We see more and more that science, mainly physics, has strayed into the realm of philosophy and though experiments. ... Do you believe science has become no longer the study of the world as it is, but as it may be? or do you see science as simply the persuit of knowledge no matter the form? — CallMeDirac

To speculate what if comes naturally to people. Imagined scenarios just convincing enough to elicit reflection and to enable change of conception or belief by the listeners go back at least to the earliest myths of mankind. Thought experiments need not be rational, just being conceivable is enough. For example, think of Pegasus or Icarus flying in the sky. Or the Wright brothers. Philosophers adopted this and other techniques to convey difficult abstract notions and theoretical and scientists followed suit naturally.

Think experiments create a mental model of what could be, and when you think about it not all that different from seeing it in person if that were actually possible. What science studies is always the form, a scientific generality, and not just this individual. The individual is treated as a representative sample of the form under study.

cite in normal language what inconsistent worlds i contain within that I am committed to? — god must be atheist

I don't know if you play or watch sports or games. Each one of these has its own logic and language. I'm a prisoners of COVID but I'm allowed to watch movies on the internet, and yes, each movie is its own imagined world. I'm not the romantic hero making love nor the spy who is impervious to the perils of the world, but for a short time I live in their world, their world is somewhat real to me, I speak their language, and use their improbable logic. Does music have any meaning to you? If yes, what is it?

multiverses in cosmology or the many-worlds interpretation in quantum mechanics, then it's the other way around: mathematics is there from the start — SophistiCat

Sorry, those are mathematical inventions. But string theories are still incomplete, I believe, for lack of more advanced maths. Newton invented fluxions to formulate his mechanics.

Identifying metaphysics with just any conceptualization is selling it a little cheap, don't you think? — SophistiCat

Well yes. It is usually cranked up to higher standards. But I'm not the inventor. Nelson Goodman did some brilliant and highly rigorous work along these lines. His work is sadly neglected.

Some thoughts,

There are theoretical physicists (hand waving) and mathematical physicists (mathematicians working in physics). — jgill

Even speculative physics of other possible physical worlds is intended to be fully mathematical as soon as the needed maths are invented. Without mathematics what physics is there?

Galileo was very much influenced by the Platonic revival — Wayfarer

Exactly. Unfortunately, Galileo had to be more occupied with the speculative science of motion and change than with philosophy. Proposing a heretical philosophical alternative was clearly not his intention.

no knowledge derived from induction - just another name for science - could refute deduced knowledge — TheMadFool

I imagine that Kant would have agreed with that. But isn't open, inductive scientific knowledge very different in kind from deductive knowledge deduced from closed, purely logical systems?

The underlying metaphysics of modern philosophy? Really? There is such a thing? — SophistiCat

Is it really possible to say anything whatsoever in any language that is not predicated on at least implied metaphysics?

metaphysical reality — god must be atheist

is an imagined but logically coherent
hypothesized philosophical world for the purpose of generating deductive consequences. The problem with the rejection of metaphysical worlds is that they create the idea and language of structure, objects, relations, facts, events, space, time, and many more, so that nothing can be conceived or communicated without them. BTW, this isn't just true for Aristotle's First Philosophy but for other philosophies as well. So, in saying anything, you have already committed yourself to some metaphysical world, or more likely a number of inconsistent worlds of your own.
I would guess that most of our discussions at TPF are disagreements about metaphysical beliefs.

I have a feeling this will end badly. — Banno

Sorry, I just dropped the other shoe in answer to the OP. If physicists understood the underlying metaphysics of modern philosophy they would raise exactly this argument. Theoretical mathematical physics is Pythagorean-Platonic, and experimental and observational physics are technology driven and serendipitous, closer to Feyerabend than to anyone else, IMHO.

metaphysics can't say anything, can't tell us anything we could actually make use of. — Banno

That's a circular argument. You start with completely reducing Aristotelian logical metaphysics to ontology of predicated things, then you claim that metaphysics is empty because it's missing. This is why post hoc metaphysics is nonsense. My argument is that Identity is not the only possible logic for philosophy, and that Identity based philosophy is way too limited to be of any use beyond metaphysics. Physics is a most obvious example, if you really think about it.

I think you are taking the problematic nature of the philosophy of physics too lightly. One can discover a thousand competent books and professional quality articles about physics that can be quoted by title, but the contents are either failed attempts to corral the issues or historical rehearsals of failed attempts to understand what is involved.

