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No comment.The analysis I performed is language-independent, it removes the linguistic component of the concepts at play and focuses purely on their conceptual referent. Ask 100 physicalists/naturalists what they mean and you'll get 100 different answers. But it's clear that there is a conceptual difference between physical causes and natural causes that requires a re-definition of physical to a degree that it is unrecognizable from the common sense definition of the word. I didn't engage in any philosophical speculation, I engaged in analytic philosophy which necessarily has an empirical referrent. This is purely about word-concept relationships, but it does create a lot of epistemic questions.
Who draws the lines? How do we know what is science without philosophy? And where are the boundaries?Dunno .. but you have done irreparable damage/violence by introducing heavy dollops of philosophy in a physical sciences forum, (IMO).
There are two types of philosophy, speculative philosohy and analytic philosophy. Analytic philosophy is roughly speaking scientific because it deals with empirical referrents and seeks to clarify what the terms we use mean.Its sort of like starting a fight between two people in pub .. and then running away, no(?)
Groan!
Sure it makes sense, especially because it reflects the sort of things I've already been saying here for years, Ana. I'm glad you are familiar enough with Philosophy to have your feet wet on these issues.
Of course there are paradoxes; but a mere paradox such as Russell's doesn't excuse any discernible informal errors we may make in our thinking in the everyday discourses we have with other people, and it's those everyday errors (and sometimes those political ideologies) that ruin the application of Critical Thinking that I'm more concerned with.
Oh, it very much is.Well I'm glad someone understands what I'm saying lol. That's a very human desire isn't it? To be understood.
... in the field of hermenueutics, we call the recursive academic action the "Hermeneutic Spiral." I just call it ongoing research ................... befitting the mindset of one (such as myself) who values education as a lifetime endeavor. It's sad to know that many people don't value human knowledge in this way.I had no intention of explaining what I meant had someone else asked @2PhiloVoid. It would have been a long waste of time.
Critical thinking is inherently difficult...because easy answers are easy. Pressing yourself to reconsider something that you think you understand seems a waste....
I'll take the approach of Copernicus and Galileo, whether people think it's needed or not and whether I have consensus from Christians or Secularlists when doing so, or not ............thank you very much.and I can't count how many times I've simply set something aside for lack of any new means of consideration. I think we needed sophistry to begin to consider logic....and we needed both to create rhetoric. While most philosophers understand logic, and try hard to avoid sophistry, one might consider the successful ones are those who employed and understood rhetoric.
I consider Hegel to be the best example of a sophist logically employing rhetoric in hopes of avoiding a problem Nietszche would later try to tackle....and fail imo.
Yes, critical thinking is exceedingly difficult. As God's word says, the heart is deceitful above all things. It's easy for our emotions to get the better of our thoughts and to convince ourselves that we have all the answers. If we dig long enough, I think we all would eventually admit that knowledge from impersonal first principles is beyond our grasp. The lines between science and philosophy blur at the edges, especially when we try to get at the foundational assumptions.Well I'm glad someone understands what I'm saying lol. That's a very human desire isn't it? To be understood.
I had no intention of explaining what I meant had someone else asked @2PhiloVoid. It would have been a long waste of time.
Critical thinking is inherently difficult...because easy answers are easy. Pressing yourself to reconsider something that you think you understand seems a waste....and I can't count how many times I've simply set something aside for lack of any new means of consideration. I think we needed sophistry to begin to consider logic....and we needed both to create rhetoric. While most philosophers understand logic, and try hard to avoid sophistry, one might consider the successful ones are those who employed and understood rhetoric.
I think Qoheleth pretty much demolishes philosophy and science. The writing of books is endless.I consider Hegel to be the best example of a sophist logically employing rhetoric in hopes of avoiding a problem Nietszche would later try to tackle....and fail imo.
I'm going to reply to this post first, because it is the closest we have come to a differentiation between physical and natural, so that my other reply can focus on the "premises and problem"For what is worth .. (groan) ..
manually requoted:.In philosophy:
Physicalism:
In philosophy, physicalism is the view that "everything is physical", that there is "nothing over and above" the physical,[1] or that everything supervenes on the physical.[2] It is opposed to idealism, according to which the world arises from mind. Physicalism is a form of ontological monism—a "one substance" view of the nature of reality, unlike "two-substance" (mind–body dualism) or "many-substance" (pluralism) views. Both the definition of "physical" and the meaning of physicalism have been debated.
again manually requoted
In philosophy, naturalism is the idea that only natural laws and forces (as opposed to supernatural ones) operate in the universe.[1] In its primary sense,[2] it is also known as ontological naturalism, metaphysical naturalism, pure naturalism, philosophical naturalism and antisupernaturalism. "Ontological" refers to ontology, the philosophical study of what exists. Philosophers often treat naturalism as equivalent to materialism, but there are important distinctions between the philosophies.
