Philosophy Discussion Forums

Quotidian wrote:Might it not be that 'epistemic' and 'ontological' amount to two sides of a coin?

If only we had access to the inside of external objects – their intrinsic nature – the qualitative character of conscious states would not seem inexplicable.

You see, that is saying 'if only we could know', but what it is, that is not known by us, is 'intrinsic nature' as opposed to 'what appears' - which is an ontological distinction - in fact, I would suggest, the primary ontological distinction of phenomenal:noumenal.

You lost me. Dalai Lama is arguing that mind and matter are "really" distinct (e.g. a distinct ontological distinction). The argument above, is that the distinction may not be an ontic (a real) distinction. It is merely an epistemic one; that is, due to our own cognitive limitations:

...[t]he world itself is as smoothly natural and seamless as one could wish; it is just that we lack the conceptual resources with which to discover its objective lineaments. This position recognises that physical states necessitating phenomenal states appears mysterious to us, but McGinn explains that...the sense of deep mystery we have, which naturally expresses itself in ontological rhetoric, is really entirely epistemic; the mystery is relative to the human intellect as it attempts to come to terms with the problem...

And I'm not saying here that this is how things 'really' are . But it can't be ruled out, so one cannot conclude that there is a clear ontological distinction between mind and matter.

Our cognitive limitations determine the limit of what is knowable. So again whether it is inherent in the world, or in the mind that beholds the world, the consequence is the same.

What basis anyway is there for assuming that 'the world is seamless'? Where is the warrant for that?

I should also point out that as far as I know, the distinction that the Dalai Lama draws is not absolute, as there are no absolutes in Buddhist philosophy, nor any substances in the philosophical sense. I think his argument (which is of course actually a scholastic argument) is pragmatic in the sense that it is only intended to demonstrate the shortcomings of materialism, not to present mind and matter as ultimately distinct. In Buddhism mind and matter are more like co-existing, or co-arising and not ultimately separate (one meaning of non-dual). However Buddhism clearly accepts that mind is something that can exist (although that word is problematic in this context) in disembodied form.

Quotidian wrote: What basis anyway is there for assuming that 'the world is seamless'? Where is the warrant for that?

This is too easy. No warrant needs to be offered for this because the burden of proof lies with those who would say otherwise. Where is the seam?

Regards Leo

Quotidian wrote:What basis anyway is there for assuming that 'the world is seamless'? Where is the warrant for that?

I didn't say it was seamless. The argument is that it might be seamless and can't be ruled out. But one also should not make the opposite claim; that mind and matter are ontologically distinct. We don't know this. And we might never know this. Personally, I think 'materialism' is a meaningless term since our conception of matter/physical is open and evolving. As Jeff Polland notes:

Conceptions of the physical are, at best, contingently tied to tentative theories in physics. Since such theories are open and evolving, the concept of the physical is unstable and, hence, not sufficiently well-defined for the purpose of framing empirical or metaphysical theses. There simply is no definite a posteriori concept of the physical available for use by the physicalist. The significance of this conclusion for physicalism is also clear: if our conception of the physical is tied to open and evolving theories in physics and there is, therefore, no well defined a posteriori conception of the physical, it follows that it is pointless to inquire about the content of the theses of physicalism since they too have no well-defined content.

so what these authors are suggesting is to refrain making judgement in either direction, particularly because of our limited conception of the non-experiential/physical/material world.

Recall the derivation of 'ontology' - it is derived from the present participle of the Greek word 'to be'. So it is strictly speaking studies of being rather than study of phenomena, although that is a distinction that is nowadays barely understandable.

Obvious Leo wrote:

Quotidian wrote: What basis anyway is there for assuming that 'the world is seamless'? Where is the warrant for that?

This is too easy. No warrant needs to be offered for this because the burden of proof lies with those who would say otherwise. Where is the seam?

Well, if you're reductionist, then you believe there is basically one substance, which is physical, or nowadays what is (somewhat glibly) summarized as 'matter~energy' (or 'the mother-substance'¹

But a non-reductionistic view might be: there are different levels of being, namely, mineral, plant, animal, and man. Each of the higher levels possesses attributes that can't be explained in terms of the lower. Each also represents a higher level of organisation than the lower. It is a hierarchy that ascends from inanimate (minerall), living (plant), conscious (animal) and self conscious (man). The higher levels include the lower but are ontologically discontinuous from them. (This is one explanation for why 'mind' can't be explained in objective terms, incidentally.)

