What is Reddit's opinion of Mind & Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False?

>So MM encompasses both hard atheist skepticism and MN, but not soft atheism…

Yes. Materialism is the strongest (most extreme) claim (in that direction), because it leaves no theoretical space for anything supernatural (of any sort).

>And neither skepticism nor MN includes MM

They don't have to, no. You can be skeptical or a naturalist without being a materialist, and the distinction is quite important. Thomas Nagel, for example, has spent decades trying to explain to people why materialism is wrong, but he's a naturalist and he's a skeptic regarding God - he "just can't bring himself to believe in such a thing".

>but MN is a purely science perspective but doesn’t encompass atheists of either type

If you are a MN then you believe science can, in theory, explain everything that is going on in the universe. That is very hard to square with belief in the existence of anything worthy of the name "God".

>And the only difference between PS and NPS is that PS believes science and metaphysics are compatible, and NPS believes that supernatural is always the answer.

Not quite. Science is science and metaphysics is metaphysics. Whether or not they are compatible doesn't make sense as a question. The question is whether science is compatible with mysticism (which are both epistemic claims ie they are about what we can know and how we can know it). PS views the laws of physics as limits to what is possible - not even God can break the laws of physics. NPS claims that physically impossible things can happen if God or some other supernatural agent wills them to happen.

>However, recent studies and tonnes of research are cohesively beginning
to align in the direction that most of the knowledge at hand indicates
that the greater current probability is that our consciousness is
(merely) a product of our brain and pretty much all of our life,

This is simply not true. Recent philosophical developments suggest the exact opposite. Materialist/functionalist theories of mind hit a high watermark between the 1950s and the 1980s, and are now under serious and sustained attack. Indeed, I'd say we are looking at the early stages of major paradigm shift which consigns metaphysical materialism to intellectual history.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mind-Cosmos-Materialist-Neo-Darwinian-Conception/dp/0199919755

>Consciousness cannot be fundamental. It developed through evolution and it’s main use is to survive reality. It simply cannot be fundamental to the universe, because the universe will still be with or without it. It belongs to things that need to survive reality, things without consciousness need not survive reality.

There's no necessary link between consciousness and the need to survive. Plants need to survive, but that doesn't mean they need to be conscious.

As for whether consciousness developed through evolution - that is very much an open question. I believe there is a logical problem with materialism, and if you accept that materialism is false then materialistic accounts of evolution also have to be rejected.

See: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mind-Cosmos-Materialist-Neo-Darwinian-Conception/dp/0199919755

I think the real question we need to ask is how to square what we do know about evolution with what we don't know about consciousness, and we will not end up at a position where we can safely conclude that consciousness isn't fundamental (or something along those lines).

>Evolutionary biology is increasingly uncovering examples symbioses and cooperation as drivers of natural history -- it is becoming increasingly evident that cooperation is just as essential as competition in evolution.

That has been very obvious for a very long time. There is nothing new about it. Nothing I have said denies it.

>The idea that life's ultimate mechanism boils down to competition or exploitation is worth considering, but it's not self evident.

I never said anything about any "ultimate mechanism". However, symbiosis doesn't change what I sam saying. You won't get a better example of symbiosis than that between humans and dogs. But the idea that the symbiotic relationship between humans and dogs is beneficial to the rest of the ecosystem is clearly absurd. Humans and dogs work together because it is the interests of both to do so, and this very obviously comes at the expense of other organisms - specifically the ones they jointly hunt.

That is how the natural world works. The key word here is "natural". If you want to talk about "life's ultimate mechanism" then we cannot restrict the discussion to "natural" in this sense. Whether there could be an ultimate mechanism that transcends natural causality is very much an open question.

see: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mind-Cosmos-Materialist-Neo-Darwinian-Conception/dp/0199919755

> Why is it the case that specific damage to parts of the brain correlated to certain behaviors; result in changes to that exact behavior.

Because brains are necessary for consciousness - or at least they are necessary for anything resembling human consciousness. Neccesary, but not sufficient.

>I don't understand why you think it's a principled position to propose anything outside of scientific understanding.

All sorts of things are outside of scientific understanding. Science is extremely powerful, but its power is directly linked to its limitations. Specifically relevant in this case is the fact that neither epistemology nor metaphysics fall within the remit of science. Both of those things are scientifically meaningless - you cannot even define what epistemology and metaphysics are with scientific language.

>The likes of which have actually come a LONG way in the last 10 years.

Science is no closer to being able to do epistemology and metaphysics when Immanuel Kant explained to the world exactly why science can't ever do them in 1781.

>To quite frank, I believe those who are still proposing solutions outside of materialism have not yet immersed themselves in the current scientific understanding of consciousness in relation to the physical brain.

To be quite frank, you have no idea what you are talking about. The problem isn't my lack of understanding of science. I have a degree in philosophy and cognitive science. The problem is your woeful lack of understanding of philosophy.

> It has come a tremendous distance in both epistemology and consensus.

This statement is complete, unadulterated nonsense. Materialism is under sustained and intense attack, because it is widely understood to have been falsified. If you came from a philosophical background rather than a scientific one, you'd realise this.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mind-Cosmos-Materialist-Neo-Darwinian-Conception/dp/0199919755

> Here, we strive for something of a continuation of the 'academic' environment, meaning, thinking within the framework of the standard models and just generally speaking the shared language of the physicists, that is, physics. That's what the rules 'mean'. It may not be everyone's thing.

I presume you believe Henry Stapp is an academic?

There is plenty of "quantum nonsense" that needs to be rejected. The problem is that far too many people consider people like Henry Stapp and Thomas Nagel to be on the wrong side of the line, when actually they are both very highly respected thinkers who are trying to provoke a Kuhnian paradigm shift in physics. If what's happening here is resistance to a legitimate paradigm shift, rather than the rejection of anti-intellectual nonsense, then that's a big problem, because you're on the wrong side of history.

Unless you like dense but vague prose with no obvious application, I can't recommend this one, at least from the beginning in the free kindle sample: https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Cosmos-Materialist-Neo-Darwinian-Conception/dp/0199919755/ref=la_B000AQ6R56_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1520986930&sr=1-1

But the first taste is free and YMMV. There are lots of blurbs from prestigious publications so go figure.

I'm a scientist and former atheist and thought the theory of evolution was simple unassailable overwhelming science. When I became a Christian I continued to have that belief, but curious about the young earth creationism (YEC) I took a couple short courses on YEC. Both were compete and utter garbage. Then I went on to study down into the science-based and philosophical-basis for intelligent design or rejection of neo Darwinism, in come cases written by atheists such as this one by Nagal. Without an aim to persuade you to accept my religious beliefs, it would be interesting to talk to you about the major problems there are with Neo Darwinism, many of which are now becoming recognized by evolutionary biologists. I don't conclude that Neo Darwinism is utterly false, but I'm convinced it is at least incomplete.

Cheers!

I would like to add in the alternate viewpoint from eminent agnostic/atheist philosopher of science, Thomas Nagel. His book Mind and Cosmos does a very good job of drawing out the limitations of these alternate theories.

Keep in mind that the vast majority of the comments here are from staunch materialists who rely on the evidence of their 5 senses and seek to explain phenomena in terms of natural physical laws Atheism has nothing to say about consciousness but contrary to popular opinion there are many atheists who see consciousness as a property existing independent of what the 5 senses can describe and which must be accounted for in any theory of reality. A great and erudite book on this subject is Thomas Nagel's Mind and Cosmos.

>The physical sciences can describe organisms like ourselves as parts of the objective spatio-temporal order – our structure and behavior in space and time – but they cannot describe the subjective experiences of such organisms or how the world appears to their different particular points of view. There can be a purely physical description of the neurophysiological processes that give rise to an experience, and also of the physical behavior that is typically associated with it, but such a description, however complete, will leave out the subjective essence of the experience – how it is from the point of view of its subject — without which it would not be a conscious experience at all. Even though the theistic outlook, in some versions, is consistent with the available scientific evidence, I don’t believe it, and am drawn instead to a naturalistic, though non-materialist, alternative. Mind, I suspect, is not an inexplicable accident or a divine and anomalous gift but a basic aspect of nature that we will not understand until we transcend the built-in limits of contemporary scientific orthodoxy.

Indeed. Materialism/physicalism is still the dominant view in the west but it seems to be undermined more and more as time goes on. I think its about time we move on from such an ancient paradigm and go with the evidence. Nagel has some awesome work on this in his book Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False as published by Oxford University Press in 2012.

> Not all, but I didn't say that all were. I said that some were.

Right and the ones that aren't we can just use experience for some of them.

> And in the case of the instruments of the sciences they're theory-laden extensions. I'm not really sure where you're going with this.

Just that we do arrive at some of these conclusions via these instruments which are extensions of our senses.

> I like Pryor's 2000 paper and Huemer's 2001 book.

Thanks for the links. I checked out the paper and he doesn't seem to be proving realism (and you kind of made note of this), I don't have time to read a whole book right now so if you're willing to just share a particular argument from it that would be great.

> Also, again as I say above, the point here is not one particular argument, but rather that professional philosophers converge on the view that idealism is false and realism correct to such a degree that no other philosophical theory can lay claim to.

I understand that a lot of philosophers are realists, just like how a lot of humans are theists, but this grants no support for realism or theism (as I'm sure you already know). As you've pointed out before materialism seems to be a kind of dominant viewpoint right now, surely this contributes to the notions of realism, however materialism is starting to unravel: Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False

> Do they effect the brain differently?

I have no idea if any studies have been done on this but (outside of the answer being interesting to people who want to know how the brain works) I'm not sure why we really need an answer to this question as phrased this way. Generally the reasons people give for the value of the arts/humanities include their ability to enhance critical thinking, enrich our perspectives, help us understand other people's points of view and other cultures, etc etc and the argument can be made without reference to brain science. In fact (and sorry, this is a bit of me on my soap box), I think people's increased need to see brain scans now before they accept arguments/insights about human behavior and society is one symptom of an overly STEM culture, where people for some reason think the only real knowledge is knowledge which can be apprehended through thoroughly objective, empirical, and if possible, quantitative methods. The humanities (and the social sciences) are important because, as vital as STEM is, there are significant parts of human experience (namely, the experience part, involving our subjectivity) that the social science, humanities, and arts are better suited to reach.

For more arguments regarding humanities' value for critical thought see Martha Nussbaum's Not For Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities. For arguments about why STEM is not well suited for explaining many important aspects of our lives see Thomas Nagel's Mind and Cosmos which he summarizes here.

No problem! Here are some recommendations (they are highly biased to what I've enjoyed and what's influenced me as someone who has been in similar shoes as you!)

Meditations is of course a classic in both epistemology and philosophy of mind. I'm not well versed in epistemology. But I do know some philosophy of mind, and I think that if you enjoyed Descartes' anti-materialist thoughts about the nature of the mind/soul then you would also really enjoy Thomas Nagel. I doubly recommend him to you because he is an atheist who nonetheless doubts that the world can be approached in fully materialist or scientific terms. His most famous article "What is it Like to be a Bat?" is a great intro to his views. He's also written books on these issues which are on my own reading list. There are also some pretty cool ancient texts which deal with these issues...you said you've read Plato, I don't know if you're familiar with the Phaedo, but it's a beautiful dialogue that deals with the nature of the mind as well as questions about death and value.

