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[ConsciousAI]

Happy New Year!

Of course, this disappoints, because you expected an exposition about just this specialized region in physics, but this is NOT philosophy.

I agree with you that physics is NOT philosophy.

I believe that you are wrong. All is philosophy.

A scientist once described the difference between science and philosophy as the following:

"Science is no more or less than the application of the process of observe, hypothesise, test, repeat. There's no suggestion of belief, philosophy or validity, any more than there is in the rules of cricket or the instructions on a bottle of shampoo: it's what distinguishes cricket from football, and how we wash hair. The value of science is in its utility. Philosophy is something else."

Where are those rules of science coming from? Who/what created those rules? What theory allows one to 'believe' in those rules in time?

A belief in science is simply philosophy turned religious (dogmatic). When looking a bit deeper, one sees, that most honest and true is not science but philosophy.

The following provides a case for it:

science itself is not prior to consciousness. Science presupposes consciousness and its phenomena. The matter seems to be at an impasse ...

There is an inquiry, but that inquiry cannot have been structured beforehand. Science is therefore a tool while it is philosophy that applies that tool. It is philosophy all the way down!

I believe Kant is wrong on this as well. While one might argue that one would be demanded to be Silent when it comes down to it, perhaps resulting in the wisdom "the wise is silent", most ethical is to speak for the world beyond existence, for a world that is good, because it is in that speaking that the world is manifested good. And so one sees that the never-ending Good-night Fairy Tale philosophy as you described it, is actually more true than science putting a man on the moon. Putting a man on the moon was preceded by a Good-night Fairy Tale! Putting a man on the moon IS a Good-night Fairy Tale and is philosophy!

there is the interest, the thrill of being a scientist, of discovery, of positive peer review and so forth. ... It is eternal, as all inquiry leads to openness, that is, you cannot pin down experience in propositional knowledge.

every time you post another Good-night Fairy Tale, in return Lagayscienza posts at least 3 replies to it, assuring you that he is tittering on the edge of your rabbit hole, almost ready to jump into it head-first.

But, he just has one last little doubt for you to dispel it for him, while knowing full-well that in his secret honest materialistic view of objective physical reality, all such metaphysical narratives, including yours, are the opium for the masses, useless incoherent laughable BS. How dishonest and cynical is that?

When it comes down to it, dogmatic science is dishonest while never-ending and therewith mystic philosophy is most honest, despite all the practical value that science might shine in front of the human eye, with that being the whole Universe an all the matter that it contains, including the human being.

But when it comes down to it, there is the question Why that world came to be, and Why that world came to be good. And while some think that they can surely put their 'belief in science' as you described it, by looking back at the success of science in history. Most honest from a philosophical position is to know that the past does not determine the future, and that it is philosophy that is fundamental to a future that is good.

Your criticism essentially sees just two options: Lagayscienza being lured into a philosophical rabbit hole, or having entered it. But what is actually most honest and true is the process of exploration of an infinite 🕳∞ rabbit hole that in the same time is relevant to a world that is good, and that is an 'option' of a different nature than science can even hope to describe.

[Lagayascienza]

I don't think I've been "lured", as material girl would have it, into anything. I have just decided to look into Transcendental Idealism and phenomenology. When I'm done, I may conclude that it leads nowhere. Or I might agree that there is some value in it. All that has changed thus far is my dogmatic physicalist stance. I can see things from a different POV. The idea that we cannot know what the physical world is in itself has been brought home to me, and if we cannot cognize the physical world in itself but have only what is presented in consciousness, then some form of idealism seems worth exploring as an explanation for this.

It's interesting that material girl seems to have disappeared in a puff of idealistic vapor.

[Lagayascienza]

I've made notes on video 4. This video was a killer. He lost me about half way through. I need to watch it again and condense the notes because some of it doesn't make sense.

[Stoppelmann]

The strangeness of the discussion on the nature of religion is that most people are contributing from outside. So, they witness the expressions of religious fervour in their various forms and fail to differentiate between the expression of religion and the coercions or constraints of the physical world and society. Most people do not know the differences because they have never been on the inside.

It is similar to a scientist who writes a treatise on swimming without ever getting into the water. The swimming experience is not his concern. Instead, he observes the phenomenon from outside, explaining in great detail what he sees but not knowing what it feels like to swim. A male gynaecologist lecturing on giving birth could experience the same problem.

Sometimes, I compare it to the speculations about an immigrant family who has moved into a house in the neighbourhood. The neighbours can’t imagine what happens in the house, so they use what they can observe from outside to speculate on what is happening inside. The fact that this family comes from a different culture means they have different habits, which are only understandable from the inside. Still, it doesn’t stop the neighbours from slandering the family.

Now, admittedly, there was a vaguely similar family several miles away, whose behaviour was unacceptable, or people from the same cultural background who broke the law in another city, but this has no bearing on the family in question, who may even condemn the behaviour themselves. Human beings seem prone to react this way to people from other cultures, and what we do not understand is often held in disdain until we get a look inside – if we want that.

In the same way, a phenomenon such as religion, with its vast differences throughout the world's cultures, obviously can’t have a single “nature,” because we know that some contradict each other. Even various denominations of the same religion may contradict each other. So, a discussion of the nature of religion would be best served by people from the inside, speaking about their subjective experiences – but that would not be acceptable for most people. They want something objective, something external that they can measure and dissect, but that isn’t the nature of living religion. No more than a dissected animal is a living example of a species.

