synthesised and converted into conceptual information by scientists. And that conceptual activity remains conditioned by, and subject to, our sensory and intellectual capabilities — determined by the kinds of sensory beings we are, and shaped by the attitudes and theories we hold (which is the lesson of embodied cognition and enactivism). And we’re never outside of that web of conceptual activities — at least, not as long as we’re conscious beings. That is the sense in which the Universe exists ‘in the mind’ — not as a figment of someone’s imagination, but as a combination or synthesis of perception, conception and theory in the mind (which is more than simply your mind or mine). That synthesis constitutes our world, and we can't see anything from 'outside' of it. As is well known, when it comes to speculative theories of the Universe prior to the singularity, the mind boggles. And I think this is also the lesson of the conundrums of modern physics, all of which tend to undermine the very notion of a 'mind-independent reality' (by the way, superb introductory article to QBism by one of its two main progenitors. QBism also tends to support the perspective I'm describing.)

Getting back to Hoffman, I think his central point is that 'the object' has no intrinsic existence apart from its incorporation into the meaning-world that comprises experience (although I think his terminology is clumsy, what he's arguing against is not 'reality' per se, but 'objectivism', although that would make for a far less flashy title). But this is why he says he has 'solved' the hard problem - he's solved it, by showing that the object can't exist outside our experience of it (which doesn't mean that it literally ceases to exist when not perceived, more that what we perceive as existence itself is a conceptual construct or vorstellung.) Whereas what modern science has tended to do is to declare that 'the subject' is completely separate from the external realm, and that meaning and quality (qualia) only inhere in the internal or subjective dimension of thought, thereby devoiding the 'real' world of meaning and purpose. Hoffman is arguing by means of cognitive science that this is a faulty cognitive construct, albeit one which is almost the default condition for the modern individual and in which we're all embedded to some degree.

See if you can get a snapshot for us.

but if the reality is thought to consist in not mind-independent existents, but ideas in a universal mind — Janus

I think of in terms of ‘the collective mind’ - as members of a species, language group and culture then we inhabit a shared reality. Is there a need to posit a mind other than that?

Maybe it is more like the relationship between a triangle and three sides, you can’t imagine one without the other. So, it is unlike a hand and pencil. Thus, they are not independent of each other. — Richard B

'Independent' in the sense that the concept triangle is not dependent on your thinking about it.

the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition regards the intellect as a distinct faculty from the senses and the imagination. The objects of the intellect are concepts, which are abstract and universal, while the senses and imagination can only ever grasp what is (at least relatively) concrete and particular. Hence your sensation or mental image of a triangle is always of a particular kind of triangle – small, isosceles, and red, for example – while the concept of a triangle grasped by your intellect applies to all triangles, whether they are small or large, isosceles, scalene, or equilateral, red, green, or black. Sensations and mental images are also subjective or private, directly knowable only to the person having them, while concepts are public and objective, equally accessible in principle to anyone. Your mental image of a triangle might be very different from mine, but when we grasp the concept of a triangle, it is one and the very same thing each of us grasps, which is why we can communicate about triangles in the first place. — Edward Feser

The same principle is broadly applicable to all manner of geometric and arithmetic concepts, as well as to logical principles and scientific laws.

There was no secession. — frank

Not 'secession', 'sedition' - my mistake - some of the Proud Boys participants were convicted of seditious conspiracy.

An example from an article referenced earlier:

Frege believed that number is real in the sense that it is quite independent of thought: 'thought content exists independently of thinking "in the same way", he says "that a pencil exists independently of grasping it. Thought contents are true and bear their relations to one another (and presumably to what they are about) independently of anyone's thinking these thought contents* - "just as a planet, even before anyone saw it, was in interaction with other planets." ' — Frege on Knowing the Third Realm, Tyler Burge

----

* 'In his work, Frege used the term "thought contents" to refer to the meanings of sentences or propositions. He argued that the meaning of a sentence or proposition was not simply a matter of the words used, but rather the thoughts that the sentence or proposition expresses. He believed that language is a system of symbols that can be used to express these thought contents, which are themselves independent of any particular language.'

thanks for the very thoughtful introduction! I hope the community lives up to the rather exalted standards you have laid out, and welcome.

aww shucks :yikes:

If you asked me "what the number 7 is?", I may want a little more clarity on what you mean by this question. — Richard B

It's very clear - 7=7 (or the sum of its factors).