I do know that you're likely to say that there is no division between living and non-living - we reached this point before, at which time you declined to argue the detail because 'I didn't get it'.

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-- Updated August 13th, 2014, 5:09 pm to add the following --

Bohm 2 wrote:what these authors are suggesting is to refrain making judgement in either direction, particularly because of our limited conception of the non-experiential/physical/material world.

I think that is a good attitude. That is nearer the proper meaning of 'scepticism'.

-- Updated August 13th, 2014, 5:11 pm to add the following --

Bohm 2 wrote:But one also should not make the opposite claim; that mind and matter are ontologically distinct. We don't know this.

I think there are very good arguments for it, although probably out of scope here. But would be interested on your take on this old thread of mind, The Computational Theory of Mind

--------------------------

1. I believe in a single substance, the mother of all forces, which engenders the life and consciousness of everything, visible and invisible. I believe in a single Lord, biology, the unique son of the substance of the world, born from the mother substance after centuries of random shuffling of material: the encapsulated reflection of the great material sea, the epiphenomenal light of primordial darkness, the false reflection of the real world, consubstantial with the mother-substance. It is he who has descended from the shadows of the mother-substance, he who has taken on flesh from matter, he who plays at the illusion of thought from flesh, he who has become the Human Brain. I acknowledge a single method for the elimination of error, thus ultimately eliminating myself and returning to the mother substance. Amen.

Quotidian wrote: Well, if you're reductionist, then you believe there is basically one substance, which is physical, or nowadays what is (somewhat glibly) summarized as 'matter~energy' (or 'the mother-substance'1

The philosophy of the bloody obvious is quite unequivocal on this point and I feel sure I've made this quite clear. Reality is a journey of information through time. The mechanism for this is the Mandelbrot set and the underlying paradigm is the Universal Turing Machine. There is no wriggle-room in my philosophy for the existence of the physical independent of a cognition of it which can give the physical a pattern of organisation. . An atom is only an atom because we choose to call it such. Both the atom and its subatomic constituents are emergent, as whatever arbitrary hierarchical levels of pattern organisation above them must be. There is no reason to suppose that a mind which evolved differently from ours would model the universe in the same way. Absolutely none. There is also no particular reason why physics has modelled it the way it has, except that Dalton's idea seemed to be a useful one at the time. A suitably ingenious human mind could model the cosmos completely differently and still have it conform to his cognition of it. (Obviously) The only conclusions which would necessarily be identical is that matter and energy are equivalent, and that time and gravity are equivalent, and that all of these equivalences are constrained by the philosophy of the quantum. After that we are completely free to make up whatever story we like.

I strongly suspect, however, that an ET intelligence would require that whatever model they invented should make sense. The chances of both a Ptolemy and a Minkowski evolving twice, even in a universe as big as this one, must be minuscule.

Regards Leo

Is there such a thing as a Universal Turing Machine?

-- Updated August 13th, 2014, 6:52 pm to add the following --

I mean, is that something that exists? Or is it like an intellectual model?

Quotidian wrote:Well, if you're reductionist, then you believe there is basically one substance, which is physical, or nowadays what is (somewhat glibly) summarized as 'matter~energy' (or 'the mother-substance'1

That was quoted by Obvious Leo. Leo's subsequent discussion , and I trust that I have understood the gist of it, is basically like what Spinoza , a substance monist, said about aspects of the one substance.Which is that the physical and the mental are the only two aspects which we can see of the one substance. There are however an infinite number of aspects of the one substance.

I wonder if I am correct in thinking that what Leo says about information's being the best description of ultimate reality(or "the one substance") is like what Spinoza said. Or, perhaps what Leo is saying can be contained within what Spinoza said about aspects of Nature the one substance.

Quotidian wrote:Is there such a thing as a Universal Turing Machine?

-- Updated August 13th, 2014, 6:52 pm to add the following --

I mean, is that something that exists? Or is it like an intellectual model?