[Sy Borg]

I may not be religious but I have debated or discussed things with dozens of theists over the years, so I have a fair idea how believers operate, and how they vary (as Stoppelman noted above). Many Christians actually worship a different deity to one another, ranging from an anthropomorphic entity that exists beyond space and time to a Spinoza-like all encompassing universal order - and everything in between.

I somewhat agree with Count in that I don't have much less epistemological doubt than idealists. That is, I think reality at our scale is largely the way we perceive it. While our senses evolved to filter out that which doesn't aid survival and reproduction, the fact that the filtered models our brain uses to represent reality are efficacious suggests that they are pretty solidly related to actual reality.

Other mammals, reptiles and birds seem to live in a similar world to us, albeit with different sensory emphases. Insects and smaller organisms are different story. I am fascinated by the way reality at different scales operates very differently. Think of how insects lead their mercifully mindless lives amongst what would seem to be numerous mobile mountains, many of which are hostile. To very tiny organisms, the air is as thick as water, sp they are much less subject to gravity than we are, but more impacted by electrostatics and Brownian motion.

So, yes, there still are many details of reality that we miss. The fact that we never truly touch anything, yet we are also constantly much more connected to our environment that the impressions given by our nervous systems. We don't notice a lot of gases and radiation and we tend to dismiss that which is hard to measure. For instance, the Earth is not actually 12,742 kms in diameter because that does not count the atmosphere, which is about 10,000 kms deep. So, unless trying to avoid not burning up on re-entry, we can largely ignore the atmosphere without consequence.

When I worked in analytics, I knew of a saying that sometimes appeared on motivational posters, "What gets measured, gets done". Thus, that which pertains to emotion tends not to be done, which is perhaps the reason the world is the way it is. As AI becomes more influential, it will be interesting how this impacts on the psyches of people. There does appear to be an increase in mechanistic thinking, reducing people to demographics rather than seeing the growing hordes of us as individuals. There is more "digging in" to established positions rather than considering options, especially the grey areas between 1 (total support) and 0 (no support).

[Count Lucanor]

Yes, there are different form of Idealism. Transcendental Idealism still leaves us a material world. It's just that we cannot know the material world in it's entirety, as it is in itself.

If Transcendental Idealism allowed leaving us a material world, it wouldn’t be Idealism. That’s why you see Kantians, neo-Kantians, Heideggerians and so on, always reacting to the claim of materiality of the world. If they think materialism is refuted, that’s because they are sure there’s no material world, or at least they don’t find any justification in asserting it. A material world occurs in time and space and has causation, all as mind-independent properties and relations, but as you might well know, the Transcendental Idealists reject it. By the empirical world they mean only the subjective experience of the world, a projection of your own mind (the projector), in which the appearances of objects (phenomena) are presented, and only in that sense they are real exterior objects, but nevertheless they are constituted by your mind, which adds the intuition of space, time and, consequently, causation. Whatever is happening, is supposedly happening to the projection, not to the things in themselves, of which we know nothing of, not even what is the relation between them and the appearances or between them and the projector. So the Kantians and all that followed made their philosophical project the understanding of the projector (perhaps what you would call the “phenomenal structure of consciousness”). Being that the case of Transcendental Idealism, it is obvious that it is all completely different from “leaving us a material world”.

Science remains untouched and incontestable. It's the only tool we have for understanding how the physical world, insofar as we can apprehend it, operates. No priestly class needed or wanted.

A physical world means to Transcendent Idealists a world of objects in outer space, where space does not exist in itself, it is constituted by your mind:
” In the empirical sense, “outer” simply refers to objects of outer sense, objects in space. Transcendental idealism is the view that objects in space are “outer” in the empirical sense but not in the transcendental sense. Things in themselves are transcendentally “outer” but appearances are not.” (Stanford Encyclopedia).
Not only space is contributed by your conscious experience, but causation, too. It is not hard to see why Idealism finds science problematic when it brings to surface its intrinsic materialism and realism.

[Hereandnow]

I've written enough and I need to read. Farewell all and have the greatest possible new year! And if you do, then you will know by virtue of it being the "greatest possible" that that its existence cannot be denied.

[Lagayascienza]

Farewell, Hereandnow. Thanks for the discussion. Happy reading.

[Stoppelmann]

I may not be religious but I have debated or discussed things with dozens of theists over the years, so I have a fair idea how believers operate, and how they vary (as Stoppelman noted above).

It is true that you can gain real insight into believers by observing them and how they react, but these are once again only “fingers pointing to the moon.” Since I left the church and turned to comparative studies, I gained the impression that the Abrahamic religions focused on what is lacking in human beings because they somehow suspected that we do not focus on what matters and “miss the mark” of what it means to be a sentient being. I think that Islam tried to combat this but became even more prone to legalistic thinking.

For some religionists, it is like entering a theatre, watching a play with philosophical undertones, high drama, and fantastical storylines, and leaving the theatre convinced that the play was an accurate portrayal of life outside the theatre. In contrast, the common denominator across religions, which underlies the procedures on the surface, seems to be the identification of and devotion to fundamental aspects of life, including the “ground of being,” which has a thousand faces, much like Campbell’s hero has. One aspect that has been coming to the fore is that consciousness is primary rather than matter, which the Vedic sages have been saying for millennia.

Looking at the religious traditions, I find much of what has been emerging in the last 200 years in philosophy hidden in the diversity of religion. It is hidden because it is contained in mythological dramas, in the words of wisdom from diverse sages, and lived out in seclusion and humility. Of course, it is contained in fewer words and, therefore, not described in the detail that we consider necessary today, which is why many scientists refuse to consider it. Renowned cosmologist Prof. Dr. Bernard Carr pointed this out in a recent interview with the Essentia Foundation and in a conversation with Sadhguru, founder and head of the Isha Foundation in India.

