Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Philosophy Club

[Atla]

You oppose my position with emotional attacks, and vague promises of evidence that is not presented or identified? No philosophical response seems called-for.

It appears this exchange is over, and I have not learned, as I hoped to, how dualistic approaches to science and philosophy have 'been refuted'. Shame.

Emotional posts are your thing, and I haven't promised you anything in this topic. Your position was a bunch of standard platitudes, getting up to date with metaphysics actually requires some dedication and hard work, and even then many people can't grasp what the experimental results seem to be telling us. I'm not just talking about QM here but it's certainly a central issue.

[Atla]

Okay so we can sum up you position as:

- only idiotic philosophers would dismiss the existence of qualia (such as feels and tastes)
- only idiotic philosophers would believe in the existence of qualia (such as feels and tastes)

Dennett logic for the win..

You love making up crap, don't you?

I get it; it's literally all you have left.

This is all your crap and I find it truly pathetic how you are trying to blame it on me.

[Pattern-chaser]

You oppose my position with emotional attacks, and vague promises of evidence that is not presented or identified? No philosophical response seems called-for.

It appears this exchange is over, and I have not learned, as I hoped to, how dualistic approaches to science and philosophy have 'been refuted'. Shame.

Emotional posts are your thing, and I haven't promised you anything in this topic. Your position was a bunch of standard platitudes, getting up to date with metaphysics actually requires some dedication and hard work, and even then many people can't grasp what the experimental results seem to be telling us. I'm not just talking about QM here but it's certainly a central issue.

Instead of attacking my ignorance, etc., why not explain, with examples, and maybe links too, how, when and by whom dualistic approaches to science and philosophy have been "refuted", as you claim?

[Pattern-chaser]

[G]etting up to date with metaphysics actually requires some dedication and hard work, and even then many people can't grasp what the experimental results seem to be telling us. I'm not just talking about QM here but it's certainly a central issue.

What metaphysical experiments are these? Mostly, it's not possible to carry out experiments on metaphysics. Metaphysics is generally not the sort of stuff you can illuminate by experiment. QM isn't metaphysics, it's science. Or it was when I used Schrodinger's wave equation many years ago, to analyse the tunnelling of electrons through an insulating barrier. QM raises philosophical questions, yes. But it is still the best scientific theory we've ever created.

[Atla]

You oppose my position with emotional attacks, and vague promises of evidence that is not presented or identified? No philosophical response seems called-for.

It appears this exchange is over, and I have not learned, as I hoped to, how dualistic approaches to science and philosophy have 'been refuted'. Shame.

Emotional posts are your thing, and I haven't promised you anything in this topic. Your position was a bunch of standard platitudes, getting up to date with metaphysics actually requires some dedication and hard work, and even then many people can't grasp what the experimental results seem to be telling us. I'm not just talking about QM here but it's certainly a central issue.

Instead of attacking my ignorance, etc., why not explain, with examples, and maybe links too, how, when and by whom dualistic approaches to science and philosophy have been "refuted", as you claim?

Yeah let's explain mountains of stuff in one post.

It was refuted indirectly by all of science: for example there isn't a single evidence supporting genuine duality or genuine separation in the universe, everything is consistent with nonduality and non-separateness.
And in QM we also seem to have direct proof of nonduality because of the entire measurement problem, and direct proof of non-separateness because of entanglement.
Of course all this can be doubted and debated too, but until there is no evidence to the contrary, these can be seen as the new default metaphysical views.
And things like the self-other dichotomy or the subject-object dichotomy are contradicted in pretty much everything known today.

[Gertie]

I don't write off Atla's monist Idealism position either, if we're going for monism why not go with the substance we directly know exists, rather than go with the substance it presents as a representative model? It's a fair point.

I'm not really a monist, not an idealist and reject substance theory. The issues are subtle: Western monism, idealism and panpsychism are still subtle forms of dualistic thinking for various reasons. And substance theory is just ancient nonsense.

Think of it this way: if we go in the direction of 'monistic panpsychism', and then go through it, leave the scope of Western philosophy alltogether, and still keep going, our views eventually collapse into the rather Eastern version of nondualism I subscribe to.

It's actually even more complicated than that, because first we arrive at the 'monistic' nondualism that most people subscribe to, but we have to still keep going forward and finally arrive at the lesser known 'non-monistic' nondualism (I haven't seen it categorized better yet). It's the only worldview I know of that's naturally compatible with all of science and also automatically solves things like the Hard problem etc.