I am not sure if there are more than a few serious thinkers who deserve consideration, and they disagree what it is that they should be philosophizing about. Everything else is pulp.

If your question is indeed sincere and you are not just tossing my challenge to physicists back in my face then I have to assume probably wrongly that you are missing some very basic issues of philosophy that I take wrongly for granted.

The first is that philosophy is a logical enterprise, an application of some pure logic just as mathematics is. Like mathematics or other axiomatic systems, philosophy attempts to stay as simple as possible but not too simple and touches any other ground only as necessary to meet the demands of some arbitrary (strings, tiles, whatever) application domain. There are many possible mathematics and philosophies with the distinction being in their axiomatic choices. Thus, neither mathematics nor philosophy should be thought of or treated as monolithic.

If any of this makes any sense, then that is the rationale for my answer to question 5. above. Theoretical physics is very different from observational physics. They are totally different games by philosophical standards. Knowing the formula for the flight of the bumblebee says nothing about why I was stung when I stuck my hand in there or how I should whack one.

As an aside just for comparison, it might be noted that mathematicians, while not particularly involved with philosophy since it seldom interacts with their mathematical efforts, are more aware of ancient beginnings and connections of mathematics.

I propose some tentative suggestions for thinking about the issue

1. Ought there be a philosophy of physics?
2. Is there a reasonable philosophy already, beyond that childish spiral diagram of 'the scientific method'?
3. Would a philosophy of physics be of any use and does that matter?
4. Can such philosophy be formulated without concern with what physics is actually doing and how that is progressing?
5. Shouldn't the philosophy of theoretical physics be different from that of the observational side?

One serious concern is that science makes steady and at times sudden progress. Most philosophy is still keyed on obsolete static categorization or Newtonian physics. How can we track that movement with our theories?

Not physics, but the physicists. They're as big know-at-alls as we are here at TPF. I don't even see any physicists with a glimmer of understanding of the philosophy of their own field.

You've yet to explain Putin's vast wealth. Please proceed to do so. — Hippyhead

Take away eleven zeros and he is just an ordinary man: 1. He will be first ever to take it all with him. 2. His family are big spenders. 3. He plans to give it all back

morality only arises in a community of conscious beings, and can only be as "absolute" as their shared reality. — Echarmion

I suppose shared reality would need to come from common human inheritance and traits or from close to uniform environmental possibilities and limitations everywhere. Should men and women have identical ethics or should differences be recognized and accounted for? Should we gradually phase in ethical norms by age?

The classical problem is an intolerant insistence on universal ethics to offer a cure against evidence that most people are not generally moral even by their own standards. Few of us are saints. Cultural differences are fading with globalization of social standards but they are still out there. Some countries are more caring than others.

solve the problem by killing anybody that disagrees with you — Restitutor

Totalitarian governments are doing that already. What if there was only one nation in the future, would it be permissive of moral plurality?

in Ancient Greece women were not used for sexual pleasure, only procreation. Therefore the only way to enlightenment must be illegal relations with younger citizens. — Outlander

Ancient Greeks were crude and unjust as measured by either their traditional religious ethics or by our modern standards. But it isn't fair to judge them in retrospect. American Vietnam veterans have been both heroes and monsters in different places in changing times. Anyway, ethics is not about what people actually are but what norms of belief and behavior they should hold up as ideals.

a) morality usually deals with social obligations, and while there are many examples of a connection to divine law or will, moral duties are rarely exactly fixed.
b) certain moral duties are consistent across different societies and times. — Echarmion

We and our society have privileged morality, there is but one true morality and it is ours. Unfortunately, others who disagree in the details also claim to be privileged.

The only way to resolve this conflicts is to appeal to one absolute authority to grant us all absolute morality. If we can agree on one unique absolute authority. An absolute authority would need to have absolute foundations. Can logic, philosophy, science, or faith be that foundation? In ancient Greek enlightenment many thought that there is only one absolute and it's ideal logic, therefore the one God must be the god of logic.

asking if we're projecting our nature onto Nature if we see morality in birds. — frank

I suppose so. Then we have to ask if the different patterns of behavior serve any purpose at all. Do they help the birds to survive, were these selected or are these a neglected folly of nature? Evolutionary dogma might overstate the case for evolution but here it could still be something else.