Considering the mystery of existence, Prof. Carr suggested that in science and spirituality, we have external and internal views of existence and that far from combatting each other, we should consider them “two sides of the same coin.” Many prominent scientists have proposed the acceptance of meditation as a preparation for scientific investigation and the acceptance of the spiritual perspective.

[Sy Borg]

I may not be religious but I have debated or discussed things with dozens of theists over the years, so I have a fair idea how believers operate, and how they vary (as Stoppelman noted above).

Considering the mystery of existence, Prof. Carr suggested that in science and spirituality, we have external and internal views of existence and that far from combatting each other, we should consider them “two sides of the same coin.” Many prominent scientists have proposed the acceptance of meditation as a preparation for scientific investigation and the acceptance of the spiritual perspective.

I have long held that Buddhist gurus were essentially conducting scientific experiments with consciousness. As the meditators would enter different states they would record what they felt, and a body of knowledge emerged, correlating states with feelings, sensations or even apparent siddhis.

As a matter of interest, many moons ago I ran a TM class at a scientific institution, and some of the scientists really took to it, and get into it much more deeply than I ever did. (I only knew the absolute basics - posture, keeping warm, dealing with thoughts etc).

God and other deities exist as a subjective phenomena. They are potentials of human minds and our unique relationship with time; our minds are capable of creating gods and other intangible structures.

[Lagayascienza]

Thanks for your response, Countlucanor.

I respect science as much as anyone, but I’ve come to understand that it can only take me so far. And from that point on, if I still have questions about what’s behind the whole show, I can either make up nice stories that I “choose” to believe, or I can resort to philosophy, to metaphysics.

As you well know, resorting to metaphysics alone was what was done before the arrival of systematic scientific thought (physics) and it was a monumental failure. The whole ontological domain was populated with the characters and forces of religion, so metaphysics could not get free from the hold of theology. Idealism remains committed, one way or the other, to mysticism. That’s why its program requires an attack on natural science and its intrinsic materialism.

Was philosophy really a "monumental failure" before science? Science started as part philosophy. As I have come to understand Transcendental Idealism and phenomenology, they are not “anti-science”. They just takes a different metaphysical stance than materialism. I’m not clear on why some people don’t seem to like that. Phenomenologists and Idealists could still do science even if they thought that, at the deepest level, the universe was one great thought.

I was looking at the sunset here this evening and I understood for the first time, in a very real way, that the sun isn't what I've learned to think of it as. It was like waking up and seeing the sun for the first time. It's like when I first saw the ocean as a child who had known only the endless dusty plains of inland Australia. My first sight of the ocean was a mind-blowing revelation. I was consumed by the experience.

[…]None of this is to say that astrophysics is not about what the sun is. It is about the sun. The data of astrophysics are true, but the data are not what the sun IS. We cannot draw the territory out of the map and know the territory - we have to experience the territory, trek into it, walk up the hills and through the forest. Similarly, we cannot draw the meal out of the menu. We have to experience the food. All this has been brought home to me

That would be fine if you imply that your claim about the data of astrophysics related to the sun being true, at the same time that it is true that it is not what the sun is, simply means that the scientific knowledge of the sun, the one provided by the data of astrophysics, which includes the notion that the sun is a material object independent of our minds, is not ALL we can say about our experience of the sun, but nevertheless it is the factual, true description of what the sun really is as something more than a perceptual experience, a concrete entity, what it is at every time, what it has been for million of years, in itself, independently of any conscious apprehension of it, even before there was any conscious experience at all. That would be no different than saying that you can see the sun poetically, which of course does not invalidate the scientific, materialistic image, as an accurate, objective, realistic view of the sun, one we cannot eliminate from our understanding without falling into error.

That’s what I thought I said. What I was getting at was that, once I was able to momentarily bracket the astrophysical account, I was able to experience the sun in a powerfully new way. That’s all. That does not mean that I think that the account science has furnished is wrong. Science looks at all the pointer readings, the data, perfects theory, makes accurate predictions… Nothing holds a candle to science in this respect.

If you ever suggested that our knowledge about the sun from astrophysics is merely one interpretation of what the sun is, standing side by side with the interpretation of the Egyptian and Aztec priests, without any metaphysical commitment as to its real, mind-independent nature, you’re taking the antirealist, antiscientific stance of idealist phenomenology, which is a bankrupt philosophy, precisely for being against science.

The data of science tell us heaps of true stuff about the sun, its mass, its temperature, the gravity that pulls it all together and the nucleosynthesis that converts mass into heavier elements and powers the light and heat we enjoy. Of all this, science gives us the only believable physical account we have. But that account is an abstraction.
Everything we deal with is an abstraction of ours. Every reflection on the world, every issue, since processed by our minds, is an abstract thought. We cannot escape that no matter what method of inquiry you choose. Certainly metaphysics or Phenomenology cannot escape from that constraint either, so there’s no point in arguing that one has to leave science behind because of that restriction. Without the facts of science, every metaphysical speculation remains like that, mere speculation.

Correct, all is abstraction. But where does Phenomenology argue that one has to leave science behind because of that? As I understand it, phenomenology is just interested in studying the phenomenal nature/structure of consciousness. Not in providing a physical explanation of it or of the material universe.