It is solely an intellectual model which underpins the entire science of computation. Alan Turing was a mathematician and neither a scientist nor a philosopher. Also he had other things on his mind when he was working on it, like saving his nation from annihilation and avoiding the persecution of those who saw fit to tell others whom they might be free to love.

The universal Turing Machine is basically just the computer that programmes its own input and generates a new reality every time. It forms the basis of many technologies in the field of virtual reality but of course is only applied to linear bottom-up computation. In my philosophy I extend it non-linear dynamic systems which have both top-down and bottom-up causality.

Belinda. Spinoza would find himself right at home with the complexity theorists of the modern world. So would Leibniz. For a long time I was almost a worshipper of Leibniz if only it weren't for his bloody god-derived monads. I found his purity of reason exquisite in a solely reductionist intellectual world. Eventually I realised I didn't need to kick him in the monads at all but simply tinker with them a bit to fit them into my Spinozan world. If Einstein had only troubled to read some philosophy before rushing to print he might have seen that Leibniz's meta-mathematical background to the calculus went far deeper than that of Newton, who basically had none.

Regards Leo

-- Updated August 13th, 2014, 7:40 pm to add the following --

Sorry Belinda I forgot to agree with your last point. Information can easily be transposed to either Spinoza's one substance or the Leibniz monads. The most obvious parallel of all is with Plato's Ideals and Forms, of course.

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You may also now be able to see why I call Niels Bohr possibly the greatest accidental genius of all time.

Obvious Leo said: "For a long time I was almost a worshipper of Leibniz if only it weren't for his bloody god-derived monads."

Well hey, I was gonna get you the latest model of the windowless monad for your birthday but if that's how you feel....

Obvious Leo wrote:
An interesting aside about general anaesthesia, which I've undergone quite a few times with my impermanent carcass. Those who have shared this experience will know what I'm talking about. It's the only time in your life when time stands still. One moment a pretty nurse is smiling at you as you count backwards and the next moment a different pretty nurse is smiling at you asking if you'd like a cup of tea. It is an utterly different experience from being asleep because of this complete suspension of time. Our sub-aware consciousness is always aware of time's passing and furthermore very accurately so. Many people, including me, never need an alarm clock and are able to wake themselves up at a predetermined time of their own choosing. My mother taught me how to do this in childhood. Almost all people who rely on alarm clocks to get themselves up in the morning routinely wake up a few minutes before the alarm goes off. Our minds never stop.

Regards Leo

Yes, it is an interesting aside. Whoever goes under the effects of anaesthesia and responds "positively" (I´ve read that some people are resistant or somewhat immune), would not know the passage of time. However, the conscious ones around him/her do not feel that way, and Know that it was not the case. It must be the effects of the chemicals that suspends mind (no taste, smell, sight, sound, touch, thoughts. that we might recall or become aware of). The notion of time passing is definitely a mental phenomenon. We might continue to have a live brain, but induced under certain chemicals, the mind will not perceive time or perceive time differently, if it was not informed by some other conscious beings or taken time from the moment the anaesthesia was applied. The passage of time is a mental representation, but does that make time non-existent? I don´t think so because we age nevertheless. I mean, even if we had no mental notion of time, our bodies (matter) will age anyway. The living brain, under certain chemicals, shuts down the mind. Matter (altered by chemicals) will produce certain effects. For example, chemicals produce effects on the brain, which in turn affects the mind. Our mind seems to be dependent on matter (brain) and its chemical composition, but can a mind exist without it? Not as far as we know...

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By the way, ghosts would may be considered minds without what we traditionally call matter. However, not everyone sees ghosts, and those who claim to see them have not been able to prove it scientifically. One must remember that those that say they see ghosts are dependent on their brains for their minds. They may not be able to see ghosts without their brains...

If such phenomena as telepathy exists I wonder if it would be two brains communicating or two minds? Is it a mind sending a message to a brain who then sends the message to its mind? Telepathy involves consciousness, at least evidence of it does.

I have experienced a phenomena that I call voluntary and involuntary telepathy. They were two separate events. Onr was involuntary because I seemed to have shared a mental experience without consciously wanting to. The other was voluntary, because I purposefully sent a mental image, and it seemed to have been received by another. However, I have not been able to corroborate voluntary telepathy ever since.

