What Is The True Nature of The Mind

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Quotidian
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Re: What Is The True Nature of The Mind

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Greta wrote:I agree with your points but none provide the slightest justification for adopting the deity of ancient people to the question of the mind. One cannot assume "God". One can suspect the existence of "a fundamental mind", but not logically assume or believe it. If you can agree with me on this, we have no debate.
What I would like to understand is how you got from the passage you quoted from me, about Husserl's criticism of naturalism, to God. Husserl's quote didn't say anything about God. It is essentially an argument about the nature of knowledge, i.e. it is an epistemological argument. I am using it to argue that mind cannot be 'objectified', which means it can't be dealt with naturalistically; it argues that to 'naturalise' mind is to misunderstand it.
Greta wrote:The question "Does God exist?" may well be irrelevant and entirely miss the point of larger goings on, but we seem locked into a binary construction of diametrically opposed models where each conception is almost certainly wrong.
I completely agree - I don't generally argue that 'God exists', but neither am I atheist. Why that would be is out of scope for this thread but please do have a read of God does not exist.

I disagree with Galen Strawson on the 'utterly obvious' nature of consciousness for what I think is the obvious reason that what we think we know of our own consciousness is only the tip of an iceberg (which is probably the most important thing that Freud discovered). The contents of discursive, rational thought is only a very small proportion of the totality of the mind, which includes all the subconscious, cutural, linguistic, archetypical and unconscious components.
Greta wrote:Earlier you spoke of forum members exchanging information that results in physiological and psychological changes. As far as we know, information requires a physical component, even if at Planck scales.
Part of that point is 'mind over matter', i.e. I can say something that scares you, and the adrenal glands will jump into action. But that again is just the tip of the iceberg, there's the entire domain of 'mind-body medicine', which, according to materialism, ought not to exist.

But there's another argument, which is that information may be represented physically, but it is not in itself physical. How come? Because information can be represented in many different media, and in many different systems, without loosing or changing it's identity. Say I write an instruction or a formula - it might contain very exact information which will produce some result. I can write that in any number of languages, or even in completely different media - binary, morse code, engraved in granite. Every physical representation is different, but if it is encoded correctly, the meaning remains the same. And how could that be if the information is physical? Information exists on a different plane or level to the physical.

Physicalists have this idea that 'mind is what brain does', as if that explains the nature of thinking; 'the brain secretes thought like the liver sectretes bile'. At the back of this argument, there is the belief that there is a causal nexus, reaching back through evolution, and down through neurobiology, which will explain 'the nature of thought' as the product of evolution. That is why, when you ask them, their explanations always comprise accounts of how neuroscientists and evolutionary biologists understand the question.

But that assumes what it is setting out to prove, i.e. it assumes that the nature of mind is something that can be explained in principle in those terms. In other words, it begs the question. The attitude that 'mind is what brain does' is the essence of materialism, and the very question which the book that was discussed earlier in this thread, Thomas Nagel's Mind and Cosmos, was about. The materialist will dismiss that book, on the basis that it is unscientific, and then carry on (as was done already). And one can perfectly well accept the biological effectiveness of evolutionary theory, without necessarily agreeing that it provides an in-principle explanation of the mind; because to say that it does, is to implicitly state the notion that the mind is a biological phenomenon, which, once again, is begging the question.

Actually there is nowadays widespread scientific recognition that information is not reducible to the physical. This realisation came through some of the work of Norbert Weiner (among others), who invented cybernetics, and who said
The mechanical brain does not secrete thought "as the liver does bile," as the earlier materialists claimed, nor does it put it out in the form of energy, as the muscle puts out its activity. Information is information, not matter or energy. No materialism which does not admit this can survive at the present day[.
Computing Machines and the Nervous System. p. 132.

By the way, I've seen John Hagelin speak, he's an inspiring guy, but a bit 'new age' for my liking (he's after all an associate of the Maharishi Mahesh "University"). I've been to a few of the Science and Non-Duality (SAND) conferences, there are many speakers like that there. Overall I am much nearer to them, than to materialists, but one still has to take it all with a grain of salt. ;-)
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Re: What Is The True Nature of The Mind

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Quotidian wrote:I completely agree - I don't generally argue that 'God exists', but neither am I atheist. Why that would be is out of scope for this thread but please do have a read of God does not exist.
"God does not exist. If God does exist, then that is not God. All existing things are relative to one another in various degrees. It is actually impossible to imagine a universe in which there is, say, only one hydrogen atom. That unique thing has to have someone else imagining it. Existence requires existing among other existents, a fundamental dependency of relation. If God also exists, then God would be just another fact of the universe, relative to other existents and included in that fundamental dependency of relation.