Cheers!That's enough for me .. I ain't a goin'down this rabbit hole!
None of this is a scientific viewpoint .. there are no absolutes in science .. Science makes use of inferences drawn from test results and does not commence from fixed, absolute untestable assumptions (like philosophers do).
It is your claim that the conflict goes away. I'm not sure what the conflict was in the original formulation even if they were different. It must have something to do with the mental, but what I cannot descern.If it isn't meaningful, why does the conflict go away? You assume natural and physical are one and the same, it's onto you to show what violence I have done to the closure principle or how they are the same.
I'm not sure what this empirically supported position is that is now decoupled, that causation has physical/natural cause? And you've replaced metaphysical hypothesis with another (natural rather than physical causation).I did, I uncoupled 1)an empirically supported proposition and 2) a metaphysical hypothesis. Which is why this analysis is significant, because removing that metaphysical hypothesis dissolves an apparent conflict.
Well then I am truly confused by your claims. The one possible interpretation I had considered, but was uncertain that might have worked was:You're focusing on irrelevant details. The only question is if I did violence to the causal principle by removing a metaphysical presumption.
If you think I am making a claim about their being no difference between natural/physical then you are mistaken. I have only stated that I don't know what the distinction could be and after reading the philosophical definitions, I'm still not clear. As such the distinction you make appears to be meaningless as does your solution.It's onto the person who claims that there is no distinction to show that physical and natural are one and the same.
And an apparent conflict dissolved, so what does that say about the hypothesis that the nature of nature is physical? If you wish to maintain that proposition it's on to you to either demonstrate how my uncoupling did violence to the causal principle or provide a definition of physical that isn't presumptive.
I like to keep the "meta" out of my physics.Because you are blind to your metaphysics.
Metaphysics is unavoidable, you just seem to refuse to critically inquire into yours by denying that you have any.
It's more than just my claim, it's the logical conclusion. The semantics are no longer in conflict when we change our understanding of the closure principle. You are just hung up on your preconceived notions and refuse to recognize evidence when it is presented to you.It is your claim that the conflict goes away. I'm not sure what the conflict was in the original formulation even if they were different. It must have something to do with the mental, but what I cannot descern.
Nope, I've supplied no metaphysical hypothesis. Nature being nature is a tautological fact. It is an identity, and identities can't be false.I'm not sure what this empirically supported position is that is now decoupled, that causation has physical/natural cause? And you've replaced metaphysical hypothesis with another (natural rather than physical causation).
I make no specific claims, I removed one without replacing it.Well then I am truly confused by your claims. The one possible interpretation I had considered, but was uncertain that might have worked was:
Calling mental causes mental causes sufficies. You're simply trying to re-assert closure on the physical rather than accepting that the metaphysical imposition is what is getting in the way of simple explanation. Nature is nature, there's no need to name it. If you want to say that physical and natural are the same thing, you are the one who needs to give an explicit definition of physical. But doing so requires us to make elaborate theories that don't seem to stand up to scrutiny.1. events require causes
2. mental can be a cause
3. mental is not physical
So if you make the causes of events "natural" rather than "physical" and consider the mental to be natural but non-physical, then the "natural mental" could be the sufficient "natural cause" of the first premise, where the "non-physical mental" couldn't be the sufficient "physical cause", but...
Mental is mental, what more detail is needed? If you want to claim that nature is physical you have to provide a testable definition of physical that fits the observations. My procedures don't depend on the definitions we use, they depend only on the interrelationships between the words we use. I am just using ordinary rules of epistemics like logical analysis and heuristics like Occam's razor. So if you want to claim that natural and physical are indistinguishable, you need to explain where my analysis goes wrong or provide the definition of what you mean by physical that it doesn't require us to develop over-elaborate theories of mind that serve only to explain it away rather than explain its function.you tell the mental is an irrelevant detail, so I guess that wasn't the right "solution". (It also doesn't tell me anything about what makes mental "natural" but not "physical" or how to distinguish between these two concepts meaningfully.)
I don't know what the distinction might be either, but it seems clear that there are at least one type of cause that is best explained in terms other than our common sense understanding of physical that merges it with materialism. We either need to define physical so that it is completely unrecognizeable, or give up the physicalist hypothesis and leave nature defined in terms of itself.If you think I am making a claim about their being no difference between natural/physical then you are mistaken. I have only stated that I don't know what the distinction could be and after reading the philosophical definitions, I'm still not clear. As such the distinction you make appears to be meaningless as does your solution.