Actually during this exchange, I've come to realise that what I believe is that whilst mathematical systems may be invented, numbers are discovered. I think that's the thrust of a saying by mathematical philosopher Leopold Kronecker, 'God invented the integers, all else is the work of man'. But even if mathematics is invented, it is dependent on that foundation, without which none of it could be invented. And having been invented, it has great predictive power, but only because it is grounded in reality, not simply in convention.

When we talk about "discovering meanings, ideas, eternal objects", we belittle the creative aspect of human intelligence. It gives this picture that human go into the room called "Platonic realm", find aisles of bins labeled "meanings", "idea", eternal objects" and select the one we like, call it a discovery, and share it it with the world — Richard B

I think that's an innaccurate depiction of what 'the ideas' actually represent, and we make it because we're accustomed to thinking of whatever as real as being 'out there somewhere'. But as already noted, universals (of which I am saying numbers are a subset) don't exist in that sense. They can only be apprehended by reason, which is a faculty unique to h. sapiens (although present in rudimentary form in some of the higher animals). My idea of the forms is that they're closer in meaning to 'principles' than to ghostly ethereal objects - and they're principles that, whilst independent of any particular mind, can only be grasped by the mind. Our thinking is thoroughly suffused with such principles.

One talks of mathematical discoveries. I shall try again and again to show that what is called a mathematical discovery had better be called a mathematical invention. — Wittgenstien - Richard B

I think the argument against this is the existence of mathematical constants. They are understood as providing objective and universal truths about the world. Unlike empirical observations, which are subject to error and variability, mathematical constants are immutable and universally applicable. For example, the golden ratio has been used as a symbol for beauty, proportion, and harmony. Pi has been used as a symbol for the infinite and the irrational. The 'six numbers' of Martin Rees, signifying the fundamental physical constraints without which matter would not have formed. The fact that mathematical physics has frequently predicted things about nature which observation alone could never do (and in the 20th c, empirical observations frequently took decades of development to test those predictions, Dirac's prediction of anti-matter being a paradigmatic example.) Claiming that these are mathematical inventions is, to say the least, rather anthropocentric, is it not? Yet it's the same ability that gave rise to these predictions that enabled the very technology on which you are now reading this.

When I ask what the number 7 is, you will point to the number, 7, and say that is what it is. But '7' is a symbol. That is an invention and can be represented in many different symbols: VII, SEVEN. What is not invented, is the meaning of the symbol. And that is what we all agree on.

Suddenly I can see what happened. Galileo saw the significance of dianoia - 'the book of the heavens is written in mathematics.' But Plato's ethics became assimilated into Christianity - and discarded with it. So we have all the engineering, but hardly any of the vision.

This was posted by Trump in 2018, showing his political adversaries behind bars for imagined 'treason'.



(Reproduced in Washington Post)

Throughout his presidential tenure, Trump repeatedly called for his critics to be tried and jailed for treason. Remember this is from the same man who stood on the world stage with Putin and said he would trust Putin over his own intelligence agencies:



And who is credibly accused of fomenting the January 6th secession, for which hundreds of people have already been sentenced to jail and for which Trump will likely be the subject of another (and far more serious) indictement.

During his time in office, Trump actively tried to recruit the FBI, IRS and DOJ to do his bidding and attack his opponents. Remember the 'lock her up chants', directed at Hillary Clinton, and on one occasion notoriously lead by Michael Flynn, who is now one of the MAGA Republicans most vocal in calling Trump's prosecution a 'weaponisation of the justice department'?

Hypocrisy, thy name is GOP.

Hoffman's conscious agents do interact to form a compound agents. — Art48

He might he say that elsewhere, but that thumbnail sketch I provided doesn't say it. It says that

The point is that what we usually call reality, including objects and spacetime, is generated by each conscious agent through a perceptual interface arising from consciousness.

There's nothing about 'compound agents' implied by that.

...try to devise a better theory.... — Art48

From which perspective? Outside consciousness? A theory of empiricism is not necessarily an empirical theory.

Right - see your point.