Let me be clear: I believe God is."


That's paradigmatic theological rubbish! Existence doesn't require what that bishop thinks it does, and to say that God is is to say that God exists. For being (in the sense of Dasein, being-there) is the same as existence. A god who is is an entity, and an entity is an existent.
Quotidian wrote:I disagree with Galen Strawson on the 'utterly obvious' nature of consciousness for what I think is the obvious reason that what we think we know of our own consciousness is only the tip of an iceberg (which is probably the most important thing that Freud discovered). The contents of discursive, rational thought is only a very small proportion of the totality of the mind, which includes all the subconscious, cutural, linguistic, archetypical and unconscious components.
Freud didn't discover a mental reality below consciousness, because his "subconsciousness" is just a theoretical posit—and just a fictional one. Descartes was right, the conscious mind or consciousness is the only distinctive and genuine mental reality. The "un-/subconscious mind" is completely reducible to neural processes or states. The iceberg-minus-the-tip is nothing but unconscious brain activity.

"[T]he ontology of unconscious mental states, at the time they are unconscious, consists entirely in the existence of purely neurophysiological phenomena. Imagine that a man is in a sound dreamless sleep. Now, while he is in such a state it is true to say of him that he has a number of unconscious mental states. For example, he believes that Denver is the capital of Colorado, Washington is the capital of the United States, etc. But what fact about him makes it the case that he has these unconscious beliefs? Well, the only facts that could exist while he is completely unconscious are neurophysiological facts. The only things going on in his unconscious brain are sequences of neurophysiological events occurring in neuronal architectures. At the time when the states are totally unconscious, there is simply nothing there except neurophysiological states and processes."
(p. 159)

"The ontology of the unconscious consists in objective features of the brain capable of causing subjective conscious thoughts."
(p. 160)

"The overall picture that emerges is this. There is nothing going on in my brain but neurophysiological processes, some conscious, some unconscious. Of the unconscious neurophysiological processes, some are mental and some are not. The difference between them is not in consciousness, because, by hypothesis, neither is conscious; the difference is that the mental processes are candidates for consciousness, because they are capable of causing conscious states. But that's all. All my mental life is lodged in the brain. But what in my brain is my 'mental life'? Just two things: conscious states and those neurophysiological states and processes that—given the right circumstances—are capable of generating conscious states. Let's call those states that are in principle accessible to consciousness 'shallow unconscious', and those inaccessible even in principle 'deep unconscious'. The main conclusion of this chapter so far is that there are no deep unconscious intentional states."
(p. 162)

"At its most naive our picture is something like this: Unconscious mental states in the mind are like fish deep in the sea. The fish that we can't see underneath the surface have exactly the same shape they have when they surface. The fish don't lose their shapes by going under water. Another simile: Unconscious mental states are like objects stored in the dark attic of the mind. These objects have their shapes all along, even when you can't see them. We are tempted to smile at these simple models, but I think something like these pictures underlies our conception of unconscious mental states, and it is important to see what is right and what wrong about that conception."
(pp. 152-3)

"So what makes something mental when it is not conscious?"
(p. 154)

"[T]he only occurrent reality of the mental as mental is consciousness."
(p. 187)

(Searle, John R. The Rediscovery of the Mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992.)

"Let us begin by asking, naively, Do unconscious mental states really exist? How can there be a state that is literally mental and at the same time totally unconscious? Such states would lack qualitativeness and subjectivity and would not be part of the unified field of consciousness. So, in what sense, if any, would they be mental states?

I think many people, including some extremely sophisticated authors such as Freud, have the following rather simplistic picture. An unconscious mental state is exactly like a conscious mental state only minus the consciousness. The problem with this picture is that it is very hard to make any sense of it."