All you do when you do that is remove it from critical inquiry. The metaphysics don't go away, you just end up refusing to question them.I like to keep the "meta" out of my physics.
Where did the condition of falsifiability enter the discussion?
It's an ill-defined definition because as far as we can discover there is only one universe that has been observed.
There are numerous existent problems, causal exclusion being one of them.
Generally the association problem is taken to be the most challenging, but there is very little by way of actual explanation of consciousness currently in science.
It is one that has numerous very robust theories that attempt to explain it away. I think it's a serious challenge for any physicalist conception of reality, to the point of falsifying physicalist metaphysics.
Essentially, if the only causes that are natural causes are physical then mental causation(that is thoughts having causal efficacy on the body) leads to overdetermination.
The problem was articulated as an argument against supervenience and non-reductiionest physicalism(that is to say strong emergence) and is generally accepted as a serious challenge to any mind-body theory though the 'hard problem" of association tends to get more attention
All of this is based on metaphysical presuppositions. There's no reason to believe that mind is just a manifestation of a special arrangement of matter unless we presume that at base the world is physical. And that is nothing more than an unjustified assumption
My ontology is best described as a neutral monism, where neither mind nor body reduce or depend on the other but both depend on a more fundamental third which integrates the two.
Simply pointing out that the metaphysical presumption of materialism/physicalism leads to a conflict in our observations.
It seems that there is a real distinction between the two, which is the point of this analysis. Based on the causal exclusion problem, it seems that physical is not a sufficient word to circumscribe natural phenomenon.
I don't think you understand what I have done here, because I'm not arguing anything I have simply performed semantic analysis.
I've taken something that is accepted as a challenge for scientific theories of mind and has a robust amount of literature attempting to explain it and removed the conflict among the four propositons by examining the terms.
It's semantic analysis and boils down to word-concept relationships. This isn't a problem I created or made up for this exercise. So it's not me making the distinction, it's the analytic process.
Yes, because I am addressing a single category which is causation.
I took a problem that is generally accepted as a real problem for scientific theories of mind and has a robust literature of responses and by re-arranging the terms resolved the conflict in the propositions.
It's semantic analysiis and nothing more, I haven't proposed any sort of alternative(though I do of course have my own ideas) I have simply proferred the suggestion that the problem lies in our terms.
I have already, I'm not going to repeat myself. If you want the full description, you can read the argument as it was suggested by Jaegwan Kim
Not at all, I've done nothing more than a bit of semantic analysis on a generally accepted challenge to scientific theories of mind which has a robust amount of literature trying to explain away the problem.
The only thing I've done is examine the terms of the problem to suggest that the problem lies not in the observations but in the terms that we are using. It's all about word-concept relationships and nothing more.
I've made no metaphysical presumption, I've simply performed a semantic analysis. I've suggested a solution to a problem that is widely regarded as a genuine challenge to any scientific theory of mind second only to the association problem.
Certainly not, but the words that it has produced are surely a product of your mind, are they not?
Or are you suggesting that you are nothing more than a wind-up toy of mindless physical action-reaction procedures?
Did your intentions move your fingers along the keyboard, or are you simply aping conscious activity?
Uh huh...so there is no mental activity involved in them?
They're just chemical and electrical noise with no real semantic significance?
"domain of subjective reality"?
And down the road of madness you go.
Not at all, I'm merely suggesting that there is an empirical case against physicalist metaphysical presumptions.
I'm making no suggestion of my own for what or how reality exists
You have no idea of what I understand.
You have presented no evidence
No. that notion appears to result from a tightly held belief in Realism.
There are other ways to think about reality, which often return surprising results.
None of those ways are necessary preconditions to the scientific method.
See the MDR hypothesis link above. Also see Model Dependent Realism.
'What it sounds like', usually signifies that what follows,
I should clarify by offering the following operational test one may apply, in order to distinguish 'beliefs':
'A belief is any notion held as being true out of preference, that does not follow from objective tests, and is not beholden to the rules of logic. (Objective tests followed by the application of logic rules is a necessary condition).
See operational definition of a belief.
Science distinguishes beliefs by attempting to test them
Oh .. and science never tests 'the thing itself'. Science tests its models.
Not quite... Nature is nature, there's no need to name it ...
Nature has two inter-related meanings in philosophy and natural philosophy. On the one hand, it means the set of all things which are natural, or subject to the normal working of the laws of nature. On the other hand, it means the essential properties and causes of individual things.