Anyhow, there may be attributes of the brain or mind that we do not know or understand or could even prove scientifically and satisfactorily. I mention this because I don´t want anyone to get the idea that by saying "that we have not been able to prove human mind outside of brain" that I cannot accept that there are other possibilities. It´s just that this is what we know (without a doubt) up to now because it is as far as we have been able to observe and prove to everyone´s satisfaction.

For those who have a little physics and have been following the other lines of thought which I've been developing here you should be able to see by now where the philosophy of the bloody obvious is going. When Einstein said "********, the moon is still there whether somebody's observing it or not" he was expressing a simple truth which no sane person could deny. And yet our physical models do deny this, and after a hundred years of furious epicyling on the hamster wheel it has been found utterly impossible to interpret these models in any other way. Physics denies the existence of an objective reality.

This is the observer problem which solves the entire riddle in a simple single sentence.

THREE-DIMENSIONAL SPACE IS AN ARTEFACT OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND NOT A PHYSICAL PROPERTY OF THE UNIVERSE.

That's it. Every paradox in physics vanishes at a single stroke and our universe is revealed as an entity of the most exquisite simplicity. The moon is still there whether somebody's watching it or not but the "space" between the observer and the moon is not, because this space is actually a time interval. I said that I could prove this and anybody that knows me will know that I don't stick my neck out and lay it on the chopping block unless I'm absolutely certain of what I'm saying. I have devised an experiment of laughable simplicity to test this hypothesis and I will now set it out in this forum.

My experiment is to do with the phenomenon of "quantum" entanglement. This phenomenon was the one which convinced Einstein once and for all that he was wrong, a conviction he maintained until his death. I'm going to skip all the nonsense that QM has invented over the years to explain entanglement because entire rainforests have already been needlessly slain in the production of such literature, every word of which is crap. Likewise I'm going to skip over exactly how I arrive at the prediction that I do, because this would require me to explore far more deeply into the physical details of my model than is appropriate for a forum such as this. It goes right to the heart of quantum philosophy and the nature of quantised information and time. I can explain it all in the minutest of detail and use this explanation to provide an alternative explanation for every observed physical phenomenon. I will deal with some of these more vexatious phenomena in later posts but I'll give a few examples of what they include. The expanding universe, the acceleration of this expansion, dark energy, gravitational lensing, the Twins paradox, wave-particle duality, particle superposition, and many others. I also have some sound though speculative ideas about dark matter, the Casimir effect, Bose-Einstein condensates, the Sagnac paradox and various other outstanding puzzles of physics which are just a little beyond my mathematical fluency to pursue without assistance.

I am quite sure that my experiment could be performed on the planetary surface but there are some awkward and rather obscure variables which would need to be contained and I have no experience in setting out protocols for physics experiments. The entanglement could decohere and I'd be left standing there looking like a dickhead, a fate I am not anxious to endure. Aside from all else I'm a story-teller before I'm anything else and I love the theatrical splendour of locating my experiment in an "outer space" that I deny the existence of.

Here goes. We place a space station, G, into an orbit around the earth. For various technical reasons I prefer a geo-synchronous orbit but this may not in fact be necessary. Attached to the space station on opposite sides are two drone spacecraft, A and B, pointed directly away from each other. The performance characteristics of these two craft are as identical as it is possible for human ingenuity to make them. At any given time these two vessels take off from the space station, G, simultaneously, inasmuch as this is possible, and head away from G at 180 degrees to each other. This is the critical point. The rate of acceleration and thus the speed of these vessels must be as close as possible to identical so that G at all times remains equidistant between them. Small rockets on G can be used to maintain this equidistance and to compensate for its orbit around the planet. In other words we're trying to hold G at a fixed point in space, relative to the two departing drones. Near enough will be good enough in the case of G but the synchronicity of A and B is critical. These drones must be performing as close as is humanly possible to identically with respect to their relative motions. All three vessels A,B and G are equipped with radio transmitters and receivers which are tuned to operate at discrete frequencies. In other words G can communicate with A on one frequency and with B on a different one, and A and B can only intercommunicate on yet a third frequency.