Ethics is much more my area so I can make more recommendations here. The ancients are a must...read The Republic (Plato) and Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle) if you haven't already (both ended up influencing some medieval catholic philosophers so you may recognize some ideas if you've already read Aquinas or Augustine). There are also some contemporary philosophers whose commentary on these ancient thinkers is pretty interesting, so if you want to understand the ancients more deeply, I highly recommend Martha Nussbaum's The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy. You might also like her book Upheavals of Thought which is partly a work in moral psychology (asking about the nature of emotions) but also a work in ethics as it asks what lessons ancient, Christian, and contemporary thought on the soul can offer us for modern day moral life.

If you're interested in Kant's ethics you should obviously read his Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. You are correct that Kant is a pretty difficult philosopher to read (though the Groundwork is one of his more accessible works). It might help you to also read some modern day Kantians, though bear in mind they are offering their own (often controversial) interpretation of Kant's ideas! I believe Christine Korsgaard is one of the biggest names in modern day Kantianism, so reading an article like this one could help you think more clearly about Kant and his legacy. Since you are coming from a background where you thought a lot about religion, I also recommend this article by Kantian Kyla Ebels-Duggan for a fascinating exploration of the disagreement between Kantians and utilitarians and an argument as to why that disagreement might lead some to hope there is a god.

>Yeah, that's the most interesting one for me too, and we have nothing better than "an emergent property of certain complex networks"

It that's the best we've got, then we've got a major problem. It's not just a poor explanation -- it looks very much like it is certifiably wrong. It doesn't make sense, because it commits a category mistake. How can subjectivity "emerge" from complex networks? What does "emerge" mean? At this point the only available way of answering the question is to propose analogies which don't work ("it's like digestion!" No it isn't.)

>But to replace that we need testable predictions, and evidence.

Actually, first we need a definition of consciousness which is meaningful in a scientific context. How can science provide meaningful answers to questions about consciousness when the word itself doesn't refer to to anything within materialistic reality? This isn't even a scientific problem. It's a conceptual problem resulting from clashing metaphysical and epistemic assumptions.

>Or maybe something else entirely? But until then we have nothing but speculation, as far as I've seen (and I've looked!). As a scientist and engineer I would like nothing more than a verifiable discovery that turns everything we know about reality on its head - but we know a lot, and it works really well so far. We need really good evidence if we're going to introduce some new, complicated explanation for consciousness beyond known science.

We have good evidence - logical evidence - that materialism is false. I believe the scientific community will eventually be forced to admit that this is the case. It has already begun: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mind-Cosmos-Materialist-Neo-Darwinian-Conception/dp/0199919755.

The question is where can scientifically-minded people go next, once they accept the reality of the mind-body problem. 90% of people then make the mistake of declaring that dualism and idealism are just as bad as materialism, and therefore we might as well stick with materialism. As Nagel's book explains, once we abandon materialism the next questions ought to be about causality, not ontology.

What does a non-materialistic naturalism look like?

>I just finished this. I would classify it as earnest nonsense. The book did not raise one point I found valid or interesting. It will be quietly forgotten.

Ah, I see. So the whole book is nonsense, it raised no valid points, but you can't actually explain a single thing that was wrong with it.

>I had been hoping for a detailed defense of the Hard Problem.

Then today is your lucky day. Please follow the definitions and reasoning step by step, and explain clearly what your objection is if you don't like one of the steps. Let's see whether you are capable of following a detailed logical argument.

1. The existence and definition of consciousness.

Consciousness exists. We are conscious. What do these words mean? How do they get their meaning? Answer: subjectivity and subjectively. We are directly aware of our own conscious experiences. Each of us knows that we aren't a zombie, and we assume other humans (and animals) are also subjectively experiencing things. So the word "conciousness" gets its meaning via a private ostensive definition. We privately "point" to our own subjective experiences and associate the word "consciousness" with those experiences. Note that if we try to define the word "consciousness" to mean "brain activity" then we are begging the question - we'd simply be defining materialism to be true, by assigning a meaning to the word "consciousness" which contradicts its actual meaning as used. So we can't do that.

2) What does the term "material" mean?

This is of critical importance, because mostly it is just assumed that everybody knows what it means. This is because the word has a non-technical, non-metaphysical meaning that is understood by everybody. We all know what "the material universe" means. It refers to a realm of galaxies, stars and planets, one of which we know to harbour living organisms like humans, because we live on it. This material realm is made of molecules, which are made of atoms (science added this bit, but it fits naturally with the rest of the concept - there is no clash). This concept is non-metaphysical because it is common to everybody, regardless of their metaphysics. It doesn't matter whether you are a materialist, a dualist, an idealist, a neutral monist, a kantian, or somebody who rejects metaphysics entirely, there is no reason to reject this basic concept of material. Let us call this concept "material-NM" (non-metaphysical).

There are also some metaphysically-loaded meanings of "material", which come about by attaching a metaphysical claim to the material-NM concept. The two that matter here are best defined using Kantian terminology. We are directly aware of a material world. It's the one you are aware of right now - that screen you are seeing - that keyboard you are touching. In Kantian terminology, these are called "phenomena". It is important not to import metaphysics into the discussion at this point, as we would if we called them "mental representations of physical objects". Calling them "phenomena" does not involve any metaphysical assumptions. It merely assumes that we all experience a physical world, and labels that "phenomena". Phenomena are contrasted with noumena. Noumena are the world as it is in itself, independent of our experiences of it. Some people believe that the noumenal world is also a material world. So at this point, we can define two metaphysically-loaded concepts of material. "Material-P" is the phenomenal material world, and "Material-N" is a posited noumenal material world (it can only be posited because we cannot, by definition, have any direct knowledge about such a world).

3) What concept of material does science use?

This one is relatively straightforwards: when we are doing science, the concept of material in use is material-NM. If what we are doing is deciding what genus a mushroom should belong to, or investigating the chemical properties of hydrochloric acid, or trying to get a space probe into orbit around Mars, then it makes no difference whether the mushroom, molecule or Mars are thought of as phenomenal or noumenal. They are just material entities and that's all we need to say about them.

Only in a very small number of very specific cases do scientists find themselves in situations where these metaphysical distinctions matter. One of those is quantum mechanics, since the difference between the observed material world and the unobserved material world is also the difference between the collapsed wave function and the uncollapsed wave function. However, on closer inspection, it turns out that this isn't science. It's metaphysics. That's why there are numerous "interpretations" of QM. They are metaphysical interpretations, and they deal with the issues raised by the distinction between material-P and material-N. Another situation where it matters is whenever consciousness comes up in scientific contexts, because material-P equates to the consciously-experienced world (to "qualia"), and the brain activity from which consciousness supposedly "emerges" is happening specifically in a material-N brain. But again, on closer inspection, it turns out that this isn't science either. It's quite clearly metaphysics. I can think of no example where scientists are just doing science, and not metaphysics, where the distinction between material-P and material-N is of any importance. Conclusion: science itself always uses the concept material-NM.

4) What concept of material does metaphysical materialism use?

We can map material-P and material-N onto various metaphysical positions. Idealism is the claim that only material-P exists, and that there is no material-N reality. Substance dualism claims both of them exist, as separate fundamental sorts of stuff.

But what does materialism claim?

Materialism is the claim that "reality is made of material and that nothing else exists". This material realm is the one described by science, but with a metaphysical concept bolted on. This is because for a materialist, it is crucial to claim that the material universe exists entirely independently of consciousness. The big bang didn't happen in anybody's mind - it happened in a self-existing material realm that existed billions of years before there were any conscious animals in it. So this is necessarily material-N, and not material-P or material-NM. The claim is metaphysical.

This is where the incoherence of most forms of materialism should become clear. Materialism is the claim that only the material-N realm exists. There is one form of materialism which does this consistently: eliminativism. Eliminative materialism denies the existence of subjective stuff. It claims consciousness, as defined in (1) does not exist. It claims the word as I've defined it doesn't have a referent in reality. As such, it is perfectly coherent. But it suffers from a massive problem, since it denies the existence of the one thing we are absolutely certain exists. This is why it is such a minority position: nearly everybody rejects it, including most materialists. Other forms of materialism do not deny the existence of consciousness and subjective stuff, and that is why they are incoherent. They are trying to simultaneously claim that only material-N exists, and that material-P also exists. The impossibility of both these things being true at the same time is the nub of "the hard problem". Materialists are left trying to defend the claim that material-P is material-N. That consciousness is brain activity, even though it has a completely different set of properties.

Conclusion:

The only form of materialism that isn't logically incoherent is eliminative materialism, which is bonkers. We should therefore reject materialism and scientific materialism. We do not need to reject scientific realism (because it avoids claiming that the mind-external world is material), but we do need to think very carefully about the implications of this conclusion for science itself. Specifically, it has ramifications for evolutionary theory and cosmology. Hence: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mind-Cosmos-Materialist-Neo-Darwinian-Conception/dp/0199919755
Scientism is what happens when people don't understand the argument in this post (expect responses along the lines of "Wall of text! [insert irrelevant unconnected argument in defence of materialism here]". It too should be rejected.

As you like it...

Firstly, so you know where I am coming from, I am a neo-Kantian epistemic structural realist. I reject substance dualism and idealism as well as materialism, and my ontology is neutral monist - I believe reality is made of one sort of stuff, but that it should not be considered either material or mental. We don't have a word for what it is. Here is the argument. Please follow the definitions and reasoning step by step, and explain clearly what your objection is if you don't like one of the steps.