"Functional : of or having a special activity, purpose, or task; relating to the way in which something works or operates." — Gnomon

Functionality is contextual only to what we can see and perhaps that could open things up for purpose in things we can't see.

I really, honest-to-ever-loving-God, in all sincerity, mean it when I say - anyone who is not as critical of Biden as they were of Trump may as well be a Trump supporter. — StreetlightX

... systemic conservative bias in the US and the huge disadvantage to the left that presents, ... [?] what the left can do tactically in hostile political circumstances to both gain some foothold in terms of policy and stave off another Trumpist-style administration. [/?] — Baden

Time for a smarter approach. — Baden

Leftists start from the top of the ladder and climb down a couple of rungs, rightists start from the mud and climb up maybe a quarter of the way. Pragmatists have a smarter approach, they start in the middle with some facts then climb a bit both up and down. They can then make the claim and actually the appearance of pleasing both sides. Is Russia communist or fascist? I can't decide.

purpose cant be explained in terms of matter and energy? — frank

That's part of the argument under discussion. Most people are economic materialists, they are motivated by more goods, money, and power. Science offers no answer for matter and energy, so far. Maybe Deacon will show us how.

For liberal theism, this could be rephrased as how much purpose can be explained by mechanistic models? Morality cannot be so easily explained, any moral purpose if not inherent is intentional. I've always been amazed by wild birds' inherent ethics. Some species will strongly aid others of their kind at the risk of life. Others only protect their own young.

End-directed forms of causality, or purpose, is clearly an aspect of life and consciousness — frank

Yes, but not magically all at once, as is usually implied by teleology. Nature is infinitely complex with many levels of complexity and we are rarely smart enough to look past just one level at a time. This is a valid reason to be suspicious of broad claims, even if eventually they turn out to be correct. For instance, impressed but not convinced, both Hume and Kant proposed their own alternatives to Newton's Laws.

Hemoglobin's ability to transport oxygen in the blood stream [p.9] can be understood either for the single blood cell or for oxygen transport functionality one level above. The cell is a structure that houses a hemoglobin molecule to fit oxygen like a glove and just the right amount of energy will cause the release of the oxygen at any peripheral organ. It serves until it dies. The functionality is to have enough working blood cells in total for all organs to survive.

The Zeno example of infinite divisibility may not have a philosophical solution. It was solved after 150 years of intense search by the greatest minds for mathematics as the Fundamental Theory of Calculus. For physics, quantization as Planck length-time guarantees a minimum step where division must end. To my thinking, unbounded lines and numbers are geometric and mathematical, infinites are unmanageably philosophical.

"absential" is supposed to pick out the object of purposeful behavior — frank

I'm still confused by absential. I understand what a key missing from a lock is, or that my pocket is empty, but that seems too specific for what needs to come later in the book. Absence should incorporate enough of the unknown background environment to explain symbiosis and forward evolution.

I love this, thousands protest the 'steal' in DC and Trump passes them by on his way to go golfing. — praxis

The golf course by the factory lay
So the boys could see the men at play

How is it that you can’t see what’s happening? — Brett

Is this what you mean?

The "Elephant in the Room" is the population explosion which is an exponential increase. Humanity is hurtling toward a population level that will not be a sustainable. The first thing to go will be the Welfare State, Economies, Rule of Law and Civilisation will collapse under the load, and technology will be too late. — Drazjan

a : conditions that are observed in the universe must allow the observer to exist
— called also weak anthropic principle
b : the universe must have properties that make inevitable the existence of intelligent life
— called also strong anthropic principle” — Michael McMahon

Or perhaps
a: conditions of the universe must allow at least one universe
b: Given this universe, such as it is, it is inevitable that bacteria exist

An epistemic argument can be formulated that only the Earth hosts intelligent life. If there ever was any other intelligent life we will never know due to the limitations on transmission of information from the cosmological past even with whatever technology we might develop in the future short life span of humanity.

In other words, bacterial life is just about certain, but if we can't discover extraterrestrial intelligence soon we never will.

that which is too novel or too demanding to be handled by automatic routine becomes escalated for a full brain attentional response — apokrisis

Is this the reaction to a bucket of icy cold water or a charging tiger which are animal responses held in common with a paramecium or an earthworm, or is it deliberated act of educated judgment, creativity, adaptation?

attentional spotlight is what emerges from the active suppression of every other possible state of interpretative response. We are conscious of "something" because the brain has just filtered out "everything else" that might have been the case — apokrisis

Does this mean that experience is not intentionally directed but emerges as an act of subconscious attentional focus?