(Searle, John R. Mind: A Brief Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. pp. 237-8)

-- Updated September 24th, 2016, 10:14 pm to add the following --
Quotidian wrote:Actually there is nowadays widespread scientific recognition that information is not reducible to the physical. This realisation came through some of the work of Norbert Weiner (among others), who invented cybernetics, and who said
The mechanical brain does not secrete thought "as the liver does bile," as the earlier materialists claimed, nor does it put it out in the form of energy, as the muscle puts out its activity. Information is information, not matter or energy. No materialism which does not admit this can survive at the present day[.
Computing Machines and the Nervous System. p. 132.
As far as I can see, there is no "widespread scientific recognition that information is not reducible to the physical."
Anyway, Wiener's idea of nonphysical, physically irreducible (physically unimplemented or unencoded, materially or energetically unrealized) information is one of those woo-woo ideas the spiritualists are so fond of.

-- Updated September 24th, 2016, 10:21 pm to add the following --

Wiener is right only with regard to this point: "The mechanical brain does not secrete thought 'as the liver does bile.'"
For thought or consciousness is not a kind of stuff or material. When the brain makes the mind/consciousness, it doesn't make new stuff. The mind/consciousness is a complex event or process that is realized by complex neural events or processes.
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Re: What Is The True Nature of The Mind

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consul wrote: A god who is is an entity, and an entity is an existent.
See if you can support that with anything from theology or biblical texts.
Consul wrote: Wiener's idea of nonphysical, physically irreducible (physically unimplemented or unencoded, materially or energetically unrealized) information is one of those woo-woo ideas the spiritualists are so fond of.
ad hominem.
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Re: What Is The True Nature of The Mind

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Quotidian wrote:
Consul wrote: A god who is is an entity, and an entity is an existent.
See if you can support that with anything from theology or biblical texts.
I don't care what those "holy scriptures" say, because "nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God."

(Lewis, C. S. The Problem of Pain. 1940. Reprint, New York: HarperCollins, 1996. p. 18)

FYI, Lewis was a theist.
Quotidian wrote:
Consul wrote: Wiener's idea of nonphysical, physically irreducible (physically unimplemented or unencoded, materially or energetically unrealized) information is one of those woo-woo ideas the spiritualists are so fond of.
ad hominem.
No, ad conceptum!
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Re: What Is The True Nature of The Mind

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I think Lewis would have agreed with Whalon. What he says is doctrinally orthodox.
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Re: What Is The True Nature of The Mind

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Quotidian wrote:I think Lewis would have agreed with Whalon. What he says is doctrinally orthodox.
Is it really? (Any references apart from Bishop Gaga?) Well, if it is, so much the worse for theology!
Anyway, the distinction between being and existence is a distinction without a difference.
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Re: What Is The True Nature of The Mind

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Quot -

This is no need to turn this into another "god" discussion. By doing so it simply forces away the the physicalist position from precisely what Husserl was talking about.

I have read Husserl so I'd adivse giving page ref., for me at least, because I have a copy of Crisis and through that I can see what you are talking about.

Hussel does talk about physical and naive physicalism. It is not something I can imagine is easy for some to digest even if they have the text to hand.

Consul -

Have you read Husserl?

-- Updated September 25th, 2016, 2:01 am to add the following --
Consul wrote:
Quotidian wrote:I think Lewis would have agreed with Whalon. What he says is doctrinally orthodox.
Is it really? (Any references apart from Bishop Gaga?) Well, if it is, so much the worse for theology!
Anyway, the distinction between being and existence is a distinction without a difference.
Unless stated as such in order to elucidate some idea. Heidegger went to great lengths to take apart the meanings of terms in order to express dasein (although, I admit I find this term obscure).
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Re: What Is The True Nature of The Mind

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Burning Ghost wrote:I have read Husserl so I'd adivse giving page ref., for me at least, because I have a copy of Crisis and through that I can see what you are talking about
The passage I quoted was from The Routledge Introduction to Phenomenology, p144.
Consul wrote:Anyway, the distinction between being and existence is a distinction without a difference.
In actual fact the notion of the 'hierarchy of being' was an integral part of Christian theology up until Duns Scotus' declaration of the univocity of being, which is one of the factors that lead to materialism. It is also discussed in that article you have previously referred to on 17th C notions of substance under 'degrees of reality'.
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Re: What Is The True Nature of The Mind

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It will probably be useful to invest time into exploring terms like "pre-scientific" and "life-world" used by Husserl.
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Re: What Is The True Nature of The Mind

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Quotidian:
Information exists on a different plane or level to the physical.
Actually there is nowadays widespread scientific recognition that information is not reducible to the physical.
This does not mean that information is separate from the physical. Without the physical there can be no information. Information requires physical structures to produce and process information. It does not exist on a different level.
Norbert Weiner:

No materialism which does not admit this can survive at the present day
He is not arguing against materialism but is arguing for a broader definition of materialism. The same is true of such things as mind and culture, as has been pointed out. You correctly argue against reductive materialism but ignore the fact that many contemporary materialists do as well.