The existence and definition of consciousness. Consciousness exists. We are conscious. What do these words mean? How do they get their meaning? Answer: subjectivity and subjectively. We are directly aware of our own conscious experiences. Each of us knows that we aren't a zombie, and we assume other humans (and animals) are also subjectively experiencing things. So the word "conciousness" gets its meaning via a private ostensive definition. We privately "point" to our own subjective experiences and associate the word "consciousness" with those experiences. Note that if we try to define the word "consciousness" to mean "brain activity" then we are begging the question - we'd simply be defining materialism to be true, by assigning a meaning to the word "consciousness" which contradicts its actual meaning as used. So we can't do that.
What does the term "material" mean? This is of critical importance, because mostly it is just assumed that everybody knows what it means. This is because the word has a non-technical, non-metaphysical meaning that is understood by everybody. We all know what "the material universe" means. It refers to a realm of galaxies, stars and planets, one of which we know to harbour living organisms like humans, because we live on it. This material realm is made of molecules, which are made of atoms (science added this bit, but it fits naturally with the rest of the concept - there is no clash). This concept is non-metaphysical because it is common to everybody, regardless of their metaphysics. It doesn't matter whether you are a materialist, a dualist, an idealist, a neutral monist, a kantian, or somebody who rejects metaphysics entirely, there is no reason to reject this basic concept of material. Let us call this concept "material-NM" (non-metaphysical). There are also some metaphysically-loaded meanings of "material", which come about by attaching a metaphysical claim to the material-NM concept. The two that matter here are best defined using Kantian terminology. We are directly aware of a material world. It's the one you are aware of right now - that screen you are seeing - that keyboard you are touching. In Kantian terminology, these are called "phenomena". It is important not to import metaphysics into the discussion at this point, as we would if we called them "mental representations of physical objects". Calling them "phenomena" does not involve any metaphysical assumptions. It merely assumes that we all experience a physical world, and labels that "phenomena". Phenomena are contrasted with noumena. Noumena are the world as it is in itself, independent of our experiences of it. Some people believe that the noumenal world is also a material world. So at this point, we can define two metaphysically-loaded concepts of material. "Material-P" is the phenomenal material world, and "Material-N" is a posited noumenal material world (it can only be posited because we cannot, by definition, have any direct knowledge about such a world).
What concept of material does science use? This one is relatively straightforwards: when we are doing science, the concept of material in use is material-NM. If what we are doing is deciding what genus a mushroom should belong to, or investigating the chemical properties of hydrochloric acid, or trying to get a space probe into orbit around Mars, then it makes no difference whether the mushroom, molecule or Mars are thought of as phenomenal or noumenal. They are just material entities and that's all we need to say about them. Only in a very small number of very specific cases do scientists find themselves in situations where these metaphysical distinctions matter. One of those is quantum mechanics, since the difference between the observed material world and the unobserved material world is also the difference between the collapsed wave function and the uncollapsed wave function. However, on closer inspection, it turns out that this isn't science. It's metaphysics. That's why there are numerous "interpretations" of QM. They are metaphysical interpretations, and they deal with the issues raised by the distinction between material-P and material-N. Another situation where it matters is whenever consciousness comes up in scientific contexts, because material-P equates to the consciously-experienced world (to "qualia"), and the brain activity from which consciousness supposedly "emerges" is happening specifically in a material-N brain. But again, on closer inspection, it turns out that this isn't science either. It's quite clearly metaphysics. I can think of no example where scientists are just doing science, and not metaphysics, where the distinction between material-P and material-N is of any importance. Conclusion: science itself always uses the concept material-NM.
What concept of material does metaphysical materialism use? We can map material-P and material-N onto various metaphysical positions. Idealism is the claim that only material-P exists, and that there is no material-N reality. Substance dualism claims both of them exist, as separate fundamental sorts of stuff. But what does materialism claim? Materialism is the claim that "reality is made of material and that nothing else exists". This material realm is the one described by science, but with a metaphysical concept bolted on. This is because for a materialist, it is crucial to claim that the material universe exists entirely independently of consciousness. The big bang didn't happen in anybody's mind - it happened in a self-existing material realm that existed billions of years before there were any conscious animals in it. So this is necessarily material-N, and not material-P or material-NM. The claim is metaphysical. This is where the incoherence of most forms of materialism should become clear. Materialism is the claim that only the material-N realm exists. There is one form of materialism which does this consistently: eliminativism. Eliminative materialism denies the existence of subjective stuff. It claims consciousness, as defined in (1) does not exist. It claims the word as I've defined it doesn't have a referent in reality. As such, it is perfectly coherent. But it suffers from a massive problem, since it denies the existence of the one thing we are absolutely certain exists. This is why it is such a minority position: nearly everybody rejects it, including most materialists. Other forms of materialism do not deny the existence of consciousness and subjective stuff, and that is why they are incoherent. They are trying to simultaneously claim that only material-N exists, and that material-P also exists. The impossibility of both these things being true at the same time is the nub of "the hard problem". Materialists are left trying to defend the claim that material-P is material-N. That consciousness is brain activity, even though it has a completely different set of properties. Conclusion: The only form of materialism that isn't logically incoherent is eliminative materialism, which is bonkers. We should therefore reject materialism and scientific materialism. We do not need to reject scientific realism (because it avoids claiming that the mind-external world is material), but we do need to think very carefully about the implications of this conclusion for science itself. Specifically, it has ramifications for evolutionary theory and cosmology. Hence: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mind-Cosmos-Materialist-Neo-Darwinian-Conception/dp/0199919755 Scientism is what happens when people don't understand the argument in this post (expect responses along the lines of "Wall of text! [insert irrelevant unconnected argument in defence of materialism here]". It too should be rejected.

Why the hard problem (which this video conveniently ignores) is not, as you have claimed elsewhere in this thread, a myth.

What follows is a repost. I would like your person response to it if we are to discuss this any further. It is a detailed explanation of what materialism, scientific materialism and scientism are, and why all of them should be rejected.

Firstly, so you know where I am coming from, I am a neo-Kantian epistemic structural realist. I reject substance dualism and idealism as well as materialism, and if forced to choose a pigeonhole then my ontology is some sort of neutral monism.

Here is the argument. Please follow the definitions and reasoning step by step, and explain clearly what your objection is if you don't like one of the steps.

The existence and definition of consciousness.

Consciousness exists. We are conscious. What do these words mean? How do they get their meaning? Answer: subjectivity and subjectively. We are directly aware of our own conscious experiences. Each of us knows that we aren't a zombie, and we assume other humans (and animals) are also subjectively experiencing things. So the word "conciousness" gets its meaning via a private ostensive definition. We privately "point" to our own subjective experiences and associate the word "consciousness" with those experiences. Note that if we try to define the word "consciousness" to mean "brain activity" then we are begging the question - we'd simply be defining materialism to be true, by assigning a meaning to the word "consciousness" which contradicts its actual meaning as used. So we can't do that.

What does the term "material" mean?

This is of critical importance, because mostly it is just assumed that everybody knows what it means. This is because the word has a non-technical, non-metaphysical meaning that is understood by everybody. We all know what "the material universe" means. It refers to a realm of galaxies, stars and planets, one of which we know to harbour living organisms like humans, because we live on it. This material realm is made of molecules, which are made of atoms (science added this bit, but it fits naturally with the rest of the concept - there is no clash). This concept is non-metaphysical because it is common to everybody, regardless of their metaphysics. It doesn't matter whether you are a materialist, a dualist, an idealist, a neutral monist, a kantian, or somebody who rejects metaphysics entirely, there is no reason to reject this basic concept of material. Let us call this concept "material-NM" (non-metaphysical).

There are also some metaphysically-loaded meanings of "material", which come about by attaching a metaphysical claim to the material-NM concept. The two that matter here are best defined using Kantian terminology. We are directly aware of a material world. It's the one you are aware of right now - that screen you are seeing - that keyboard you are touching. In Kantian terminology, these are called "phenomena". It is important not to import metaphysics into the discussion at this point, as we would if we called them "mental representations of physical objects". Calling them "phenomena" does not involve any metaphysical assumptions. It merely assumes that we all experience a physical world, and labels that "phenomena". Phenomena are contrasted with noumena. Noumena are the world as it is in itself, independent of our experiences of it. Some people believe that the noumenal world is also a material world. So at this point, we can define two metaphysically-loaded concepts of material. "Material-P" is the phenomenal material world, and "Material-N" is a posited noumenal material world (it can only be posited because we cannot, by definition, have any direct knowledge about such a world).

What concept of material does science use?

This one is relatively straightforwards: when we are doing science, the concept of material in use is material-NM. If what we are doing is deciding what genus a mushroom should belong to, or investigating the chemical properties of hydrochloric acid, or trying to get a space probe into orbit around Mars, then it makes no difference whether the mushroom, molecule or Mars are thought of as phenomenal or noumenal. They are just material entities and that's all we need to say about them.

Only in a very small number of very specific cases do scientists find themselves in situations where these metaphysical distinctions matter. One of those is quantum mechanics, since the difference between the observed material world and the unobserved material world is also the difference between the collapsed wave function and the uncollapsed wave function. However, on closer inspection, it turns out that this isn't science. It's metaphysics. That's why there are numerous "interpretations" of QM. They are metaphysical interpretations, and they deal with the issues raised by the distinction between material-P and material-N, especially at scales below that of atoms. Another situation where it matters is whenever consciousness comes up in scientific contexts, because material-P equates to the consciously-experienced world (to "qualia"), and the brain activity from which consciousness supposedly "emerges" is happening specifically in a material-N brain. But again, on closer inspection, it turns out that this isn't science either. It's quite clearly metaphysics. I can think of no example where scientists are just doing science, and not metaphysics, where the distinction between material-P and material-N is of any importance. Conclusion: science itself always uses the concept material-NM.

What concept of material does metaphysical materialism use?

We can map material-P and material-N onto various metaphysical positions. Idealism is the claim that only material-P exists and that there is no material-N reality or material-N is also mental. Substance dualism claims both of them exist, as separate fundamental sorts of stuff. Neutral monism claims that both exist, but neither are the fundamental stuff of reality. What does materialism claim?

Materialism is the claim that "reality is made of material and that nothing else exists". This material realm is the one described by science, but with a metaphysical concept bolted on. This is because for a materialist, it is crucial to claim that the material universe exists entirely independently of consciousness. The big bang didn't happen in anybody's mind - it happened in a self-existing material realm that existed billions of years before there were any conscious animals in it. So this is necessarily material-N, and not material-P or material-NM. The claim is metaphysical.

This is where the incoherence of most forms of materialism should become clear. Materialism is the claim that only the material-N realm exists. There is one form of materialism which does this consistently: eliminativism. Eliminative materialism denies the existence of subjective stuff. It claims consciousness, as defined in (1) does not exist. It claims the word as I've defined it doesn't have a referent in reality. As such, it is perfectly coherent. But it suffers from a massive problem, since it denies the existence of the one thing we are absolutely certain exists. This is why it is such a minority position: nearly everybody rejects it, including most materialists. Other forms of materialism do not deny the existence of consciousness and subjective stuff, and that is why they are incoherent. They are trying to simultaneously claim that only material-N exists, and that material-P also exists. The impossibility of both these things being true at the same time is the nub of "the hard problem". Materialists are left trying to defend the claim that material-P is material-N. That consciousness is brain activity, even though it has a completely different set of properties.

Conclusion:

The only form of materialism that isn't logically incoherent is eliminative materialism, which is bonkers, since it denies the existence of the only thing we are absolutely certain exists. We should therefore reject materialism and scientific materialism. We do not need to reject scientific realism (because it avoids claiming that the mind-external world is material, it only makes claims about its behaviour/structure), but we do need to think very carefully about the implications of this conclusion for science itself. Specifically, it has ramifications for evolutionary theory and cosmology. Hence: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mind-Cosmos-Materialist-Neo-Darwinian-Conception/dp/0199919755

This is my subject. I think Chalmers' formulation of the hard problem is slightly misleading. Specifically, we need to get rid of his concept of "philosophical zombies". We don't need to posit the possibility of entities that behave exactly like humans even though they lack consciousness.

If you are interested in this topic, then this sub is a good one: https://new.reddit.com/r/consciousness/comments/srqunc/the_meaning_of_the_word_consciousness/

Here is my refutation of materialism. I've spent 20 years honing this, quite literally.

Firstly, so you know where I am coming from, I am a neo-Kantian epistemic structural realist. I reject substance dualism and idealism as well as materialism, and my ontology is neutral monist - I believe reality is made of one sort of stuff, but that it should not be considered either material or mental. We don't have a word for what it is. Here is the argument. Please follow the definitions and reasoning step by step, and explain clearly what your objection is if you don't like one of the steps.