It doesn't get much more complicated than this so I hope you're following me so far. In this scenario if G sends a ping signal to either A or B the response time for its return ping will be identical for both. To make my predicted effect unquestionable we need to allow both A and B to travel a long way away from G and my suggestion would be 300,000 km, or one light second. How long it takes them to travel this distance is irrelevant as long as they both travel it in the same amount of time. By this stage of their respective journeys a ping signal to either A or B will take 2 seconds to record a ping response at G. This is where the philosophy of the bloody obvious will pull its master surprise.

What we now do is send our signal from G to A, which then re-routes it to B via its discrete radio link and then B sends the signal back to G to record the ping response. Special Relativity makes a very precise prediction of 4 seconds for the radio signal to traverse the distance GABG but I make a very different prediction. In the best of all possible worlds my prediction is that the time for the return signal GABG will be 2 seconds, the same as for GAG or for GBG. These drone spaceships are temporally entangled and the signal AB will be transmitted almost instantaneously. I say almost because this experimental scenario is fraught with a few physical limitations impossible to control with absolute precision. A and B will be entangled to a certain co-efficiency of entanglement which cannot be calculated because of these uncontrollable variables. I'm almost certain that GABG will take less than 2.1 seconds but would not be overly surprised if it took as a long as 2.5 sec. However any value less than 4 seconds will bury the spacetime paradigm under its own mountain of ********, from which it will never emerge.

So certain am I of this outcome that I'll lay my head beneath the guillotine with a smug smile and a rude gesture. The epicycling is finally over because space does not exist.

Regards Leo

P.S. I don't for one moment suggest that my prediction will ever be tested in this way. I simply felt it was the easiest way to make my point, but in fact it should be possible to test a simpler variation of it in a high school science class. I have a number of ideas along those lines but would need somebody to take me seriously first and help me work out the details.

Leo wrote:Physics denies the existence of an objective reality.

So what do you make of Richard Conn Henry's opinion, published in Nature in 2005, called The Mental Universe? Is that close to what you're talking about?


I think I follow your thought-experiment above. The question I have is that if it is so simple, why hasn't it been validated? I seem to recall that it was Eddington who provided validation of Einstein's equations by making observations of eclipse data which confirmed with Einstein's predictions of the effects of gravitational mass on the speed of light. Your proposed experiment doesn't seem too distant in principle from such validation. So wouldn't it be possible to test your prediction without actual spacecraft?

These drone spaceships are temporally entangled...

Why do you say that? I have never heard of the idea of macro-scopic objects being entangled.

Would you consider posting your above prediction on Physics Forum? It might be interesting to see what other physics followers had to say about it, don't you think?

Quotidian wrote: So what do you make of Richard Conn Henry's opinion, published in Nature in 2005, called The Mental Universe? Is that close to what you're talking about? (If so, I can stop arguing with you

I hadn't seen the article before but I just read it. It's not a form of language that a systems theorist would use but it's perfectly in tune with what I'm saying. Yes. This is how I see the physical world, but a systems theorist would be able to strip it of its teleological undertone, which is essentially reductionist. We don't perceive a representation of our physical world but we bring it forth into our consciousness as a reconstruction of patterns which have no existence independent of a dynamic conceptual framework.

Quotidian wrote:I think I follow your thought-experiment above. The question I have is that if it is so simple, why hasn't it been validated? I seem to recall that it was Eddington who provided validation of Einstein's equations by making observations of eclipse data which confirmed with Einstein's predictions of the effects of gravitational mass on the speed of light. Your proposed experiment doesn't seem too distant in principle from such validation. So wouldn't it be considered?

It hasn't been validated because nobody has ever asked the right question of the model. Indeed Eddington validated the equations but he didn't validate the explanation, which has still never been validated because it is non-mechanical. i.e. spacetime is an action-at-a-distance model. The light bends towards the massive body because it follows the path of the curvature of space. Space has no physical properties, thus no explanation for such a curvature is possible, even in principle. This has held the entire science up for over a century and the Blue's Brothers are well aware they've got something badly cocked up. Henry appears to be one of them and the numbers are growing daily.