It seems to me that even behavior patterns of matter and their statistical tendencies for this or that, are still not quite getting at the question. It does provide interesting ideas for how biology can be considered information rather than mechanistic, but that's not answering the question I am interested in. — schopenhauer1

That seems to summarize the dilemma of the social sciences. When they study minute mechanistic processes they get funded and succeed with many small publishable results. When they study meaningful, experientially relevant topics the results are washed out by the inherent multi-faceted complexity of the subject matter and consequently lose funding.

Pink Floyd and the Beatles became successful after years of touring. If they posted the same music today, without touring they would receive very few listens. — TheQuestioner

You would say that the difference between a musician and a successful musical is some timely marketable shtick, a successful presentation plus audience appreciation, which together are measurable in moneys earned?

Zero is just a strange number with many guises. It isn't just 0 or Nothing but also the dimensionless Origin of any arbitrary observer in space-time or of the absolute here-now of the Self. In this sense its opposite would be untamed metaphysical infinity.

The library heroically fetched a copy of the book for me. It was sad to see four bored workers and no patrons. I am grateful to you for bringing this topic for attention. It seems as if I've been in a slumber on emergence for a decade.

I am curious how Deacon develops 'absential' as the centerpiece of his theory. When thinking of holes in wholes, Emmentaler Swiss cheese or a mathematical doughnut comes to mind. These are fixed though, there can't be much action there. The example of the red blood cell is intriguing from evolutionary, structural physical chemistry, and functional perspectives. Just the right hole for an oxygen atom for transport is shaped and preserved, and the atom is loosely held by the cell's molecular structure so it can later be released. But absences in other instances could also be environmental or symbiotic in some sense.

criticism of computational theory of mind — schopenhauer1

I read that Deacon objects to the overly simple linear computer modeling for either the massive neuronal cross-wiring of the brain or for the unknown complex higher functionality of the mind. In the example of Big Blue's defeat of chess champion Kasparov, Deacon says that the computer was loaded with the all relevant historical games and the computer's speedy and deep calculations just wore the human into exhaustion. In other words, it was more a competition of computational speed and not of mental power.

To me, the real test would be one of judgment, creativity, and adaptability.

Yes, but that provides the excuse to stop the lawlessness with order

Expect this next few months to be scorched earth destruction on the part of Trump. Yall ain't done at all. — StreetlightX

:alarmed: He is replacing a number of Defense Dept officials. Just to be paranoid, which is called for with HeWhoMustNotBeNamed, is this just childish revenge or part of a preparation to mobilize federal agents as was done against the Portland protests?

While the personnel changes added to the tumult in the wake of Esper's departure, it's not clear how much impact they could have on the massive Pentagon bureaucracy. The department is anchored by the tenet of civilian control of the military — NBC News

I'm not going to push this further, but Plato's final reaction to this discussion would have been that there is no subject-object relationship either up or down between (metaphysical) levels of being. Rather, all being is interactive or it cannot be.

difference between epistemological solipsism and metaphysical solipsism — Partinobodycular

Thank you, I have only considered metaphysical solipsism which is an entirely different rabbit's hole. Descartes pulled a rabbit out and asked what that looks like to standard philosophy of his day and came up with dualism and Early Modern enlightenment. To today's standard epistemology the mind is still an unresolved puzzle because it does not exist in a philosophical sense.

According to this take, what is knowable needs to be publicly justifiable true belief, and solipsism denies all of these conditions as meaningless. The notion of classical epistemological knowledge is under attack and not solipsism. Solipsism gains its strength from its soundness as well as from being impervious to dogmatic refutation. To say that it is not 'logical' is a fallacy of circularity, it is the critic who presupposes classical language and logic universally for every rabbit hole then concludes that anything that denies this presupposition is necessarily false.

Solipsists love other viewpoints — Partinobodycular

?
I presented the most positive and strongest possible position that I could imagine for a solipsist to hold and to defend against any critique.
But if you are a convinced solipsist then how can you also allow for incompatible philosophies?