The existence and definition of consciousness. Consciousness exists. We are conscious. What do these words mean? How do they get their meaning? Answer: subjectivity and subjectively. We are directly aware of our own conscious experiences. Each of us knows that we aren't a zombie, and we assume other humans (and animals) are also subjectively experiencing things. So the word "conciousness" gets its meaning via a private ostensive definition. We privately "point" to our own subjective experiences and associate the word "consciousness" with those experiences. Note that if we try to define the word "consciousness" to mean "brain activity" then we are begging the question - we'd simply be defining materialism to be true, by assigning a meaning to the word "consciousness" which contradicts its actual meaning as used. So we can't do that.
What does the term "material" mean? This is of critical importance, because mostly it is just assumed that everybody knows what it means. This is because the word has a non-technical, non-metaphysical meaning that is understood by everybody. We all know what "the material universe" means. It refers to a realm of galaxies, stars and planets, one of which we know to harbour living organisms like humans, because we live on it. This material realm is made of molecules, which are made of atoms (science added this bit, but it fits naturally with the rest of the concept - there is no clash). This concept is non-metaphysical because it is common to everybody, regardless of their metaphysics. It doesn't matter whether you are a materialist, a dualist, an idealist, a neutral monist, a kantian, or somebody who rejects metaphysics entirely, there is no reason to reject this basic concept of material. Let us call this concept "material-NM" (non-metaphysical). There are also some metaphysically-loaded meanings of "material", which come about by attaching a metaphysical claim to the material-NM concept. The two that matter here are best defined using Kantian terminology. We are directly aware of a material world. It's the one you are aware of right now - that screen you are seeing - that keyboard you are touching. In Kantian terminology, these are called "phenomena". It is important not to import metaphysics into the discussion at this point, as we would if we called them "mental representations of physical objects". Calling them "phenomena" does not involve any metaphysical assumptions. It merely assumes that we all experience a physical world, and labels that "phenomena". Phenomena are contrasted with noumena. Noumena are the world as it is in itself, independent of our experiences of it. Some people believe that the noumenal world is also a material world. So at this point, we can define two metaphysically-loaded concepts of material. "Material-P" is the phenomenal material world, and "Material-N" is a posited noumenal material world (it can only be posited because we cannot, by definition, have any direct knowledge about such a world).
What concept of material does science use? This one is relatively straightforwards: when we are doing science, the concept of material in use is material-NM. If what we are doing is deciding what genus a mushroom should belong to, or investigating the chemical properties of hydrochloric acid, or trying to get a space probe into orbit around Mars, then it makes no difference whether the mushroom, molecule or Mars are thought of as phenomenal or noumenal. They are just material entities and that's all we need to say about them. Only in a very small number of very specific cases do scientists find themselves in situations where these metaphysical distinctions matter. One of those is quantum mechanics, since the difference between the observed material world and the unobserved material world is also the difference between the collapsed wave function and the uncollapsed wave function. However, on closer inspection, it turns out that this isn't science. It's metaphysics. That's why there are numerous "interpretations" of QM. They are metaphysical interpretations, and they deal with the issues raised by the distinction between material-P and material-N. Another situation where it matters is whenever consciousness comes up in scientific contexts, because material-P equates to the consciously-experienced world (to "qualia"), and the brain activity from which consciousness supposedly "emerges" is happening specifically in a material-N brain. But again, on closer inspection, it turns out that this isn't science either. It's quite clearly metaphysics. I can think of no example where scientists are just doing science, and not metaphysics, where the distinction between material-P and material-N is of any importance. Conclusion: science itself always uses the concept material-NM.
What concept of material does metaphysical materialism use? We can map material-P and material-N onto various metaphysical positions. Idealism is the claim that only material-P exists, and that there is no material-N reality. Substance dualism claims both of them exist, as separate fundamental sorts of stuff. But what does materialism claim? Materialism is the claim that "reality is made of material and that nothing else exists". This material realm is the one described by science, but with a metaphysical concept bolted on. This is because for a materialist, it is crucial to claim that the material universe exists entirely independently of consciousness. The big bang didn't happen in anybody's mind - it happened in a self-existing material realm that existed billions of years before there were any conscious animals in it. So this is necessarily material-N, and not material-P or material-NM. The claim is metaphysical. This is where the incoherence of most forms of materialism should become clear. Materialism is the claim that only the material-N realm exists. There is one form of materialism which does this consistently: eliminativism. Eliminative materialism denies the existence of subjective stuff. It claims consciousness, as defined in (1) does not exist. It claims the word as I've defined it doesn't have a referent in reality. As such, it is perfectly coherent. But it suffers from a massive problem, since it denies the existence of the one thing we are absolutely certain exists. This is why it is such a minority position: nearly everybody rejects it, including most materialists. Other forms of materialism do not deny the existence of consciousness and subjective stuff, and that is why they are incoherent. They are trying to simultaneously claim that only material-N exists, and that material-P also exists. The impossibility of both these things being true at the same time is the nub of "the hard problem". Materialists are left trying to defend the claim that material-P is material-N. That consciousness is brain activity, even though it has a completely different set of properties. Conclusion: The only form of materialism that isn't logically incoherent is eliminative materialism, which is bonkers. We should therefore reject materialism and scientific materialism. We do not need to reject scientific realism (because it avoids claiming that the mind-external world is material), but we do need to think very carefully about the implications of this conclusion for science itself. Specifically, it has ramifications for evolutionary theory and cosmology. Hence: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mind-Cosmos-Materialist-Neo-Darwinian-Conception/dp/0199919755 Scientism is what happens when people don't understand the argument in this post (expect responses along the lines of "Wall of text! [insert irrelevant unconnected argument in defence of materialism here]". It too should be rejected.

>I think I just don't buy what you're trying to sell here. I'm not anywhere near ready to give up material or reductionistic (scientific) explanations to natural phenomena.

...and there's a lot of people like you, who control the centre of gravity in the scientific community. That is why, 100 years after the discovery of quantum mechanics, and 400 after the scientific revolution, no progress has been made on either the measurement problem or the hard problem. What will it take to shift that centre of gravity? I am not sure, but I believe the shift will come.

>I could be wrong, but I highly doubt I am. Moreover, I suspect that it will take much more work than simply making philosophical arguments.

How can anybody supply more than philosophical arguments when the problem itself is fundamentally philosophical? You are demanding scientific answers to philosophical problems. This is scientism.

>The many worlds interpretation is a hard nut to crack because it's still not been fully formulated (particularly, what it predicts regarding the nature of branching is still somewhat ambiguous).

MWI in its full-blooded form is soul-destroying. It is what you get if you ignore the hard problem but take the measurement problem seriously. It is the ultimate manifestation of materialism and determinism. However, as you say, what it says about branching is ambiguous. Maybe reality doesn't usually branch, but does branch in specific rare circumstances.

There is a whole new paradigm waiting for you. :-)

>But the different interpretations of quantum mechanics are not purely philosophical. They have implications for quantum gravity, for instance.

Does Von Neumann / Stapp have implications for quantum gravity?

>Finally, the hard problem of consciousness is extremely hard.

For a materialist it isn't just extremely hard; it is completely impossible. If you accept materialism is wrong then it disappears.

>I don't know what the answer is on that one at all. But I do find it suspicious that many, such as yourself, try to kill both problems (consciousness and the measurement problem) with one stone, the idea of mysticism and consciousness being fundamental.

Why is it suspicious? We have two major problems which appear to have the same very simple solution. It is, in fact, the obvious answer. The only reason it doesn't look that way to you is because you've been spoon-fed materialism for your whole life by the very people you have the most faith in.

>John von Neumann indeed fell to this temptation, because it is tempting.

He didn't fall into it. He followed the logic and the maths. He refused to accept the notion that there was anything special about "measuring devices", and he was very much justified in doing so. Why is a "measuring device" any different to any other quantum system? There is no answer. The "Heisenberg Cut" is also baloney. It is entirely arbitrary.

>But to me, it doesn't account for what the universe looked like before we got here, and it doesn't square with what the entire enterprise of science has found thus far. That's why such a view would require an unbelievable amount of evidence to justify.

OK, let's think about this a bit harder. Let's follow our intuition and assume that consciousness first appeared in very early animals - something like Ylingia. If consciousness (the participating observer) collapses the wave function, then what collapsed the wave function before the evolution of this pre-cambrian worm?

The answer could not be more obvious: nothing did. Which means before that point, the entire cosmos was in a superposition. In effect, the cosmos was a giant supercomputer, seeking out the timeline where conscious animals evolve. What would the cosmos look like if this were true?

(1) The Earth may well be the only place conscious life exists. We'd search for life in the elsewhere and find none . (check)

(2) We'd expect evolution to have to phases, with a major hiatus in-between as evolution changed from pre-consciousness to post-consciousness. Something like..the Cambrian Explosion, which currently has no agreed explanation, but happened a few million years after the appearance of the first conscious animal. (check).

(3) The Earth would appear to be the ultimate "goldilocks planet". (check).

How much evidence do you need? It's already there, staring us in the face. People can't see it because they react with the same incredulity that you do.

>It would change the entire course of science if it were found to be correct.

Not the entire course of science, no. But it has major implications for cosmology and evolutionary theory.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mind-Cosmos-Materialist-Neo-Darwinian-Conception/dp/0199919755

>In Mind and Cosmos Thomas Nagel argues that the widely accepted world view of materialist naturalism is untenable. The mind-body problem cannot be confined to the relation between animal minds and animal bodies. If materialism cannot accommodate consciousness and other mind-related aspects of reality, then we must abandon a purely materialist understanding of nature in general, extending to biology, evolutionary theory, and cosmology. Since minds are features of biological systems that have developed through evolution, the standard materialist version of evolutionary biology is fundamentally incomplete. And the cosmological history that led to the origin of life and the coming into existence of the conditions for evolution cannot be a merely materialist history. An adequate conception of nature would have to explain the appearance in the universe of materially irreducible conscious minds, as such. No such explanation is available, and the physical sciences, including molecular biology, cannot be expected to provide one. The book explores these problems through a general treatment of the obstacles to reductionism, with more specific application to the phenomena of consciousness, cognition, and value. The conclusion is that physics cannot be the theory of everything.

Can you see the pieces of the puzzle falling into place yet? You need to use the right hemisphere of your brain. The left hemisphere will resist, because it doesn't fit the old narrative. But all the evidence is already there.

>But again, I don't know what the answer to either question is. So anyone's guess, as long as it's well-formulated and the consequences are unambiguous, is probably as good as mine.

I am not guessing. If you open your mind to what I am saying, and allow yourself to explore these ideas, I can promise you that it all fits together beautifully. There is a new paradigm waiting for you, and for the scientific community. But you cannot find the doorway until you accept that materialism is false - that the hard problem is completely unsolvable for materialists. I can provide a detailed explanation of why that is too if you like.

>>I understand consciousness in a minimal sense, that is, as the appearance of a world (inner world and outer world) that is generated as a byproduct of complex systems in the brain, as proposed by Thomas Metzinger

And this view of consciousness really needs to be consigned to the history books because it is fundamentally incoherent. It literally does not make any sense. What does "generated" mean? How can complexity "generate consciousness"? How is this different to pure magic on the same scale as 7-day creationism?

https://new.reddit.com/r/consciousness/comments/sbqpos/repost_refutation_of_materialism/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mind-Cosmos-Materialist-Neo-Darwinian-Conception/dp/0199919755

>If consciousness can be understood in terms of a Computational Theory of the Mind

It cannot. Animal brains are not computers. They are both intelligent, but one of them is conscious and the other is not. If we want to understand consciousness then we have to allow metaphysics, epistemology and pure reason into the game. We cannot just keep pretending it possible that consciousness "arises" from brain activity, regardless how complex it is.