Sean Carroll describes materialism as follows:
The materialist thesis is simply: that’s all there is to the world. Once we figure out the correct formal structure, patterns, boundary conditions, and interpretation, we have obtained a complete description of reality.
https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/writings/nd-paper/
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Re: What Is The True Nature of The Mind

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Burning ghost wrote:Consul - Have you read Husserl?
Yes (but not everything he wrote).
Burning ghost wrote:
Consul wrote:Anyway, the distinction between being and existence is a distinction without a difference.
Unless stated as such in order to elucidate some idea. Heidegger went to great lengths to take apart the meanings of terms in order to express dasein (although, I admit I find this term obscure).
Heidegger was an obscurantist philosopher. I know he differentiated between Dasein and Existenz. His concept of Dasein is anthropocentric, having to do with human being(s). Richard Brandom writes that "Dasein is the kind of Being we ourselves have."
But in the non-Heideggerian sense, "Dasein" is an absolutely non-obscure and non-anthropocentric term, simply meaning "existence". To have Dasein is to have being is to have existence. For something da zu sein is for it to be there.

"So how do we carry out fundamental ontology, and thus answer the question of the meaning of Being? It is here that Heidegger introduces the notion of Dasein (Da-sein: there-being). One proposal for how to think about the term ‘Dasein’ is that it is Heidegger's label for the distinctive mode of Being realized by human beings (for this reading, see e.g., Brandom 2002, 325). Haugeland (2005, 422) complains that this interpretation clashes unhelpfully with Heidegger's identification of care as the Being of Dasein, given Heidegger's prior stipulation that Being is always the Being of some possible entity. To keep ‘Dasein’ on the right side of the ontological difference, then, we might conceive of it as Heidegger's term for the distinctive kind of entity that human beings as such are. This fits with many of Heidegger's explicit characterizations of Dasein (see e.g., Being and Time 2: 27, 3: 32), and it probably deserves to be called the standard view in the secondary literature (see e.g., Haugeland 2005 for an explicit supporting case). That said, one needs to be careful about precisely what sort of entity we are talking about here. For Dasein is not to be understood as ‘the biological human being’. Nor is it to be understood as ‘the person’. Haugeland (2005, 423) argues that Dasein is “a way of life shared by the members of some community”. (As Haugeland notes, there is an analogy here, one that Heidegger himself draws, with the way in which we might think of a language existing as an entity, that is, as a communally shared way of speaking.) This appeal to the community will assume a distinctive philosophical shape as the argument of Being and Time progresses."

Martin Heidegger: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heidegger/

-- Updated September 25th, 2016, 10:58 am to add the following --
Quotidian wrote:
Consul wrote:Anyway, the distinction between being and existence is a distinction without a difference.
In actual fact the notion of the 'hierarchy of being' was an integral part of Christian theology up until Duns Scotus' declaration of the univocity of being, which is one of the factors that lead to materialism. It is also discussed in that article you have previously referred to on 17th C notions of substance under 'degrees of reality'.
"In contrast to contemporary philosophers, most 17th century philosophers held that reality comes in degrees—that some things that exist are more or less real than other things that exist. At least part of what dictates a being’s reality, according to these philosophers, is the extent to which its existence is dependent on other things: the less dependent a thing is on other things for its existence, the more real it is. Given that there are only substances and modes, and that modes depend on substances for their existence, it follows that substances are the most real constituents of reality."

http://www.iep.utm.edu/substanc/

"There are two general aspects to realism, illustrated by looking at realism about the everyday world of macroscopic objects and their properties. First, there is a claim about existence. Tables, rocks, the moon, and so on, all exist, as do the following facts: the table's being square, the rock's being made of granite, and the moon's being spherical and yellow. The second aspect of realism about the everyday world of macroscopic objects and their properties concerns independence."