The sun is not the astrophysical theory and data. Theoretical models and data cannot tell us what the sun is in itself. We are in no position to know that, and science cannot help us. And so, if we have further questions, we need to leave science to do what it does so well and go to metaphysics. Science does not go into foundational questions such as what’s behind it all, the nature of “being” and so forth. We cannot expect science to do that.
I’m not sure what you mean by “foundational”, but science does get into the fundamental nature of reality, which is material reality, the only reality we know of. Surely, science is founded on realist and materialistic assumptions, which is why you cannot stay with science and still reject its realistic and materialistic foundation. It’s not possible, as you can see from the fact that Idealism always aims its cannons towards the scientific models.

Yes, of course science gets into material reality. But Idealists (and plenty of scientist) know that there is more to reality than the mathematical abstractions that we use to describe the material world - value being an important example. As I understand it, in metaphysics, one can posit a noumenal reality beneath science’s materialist foundation and still stay with science. And, as mentioned above, I’m not sure that Idealism “aims its canons at science”. Even if I were a convinced Transcendental Idealist/phenomenologist, I can envisage taking an Idealist POV on metaphysical questions but, at the same time, holding to science because science is the best and only tool we have for understanding the workings of the physical/material world we seem to interact with. I don’t understand why one would think there is any antagonism here. I hear no canons firing.

Once we accept this, we can then ask how else we might look at the sun and the earth, at rocks and at trees and at the “being” of matter itself, and at consciousness. Metaphysically, I cannot see any way other than to start with the primacy of phenomena given in consciousness (which, BTW, includes the perceptions of astrophysicists and their perceptions of the astrophysical data) and to adopt some form of idealism. I still have confidence in what science tells me. Phenomenology, and Kant’s Transcendental Idealism are not anti-science. Metaphysics just takes up where science leaves off. There’s no competition here. One is philosophy and the other is science.

The issue here is not metaphysics vs science, but metaphysical Idealism vs materialistic science. Materialism is the ontological basis of science. Idealist Phenomenology, such as the one advocated by Husserl and Heidegger, is clearly anti-science when it comes to dealing with the nature of reality, all as a result of a purely epistemological assumption about ontology. But epistemology cannot say anything of what really is, it can only deal (barely) with how we get to know things. We can also engage with the objects of the world in many other meaningful ways: poetically, morally, etc., but that only discloses our particular and contingent entanglements, our human relations with those objects, but not the reality of those objects in themselves, which remains true even when they do not appear in our experience. There was an ancestral Earth, Sun, dinosaurs, etc., as has been made evident by science, a reality without any dependency or intervention of the human mind. Just because we engage the world consciously, does not mean that the world itself is a pure domain of consciousness. Actually, as conscious beings, we are embedded in the world, and the consciousness within ourselves, is part of it. There must be the world before consciousness emerges. The Idealist Phenomenologist’s take is that the world emerges from consciousness, is constituted by it, which is fundamentally wrong

But why is it wrong? Phenomenology just wants to start with phenomena given in consciousness. That is what phenomenology is interested in. And phenomena given in consciousness is exactly what science starts with. How else could it proceed. Phenomenology just takes consciousness to be primary. I don’t see a problem. Science just goes in a different direction, and uses mathematics and makes abstractions out of data given in consciousness. That’s how science works. Phenomenology does not pretend to explain the physical workings of consciousness or the physical world at large. It's just interested in phenomena as they are given in consciousness. Do materialists ask why it is necessary to start with what is given in consciousness? That would be a strange question because that is precisely what science must do. It is the only place it can start.

I wonder what you mean by the “materialistic way” being simple. I mean, the materialistic way of science understanding the sun does not look so simple, actually it has demanded the higher intellectual skills, hard work and collaboration of many specialized disciplines to get there, it’s not something that has been accesible to the common man at first hand. In any case, by a materialistic way of understanding the sun we mean that the ultimate nature of the sun is material and it is a real object, independently of our perceptions, but you seem to be suggesting now that the sun is merely “mind stuff”, just as consciousness supposedly is, otherwise you would not deny the materialistic way of understanding it. Bear in mind that phenomenalism does not necessarily entail the denial of realism and materialism, it is a stance about knowledge that highlights the fact that it is founded on our perception of things.

Yes, of course the sun is still there when we are not observing it. It’s not “just” mind stuff. And I agree that Phenomenology does not entail the denial of physical matter insofar as science can explain it.
Allow me to clarify that I said “phenomenalism”, not Phenomenology. The latter is a radical antirealist form of phenomenalism. As you can see from this forum and everywhere else, the commitments of Phenomenology to an ontology that acknowledges the physicality of the world is, at best, elusive.[/quote]

I don’t see that Phenomenology denies the physical world. How could it?

But science is all pointer readings and data. Which I respect and have confidence in. But that does not tell us what matter is in itself. We cannot expect the astrophysical models and data to do that. And Transcendental Idealism does not pretend to do that. It’s just about phenomena that are given in consciousness. Heidegger, who I’m currently trying to read and who is said to go beyond phenomenology, may go more deeply into the nature of being and time, but I doubt he tell me what matter is in itself either. He’ll be more into what “being” matter “means”.
I don’t see what justifies the claim that science cannot tell us what matter in itself really is. As someone said, it is trustable knowledge that lands a rover on mars and flies planes. If the justification is phenomenalism, then there’s a big problem, because such approaches eventually only lead to solipsism, epistemological nihilism, irrationalism, and so on, including the rejection of science. It’s the bankruptcy of Idealism. I wouldn’t try to study biochemistry with Phenomenology, it cannot tell us nothing insightful.