>Evolution is often portrayed as an "accidental process" whereby species evolve through a series of "random" mutations, which mysteriously seem to result the "optimization" of the species (or entirely new species).
>
>I am skeptical of this "accidental" view of Nature, although I try to keep an open mind.

OK. You really need to read this book if you haven't already: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mind-Cosmos-Materialist-Neo-Darwinian-Conception/dp/0199919755

Nagel argues that in the case of consciousness, evolution must have been teleological. And I think he is right.

>It is clear to me that humans have superior brains, because they have been "designed" to eventually leave this planet and "infest" other worlds. Yes, like cockroaches, only on a larger scale.

This, I think, is wrong. The purpose - the teleology - was only for the "purpose" of getting to a that first conscious animal. After that consciousness already existed - it did not need to evolve twice. However, that first animal was really stupid. It had a tiny brain. Intelligence is not consciousness - it does not demand a teleological explanation, because it is very obvious what intelligence is useful for, and how it evolved. Humans have got very large brains because about 5 million years ago our ancestors started depending entirely on brainpower to survive. It's got nothing to do with leaving the planet. It was about becoming a super-predator. Unfortunately we have become too good at this, and we will now be lucky to survive the eco-apocalypse we've created. We aren't going to leave the planet.

>Besides being unappealing to people who believe in souls for religious reasons, why is being a biological computer a problem from a logical perspective?
>
>The biological algorithm processes external sensory signals and internal signals (e.g. memory and other things) and the qualia of looking at something blue is the processing of that blue external stimulus...

The logical problem is, in this case, hidden by the word "is" (my bold above). It's such a tiny word, but the whole of your position is dependent on its meaning. For the statement to make sense, it has to indicate identity. "Qualia are physical processes" has to mean they are ontologically identical - that they are one and the same thing. There is a very obvious problem with this, and that is that they appear to be not only completely different things, but completely different sorts of things. Therefore the claim "qualia are physical processes" is an extremely radical claim that needs strong justification, and you haven't provided any justification at all. By default, if we have what appear to be two very different things then we need to assume that they really are two different things. In this case we have strong grounds for claiming that even though they are two different things, they are in some way bound together - that qualia are dependent upon physical processes in some way that we really don't understand. What we need to do is to try to understanding what this relationship is. We cannot do that if we have declared that this relationship is one of identity without explaining how this can be possible, given that the two things in question have entirely different sets of properties. The truth is that they are two different things. Qualia are not physical processes, they are merely dependent on physical processes.

If we want to talk about motives, then I want to talk about yours. My motive is purely logical - I want to explore the truth. Yours, I could easily speculate, is a desire to shut down any possibility of things like souls, for anti-religious reasons. Materialism rules those things out, so if we conclude materialism is false then such things re-enter the realm of the possible.

>Consciousness therefore is exactly the things that are modeled plus the hypothetical modeling simulations that use these models to generate predictions, which are the evolutionary advantage that led organisms to develop the complicated machine in the first place.

Same problem. What does "is exactly" mean? This time you've qualified the "is" with something that confirms the meaning you intend is identity, but the things in question are prima facie very different, so how do you justify the claim of identity?

>I feel like the only reason to postulate some idealism mental essence is to defend the idea of human transcendence and exaltation beyond the mere physical world, which in my opinion is in the same spirit of hubris that made the ancients assume that it was obvious that the earth was the center of the universe and all things revolve around us.

And from my perspective you are attempting to defend a mechanistic view of the reality which should have been consigned to the dustbin of history in 1925. I am not part of a movement which is trying to drag science and philosophy backwards to how things were before the scientific revolution. I am trying to drag the materialists, who are stuck in the late 19th century, forwards into a world where quantum mechanics actually makes some sort of sense and the hard problem of consciousness is acknowledged and accounted for. This is precisely what Thomas Nagel has been trying to get people to understand: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mind-Cosmos-Materialist-Neo-Darwinian-Conception/dp/0199919755.

I believe what is actually needed is a new epistemic deal. A post quantum-mechanics, post-hard-problem re-assesment of what science is, what philosophy is and what religion/mysticism is. At the moment there is mainly just a lot of confusion, being driven by well-meaning people on both the scientific and mystical sides of the debate. We all need to take a step backwards and ask what sorts of knowledge are possible, and how they are related to each other.

>Human beings have evolved from animals. Animals have evolved from bacteria.

Actually animals and bacteria may be different branches of life entirely. They presumably have a common ancestor though.

>A bacterium uses its senses to experience a subjective universe which is real only to that bacterium.

We have absolutely no reason to believe a bacterium experiences a subjective universe, and a lot of very good reasons to believe that it does not. Bacteria don't even have a nervous system, let alone a brain. If you make the very reasonable assumption that brains (or at least nerves) are required for consciousness, then bacteria are exactly as conscious as plants: not at all.

The origin of consciousness in animals is still unknown scientifically, because it is impossible to even meaningfully define consciousness in terms of matter. However, both intuitively and anatomically I think we can draw the line somewhere between sponges and flatworms. Sponges also have no nervous system, and most people presume them to be non-conscious. Flatworms have eyes and two-lobed brains, and move around like other animals in search of prey. It is reasonable to assume they do experience a subjective world. In between, in terms of evolution are jellyfish, comb jellies and presumably some even older type of worm. The most likely point in evolution when consciousness first appeared was somewhere around there.

>I think that maybe the second law of thermodynamics causes non-living matter to turn into living organisms.

There is no known connection between the second law of thermodynamics and abiogensis. I personally agree with Thomas Nagel - I think it was the result of naturalistic teleology: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mind-Cosmos-Materialist-Neo-Darwinian-Conception/dp/0199919755

>In any case, according to me, I think that each electron, each proton and so on, also experience a subjective universe which is real only to that electron or proton.

That is panpsychism. It is not possible to rule this out at this time, but I personally find it unconvincing. I think brains are needed for minds.

>I'm not interested in pedantry about how you or other people define materialism: it means that whatever the material of the universe is, it behaves in accordance with mathematical laws.

No it doesn't. You are now playing a purely semantic game. You have redefined "materialism" to mean something it simply does not mean. What's more, your mis-definition is useless, because it fails to distinguish between naturalism and probabilistic supernaturalism, as already explained.

I am not interested in having a semantic argument with you. If you want to redefine technical philosophical terms to mean things they do not mean then that's your business. Insisting you use such terms correctly is not "pedantry". It's how philosophy works. You wouldn't allow anybody to redefine scientific terms according to their personal whims, so I don't understand why you expect anyone to accept you doing the same thing with philosophical terms.

>The assumption that there is something other than that material universe, which might distinguish your classic idea of materialism from your textbook doctrines of realism, made sense before Darwin, and makes no sense after, since there is nothing left in the universe that might reasonably require non-material (non-mathematical, irrational, or metaphysical) explanation once human existence (inherently including human consciousness) can be explained by biological evolution.

This is incorrect. You need to read Mind and Cosmos by Thomas Nagel. I'm tired of trying to educate you. You are unwilling to learn anything. That book directly and comprehensively refutes your claim above. It destroys it.

>Obviously, you do not agree with that, and that is fine, you don't need to; I'm more than happy to debate it with you. But if you want me to take your opinion seriously enough to respect your side of the debate, you must give some small indication, at least, that you are capable of comprehending the idea, and so far you have not.

I was a strident materialist, and scientistic admirer of Richard Dawkins until the age of 33. I understand that mindset perfectly. I also understand exactly what it is wrong with it.

>I understand your position; that the imaginary possibility that there could be some non-material metaphysics at work in the universe (despite being self-contradicting by definition, since if it is at work in the physical universe it is unquestionably physical) is sufficient to philosophically support some alternative to realism.

There is nothing imaginary about this possibility, and I will make one more attempt to explain to you why, this time in terms of the metaphysical interpretations of QM.

MWI is entirely consistent with the scientific data. From a strictly scientific point of view, there is no reason to rule out MWI. If MWI is true then the cosmos is rigidly deterministic - all possible quantum outcomes occur in different branching timelines.

The Copenhagen Interpretation is also entirely consistent with the scientific data, but in this case there is only one timeline, but we have no explanation as to why the wave function collapses when it does or where it does. We just have the entirely arbitrary "Heisenberg Cut", and a set of probabilities.

This makes clear how little we can say, from a strictly scientific point of view, about what is probabilistically possible. It is also possible, and entirely consistent with the scientific data, that:

1) something like MWI is true but only some of the branches manifest while most of them don't.

and also

2) there is a complex metaphysical system, worthy of the name "God", which selects between the possible outcomes via processes what science could not theoretically have access to. Our only knowledge of it would be when individual humans experience its effects, but that knowledge would be entirely anecdotal and no use to science. Some mystics claims that this is exactly what the situation is, as explained in Where the Conflict Really Lies by Alvin Plantinga.

Your subjective judgement about what is "reasonable" is of no interest to me. I am interested only in what is scientifically/physically possible, and what is metaphysically/logically possible, and how we can legitimately answer those questions. However, this is completely impossible - we can't even discuss it - unless you are willing to adopt the correct philosophical terminology. That terminology has developed for a reason: it's impossible to have a rational discussion without it.

> My tone was hostile in my message, since my main problem is with you putting up borders where you cannot be sure there are borders.

The borders between science and metaphysics are absolute. That is why Kant is such an influential figure in the history of philosophy.

>Why can't a scientist also be able of critical thought? That is how I read your statement. Is that what you mean?

No, it is not what I mean. Many scientists are capable of critical thought. Some aren't, and the particular sort I am talking about is exemplified by Richard Dawkins. People who come from a science background but end up talking about philosophy because they hate religion. These people tend to assume they can just do philosophy because they know how to think critically, because they are scientists, but then they make elementary mistakes. Dawkins makes elementary philosophical mistakes, and is totally oblivious to this fact. He is well respected in atheist circles, but you will struggle to find a philosopher who doesn't think he's a bit of an idiot. A senior professor of philosophy I once studied under simply called him a "c*nt".

> I also think you throw Kant's views around like he wrote the Bible. He's been absolutely, very influentual but not infallible.

Kant is to philosophy what Newton is to science. His book isn't the Bible, but it did mark the beginning of the modern academic discipline. My claim was that if you don't understand its relevance, you don't understand the modern discipine, and I stand by that claim.

>The sheer amount of daily discussion within the field of philosophy proves there's heaps and heaps of work to be done, and the different, at times contradicting schools of philosophy prove that yet again.One should not weaponize it in an attempt that the jury's not still out on philosophy, too. Like science, it is still evolving.

It is not going backwards though. Philosophy is never going to evolve towards the position of Richard Dawkins, regardless of how hard people like Daniel Dennett try to force it to do so. I consider Dennett to be an aberration - he's what a philosopher who doesn't understand Kant looks like. Fortunately there's not many like him.