One finger cannot point at itself. — creativesoul

For solipsism there is only one. Memory, reflection, imagination, creativity are all purely solipsist activities. What's wrong with solipsism is the dogmatism attached, there is no reason to accept that there are no other philosophical worlds. For one, subjectivism is similar but broader in that it encompasses solipsism as a special case.

Probably beyond metaphysics — jgill

I have no clue what metaphysics is. It is not defined unambiguously. — god must be atheist

Much of the confusion arises from frequent time honored conflation of realist ontology with metaphysics. Ontology is perfectly adequate to the study of what there is or what there could be given realist philosophical axioms. Metaphysics is the appropriate term for examining all philosophical axiomatic systems as systems rather than what can be derived or speculated in each philosophy.

Metaphysics is analogous to pure mathematics in that both are purely abstract and have abstract applications as well. Meta-metaphysics is to metaphysics (in plural) as meta-mathematics is to mathematics (also plural).

"In solipsism, only the mind exists [there is only mind] ... the totality of all that you [feel, think, imagine,] and perceive, this includes all of the senses. What are the people around me other than images, sounds, and feelings?" — Darkneos

The solipsist is living a daydream in the present where there are no objects to 'exist', or events or facts to stand in their place. All feelings and sensations are self-evident and all logic is fuzzy and intuitive. There is no formal language, only a mix of words and emerging thoughts from a deeper source. There is no assumption needed about the past or the cultural and social history of the solipsist living only in the present. Time flows both ways only in the short-term past and future. Epistemology and ethics are self-serving without regard to what might at times be imagined is outside this cocoon. The solipsist is or is-not as the totality of the universe.

Counter-arguments invariably introduce their own un-solipsistic absurd strawmen to be knocked down by their proprietary elementary logic. Realist objects, universals, formalism, or logic are in no way applicable to solipsism.

People seem awfully quick in predicting Trump's downfall in disgrace. — Echarmion

:smile: :up:
As of this moment Biden has edged ahead in both Pennsylvania and Georgia, and Biden is heading for around 300 electoral votes for better than a 60 vote win. The Trump court cases are without merit but will be dragged out until Federal charges are filed against Trump and his family. If he wants to stay out of jail and ever see a penny of his future ill-begotten billions he will make a deal before January 20.

Ultimately, yes.

Not someone but something. Observations can be repeated or measured for public scrutiny or it is not science.

So some facts are agreed by many. But if there was no private experience of facts, no public fact would exist. — Olivier5

You're making a good point. I'm missing at least a third kind of knowledge. If I am hungry is subjective and private to me, then we are hungry is still not a scientific fact but is dependent on each of many people asked. This is an example of facts dependent on individuals, one of many kinds of relativism. Other examples are all around, it is raining, it is hot, my pocket is empty, the sky is red and purple.

Scientific laws and facts are often thought as being universal, as being everywhere and nowhere. That's just a conceptual oversight of something Newton understood which is that there is always an implied and unavoidable origin in space and time to every law and observation. That origin is not absolutely fixed within the absolute 'I' (God is the only other absolute) but is 'arbitrary' in the sense that any imaginary daemon may place it anywhere in the universe and the laws will still be correctly applicable (not 'true'). For this to so the universe must be uniform at sufficiently (whatever that means) large scales, and this is axiomatically assumed. Newton didn't know about black holes.

metaphysical causality — Gnomon

or just metaphysical relation or metaphysical transcendence is a very significant part of trying to understand much of philosophy. What is understanding? How does communication carry any meaning? How can we possibly understand someone else's or even an animal's feelings?

Sorry for the delay, I am still waiting for the library to retrieve and transfer this book for me. After looking at the snippets available online, one thing became clear which is that this subject is mostly unfamiliar to me.

Since Deacon is creating abstract philosophy he makes up and redefines many terms to cover the topic. An interesting introduction is to read the book starting with the glossary.

2 is just 1 multiplied by 2. — Olivier5

1 is not only subjective and private but (in that special sense only) also possibly absolute, unquestionable, and irrefutable. 2 Public knowledge, like all scientific facts, changes or evolves over time. 1 I am hungry is an absolute fact because I say so. 2 Rome is the greatest Western empire. This is an expired fact.

If we're talking emergence, then is that private, scientific, or both? Scientific emergence is already a puzzle but at least it has some history.