There’s no suggestion that science doesn’t work or that it could be replaced by any sort of metaphysics, Idealist or otherwise. But if science can tell us what matter is in itself, then what is its answer to the question: What is matter “in itself”? I suppose, to save time, we could start with atoms, and then ask what sub-atomic particles are made of, and if we keep asking such questions we get to something like disturbances in spatio-temporally unbounded fields. But what does that mean? It is just a linguistic abstraction of what can only be more precisely described with mathematical equations which are the more detailed and precise abstractions. But neither linguistic abstractions nor the equations themselves are the reality they refer to. So, what’s behind the equations? Oh, the equations describe matter. Ok, right... But what is matter? And around we go again. Matter is atoms...and so on ad absurdum.

As for solipsism, I don’t see it as the inevitable end-point of phenomenology. Phenomenology, as I understand it, recognises that other minds, and the world at large, exist. Anyone who denied them would not be necessarily be a phenomenologist but would, indeed, be a solipsist

To put it in a simple way: science will tell us what really is and how it is, not what ought to be. Science is not normative about moral behavior, we can easily agree on that. But it seems that Phenomenology does take a stand on what it is and how it is, even if elusive, speculative. In that sense it clashes with realistic approaches to understanding our human condition and the social environment where we live. That’s why Phenomenology fails in getting the key insight on religion.

What stand does phenomenology take on value? It certainly recognises value as real, even if not physical. But, then, I think phenomenology and science (or at least, most scientists) would be in accord here.

Don't get me wrong here. I do not, could not, question science's unique ability in enabling us to understand the material universe. But the material universe is not all there is. As I've mentioned elsewhere, most of human life is taken up with valuing. Indeed, it is the reason we do science. We value the pursuit of knowledge, we value new discoveries and marvel at what science shows us about the universe. That's valuing. And most of daily life is about value. Most people don't spend the greater part of their daily lives doing logical deductions and differential equations. Life's about feeding the dog, picking the kids up from school, making a nice dinner, watching a movie... All the things that matter to us, that we value.

I'm an atheist, but, with the limits of science in mind, I decided to check check out the metaphysical landscape to see what was on offer and I got interested in phenomenology by participating in interesting discussion with yourself and Hereandnow. I certainly would not consider myself to be a phenomenologist. I'm just trying to understand it. I can't see that phenomenology (insofar as I understand it), or my current interest in it, conflicts with science any more than my interest in coin collecting.

[Lagayascienza]

That last sentence was unfinished' It should read:

I can't see that phenomenology (insofar as I understand it), or my current interest in it, conflicts with science any more than my interest in coin collecting conflicts with science.

It's still a clumsy sentence but the meaning is (hopefully) clear.

[Count Lucanor]

Was philosophy really a "monumental failure" before science? Science started as part philosophy.

Nature is what we have in front of us, that’s the whole show. To get the insight on what’s behind it, the ancients only had raw observation and reflection, which could not get them too far, especially when being heavily influenced by theological speculations. Not even natural philosophy managed to liberate itself from the chains of religious thinking. So, in some way indeed philosophy took on the tasks that we trust now to science, but it was at best its infancy. It should be acknowledged that philosophy advanced in other matters, in fact the philosophy of materialism was in place even before the scientific revolution. Nevertheless, it is as clear as a sunny day that with regards to nature, to the kind of things that exist, naturalistic science left behind philosophical speculation. It is odd to think that we can leave science “behind” by going back to philosophical speculation.

As I have come to understand Transcendental Idealism and phenomenology, they are not “anti-science”. They just takes a different metaphysical stance than materialism. I’m not clear on why some people don’t seem to like that. Phenomenologists and Idealists could still do science even if they thought that, at the deepest level, the universe was one great thought.

Taking a different metaphysical stance than materialism is the same as being a non-materialist. Science is naturalistic and rests on the realistic premise that nature, the universe, at every level, is material. Whatever is not embracing naturalism, materialism and realism, is against science.

Correct, all is abstraction. But where does Phenomenology argue that one has to leave science behind because of that? As I understand it, phenomenology is just interested in studying the phenomenal nature/structure of consciousness. Not in providing a physical explanation of it or of the material universe.

I’m responding to your post, it was you who said we had to leave science behind.
Phenomenalism, as it is adopted by Transcendental Idealism since Kant, posits that our knowledge is restricted to appearances and embraces the notion that we can never know anything about how the real world is. It’s not something just about a particular scope of interest, but a foundational theme: the empirical materiality of the world is ontologically subordinate to conscious experience, therefore materialism is false, insofar it conveys the notion that the world is really material and knowledgeable in itself, that is, that our mind conforms to its objects. Instead, for phenomenologists, the world conforms to our minds. What is the point of a naturalistic, materialistic science then? If Phenomenology wants to leave science alone perhaps it is because it cannot dare to answer that question.

But why is it wrong? Phenomenology just wants to start with phenomena given in consciousness. That is what phenomenology is interested in. And phenomena given in consciousness is exactly what science starts with. How else could it proceed. Phenomenology just takes consciousness to be primary. I don’t see a problem. Science just goes in a different direction, and uses mathematics and makes abstractions out of data given in consciousness. That’s how science works. Phenomenology does not pretend to explain the physical workings of consciousness or the physical world at large. It's just interested in phenomena as they are given in consciousness. Do materialists ask why it is necessary to start with what is given in consciousness? That would be a strange question because that is precisely what science must do. It is the only place it can start.