> So, thank you for that. And apologies for my harsh tone.

You are welcome. You don't need to apologise. This is not an easy subject, especially if English isn't your first language.

> As to why your comment triggered a response from me; I read a lot of it as yet another attempt at merely disqualifying narrative originating from experts or scientific organisations surrounding CoV-19 etc

I am a fierce defender of both science itself and of scientific realism as a philosophical position. I love science and think it is absolutely crucial to defend it against all who are trying to attack it, undermine it and devalue it. But I also believe that metaphysical materialism is false, and I hate scientism. I passionately believe there is room in the world for both science and spirituality, but that both sides need to understand where the border between them lies. They must not be mixed up. But in order to prevent people on boths sides of that pointless war mixing them up, it is absolutely crucial to distinguish between science and philosophy first. The border between philosophy and religion is much more blurred, but it too must be defined by philosophy (in this case, Wittgenstein is the most significant figure).

> I'd very much appreciate any further thought or expansion from you.

Happy to discuss this further, though it will be much later. If you want to better understand the implications of what I am saying for science itself, the most important book in recent years is this one:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mind-Cosmos-Materialist-Neo-Darwinian-Conception/dp/0199919755

> Have a nice day

You also.

>Why don't you define "hard problem"?

OK. Please follow the definitions and reasoning step by step, and explain clearly what your objection is if you don't like one of the steps.

Step 1: The existence and definition of consciousness.

Consciousness exists. We are conscious. What do these words mean? How do they get their meaning? Answer: subjectivity and subjectively. We are directly aware of our own conscious experiences. Each of us knows that we aren't a zombie, and we assume other humans (and animals) are also subjectively experiencing things. So the word "conciousness" gets its meaning via a private ostensive definition. We privately "point" to our own subjective experiences and associate the word "consciousness" with those experiences. Note that if we try to define the word "consciousness" to mean "brain activity" then we are begging the question - we'd simply be defining materialism to be true, by assigning a meaning to the word "consciousness" which contradicts its actual meaning as used. So we can't do that.

Step 2: What does the term "material" mean?

This is of critical importance, because mostly it is just assumed that everybody knows what it means. This is because the word has a non-technical, non-metaphysical meaning that is understood by everybody. We all know what "the material universe" means. It refers to a realm of galaxies, stars and planets, one of which we know to harbour living organisms like humans, because we live on it. This material realm is made of molecules, which are made of atoms (science added this bit, but it fits naturally with the rest of the concept - there is no clash). This concept is non-metaphysical because it is common to everybody, regardless of their metaphysics. It doesn't matter whether you are a materialist, a dualist, an idealist, a neutral monist, a kantian, or somebody who rejects metaphysics entirely, there is no reason to reject this basic concept of material. Let us call this concept "material-NM" (non-metaphysical).

There are also some metaphysically-loaded meanings of "material", which come about by attaching a metaphysical claim to the material-NM concept. The two that matter here are best defined using Kantian terminology. We are directly aware of a material world. It's the one you are aware of right now - that screen you are seeing - that keyboard you are touching. In Kantian terminology, these are called "phenomena". It is important not to import metaphysics into the discussion at this point, as we would if we called them "mental representations of physical objects". Calling them "phenomena" does not involve any metaphysical assumptions. It merely assumes that we all experience a physical world, and labels that "phenomena". Phenomena are contrasted with noumena. Noumena are the world as it is in itself, independent of our experiences of it. Some people believe that the noumenal world is also a material world. So at this point, we can define two metaphysically-loaded concepts of material. "Material-P" is the phenomenal material world, and "Material-N" is a posited noumenal material world (it can only be posited because we cannot, by definition, have any direct knowledge about such a world).

Step 3: What concept of material does science use?

This one is relatively straightforwards: when we are doing science, the concept of material in use is material-NM. If what we are doing is deciding what genus a mushroom should belong to, or investigating the chemical properties of hydrochloric acid, or trying to get a space probe into orbit around Mars, then it makes no difference whether the mushroom, molecule or Mars are thought of as phenomenal or noumenal. They are just material entities and that's all we need to say about them.

Only in a very small number of very specific cases do scientists find themselves in situations where these metaphysical distinctions matter. One of those is quantum mechanics, since the difference between the observed material world and the unobserved material world is also the difference between the collapsed wave function and the uncollapsed wave function. However, on closer inspection, it turns out that this isn't science. It's metaphysics. That's why there are numerous "interpretations" of QM. They are metaphysical interpretations, and they deal with the issues raised by the distinction between material-P and material-N. Another situation where it matters is whenever consciousness comes up in scientific contexts, because material-P equates to the consciously-experienced world (to "qualia"), and the brain activity from which consciousness supposedly "emerges" is happening specifically in a material-N brain. But again, on closer inspection, it turns out that this isn't science either. It's quite clearly metaphysics. I can think of no example where scientists are just doing science, and not metaphysics, where the distinction between material-P and material-N is of any importance. Conclusion: science itself always uses the concept material-NM.

Step 4: What concept of materialism does metaphysical materialism use?

We can map material-P and material-N onto various metaphysical positions. Idealism is the claim that only material-P exists, and that there is no material-N reality. Substance dualism claims both of them exist, as separate fundamental sorts of stuff. But what does materialism claim?

Materialism is the claim that "reality is made of material and that nothing else exists". This material realm is the one described by science, but with a metaphysical concept bolted on. This is because for a materialist, it is crucial to claim that the material universe exists entirely independently of consciousness. The big bang didn't happen in anybody's mind - it happened in a self-existing material realm that existed billions of years before there were any conscious animals in it. So this is necessarily material-N, and not material-P or material-NM. The claim is metaphysical.

This is where the incoherence of most forms of materialism should become clear. Materialism is the claim that only the material-N realm exists. There is one form of materialism which does this consistently: eliminativism. Eliminative materialism denies the existence of subjective stuff. It claims consciousness, as defined in (1) does not exist. It claims the word as I've defined it doesn't have a referent in reality. As such, it is perfectly coherent. But it suffers from a massive problem, since it denies the existence of the one thing we are absolutely certain exists. This is why it is such a minority position: nearly everybody rejects it, including most materialists. Other forms of materialism do not deny the existence of consciousness and subjective stuff, and that is why they are incoherent. They are trying to simultaneously claim that only material-N exists, and that material-P also exists. The impossibility of both these things being true at the same time is the nub of "the hard problem". Materialists are left trying to defend the claim that material-P is material-N. That consciousness is brain activity, even though it has a completely different set of properties.

Conclusion:

The only form of materialism that isn't logically incoherent is eliminative materialism, which is bonkers. We should therefore reject materialism and scientific materialism. We do not need to reject scientific realism (because it avoids claiming that the mind-external world is material), but we do need to think very carefully about the implications of this conclusion for science itself. Specifically, it has ramifications for evolutionary theory and cosmology. Hence: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mind-Cosmos-Materialist-Neo-Darwinian-Conception/dp/0199919755

Scientism is what happens when people don't understand the argument in this post (expect responses along the lines of "Wall of text! [insert irrelevant unconnected argument in defence of materialism here]". It too should be rejected.

>Thank you for this comment. I have a question: do you think that materialism and spirituality are incompatible?

Yes, basically. I think metaphysical materialism entails metaphysical naturalism, and metaphysical naturalism is incompatible with genuine spirituality. Spirituality needs some sort of sprinkling of magic, or it's like non-alcholic beer.

>However, I see materialism as a hard truth - I just don't see how I could hold a belief in objective purpose or something outside of matter and energy.

It's a hard untruth. It's demonstrably false. It is either internal incoherent or incompatible with the existence of phenomenal reality (including the physical world you are directly aware of). Plenty of people have pointed out exactly why this is so, and there's a paradigm shift waiting to take place when the materialists finally realise what is going on. Thomas Nagel has laid it out on a plate for them, but the uptake is painfully slow.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mind-Cosmos-Materialist-Neo-Darwinian-Conception/dp/0199919755

>To me, this isn't a problem for spirituality. When I'm on psylocybin and I expierence a profound sense of interconnectedness with all life on this planet, that isn't diminished by my belief that it's all physics going on in my head.

That's not really spirituality though. It's something similar. Maybe it is a step on the right path. But unless you can let go of materialism, you can't get any further down the path. The belief in materialism forces you into an incorrect belief that naturalism must be true. But this is not so.

I was a strident atheist for many years. I was once the main administrator at the now-defunct Richard Dawkins Foundation forum. I am not anymore.

>For me it's actually the opposite: the fact that we can have such profound expierences of consciousness as a result of self replicating molecules following physics for billions of years is utterly amazing.

It's not that amazing if it is totally wrong. I didn't reject materialism because I thought the alternative was really amazing. I rejected it because I came to understand it has a logical hole in it.

>My thought is that spirituality is not incompatible with materialism but the nihilism that often results from materialism. Nihilism is defenitely a problem if not used as a stepping stone towards existential self actualization

That is exactly what nihilism was for me. It was only because I became a complete nihilist that I was able to reject the foundation of my belief system (materialism).

I have spent many years trying to figure out the best way to explain this people. This is where I've ended up: https://new.reddit.com/r/Metaphysics/comments/jidq3r/refutation_of_materialism/

>If we believe that Von Neumann interpretation is correct, and that metaphysical materialism is indeed false, what will be the alternative research program? As far as i can see you'd still need to try to build a conscious machine and fail to prove that the assumptions were true.

I am not sure it is even ethical to try to build a conscious machine. I also don't believe it is possible to empirically prove that any of the interpretations of QM are correct. They are metaphysical theories. What we actually need to do is recognise the limits of science.

> But i don't agree that metaphysical materialism has been repeatedly demonstrated to be logically false.

It's false.

1) The existence and definition of consciousness.

Consciousness exists. We are conscious. What do these words mean? How do they get their meaning? Answer: subjectivity and subjectively. We are directly aware of our own conscious experiences. Each of us knows that we aren't a zombie, and we assume other humans (and animals) are also subjectively experiencing things. So the word "conciousness" gets its meaning via a private ostensive definition. We privately "point" to our own subjective experiences and associate the word "consciousness" with those experiences. Note that if we try to define the word "consciousness" to mean "brain activity" then we are begging the question - we'd simply be defining materialism to be true, by assigning a meaning to the word "consciousness" which contradicts its actual meaning as used. So we can't do that.

2) What does the term "material" mean?

This is of critical importance, because mostly it is just assumed that everybody knows what it means. This is because the word has a non-technical, non-metaphysical meaning that is understood by everybody. We all know what "the material universe" means. It refers to a realm of galaxies, stars and planets, one of which we know to harbour living organisms like humans, because we live on it. This material realm is made of molecules, which are made of atoms (science added this bit, but it fits naturally with the rest of the concept - there is no clash). This concept is non-metaphysical because it is common to everybody, regardless of their metaphysics. It doesn't matter whether you are a materialist, a dualist, an idealist, a neutral monist, a kantian, or somebody who rejects metaphysics entirely, there is no reason to reject this basic concept of material. Let us call this concept "material-NM (non-metaphysical)".