Here is a good detailed review of Case Against Reality with some useful comparisons. Some snippets:

Hoffman spends considerable time describing various philosophical positions and positioning his perspective among them. He acknowledges predecessors with similar views, such as Immanuel Kant. Philosophers have various objections to Interface Theory of Perception (ITP), and he counters all that he discusses. Here I won’t try to adjudicate these disputes but instead to outline Hoffman’s view.

Followed by a very succinct statement of 'conscious realism':

Hoffman supports a monist philosophical position that he calls “conscious realism.” In it, the world is populated by conscious agents that influence each other and perceive each other. He distinguishes conscious realism with panpsychism, in which physical objects can be conscious. In conscious realism, there is no requirement that the physical reality behind our interface is itself conscious. The point is that what we usually call reality, including objects and spacetime, is generated by each conscious agent through a perceptual interface arising from consciousness. Conscious entities only perceive icons, not reality, and do not directly perceive other conscious entities, only their icons.

To me, it has always seemed strongly reminiscent of Leibniz' monadology. 'According to Leibniz, monads are the fundamental units of reality, which are simple, indivisible, and unextended substances subjects.

For Leibniz, monads are the basic building blocks of the universe, and all things, including physical bodies and even human souls, are made up of monads. Each monad has its unique qualities, which determine its specific nature and behavior. Monads do not interact with each other directly, but rather each one reflects the entire universe within itself, creating a harmonious pre-established harmony.'

In other words, 'conscious agents all the way down'. Whitehead's 'actual occasions of experience' also come to mind, although I've never really been able to get my head around that.

Another point worth making:

Hoffman says the FBT ('fitness beats truth') theorem applies only to perceptions of the world (90-91). Cognitive capacities need to be studied separately to see how they are shaped by evolution. Not all evolutionarily derived capacities are necessarily unreliable. Indeed, there can be selection pressures for ability with logic. For example, the value of reciprocity for humans can contribute to selection for logical ability. Hoffman says skills in mathematics and logic can exist compatibly with the FBT theorem and with Interface Theory of Perception (ITP), but whether concepts in mathematics and logic enable understanding of objective reality remains to be seen.

This partially addresses the question of why science itself ought not to be considered also a perceptual illusion. However further down, we read:

Hoffman says science has evolved in a way that draws on features of human nature: people argue best for what they believe or against contrary ideas that others believe (196). Reasoning evolved for the purposes of persuasion, and science arose from these inadequate foundations via groups and individuals mustering logic and evidence against opponents. This perspective on science is contrary to the common view, at least among scientists, that scientists should be objective. Hoffman’s evolutionary picture is more compatible with the analysis of Ian Mitroff (1974), who found that elite scientists fiercely stuck by their preferred views and attempted to undermine contrary views (and denigrated scientists holding those contrary views). According to Mitroff, scientific norms such as organised scepticism exist alongside “counternorms” such as organised dogmatism, and the counternorms can be functional for scientific progress. Mitroff’s picture might be a starting point for an evolutionary model of science.

I am always dubious about attempts to explain the capacity of reason with reference to evolution, as it always seems reductionist to me. After all, reason ought to be the source, not the subject, of whatever explanations we are able to discern. This is why I make frequent references to Thomas Nagel's essay Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion, which elaborates the point: if reason is only the product of adaptive necessity, then why trust it? Classical philosophical theology has an answer for that: the mind contains a faculty, however corrupted, which is able to discern the truth by reason. (It's also worth noting The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science, Peter Harrison, which argues that one of the primary impulses for early modern science was as a corrective for the corrosive effects of original sin on the intellect.)

I think from what I've read so far, Hoffman's book raises many interesting questions based on evolutionary science, but it also makes the mistake of seeing evolution as a kind of all-powerful agency, which perhaps is the lingering cultural legacy of the mythology it has displaced. 'The jealous God dies hard', something you certainly see in the polemics of the 'ultra darwinists' such as Dennett and Dawkins. While Hoffman's view seems worlds away from their lumpen materialism, his estimation of evolution as the sole creative agency in the development of life remains quite close to it, in some fundamental ways.

And overall, it leaves open the question that if, as he says, all of the objects of experience are simply icons, then what is the reality? I think he says this is not something we can know, but that is deeply problematical in my view. Still, it's a developing field of enquiry, and some grander truth behind the illusion of desktops and icons might yet come into focus.