I concur with the notion of examining closely, how word meanings directly impact our collective understanding of 'what reality is'.
You may find the link I posted in my previous response to @Ana the Ist of some interest(?):
Ie: Model Dependent Realism and Mind (model) Dependent Reality (MDR) Hypothesis.
PS: Namely because, .. well hey .., this is a physical sciences forum where evidence/references count .. and not a philosophy forum, no(?)
No, what I understand makes no difference in the analytic process. You just fail to understand the procedures that I have employed which are independent of how I might define the word. This is an "objective" process.
Who draws the lines? How do we know what is science without philosophy? And where are the boundaries?
There are two types of philosophy, speculative philosohy and analytic philosophy.
Analytic philosophy is roughly speaking scientific because it deals with empirical referrents and seeks to clarify what the terms we use mean.
Huh?... If you want to claim that nature is physical you have to provide a testable definition of physical that fits the observations.
Tautologies can't be falsified, they can only be defined. And it's not simply a claim that I am making, but how the Bible defines God in the one place He gives His "name". Ehyeh asher Ehyah. What will be will be, I am that I am. I can only work with Biblical definitions of God when considering the Biblical God.I'm pretty sure it was the same moment you claimed your definition to be tautological.
Our observations limit us to one, it is quite possible God has created infinite universes. But such metaphysical speculation isn't very productive and is more...well, I don't think the word for it would pass the filters so I'll leave you to fill it in.Unless your god requires something to make universes from it seems unnecessary to limit it to one.
If you don't believe me, you are free to look over a bit of the literature among theorists of mind. There are many theoretical constructs that attempt to answer the causal exclusion problem. It is only second in attention to the association problem(the so-called "hard problem")You keep saying that....
Not at all, it draws on nothing but "seemngs" or direct experience.A cart before the horse problem.
The so-called hard problem of how an individuals mind can associate with a particular body. It's the so-called "hard problem".The association problem?
Yes, but these kinds of denials become necessary if physicalist metaphysics are taken consistently. The notion that free will and consciousness are illusory is taken as a serious proposition among "scientific" thinkers and it ultimately comes down to clinging tightlly to a metaphysical construct that they can't reconsider.It's hard to see how that becomes a problem. Show me a hard determinist who rejects all notion of compatibalism and I'll show you someone who acts as if free will exists.
Not really, people are only convinced as much because they have been taught not to question supervenience on the physical. There are other metaphysical constructs that untie many of the Gordian knots that consciousness creates for physicalist explanations. We don't have to tie ourselves into pretzels denying what should be plain to everyone with a mind.Ok....there's some phenomena which you'd struggle to explain without a concept of "mind" arising from the physical development of the brain.
I don't really know what babies are born understanding, though we can describe their behaviors. I don't know what understanding without language means, as the whole of my understanding is limited to my ability to articulate it.Babies aren't born understanding object permanence, for example. Language has a built in cut-off time....if never learned, it seems impossible to do so. Then there's the split brain experiments demonstrating spontaneous insertion of false memories for logical consistency.
I'm not suggesting the two are totally independent phenomena, just that the presumption that the mind is dependent on and fully explainable in terms of the physical structures doesn't seem warranted and seems to create conflicts that are easily solved by changiing the terms we use.The physical development of the brain seems necessary to account for these phenomena.
Not really.Well then the split brain experiments will really disappoint you.
And that's a problem because? You speak your thoughts, I assume that you have them and that they provide an explanaton for your actions. I presume you aren't just a wind-up toy marching along to the beat of irrational laws.You can't touch my thoughts.
My suggestion is simply procedural, the causal exclusion problem is something drawn from debates within theories of mind. All I've done is suggested that it is the terms themselves and how they are defined that is the culprit and we don't need fanciful explanations to explain away mental phenomena as causally effective in their own right.I swore you weren't going to insist on some distinction there.
You are so close, yet so far.I agree the physical and natural are different.
In fact, I gave examples of how they are.
No pride, more baffled at how such a simple epistemic move is so readily ignored by so many who think themselves knowledgeable.You seem proud of that.
Doesn't really matter, all that matters here is whether I've made a procedural error.What would be the most current literature on the topic?
Neuroscience seems to still be struggling with several problems that has created a diverse body of robust theoretical explanations that seem more attempts to explain away mental effectiveness than explain the phenomena as they present themselves.Something I'm sure was necessary when phrenology was still a science.
I didn't make the problem up, this is part of a current debate in theories of mind with multiple robust and complex theories to explain how mental phenomena are really just expressions of physical phenomena and not their own category of causal effectiveness. Mind is explained away rather than explained.Uh huh.