There are also some metaphysically-loaded meanings of "material", which come about by attaching a metaphysical claim to the material-NM concept. The two that matter here are best defined using Kantian terminology. We are directly aware of a material world. It's the one you are aware of right now - that screen you are seeing - that keyboard you are touching. In Kantian terminology, these are called "phenomena". It is important not to import metaphysics into the discussion at this point, as we would if we called them "mental representations of physical objects". Calling them "phenomena" does not involve any metaphysical assumptions. It merely assumes that we all experience a physical world, and labels that "phenomena". Phenomena are contrasted with noumena. Noumena are the world as it is in itself, independent of our experiences of it. Some people believe that the noumenal world is also a material world. So at this point, we can define two metaphysically-loaded concepts of material. "Material-P" is the phenomenal material world, and "Material-N" is a posited noumenal material world (it can only be posited because we cannot, by definition, have any direct knowledge about such a world).

3) What concept of material does science use?

This one is relatively straightforwards: when we are doing science, the concept of material in use is material-NM. If what we are doing is deciding what genus a mushroom should belong to, or investigating the chemical properties of hydrochloric acid, or trying to get a space probe into orbit around Mars, then it makes no difference whether the mushroom, molecule or Mars are thought of as phenomenal or noumenal. They are just material entities and that's all we need to say about them.

Only in a very small number of very specific cases do scientists find themselves in situations where these metaphysical distinctions matter. One of those is quantum mechanics, since the difference between the observed material world and the unobserved material world is also the difference between the collapse wave function and the uncollapsed wave function. However, on closer inspection, it turns out that this isn't science. It's metaphysics. That's why there are numerous "interpretations" of QM. They are metaphysical interpretations, and they deal with the issues raised by the distinction between material-P and material-N. Another situation where it matters is whenever consciousness comes up in scientific contexts, because material-P refers specifically to the consciously-experiences world (to "qualia"), and the brain activity from which consciousness supposedly "emerges" is happening specifically in a material-N brain. But again, on closer inspection, it turns out that this isn't science either. It's quite clearly metaphysics. I can think of no example where science is just doing science, and not metaphysics, where the distinction between material-P and material-N is of any importance. Conclusion: science itself always uses the concept material-NM.

4) What concept of materialism does metaphysical materialism use?

We can map material-P and material-N onto various metaphysical positions. Idealism is the claim that only material-P exists, and that there is no material-N reality. Substance dualism claims both of them exist, as separate fundamental sorts of stuff. But what does materialism claim?

Materialism is the claim that "reality is made of material and that nothing else exists". This material realm is the one described by science, but with a metaphysical concept bolted on. This is because for a materialist, it is crucial to claim that the material universe exists entirely independently of consciousness. The big bang didn't happen in anybody's mind - it happened in a self-existing material realm that existed billions of years before there were any conscious animals in it. So this is necessarily material-N, and not material-P or material-NM. The claim is metaphysical.

This is where the incoherence of most forms of materialism should becomes clear. Materialism is the claim that only the material-N realm exists. There is one form of materialism which does this consistently: eliminativism. Eliminative materialism denies the existence of subjective stuff. It claims consciousness, as defined in (1) does not exist. It claims the word as I've defined it doesn't have a referent in reality. As such, it is perfectly coherent. But it suffers from a massive problem, since it denies the existence of the one thing we are absolutely certain exists. This is why it is such a minority position: nearly everybody rejects it, including most materialists. Other forms of materialism do not deny the existence of consciousness and subjective stuff, and that is why they are incoherent. They are trying to simultaneously claim that only material-N exists, and that material-P also exists. The impossibility of both these things being true at the same time is the nub of "the hard problem". Materialists are left trying to defend the claim that material-P is material-N. That consciousness is brain activity, even though it has a completely different set of properties.

Conclusion:

The only form of materialism that isn't logically incoherent is eliminative materialism, which is bonkers. We should therefore reject materialism and scientific materialism. We do not need to reject scientific realism (because it avoids claiming that the mind-external world is material), but we do need to think very carefully about the implications of this conclusion for science itself. Specifically, it has ramifications for evolutionary theory and cosmology. Hence: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mind-Cosmos-Materialist-Neo-Darwinian-Conception/dp/0199919755

>Do you mean that philosophers already understand consciousness, or that they know where to search and scientists need to collaborate?

Too many scientists have failed to understand that metaphysical materialism has been repeatedly demonstrated to be logically false. Because of that, most of them have rejected the only interpretation of quantum mechanics that actually makes sense (the Von Neumann / Wigner / Stapp interpretation).

https://www.reddit.com/r/quantuminterpretation/comments/m3mhvo/mwi_vonneumann_and_the_evolution_of_consciousness/

That's the QM side of the equation. The rest of it is covered by Thomas Nagel: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mind-Cosmos-Materialist-Neo-Darwinian-Conception/dp/0199919755

> all i could find was not something that would help to understand consciousness from the point of view that scientists are interested in: which is creating a machine that would be conscious.

Why on earth do you think scientists are only interested in consciousness in order to make conscious machines??

>I suppose I just don't accept that materialism has been falsified

Have you seen the argument I posted elsewhere in this thread?

>It's probably that humans are just too dumb to notice it.

Yes. It is staring us in the face. Below is a repost from elsewhere.

I have just read a book called "Quantum Ontology" which dismisses the Von Neumann - Wigner interpretation in a wave of the hand. The grounds given are that "evolution is a purely physical theory" and that it is impossible to explain how conscious beings could have evolved if consciousness collapses the wave function. It also claims the theory involves "deeply problematic interactionist dualism". To me this seems to be a very weak objection. Why?

Firstly, I believe it has been shown that materialism is logically false, and that this has major implications for both evolution and cosmology.

Secondly, the interactive dualism itself isn't a major problem.

So now we are left with the primary objection: how can conscious beings have evolved if consciousness collapses the wave function? What collapsed the wave function before consciousness evolved?

Far from being a show-stopping problem, the answer is surely obvious: nothing did. We actually end up with a situation where, before the appearance of conscious animals, something identical to MWI was true: there were no conscious beings in the world, so the wave-function never collapsed.

As well as providing us with a complete version of QM and escaping the Hard Problem of consciousness, this provides an answer to no less than five other mysteries:

Why do we appear to be alone in the universe?

Why is the Earth such a goldilocks planet?

How did abiogenesis happen?"

How could Thomas Nagel's "teleological naturalism" work?

Why did the Cambrian Explosion happen?

The situation would be thus:

When the universe began, there were no conscious animals in it, so MWI was true. Every planet had gazillions of MWI histories. So not only do you have trillions of planets to choose from, where only one of them needs the right conditions for life to evolve, but you've got gazillions of branching histories where every possible quantum outcome occurs. In such a situation, if it is physically possible for conscious life to evolve, then it is absolutely guaranteed to happen.

The result would look exactly like Nagel's teleological naturalism. Except it isn't that the universe conspired such that life began and conscious beings evolved, but that the cosmos had a near-infinite number of MWI timelines for the correct planetary conditions to exist and exactly the right mutations to occur. No miracles required. This would be a completely naturalistic process. We can call it "the Goldilocks Process (GP)".

Then at the moment the first conscious animal appears on a planet (and it happened to be Earth), the wave function for the whole of the cosmos observable from Earth would collapse, and the GP would cease. The result would be just one planet in the whole cosmos where conscious life exists, which explains why we can't find any sign of life elsewhere and why the Earth is a goldilocks planet (this is just the anthropic principle, applied to QM). It makes abiogenesis a naturalistic dead cert instead of looking like an impossible miracle - it makes an intelligent designer God completely redundant. It explains exactly how Nagel's teleology works. And what about the Cambrian Explosion (CE)? Well, if this theory was true then we'd expect evolution to have two distinct phases -- one before the appearance of consciousness, when the GP was in play, and one after its appearance, with an inflection point where the two phases meet. And isn't that precisely what the CE is?? The reason all the major branches of life appeared at roughly the same time is that the evolutionary process had fundamentally changed. The GP had stopped, and been replaced by conscious animals collapsing the wave-function.

All we need now is for somebody to show how this also explains wave-particle duality and we'll be on to a winner. Oh, here it is:

https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1608/1608.06722.pdf#

>WAVE PARTICLE DUALITY, THE OBSERVER AND RETROCAUSALITYAshok Narasimhana,bandMenas C.Abstract. We approach wave particle duality, the role of the observer and implications on Retrocausality, by starting with the results of a well verified quantum experiment. We analyze how some current theoretical approaches interpret these results. We then provide an alternative theoretical framework that is consistent with the observationsand in many ways simpler than usual attempts to account for retrocausality, involving a non-local conscious Observer.

How many more ducks do I need to get in a row before people take this seriously?

>Quantum mechanics, as it's usually written down in textbooks, is logically incomplete.

It's complete if you accept MWI, and it is also complete if you accept Von Neumann / Stapp.

> The word "observer" is never defined properly in a way that makes it compatible with the Schrödinger equation. So, there's no way to settle this debate, until either something comes along to replace quantum mechanics, or an interpretation is proven to be correct.

I believe there is another alternative, and that's a paradigm shift on a higher level of abstraction. This one: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mind-Cosmos-Materialist-Neo-Darwinian-Conception/dp/0199919755. The reason for the current impasse is that most of the people involved in the debates do not accept that materialism has been falsified. Once you do accept this, then the whole landscape shifts.

>Everything's quantum. von Neumann never claimed consciousness causes collapse; instead, he said that the collapse could logically occur anywhere between the atomic scale and the scale of the human.

Erm...he absolutely said consciousness causes collapse. His position was that the whole physical world is the only quantum system that matters, and it must be collapsed from outside.

As for Wigner, I do not have detailed knowledge of his views - I am familiar only with what Henry Stapp said about them. It does seem he changed his mind several times.

> That's a mighty big assertion to swallow without a lot of supporting evidence. People don't even agree on what consciousness is, let alone agree on how it works.

All the interpretations of QM contain mighty big assertions, and none of them have any supporting evidence. That's what makes them metaphysical interpretations rather than science. In this case, you need to start by refuting materialism. Once that has been done, the situation looks rather different.

> I hadn't ever heard of Stapp, but I did find a review of his work with a bunch of quotations about relevant concepts. As far as I can tell, he's a philosopher rather than a physicist or neuroscientist.

His take on the physics is certainly of major philosophical interest, but he's primarily a physicist.

>The thing is, that model of free choice allows picking one of many superposed outcomes with statistics differing from Born's rule, which is exactly postselection. It doesn't matter if it's currently limited to selecting from superposed brain states in a human consciousness; if it's possible to postselect at all, then it'll eventually be possible to build minds that do arbitrary postselection, and postselection gives you Amazing Powers.

That all depends on the metaphysical details. It may be possible to "postselect", but only in very limited ways. Or only in very limited ways most of the time. Once you have posited something outside the physical system, then it all depends on exactly what's outside, and how it works. But yes, it is possible that this sort of scheme opens the door to some forms of probabilistic supernaturalism. In fact, that's pretty much what Stapp is suggesting. Free Will as he describes it is outside the realm of natural causality.