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/realism/

If degrees of reality are degrees of (in)dependence, then I understand the concept of a degree of reality; but if they are degrees of existence or being, I don't. For instance, Alexius Meinong distinguished between beings which exist/have existence and ones which subsist/have subsistence. He also used a bizarre third category: "Außersein" ("extra-being", with "extra" meaning "outside"/"beyond" rather than "additional").
These are all verbal distinctions without a real ontological difference. There are many kinds of beings, existents, and realities, but there is only one kind of being, existence, and reality (in the existence sense).

"I do not have the slightest idea what a difference in manner of existing is supposed to be."

(Lewis, David. On the Plurality of Worlds. Oxford: Blackwell, 1986. p. 2)

Neither have I.

"If you say there is something that exists to a diminished degree, once you've said 'there is' your game is up. Existence is not some special distinction that befalls some of the things there are. Existence just means being one of the things there are, nothing else."

(Lewis, David. Parts of Classes. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991. pp. 80-1)
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Re: What Is The True Nature of The Mind

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An example would be, in what sense to 'the laws of physics' exist? You can't see 'the laws of physics', in fact their discovery by Newton was a major turning point in history. But you would be foolish to say 'they don't exist'. So in what manner to they exist? And then, what about numbers? They are real, without being able to grasp them, the laws of physics would not have been discovered. But where do they exist? You might say 'in the mind', but they're not dependent on the mind, insofar as things would fall at the same rate without being observed, and that rate is expressible numerically. So I think numbers, scientific laws, and such things, are of a different order of existence to rocks, tables, and chairs.

And in fact, once again, there are modern physicists who support this view. In his talk on Democritus and Plato, which is a discussion of materialism vs idealism, Werner Heisenberg argues that the entities of modern physics are much more like ideas than objects.
i]The concept of the atom had proved exceptionally fruitful in the explanation of chemical bonding and the physical behavior of gases. It was soon, however, that the particles called atoms by the chemist were composed of still smaller units. But these smaller units, the electrons, followed by the atomic nuclei and finally the elementary particles, protons and neutrons, also still seemed to be atoms from the standpoint of the materialist philosophy. The fact that, at least indirectly, one can actually see a single elementary particle—in a cloud chamber, say, or a bubble chamber—supports the view that the smallest units of matter are real physical objects, existing in the same sense that stones or flowers do.

But the inherent difficulties of the materialist theory of the atom, which had become apparent even in the ancient discussions about smallest particles, have also appeared very clearly in the development of physics during the present century.

This difficulty relates to the question whether the smallest units are ordinary physical objects, whether they exist in the same way as stones or flowers. Here, the development of quantum theory some forty years ago has created a complete change in the situation. The mathematically formulated laws of quantum theory show clearly that our ordinary intuitive concepts cannot be unambiguously applied to the smallest particles. All the words or concepts we use to describe ordinary physical objects, such as position, velocity, color, size, and so on, become indefinite and problematic if we try to use then of elementary particles. I cannot enter here into the details of this problem, which has been discussed so frequently in recent years. But it is important to realize that, while the behavior of the smallest particles cannot be unambiguously described in ordinary language, the language of mathematics is still adequate for a clear-cut account of what is going on.

During the coming years, the high-energy accelerators will bring to light many further interesting details about the behavior of elementary particles. But I am inclined to think that the answer just considered to the old philosophical problems will turn out to be final. If this is so, does this answer confirm the views of Democritus or Plato?

I think that on this point modern physics has definitely decided for Plato. For the smallest units of matter are, in fact, not physical objects in the ordinary sense of the word; they are forms, structures or—in Plato's sense—Ideas, which can be unambiguously spoken of only in the language of mathematics.[/i]
The whole issue of the measurement problem manifests around this point, i.e. sub-atomic particles don't have a definite location until they're measured. And as such, it can be said they don't truly exist, that all the wave equation describes is a tendency or likelihood.

-- Updated September 26th, 2016, 9:55 am to add the following --
"In contrast to contemporary philosophers, most 17th century philosophers held that reality comes in degrees—that some things that exist are more or less real than other things that exist. At least part of what dictates a being’s reality, according to these philosophers, is the extent to which its existence is dependent on other things: the less dependent a thing is on other things for its existence, the more real it is.
It is important to recall that the original meaning of the atom was that it was uncreated, indivisible and eternal. This is the way that the Greek atomists solved the problem of the relationship between the One and the many: the atom was both one, and many. It was uncreated, indivisible and not subject to change, but by being combined into multifarious forms it could assume the forms of the objects.