Takes consciousness to be primary to what? To what’s behind nature, the world? If not, if it’s only primary to our dealings with the world, that does not put the world inside of us. The world is out there and we’re thrown into it, our experience of it is necessarily dependent of what it actually is, notwithstanding that we apprehend it with the limitations of our senses. If what is given in consciousness didn’t reflect somehow what is there in itself, science would have nothing to start with. Not even philosophy, since it still relies on intersubjective agreements with other conscious subjects about the world we share in our individual experiences. A look inward to find everything necessarily leads to solipsism.

There’s no suggestion that science doesn’t work or that it could be replaced by any sort of metaphysics, Idealist or otherwise. But if science can tell us what matter is in itself, then what is its answer to the question: What is matter “in itself”? I suppose, to save time, we could start with atoms, and then ask what sub-atomic particles are made of, and if we keep asking such questions we get to something like disturbances in spatio-temporally unbounded fields. But what does that mean? It is just a linguistic abstraction of what can only be more precisely described with mathematical equations which are the more detailed and precise abstractions. But neither linguistic abstractions nor the equations themselves are the reality they refer to. So, what’s behind the equations? Oh, the equations describe matter. Ok, right... But what is matter? And around we go again. Matter is atoms...and so on ad absurdum.

Can Phenomenology bypass our linguistic abstractions? Isn’t “meaning” reduced to a linguistic abstraction of the intersubjectivity implied in our utterances? How can you talk about consciousness if not referring to another embodied consciousness out there? If it is suggested that science cannot know the thing in itself because of correlationism being true, what about Phenomenology not knowing consciousness in itself because of the very same reason?

As for solipsism, I don’t see it as the inevitable end-point of phenomenology. Phenomenology, as I understand it, recognises that other minds, and the world at large, exist. Anyone who denied them would not be necessarily be a phenomenologist but would, indeed, be a solipsist

What is the basis for the acknowledgement that a world out there, including other embodied minds, exist in themselves, if all we have is access to phenomena?

What stand does phenomenology take on value? It certainly recognises value as real, even if not physical. But, then, I think phenomenology and science (or at least, most scientists) would be in accord here.

Don't get me wrong here. I do not, could not, question science's unique ability in enabling us to understand the material universe. But the material universe is not all there is. As I've mentioned elsewhere, most of human life is taken up with valuing. Indeed, it is the reason we do science. We value the pursuit of knowledge, we value new discoveries and marvel at what science shows us about the universe. That's valuing. And most of daily life is about value. Most people don't spend the greater part of their daily lives doing logical deductions and differential equations. Life's about feeding the dog, picking the kids up from school, making a nice dinner, watching a movie... All the things that matter to us, that we value.

That talk does not make any sense to me. What doesn’t have mass and extension is immaterial? Relations, properties, processes, etc., are not material then? You cannot have value floating around on its own, it is just another linguistic abstraction from observed patterns of behavior and utterances, all of which are necessarily embodied in physical subjects. They can certainly be the object of study in social science, without any talk about their supposed immateriality. And BTW, we can do pretty well studying society scientifically, we don’t need Phenomenology for that.

[Sy Borg]

Was philosophy really a "monumental failure" before science? Science started as part philosophy.

Nature is what we have in front of us, that’s the whole show. To get the insight on what’s behind it, the ancients only had raw observation and reflection, which could not get them too far, especially when being heavily influenced by theological speculations. Not even natural philosophy managed to liberate itself from the chains of religious thinking. So, in some way indeed philosophy took on the tasks that we trust now to science, but it was at best its infancy. It should be acknowledged that philosophy advanced in other matters, in fact the philosophy of materialism was in place even before the scientific revolution. Nevertheless, it is as clear as a sunny day that with regards to nature, to the kind of things that exist, naturalistic science left behind philosophical speculation. It is odd to think that we can leave science “behind” by going back to philosophical speculation.

Philosophy as we know it did not exist before science. As you mentioned, it was natural philosophy, a combination of science and philosophy. Many of the old philosophers were also scientists. Then science split off from the rest of philosophy.

So, philosophy was not a failure, unless we consider all work done before modernity to be a failed attempt at modernity.

While I am not a fan of schools replacing hard grades with motherhood statements, I think that "developing" is a more accurate description for our ancestors' endeavours than giving them a F.

It's a good point that science was influenced by its theistic heritage. It would not surprise me if there are still scientific practices today that carry unconscious influences of the old church, and no one yet realises. It might take AI to pick up those subtleties - or AI's makeup itself might be subject to those influences.

Still, there are areas of interest to individuals, which are not of the same interest to society, which science cannot address. For instance, science is famously no help in making decision as to how to use scientific findings, the concept brought to life in Frankenstein. It doesn't help with aesthetic assessments. It won't help you develop morality. Science can tell you how things might exist but provides no reason for any of it. Stuff just happens.

There's a terrific answer on Quora about questions that science cannot answer:

What is the right answer to the trolley problem in ethics?
Who is the greatest painter?
What should I have for dinner tonight?
Is it better to be successful or to be happy?
What is the best form of government?
Is there a god?
What is the prettiest season?
Is George Clooney a better actor than Edward Norton?
What's the best brand of tea?
Should I get married?
What should I do for a living?
Is it better to have lived and lost than never to have lived at all?
What is our purpose?

These are my answers to those questions.

What is the right answer to the trolley problem in ethics?
In most cases, utilitarianism.