I watched the talk you posted earlier, can't recall it well now, but the way I could get a handle on it was that everything is fundamentally akin to a field of experience, which presents in comprehensible ways as matter and everything else we perceive (reminded me of Plato's Cave). That might not be his position exactly, but that was how I could make sense of it at least.

I thought the bloke who gave the talk was very good at laying out the problems with how we can understand the issue, I agreed with him in that part. He clearly understands the problems.

Then he talked about QM which I don't understand, and then he came up with his solution. But it seemed speculative to me, another 'What If...'. And if the missing explanatory step between the problem and his solution is QM, I'd assume people who do understand QM would all come to his conclusion and be announcing QM had cracked the problem. So I think it's right for me to believe his conclusion is speculative.

That's my take.

(The meditation and 'feeling oneness with the world' through altered states of consciousness aren't persuasive to me, I consider that to be in principle explainable as feelings we get when we effectively shut down certain processes which contribute to our sense of self being in our awareness).

[Pattern-chaser]

...why not explain, with examples, and maybe links too, how, when and by whom dualistic approaches to science and philosophy have been "refuted", as you claim?

[Dualism] was refuted indirectly by all of science

This seems unlikely. After all, reductionism - pretty much the archetype of dualism - is a core tool of science.

[Steve3007]

QM isn't metaphysics, it's science. Or it was when I used Schrodinger's wave equation many years ago, to analyse the tunnelling of electrons through an insulating barrier. QM raises philosophical questions, yes. But it is still the best scientific theory we've ever created.

I think QM is deemed to be particularly relevant to philosophical questions about the interface between mind and matter, and dualism/non-dualism/monism etc because it brought into focus the fact (which had obviously always been there) that the observer of a physical system is itself part of the physical system.

As far as I can gather, these non-dualism ideas start from the observation that divisions in Nature, including the division between observer and observed, can be changed depending on purpose. i.e. we impose divisions on Nature to the extent that they are useful to our current purposes. For example, for some purposes we conclude that the Earth is a thing. For other purposes we conclude that it is a large collection of smaller things. Therefore it is concluded (by those who are that way inclined) that those divisions are, like any system of classification, abstract and not real. Therefore it is concluded (by those who are that way inclined) that, ontologically but not epistemologically, the universe is just one thing and that "thingness" (if, by that, we mean real sub-things within the universe) has no place in an ontology.

[Pattern-chaser]

QM isn't metaphysics, it's science. Or it was when I used Schrodinger's wave equation many years ago, to analyse the tunnelling of electrons through an insulating barrier. QM raises philosophical questions, yes. But it is still the best scientific theory we've ever created.

I think QM is deemed to be particularly relevant to philosophical questions about the interface between mind and matter, and dualism/non-dualism/monism etc because it brought into focus the fact (which had obviously always been there) that the observer of a physical system is itself part of the physical system.

Oh, that is what the fuss is about. The discovery that observation is active, not passive; no more 'impartial observers', at least in that sense. Thanks.

As far as I can gather, these non-dualism ideas start from the observation that divisions in Nature, including the division between observer and observed, can be changed depending on purpose. i.e. we impose divisions on Nature to the extent that they are useful to our current purposes. For example, for some purposes we conclude that the Earth is a thing. For other purposes we conclude that it is a large collection of smaller things. Therefore it is concluded (by those who are that way inclined) that those divisions are, like any system of classification, abstract and not real. Therefore it is concluded (by those who are that way inclined) that, ontologically but not epistemologically, the universe is just one thing and that "thingness" (if, by that, we mean real sub-things within the universe) has no place in an ontology.

Dualism has pros and cons, as do the alternatives. In theory, I see no reason to divide anything without good strong reasons, and I am aware of none. But in practice, I also know that human minds cannot digest LU+E (Life, the Universe and Everything) in one bite, so we must either not think about anything at all complicated, or we must practice reductionism, which is multiply-recursive dualism. We divide and divide until the parts we have are small and simple enough for us to hold in our minds. I think we understand this division is unjustified, but the fact is that we have no choice.

In some ways, where we can, we renounce dualism. In other ways, where we cannot, we do not. There's a bit of cognitive dissonance there.

My discussion with @Atla has not been about dualism directly, but about their claim that dualism has been "refuted" by science, or maybe by philosophy, I'm not sure. Of course it has not, but non-dualism currently holds the consensus, and I am quite happy with that. I have long accepted the tension between division (dualism) being unjustified, and reductionism (dualism) being necessary.