(This was the meaning of Lucretius' essay De Rerum Natura which is still taught and is classical literature in philosophy.)

But the point here is that the notion of 'proximity to the uncreated' which underlies the idea of 'substance', was given, in materialist philosophies, by the atom, where in idealist philosophies, it was understood in terms of proximity to the One (which is usually characterised in theistic terms). But obviously the idea of the atom as a metaphysical simple has been undermined by quantum physics. But this is why when all of the discoveries were made about the uncertainty principle and the wave function, that it carries such profound philosophical ramifications. This is why Einstein rhetorically asked Michael Besso 'does the moon still exist when we're not looking at it?' He asked this, because of the discovery of the so-called measurement problem by Heisenberg.

Now none of those philosophical problems associated with quantum physics have been definitely solved. You might say 'what has this got to do with philosophy', but that is why we have to remember how the 'atom' was said to have provided a solution in the first place. Now 'matter' can be depicted in terms of fields or branes or whatever theoretical construct physics finds necessary to account for the measurements and observations, but it no longer adds up to a coherent natural philosophy.
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Re: What Is The True Nature of The Mind

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Quotidian wrote:…So I think numbers, scientific laws, and such things, are of a different order of existence to rocks, tables, and chairs.
If abstract objects exist, they are categorially different from concrete objects (by being abstract rather than concrete); but this doesn't mean that if they exist, they exist in a different sense of "to exist".

"If Pegasus existed he would indeed be in space and time, but only because the word 'Pegasus' has spatio-temporal connotations, and not because 'exists' has spatio-temporal connotations. If spatio-temporal reference is lacking when we affirm the existence of the cube root of 27, this is simply because a cube root is not a spatio-temporal kind of thing, and not because we are being ambiguous in our use of 'exist'."

(Quine, W. V. "On What There Is." 1948. Reprinted in Metaphysics: Contemporary Readings, edited by Michael J. Loux, 42-56. London: Routledge, 2001. p. 43)

"I shall find no use for the narrow sense which some philosophers have given to 'existence', as against 'being'; viz., concreteness in space-time. If any such special connotation threatens in the present pages, imagine 'exists' replaced by 'is'. When the Parthenon and the number 7 are said to be, no distinction in the sense of 'be' need be intended. The Parthenon is indeed a placed and dated object in space-time while the number 7 (if such there be) is another sort of thing; but this a difference between the objects concerned and not between senses of 'be'."

(Quine, W. V. Methods of Logic. 4th ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982. p. 263)
Quotidian wrote:And in fact, once again, there are modern physicists who support this view. In his talk on Democritus and Plato, which is a discussion of materialism vs idealism, Werner Heisenberg argues that the entities of modern physics are much more like ideas than objects.
…The mathematically formulated laws of quantum theory show clearly that our ordinary intuitive concepts cannot be unambiguously applied to the smallest particles. All the words or concepts we use to describe ordinary physical objects, such as position, velocity, color, size, and so on, become indefinite and problematic if we try to use then of elementary particles. I cannot enter here into the details of this problem, which has been discussed so frequently in recent years. But it is important to realize that, while the behavior of the smallest particles cannot be unambiguously described in ordinary language, the language of mathematics is still adequate for a clear-cut account of what is going on.
During the coming years, the high-energy accelerators will bring to light many further interesting details about the behavior of elementary particles. But I am inclined to think that the answer just considered to the old philosophical problems will turn out to be final. If this is so, does this answer confirm the views of Democritus or Plato?
I think that on this point modern physics has definitely decided for Plato. For the smallest units of matter are, in fact, not physical objects in the ordinary sense of the word; they are forms, structures or—in Plato's sense—Ideas, which can be unambiguously spoken of only in the language of mathematics.
The whole issue of the measurement problem manifests around this point, i.e. sub-atomic particles don't have a definite location until they're measured. And as such, it can be said they don't truly exist, that all the wave equation describes is a tendency or likelihood.

It is important to recall that the original meaning of the atom was that it was uncreated, indivisible and eternal. This is the way that the Greek atomists solved the problem of the relationship between the One and the many: the atom was both one, and many. It was uncreated, indivisible and not subject to change, but by being combined into multifarious forms it could assume the forms of the objects.