Who is the greatest painter?
Picasso. His skills, rhythm and ability to be interesting.

What should I have for dinner tonight?
Food that my malfunctioning intestines can handle.

Is it better to be successful or to be happy?
Happy.

What is the best form of government?
The system that best suits a region's geography, climate and cultural history.

Is there a god?
There are many, and each lives inside a believer's head.

What is the prettiest season?
Autumn ... no spring... Pass.

Is George Clooney a better actor than Edward Norton?
Edward Norton is technically better, but George Clooney is a better team player.

What's the best brand of tea?
I find Dilmah to be best value for money..

Should I get married?
If you need to ask, then no.

What should I do for a living?
Whatever work you can get.

Is it better to have lived and lost than never to have lived at all?
I know the saying as "loved and lost". Answer: each option has positives and negatives. Swings and roundabouts.

What is our purpose?
To process energy and information. We are all doing a terrific job at it.

As I review the answers, it's clear that I'm using science-like methods to make decisions, though the assumptions and choices are not actual science. That's the other side. Lagaya, in your explorations of idealist philosophy, what is your impression of the methods? Do they seem science-like to you?

[Lagayascienza]

Thanks for your response Count Lucanor

Was philosophy really a "monumental failure" before science? Science started as part philosophy.

Nature is what we have in front of us, that’s the whole show. To get the insight on what’s behind it, the ancients only had raw observation and reflection, which could not get them too far, especially when being heavily influenced by theological speculations. Not even natural philosophy managed to liberate itself from the chains of religious thinking. So, in some way indeed philosophy took on the tasks that we trust now to science, but it was at best its infancy. It should be acknowledged that philosophy advanced in other matters, in fact the philosophy of materialism was in place even before the scientific revolution. Nevertheless, it is as clear as a sunny day that with regards to nature, to the kind of things that exist, naturalistic science left behind philosophical speculation. It is odd to think that we can leave science “behind” by going back to philosophical speculation.

As I’ve already made clear, there is no question of leaving science behind. Idealists can be great scientists. In fact, some of the greatest have been Idealists. Arthur Eddington and James Jeans are examples

As I have come to understand Transcendental Idealism and phenomenology, they are not “anti-science”. They just takes a different metaphysical stance than materialism. I’m not clear on why some people don’t seem to like that. Phenomenologists and Idealists could still do science even if they thought that, at the deepest level, the universe was one great thought.

Taking a different metaphysical stance than materialism is the same as being a non-materialist. Science is naturalistic and rests on the realistic premise that nature, the universe, at every level, is material. Whatever is not embracing naturalism, materialism and realism, is against science.

But when we are talking about what underlies everything, (let's call it the ground of being), can one not be a non-materialist in respect of that ground of being, without it interfering with one’s pursuit of science. The above two examples, Jeans and Eddington, make that clear. Believing that there is a ground of being beneath or behind the material universe does not entail being anti-science. can we accuse Jeans and Eddington cannot be accused of being anti-science? Eddington in particular was great popularizer of science.

Correct, all is abstraction. But where does Phenomenology argue that one has to leave science behind because of that? As I understand it, phenomenology is just interested in studying the phenomenal nature/structure of consciousness. Not in providing a physical explanation of it or of the material universe.

I’m responding to your post, it was you who said we had to leave science behind.
Phenomenalism, as it is adopted by Transcendental Idealism since Kant, posits that our knowledge is restricted to appearances and embraces the notion that we can never know anything about how the real world is. It’s not something just about a particular scope of interest, but a foundational theme: the empirical materiality of the world is ontologically subordinate to conscious experience, therefore materialism is false, insofar it conveys the notion that the world is really material and knowledgeable in itself, that is, that our mind conforms to its objects. Instead, for phenomenologists, the world conforms to our minds. What is the point of a naturalistic, materialistic science then? If Phenomenology wants to leave science alone perhaps it is because it cannot dare to answer that question.

Where did I say that we had to leave science behind? It is true that all we can say about the universe is abstraction. And that is precisely the point. It’s the best we can do. Asserting that the materiality of the world is ontologically subordinate to conscious is not to leave science behind. As I understand it, phenomenology is just interested in the phenomenal structure of consciousness, and it tries to look at it in a systematic way. I can’t see that there is anything antithetical to science in this or in Idealism generally.

But why is it wrong? Phenomenology just wants to start with phenomena given in consciousness. That is what phenomenology is interested in. And phenomena given in consciousness is exactly what science starts with. How else could it proceed. Phenomenology just takes consciousness to be primary. I don’t see a problem. Science just goes in a different direction, and uses mathematics and makes abstractions out of data given in consciousness. That’s how science works. Phenomenology does not pretend to explain the physical workings of consciousness or the physical world at large. It's just interested in phenomena as they are given in consciousness. Do materialists ask why it is necessary to start with what is given in consciousness? That would be a strange question because that is precisely what science must do. It is the only place it can start.

Takes consciousness to be primary to what? To what’s behind nature, the world? If not, if it’s only primary to our dealings with the world, that does not put the world inside of us. The world is out there and we’re thrown into it, our experience of it is necessarily dependent of what it actually is, notwithstanding that we apprehend it with the limitations of our senses. If what is given in consciousness didn’t reflect somehow what is there in itself, science would have nothing to start with. Not even philosophy, since it still relies on intersubjective agreements with other conscious subjects about the world we share in our individual experiences. A look inward to find everything necessarily leads to solipsism.