[Pattern-chaser]

I have long accepted the tension between division (dualism) being unjustified, and reductionism (dualism) being necessary.

Oops! Of course this dualism (reductionism) is only necessary for the certainty-worshipping cults within Western science and philosophy. As others have already observed here, dualism doesn't seem to be so problematic in Eastern philosophy.

[Steve3007]

Oh, that is what the fuss is about. The discovery that observation is active, not passive; no more 'impartial observers', at least in that sense. Thanks.

Yes, I assume that's what the fuss is about. I assume that's why Atla mentioned a figure of "nearly a hundred years" in a post to you (I think) a while ago as the timescale for which he claims "dualism has been disproved" or some words similar to that. Nearly a hundred years takes us back to the dawn of QM so presumably that's what he had in mind.

[Atla]

I watched the talk you posted earlier, can't recall it well now, but the way I could get a handle on it was that everything is fundamentally akin to a field of experience, which presents in comprehensible ways as matter and everything else we perceive (reminded me of Plato's Cave). That might not be his position exactly, but that was how I could make sense of it at least.

I thought the bloke who gave the talk was very good at laying out the problems with how we can understand the issue, I agreed with him in that part. He clearly understands the problems.

Then he talked about QM which I don't understand, and then he came up with his solution. But it seemed speculative to me, another 'What If...'. And if the missing explanatory step between the problem and his solution is QM, I'd assume people who do understand QM would all come to his conclusion and be announcing QM had cracked the problem. So I think it's right for me to believe his conclusion is speculative.

That's my take.

No one fully understands QM as far as I know (personally I've been at it for 10 years, and the central issue still continues to be elusive, although I've come up with a unique hypothesis by now). It's not that QM is the missing link, it's that QM points to the nondual philosophical paradigm, which is virtually unknown in the West. And in the nondual philosophical paradigm, the Hard problem is automatically resolved (there isn't one because there can't be), all we are left with are the Easy problems.

Anyway that video is somewhat outdated, Russell said that his views have evolved somewhat since then.
Btw the best source for this worldview are Alan Watts videos, I think he's by far the best at presenting it to a Western audience.

(The meditation and 'feeling oneness with the world' through altered states of consciousness aren't persuasive to me, I consider that to be in principle explainable as feelings we get when we effectively shut down certain processes which contribute to our sense of self being in our awareness).

Well, people who claim this stuff are somewhat delusional or maybe narcissistic+escapist. There is no 'oneness' to be 'felt', existence is simply nondual and things are fundamentally non-separable, but this doesn't come with some kind of universal sensation or feeling we can get access to. And one can arrive at such views without doing any meditation.

[Atla]

...why not explain, with examples, and maybe links too, how, when and by whom dualistic approaches to science and philosophy have been "refuted", as you claim?

[Dualism] was refuted indirectly by all of science

This seems unlikely. After all, reductionism - pretty much the archetype of dualism - is a core tool of science.

Reductionism is a tool, not ontology.

[Atla]

I think QM is deemed to be particularly relevant to philosophical questions about the interface between mind and matter, and dualism/non-dualism/monism etc because it brought into focus the fact (which had obviously always been there) that the observer of a physical system is itself part of the physical system.

Oh, that is what the fuss is about. The discovery that observation is active, not passive; no more 'impartial observers', at least in that sense. Thanks.

No, that's not what the fuss is about. I mean sure, there is some fuss about this one as well: observation always disturbs what is being observed. Originally, one of the core principles of the scientific process was the idea of total objectivity, and this idea was thoroughly refuted - by the scientific process. I'm not sure that we even need QM for this realization though. It's pretty simple and straightforward.
In short: observations disturb what has to be measured

The fuss is about the mindbending problem at the heart of QM, called the measurement problem. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think Steve understands this one.
In short (and take this as a metaphor, or with a bucket of salt): observations not only disturb what has to be measured, they produce it

[Steve3007]

The fuss is about the mindbending problem at the heart of QM, called the measurement problem. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think Steve understands this one.
In short (and take this as a metaphor, or with a bucket of salt): observations not only disturb what has to be measured, they produce it

The "measurement problem", and its manifestation in the observations of particular experiments, has been discussed in various topics started by various posters here over the years. Here's one I started a few years ago as an example:

viewtopic.php?p=232485#p232485

Here's another example from even longer ago, by another poster, discussing the famous "delayed choice quantum eraser":
viewtopic.php?p=69588#p69588