But the point here is that the notion of 'proximity to the uncreated' which underlies the idea of 'substance', was given, in materialist philosophies, by the atom, where in idealist philosophies, it was understood in terms of proximity to the One (which is usually characterised in theistic terms). But obviously the idea of the atom as a metaphysical simple has been undermined by quantum physics. But this is why when all of the discoveries were made about the uncertainty principle and the wave function, that it carries such profound philosophical ramifications. This is why Einstein rhetorically asked Michael Besso 'does the moon still exist when we're not looking at it?' He asked this, because of the discovery of the so-called measurement problem by Heisenberg.

Now none of those philosophical problems associated with quantum physics have been definitely solved. You might say 'what has this got to do with philosophy', but that is why we have to remember how the 'atom' was said to have provided a solution in the first place. Now 'matter' can be depicted in terms of fields or branes or whatever theoretical construct physics finds necessary to account for the measurements and observations, but it no longer adds up to a coherent natural philosophy.
There is much to say from the ontological point of view; but since this is off-topic here, I'll make only some remarks:

* It is true that contemporary physics, especially quantum physics, is fraught with metaphysical/ontological problems concerning the fundamental nature and structure of the physical universe, the architecture of MEST. But whatever the correct or most credible solutions, they will be compatible with the realistic/naturalistic/materialistic worldview.

* Structures are webs of relations, and you cannot have relations without relata, i.e. objects that stand in relations to one another. So objects are ontologically irreducible to structures. This is true even if "physics gives no information except as to structure." (Russell, Human Knowledge, 259), because epistemological structuralism doesn't entail ontological structuralism.

"Even the deeply or necessarily unknowable has an intrinsic nature as robustly as the most easily known of things: epistemology never dictates ontology."
(Colin McGinn, Basic Structures of Reality: Essays in Meta-Physics, 157)

(For more, see Structural Realism!)

* Platonic ideas or forms are transcendent (extra-spatiotemporal) universals (universal kinds, properties, or relations), and these are not mathematical entities!
So to say that physical objects or particulars, especially elementary particles, are Platonic ideas or forms is to say that they are complexes ("bundles") of transcendent universals. This view is very strange and hardly coherent because it means that physical objects don't exist in spacetime. Moreover, given that there are no spatiotemporal relations in Plato's heaven, the bundling or grouping relation is unintelligible, since transcendent universals cannot be bundled or grouped together in terms of compresence (collocation, "the unique congress in the same volume" – D. C. Williams), which presupposes space and spatial relations.
The situation is different if one believes in (spacetime-)immanent, Aristotelian universals, because then the above-mentioned problems disappear. And only Aristotelian realism about universals is compatible with naturalism/materialism.
(David Armstrong, who was a naturalist and physicalist, is famous for being a champion of Aristotelian universals.)

* Physical atoms aren't literally atomic, i.e. mereologically simple and indivisible, since they are composed of elementary particles.
The relationship between "classical particles" and "quantum particles" is a highly contentious issue, and so is the question of the true ontological nature of physical particles or "corpuscles". Are they ontologically irreducible objects or substances? Are they ontologically reducible to complexes of compresent attributes (properties, be they universals or particulars [tropes])?
For example, according to Campbell's trope-field ontology, particles are reductively identifiable with bundles of field-quanta:

"The particles, from the field point of view, are thus derivative individuals. They are complexes, superimposed zones of intersection of the flickering and transforming values of the basic underlying fields. The patterns of the dance in which particles combine, divide and decay are created, according to field theory, by the restless shuffles and re-shuffles of the eddies and vortices of these interpenetrating, space-and-time-filling, thin particulars, the field tropes.
The hadronic, or strong, nuclear force both binds quarks to one another and holds together the resulting heavy particles, such as protons and neutrons, in the atomic nucleus. Quarks are smudged points of intersection of inertial, electro weak and hadronic fields.
The entire sub-atomic bestiary, of pions and muons, neutrinos, W bosons and Y hyperons, etc. can, so far as I can tell, all be subjected to this interpretation as zones of commonality and linkage between various local levels of intensity of the quantities present in some or all of the basic fields."


(Campbell, Keith. Abstract Particulars. Oxford: Blackwell, 1990. pp. 147-8)

* Physical entities cannot hover in an ontologically indeterminate twilight zone between being and nonbeing; they cannot be mere possibilia or mere probabilia. Mathematical "probability waves" aren't real physical waves. Wave functions are abstract mathematical objects rather than concrete physical ones. Beware of ontological mathematicalism or Pythagoreanism in (quantum) physics!