Consciousness is primary to our experience of phenomena. That is as far as I would want to go. Obviously, without consciousness and the phenomena that are given therein, science would have nowhere to start. But it is not clear to me that a phenomenologist cannot accept that what is given in consciousness has a connection with objects perceived even if we are not in a position to know the whole truth about any reality underlying those objects and the rest of the material universe.

And looking at the phenomena given in consciousness need not entail solipsism – at least I cannot see how it must. If I were a phenomenologist, I could still acknowledge the existence of the physical world, even if I believe that what we experience is not the whole story, not the world “in itself”. And I can still, indeed I must, acknowledge the existence of other minds. But if I want to be complete idealist, I could say, as Jeans did, that the universe looks like "a great thought", and doing so would not prevent me from pursuing science, as he and Eddington did in an effort to better understand how the physical universe we perceive works. Eddington and Jeans were among the greatest of scientists and they could still believe that science was not in a position to put us in complete touch with the reality underlying the material universe. I don’t think there need be any conflict between Transcendental Idealism and phenomenology on the one hand, and science on the other. And those two great scientists certainly didn't think so either.

There’s no suggestion that science doesn’t work or that it could be replaced by any sort of metaphysics, Idealist or otherwise. But if science can tell us what matter is in itself, then what is its answer to the question: What is matter “in itself”? I suppose, to save time, we could start with atoms, and then ask what sub-atomic particles are made of, and if we keep asking such questions we get to something like disturbances in spatio-temporally unbounded fields. But what does that mean? It is just a linguistic abstraction of what can only be more precisely described with mathematical equations which are the more detailed and precise abstractions. But neither linguistic abstractions nor the equations themselves are the reality they refer to. So, what’s behind the equations? Oh, the equations describe matter. Ok, right... But what is matter? And around we go again. Matter is atoms...and so on ad absurdum.

Can Phenomenology bypass our linguistic abstractions? Isn’t “meaning” reduced to a linguistic abstraction of the intersubjectivity implied in our utterances? How can you talk about consciousness if not referring to another embodied consciousness out there? If it is suggested that science cannot know the thing in itself because of correlationism being true, what about Phenomenology not knowing consciousness in itself because of the very same reason?

I don’t see how phenomenology can overcome our linguistic abstractions. But, then, I’m not sure that it needs to or that it claims to. As far as I know it doesn’t say anything about correlationism. And as I understand it, phenomenology does not pretend to give a physical explanation of consciousness or of the material universe. It is just interested in phenomenon given in consciousness. There is nothing to stop it recognising the existence of the physical world. I don't see how it can deny the existence of the material universe. It may not be the whole story but it is there nonetheless.

As for solipsism, I don’t see it as the inevitable end-point of phenomenology. Phenomenology, as I understand it, recognises that other minds, and the world at large, exist. Anyone who denied them would not be necessarily be a phenomenologist but would, indeed, be a solipsist

What is the basis for the acknowledgement that a world out there, including other embodied minds, exist in themselves, if all we have is access to phenomena?

If I were a phenomenologist, I would know, or at could least infer, your existence from your posts here. If you lived next door I could go check to make sure. I infer your existence from the phenomenon of your posts which are given in my consciousness. I have a mind, you have a mind, we all have minds. And whether all our minds are linked to some "universal mind" which some idealists think underlies the whole show, well…that is just speculation. But it does not, as far as I can see, entail solipsism. And neither can I see how it prevents one from doing science.

What stand does phenomenology take on value? It certainly recognises value as real, even if not physical. But, then, I think phenomenology and science (or at least, most scientists) would be in accord here.

Don't get me wrong here. I do not, could not, question science's unique ability in enabling us to understand the material universe. But the material universe is not all there is. As I've mentioned elsewhere, most of human life is taken up with valuing. Indeed, it is the reason we do science. We value the pursuit of knowledge, we value new discoveries and marvel at what science shows us about the universe. That's valuing. And most of daily life is about value. Most people don't spend the greater part of their daily lives doing logical deductions and differential equations. Life's about feeding the dog, picking the kids up from school, making a nice dinner, watching a movie... All the things that matter to us, that we value.

That talk does not make any sense to me. What doesn’t have mass and extension is immaterial? Relations, properties, processes, etc., are not material then? You cannot have value floating around on its own, it is just another linguistic abstraction from observed patterns of behavior and utterances, all of which are necessarily embodied in physical subjects. They can certainly be the object of study in social science, without any talk about their supposed immateriality. And BTW, we can do pretty well studying society scientifically, we don’t need Phenomenology for that.

I get that it does not make sense. I was a dyed-in-the-wool materialist. But I have come to accept the possibility that the cup on my desk may not be the exhaustive truth about what is actually there. When this is coupled with the fact that we have no idea what consciousness is, no idea about how what is there on my desk gets into my consciousness, I think some form of idealism remains open to us.

As for relations, properties, processes, etc., I would say that they are not material, unlike like the material entities that take part in those relations, properties and processes or which give rise to them. Are you suggesting that my aesthetic appreciation of impressionist paintings, my valuing fairness and justice, and my feeling that there may be something unseen underlying the material universe, are material? I cannot see how they are material. Where is the materiality in those phenomena? What are they? What is the explanation that physics would give? I think we will find that it leads back to something like excitations or disturbances in spatio-temporally unbounded fields. But where is the valuing of justice in that? What, materially, is value? What, materially, is the beauty I experience I experience when I look at Monet's Haystacks painting?

I’m not sure that phenomenology has any interest in studying society per se, but I can see how a phenomenological perspective may provide particular insights into phenomena studied by the human sciences.