Here is an explanation for gravitational lensing in a spaceless universe. All motion is through time alone and it has been well known since GR that the speed of time is inversely proportional to the strength of the gravitational field. Clocks tick faster on top of the hill than they do at the bottom, etc. Clocks inside black holes might produce one tick per hundred human lifetimes if we could measure such a thing from our own inertial frame but we can't. Inside the black hole the clock ticks at 1 sec/sec because absolutely EVERYTHING slows down, including the speed of light. The speed of light in a spaceless universe is exactly the same thing as the speed of passing time. As the light from a distant quasar travels through time to the observer it is slowed down by the gravitational field of the intervening galaxy. The observer perceives this as bent light. The observer will always observe the speed of light to be a constant because he can only perform this measurement in his own inertial frame, where time always proceeds at 1sec/sec regardless of gravity. In an absolute sense this is false but the universe has no absolute time because it is relativistic. Galileo knew this hundreds of years ago but like Newton after him he assumed that the speed of light was instantaneous. The penny should have dropped when they noticed that the speed of light was not only finite but observed to be a constant. In an objectively real relativistic world it simply cannot be possible that the speed of light actually IS a constant. Impossibility doesn't seem to bother physicists but it bothers the **** out of me.

Quotidian wrote:Another question (forgive me): have you, or would you consider, posting your above prediction on Physics Forum? It might be interesting to see what other physics followers had to say about it, don't you think?

It's a very long story,Q, and not a happy one. It is simply forbidden to question the spacetime paradigm in any physics forum. It is regarded as immutable physical law and if one attempts to use logic one is laughed into submission, very often with considerable malice. Only equations will do and no Newtonian mathematical tools can describe this model. No other mathematical system is permitted and this would make no difference anyway because I wouldn't know how to use one. Any reference to any philosophy whatsoever is unmercifully ridiculed, philosophy being for dead Greeks and navel-gazers pissing around with the meanings of words. You honestly wouldn't be able to understand how hard it is to get through to these guys, it is truly heart-breaking and has cost me dearly of my time. However I have managed to post this prediction and supportive argument on another forum before finally being ejected for heresy. I have a sarcastic tongue on me when provoked and little tolerance for fools so it came as no surprise. It's still there and I still correspond in private with a few of the members who could see that I had been harshly dealt with. I have approached physics departments directly at a number of universities and been very kindly and indulgently treated. In their condescending way they've praised the depth of my physics knowledge and then politely pointed out that "that's not the way we do physics". The infuriating thing for me has always been that I'm not contradicting any of their findings. All I'm offering is an explanation for why they see the things they do. I've had to learn an awful lot about it to be able to this coherently, and I know bloody well I haven't been wasting my time because I've got damn near every philosopher in history in my corner, and now the complexity theorists as well. This can't be wrong, mate.

I've gone to the trouble of joining this site just to get this stuff down somewhere else, that's all. I was advised by many not to bother with this place because it's full of crackpot science, religious fanaticism, bogus philosophy and conspiracy theories. By and large I've found this to be true but not universally true. I find it very helpful in formulating my language of expression if I'm posed the right questions and look at them from different angles. A few people have been helpful, including yourself on Buddha and Kant, and I'm sincerely grateful. I've spent forty years on this and don't propose to give up,Q, but I'm a hermit nowadays and getting out of my home is difficult for me. I'll do it when I'm sure I'm ready but I don't expect an easy ride. New ideas have always been very difficult to get across to people who have so much invested in the old ones.

Regards Leo

-- Updated August 14th, 2014, 1:30 pm to add the following --

Quotidian wrote: Why do you say that? I have never heard of the idea of macro-scopic objects being entangled.

Sorry I missed this question. That's what I meant when I said they've never asked the right question of their model. It took me years to find it myself and I never for one moment intended to say a single word in public without such a question.

Leo wrote:We don't perceive a representation of our physical world but we bring it forth into our consciousness as a reconstruction of patterns which have no existence independent of a dynamic conceptual framework.

So is consciousness, rather than what we think of as 'matter', the basic 'stuff of the world'?

Leo wrote:. I'm almost certain that GABG will take less than 2.1 seconds but would not be overly surprised if it took as a long as 2.5 sec. However any value less than 4 seconds will bury the spacetime paradigm

Wouldn't this be scalable? If you conducted such an experiment on a smaller scale, you should still be able to detect the anomaly, should you not? Why should such an experiment not be carried out with pairs of particles, like the Alain Aspect experiments?