"If you were to reject the ultimacy of objects and replace them with space-time segments, 'worms,' or fields, there would still be properties—things about or things had by these segments or fields that would not be those segments or fields themselves or parts of them. These properties would be more than mere mathematicized measures. Even concerning such elementary particles, fields, or space-time representations, there is a need for more than quantities and numbers. Every quantity or measure is such only by virtue of there being qualities for and of which it is the quantity or measure. The alternative is an unacceptably empty desert of Pythagoreanism unsurprisingly endorsed by Quine in 'Whither physical objects?' (Quine 1976)."

(Martin, C. B. The Mind in Nature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. p. 83)
"We may philosophize well or ill, but we must philosophize." – Wilfrid Sellars
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Burning ghost
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Re: What Is The True Nature of The Mind

Post by Burning ghost »

Correct me if I am wrong.

I think Quot is trying to get at the concept of "concrete" as opposed to "abstract". Meaning that "concrete" is just covered up abstraction.

It is as this point where we see more clearly a phenomenological view come into focus. For a great number of posts there has been discussion about physicalism.

The people who deal with the physical, the physicists, are in no position to question the abstraction of physicalism from a prescientific condition. By seeing this point we can see that the physicalist position is limited by its structural being.

As Hussel said, the physicist deals with the physical, the biologist with the biological, etc.,. If a philosopher only has interest in the world as "physical" he becomes a physicist and describes the world as completely physical. If a philosopher only has interest in the world as chemical he becomes a chemist and describes the world as completelt chemical.

Through physical reduction we tend to view physics as fundamental even though it is essentially something known by chemical theory. Meaning that physics loses meaning if we have no chemical theory.

A position that Husserl brings into question is the physicalism of psychology.
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Rr6
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Favorite Philosopher: R. Bucky Fuller

Re: Atom Has Shape

Post by Rr6 »

Metaphysical-1, mind/intellect/concepts are not physical. See dictionary definition for metaphysical.
Consciousness is basis for accessing metaphysical-1, mind/intellect/concepts.
No consciousness then no access to metaphysical-1, mind/intellect/concepts.
< < Past Out < ( * / * ) < In Future <<

1a} Metaphysical-1, mind/intellect/concept{ Spirit-1}
.....1a1} absolute truths,

.....1a2} relative truths,

.....1a3} spirit-of-intent

3} Consciousness { charge } + positive skew / or - negative skew \

.....3a} electric,

......3b} magnetic.

4} Consciousness { shape }: spherical and toroidal

......4a) positive,

......4b} negative.

5} Consciousness { pattern }: web of relationships

.......5a} in ergo convergent

........5b} out ergo divergent

6} Complex consciousness ( * / * )

....6a} bi-lateral ( * * ) symmetry

.....6b} radial symmetry

......6c} non-symmetrical
Rr6 wrote:Atom has two basic shapes. It varies based on energy applied to it.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... -of-atoms/
The barbell shape and convex spherical shape are both found wit Fuller Operating System of Universe, the Vector Equilibrium aka the jitterbug, that transforms into 7 exotic shapes of space.
Euclidean topology of a double sine-wave ^v set that we also see with EMRadiation if not most particles, including the atom under some circumstances, If I recall correctly.
Negative space shape as found with inner side of a torus,
Convex spherical shape
Octahedron,
http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/synergeti ... f6008.html
Tetrahedron-- two kinds,
2D anisotropic lattice,
2D isotropic lattice,
Complex 2D octagonal ripple,
2D hexagon with tail wing triangle that is perpendicular to the hexagon,
3D close-packing of vertexia.
and others. I know of no hand-held model that shows as many exotic shapes of space as the jitterbug.
Occupied Space: 3 parts {2a, 2b,2c }
....2a}physical/energy is fermions, bosons and aggregate thereof
...physical/energy/reality/Observed Time/Frequency ^v { sine-wave }....
....2b} metaphysical-2 gravity,
.....2c} metaphysical-3, dark energy.
The truth exists for those who seek it, those who don't and those scoff at it. imho
[/quote]
"U"niverse > UniVerse > universe > I-verse < you-verse < we-verse < them-verse
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