Again, I didn't see any conflict.
Presumptions can create problems, you're more than welcome to read the various responses to the causal exclusion problem in theories of mind but this isn't a problem I made up.Presumptions aren't problems.
I make no claims of my own here, though I do have a metaphysical understanding of my own. I've performed a procedural analysis and removed a hidden claim that is taken as an assumption and then defended as empirical because of its insertion into the closure principle.If I do this, and don't see what your claim is there....
I've explained it enough in this thread already. If you don't understand the procedures I've used, that's a comprehension issue on your part. There's nothing speculative or argumentative about what I've done, just logical procedures.You're going to explain it?
You mean the presumption.
The problem is taken from literature on theories of mind, it's not a problem that I have identified on my own but is one that has a vast amount of literature trying to address it.A problem would belong to a different category.
I've taken a recognized problem from the literature surrounding theories of mind and dissolved the conflict by uncoupling a metaphysical presumption from an epistemically defensible proposition. I didn't create the problem, I merely performed logical analysis on it.You've suggested a presumption is a problem without reason.
The language is a repository, but what value are the thoughts that you are conveying if they do not originate within your thinking in some form or fashion? Do your arguments simply happen automatically and are actually empty of any real meaning?I definitely did not create the English language.
It's a very relevant question, because explaining away mind destroys epistemics. If you are merely expressing computations then there is no semantic value to any of the words you use. They're just hot air. I assume you thnk the words you use hold significance, and are not just mathematical equations being solved by some kind of organic counting machine.It doesn't seem like a relevant question....nor one of any consequence.
So you're just marching along spewing out nonsense? No intention or meaning to the words you use? Your thoughts are just things that happen to you, and not something within your conscious control?I honestly don't think hard enough to engage in "intention". When typing....an inner monologue gets expressed visually on the screen in almost real time.
Answering this moves us into waters too deep for me.Involved in? Their conceptualization?
Come again?Post conceptualization that's a way you can describe them....until expressed.
To an extent, but perspectives don't matter to the procedures I've implemented. If I am in error, then identify the procedural error I made. If not, we must consider the epistemic and metaphysical implications of the logical resolution to such a problem.Right.
Is it?
I'm certain you accept that you have your perspective and I have mine.
Yes, I am standing on a logical procedure that presents an empirical case against notions of supervenience upon the physical. Because none of the people looking to dispute it have addressed the procedures and instead are clinging to presumptions that the procedure exposes.Whenever you want to make it, feel free....you have repeatedly insisted upon a semantic analysis, that's all.
Depends on how it's looked at, because it seems to me that it's gotten a fair bit of mileage.Well then this thread seems like a waste.
So "physical" is just a meaningless catch-all? What purpose does it serve, then?Huh?
Perceptional models, (which include tactile, visual/observation, auditory, etc inputs), once described using language and tested, inform us on what 'physical' means .. and not the other way around ..(?)
One last question:
How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
Oh, it very much is.
... in the field of hermenueutics, we call the recursive academic action the "Hermeneutic Spiral." I just call it ongoing research ................... befitting the mindset of one (such as myself) who values education as a lifetime endeavor. It's sad to know that many people don't value human knowledge in this way.
I'll take the approach of Copernicus and Galileo, whether people think it's needed or not and whether I have consensus from Christians or Secularlists when doing so, or not ............thank you very much.
I think both Hegel and Nietszche are a pain in the ass, and folks would be wise to let loose of what they read from those kinds of views. Not that reading them isn't useful for something ...........................................
It's more than just my claim, it's the logical conclusion. The semantics are no longer in conflict when we change our understanding of the closure principle. You are just hung up on your preconceived notions and refuse to recognize evidence when it is presented to you.
Nope, I've supplied no metaphysical hypothesis. Nature being nature is a tautological fact. It is an identity, and identities can't be false.
Calling mental causes mental causes sufficies. You're simply trying to re-assert closure on the physical rather than accepting that the metaphysical imposition is what is getting in the way of simple explanation.
Nature is nature, there's no need to name it.
Mental is mental, what more detail is needed? If you want to claim that nature is physical you have to provide a testable definition of physical that fits the observations.
My procedures don't depend on the definitions we use, they depend only on the interrelationships between the words we use.
Yes, just two. The two can be subdivided, but all philosophy can be categorized into one of those two groups or some blending of the two.Wow. Just two huh?
This is an interesting statement. Can we clarify terms without connecting them to their external referrent? And what and who decides what qualifies as science and what doesn't? Who has the final say so?We can clarify terms without science.
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