The Von-Neumann interpretation is incredibly powerful in terms of explanatory power for other scientific mysteries. I made a post on this in /r/quantuminterpretation:

>I have just read a book called "Quantum Ontology" which dismisses the Von Neumann - Wigner interpretation in a wave of the hand. The grounds given are that "evolution is a purely physical theory" and that it is impossible to explain how conscious beings could have evolved if consciousness collapses the wave function. It also claims the theory involves "deeply problematic interactionist dualism". To me this seems to be a very weak objection. Why?
>
>Firstly, I believe it has been shown that materialism is logically false, and that this has major implications for both evolution and cosmology.
>
>Secondly, the interactive dualism itself isn't a major problem.
>
>So now we are left with the primary objection: how can conscious beings have evolved if consciousness collapses the wave function? What collapsed the wave function before consciousness evolved?
>
>Far from being a show-stopping problem, the answer is surely obvious: nothing did. We actually end up with a situation where, before the appearance of conscious animals, something identical to MWI was true: there were no conscious beings in the world, so the wave-function never collapsed.
>
>As well as providing us with a complete version of QM and escaping the Hard Problem of consciousness, this provides an answer to no less than five other mysteries:
>
>Why do we appear to be alone in the universe?
>
>Why is the Earth such a goldilocks planet?
>
>How did abiogenesis happen?"
>
>How could Thomas Nagel's "teleological naturalism" work?
>
>Why did the Cambrian Explosion happen?
>
>The situation would be thus:
>
>When the universe began, there were no conscious animals in it, so MWI was true. Every planet had gazillions of MWI histories. So not only do you have trillions of planets to choose from, where only one of them needs the right conditions for life to evolve, but you've got gazillions of branching histories where every possible quantum outcome occurs. In such a situation, if it is physically possible for conscious life to evolve, then it is absolutely guaranteed to happen.
>
>The result would look exactly like Nagel's teleological naturalism. Except it isn't that the universe conspired such that life began and conscious beings evolved, but that the cosmos had a near-infinite number of MWI timelines for the correct planetary conditions to exist and exactly the right mutations to occur. No miracles required. This would be a completely naturalistic process. We can call it "the Goldilocks Process (GP)".
>
>Then at the moment the first conscious animal appears on a planet (and it happened to be Earth), the wave function for the whole of the cosmos observable from Earth would collapse, and the GP would cease. The result would be just one planet in the whole cosmos where conscious life exists, which explains why we can't find any sign of life elsewhere and why the Earth is a goldilocks planet (this is just the anthropic principle, applied to QM). It makes abiogenesis a naturalistic dead cert instead of looking like an impossible miracle - it makes an intelligent designer God completely redundant. It explains exactly how Nagel's teleology works. And what about the Cambrian Explosion (CE)? Well, if this theory was true then we'd expect evolution to have two distinct phases -- one before the appearance of consciousness, when the GP was in play, and one after its appearance, with an inflection point where the two phases meet. And isn't that precisely what the CE is?? The reason all the major branches of life appeared at roughly the same time is that the evolutionary process had fundamentally changed. The GP had stopped, and been replaced by conscious animals collapsing the wave-function.

>That line in the FAQ is most likely drawn directly from here:
>
>https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-consciousness/notes.html#note-8
>
>which quotes from Wigner’s Collected Works Vol. VI. His much later desire to replace solipsism with an underlying realism is also remarked on here (PDF, page 11):

OK, thanks for that.

There is no need to resort to solipsism though. Solipsism is the claim that only your own consciousness exists, and there's no reason that the Von Neumann interpretation has to go there. I don't know that much about Wigner's specific views - I am more family with Von Neumann's position and Henry Stapp's re-interpretation of it.

> The idea that conscious observers are required for the experiment to work is always the first thing that trips people up, and it isn't part of modern QM.

It's absolutely part of modern QM. You cannot simply dismiss Henry Stapp as if he doesn't exist, isn't a physicist, or doesn't ascribe to the Von Neumann interpretation.

And also, conscious observers are required only to collapse the wave function. If there are no (embodied) observers, the wave function doesn't collapse at all. In other words, the Von-Neumann interpretation equates to MWI before consciousness evolved.

> is an extremely fringe idea.

Only because a lot of people in the scientific mainstream are blissfully unaware that materialism has been well and truly falsified. Most revolutionary ideas start out as "fringe". That's how scientific revolutions generally work.

>Maybe you are a genius with a groundbreaking new philosophy to share - who knows! But you're not going to win any friends by lording yourself over people. You have to first convince the powers that be (agents and publishers, in this case) that your work is worth getting behind, and that takes a lot more people skills than it does intelligence.

I accept that. People skills is something I have always struggled with. And just to be clear...very little of it is genuinely new. What I am trying to do is bring together a bunch of ideas that people much cleverer than I am have come up with, but which haven't been put together and presented as a package before. There is already a groundbreaking new philosophy out there, waiting to be understood (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mind-Cosmos-Materialist-Neo-Darwinian-Conception/dp/0199919755, https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783642180750). What I am trying to do is introduce people to these ideas in a more accessible form than the books linked to above.

I partly started this thread because I am aware of the sort of problem you are talking about, and I know I need to address it. At the end of the day what I really want is for people to think about the philosophical message rather than to think I am clever.

> A lot of people think their personal philosophy is groundbreaking and important and will change the world. Show us why this philosophy is so groundbreaking rather than just telling us that it is, and that we are sticks in the mud if we don't see it.

That is the whole purpose of this project. That's why I have written the story - to show people how it would work. What I've described in the opening post is the plot devices that allow me to show this. I can't think of any other way to do it.

>I'm also gonna be honest that I'm still getting Qanon vibes from the way you're talking about these powerful people, so if you don't subscribe to those views I'd reconsider the way you approach the topic, in case other people take it the same way.

I'm English, and Qanon is something I struggle to understand at all, since it is so intensely American. I do genuinely believe those people are the enemies of any genuine progress though: it is in their self-interest to stand in the way of meaningful economic reform, because they are the prime beneficiaries of the existing (and broken) system. And they retain their power partly because the political opposition to them is hopelessly split, and arguing amongst itself. Why is it hopelessly split? Because people cannot agree on what is real/true and what isn't. How can we fix this? Answer: we need to think again about the nature of reality, because the currently-prevailing epistemic regime is fundamentally flawed. The problem is metaphysical materialism, which is demonstrably false, even though scientific realism is eminently defendable.

Perhaps you are getting an idea now of why I need to package this up in a story?

The existence and definition of consciousness.

Consciousness exists. We are conscious. What do these words mean? How do they get their meaning? Answer: subjectivity and subjectively. We are directly aware of our own conscious experiences. Each of us knows that we aren't a zombie, and we assume other humans (and animals) are also subjectively experiencing things. So the word "conciousness" gets its meaning via a private ostensive definition. We privately "point" to our own subjective experiences and associate the word "consciousness" with those experiences. Note that if we try to define the word "consciousness" to mean "brain activity" then we are begging the question - we'd simply be defining materialism to be true, by assigning a meaning to the word "consciousness" which contradicts its actual meaning as used. So we can't do that.

2) What does the term "material" mean?

This is of critical importance, because mostly it is just assumed that everybody knows what it means. This is because the word has a non-technical, non-metaphysical meaning that is understood by everybody. We all know what "the material universe" means. It refers to a realm of galaxies, stars and planets, one of which we know to harbour living organisms like humans, because we live on it. This material realm is made of molecules, which are made of atoms (science added this bit, but it fits naturally with the rest of the concept - there is no clash). This concept is non-metaphysical because it is common to everybody, regardless of their metaphysics. It doesn't matter whether you are a materialist, a dualist, an idealist, a neutral monist, a kantian, or somebody who rejects metaphysics entirely, there is no reason to reject this basic concept of material. Let us call this concept "material-NM (non-metaphysical)".

There are also some metaphysically-loaded meanings of "material", which come about by attaching a metaphysical claim to the material-NM concept. The two that matter here are best defined using Kantian terminology. We are directly aware of a material world. It's the one you are aware of right now - that screen you are seeing - that keyboard you are touching. In Kantian terminology, these are called "phenomena". It is important not to import metaphysics into the discussion at this point, as we would if we called them "mental representations of physical objects". Calling them "phenomena" does not involve any metaphysical assumptions. It merely assumes that we all experience a physical world, and labels that "phenomena". Phenomena are contrasted with noumena. Noumena are the world as it is in itself, independent of our experiences of it. Some people believe that the noumenal world is also a material world. So at this point, we can define two metaphysically-loaded concepts of material. "Material-P" is the phenomenal material world, and "Material-N" is a posited noumenal material world (it can only be posited because we cannot, by definition, have any direct knowledge about such a world).

3) What concept of material does science use?

This one is relatively straightforwards: when we are doing science, the concept of material in use is material-NM. If what we are doing is deciding what genus a mushroom should belong to, or investigating the chemical properties of hydrochloric acid, or trying to get a space probe into orbit around Mars, then it makes no difference whether the mushroom, molecule or Mars are thought of as phenomenal or noumenal. They are just material entities and that's all we need to say about them.

Only in a very small number of very specific cases do scientists find themselves in situations where these metaphysical distinctions matter. One of those is quantum mechanics, since the difference between the observed material world and the unobserved material world is also the difference between the collapse wave function and the uncollapsed wave function. However, on closer inspection, it turns out that this isn't science. It's metaphysics. That's why there are numerous "interpretations" of QM. They are metaphysical interpretations, and they deal with the issues raised by the distinction between material-P and material-N. Another situation where it matters is whenever consciousness comes up in scientific contexts, because material-P refers specifically to the consciously-experiences world (to "qualia"), and the brain activity from which consciousness supposedly "emerges" is happening specifically in a material-N brain. But again, on closer inspection, it turns out that this isn't science either. It's quite clearly metaphysics. I can think of no example where science is just doing science, and not metaphysics, where the distinction between material-P and material-N is of any importance. Conclusion: science itself always uses the concept material-NM.

4) What concept of materialism does metaphysical materialism use?

We can map material-P and material-N onto various metaphysical positions. Idealism is the claim that only material-P exists, and that there is no material-N reality. Substance dualism claims both of them exist, as separate fundamental sorts of stuff. But what does materialism claim?

Materialism is the claim that "reality is made of material and that nothing else exists". This material realm is the one described by science, but with a metaphysical concept bolted on. This is because for a materialist, it is crucial to claim that the material universe exists entirely independently of consciousness. The big bang didn't happen in anybody's mind - it happened in a self-existing material realm that existed billions of years before there were any conscious animals in it. So this is necessarily material-N, and not material-P or material-NM. The claim is metaphysical.

This is where the incoherence of most forms of materialism should becomes clear. Materialism is the claim that only the material-N realm exists. There is one form of materialism which does this consistently: eliminativism. Eliminative materialism denies the existence of subjective stuff. It claims consciousness, as defined in (1) does not exist. It claims the word as I've defined it doesn't have a referent in reality. As such, it is perfectly coherent. But it suffers from a massive problem, since it denies the existence of the one thing we are absolutely certain exists. This is why it is such a minority position: nearly everybody rejects it, including most materialists. Other forms of materialism do not deny the existence of consciousness and subjective stuff, and that is why they are incoherent. They are trying to simultaneously claim that only material-N exists, and that material-P also exists. The impossibility of both these things being true at the same time is the nub of "the hard problem". Materialists are left trying to defend the claim that material-P is material-N. That consciousness is brain activity, even though it has a completely different set of properties.

Conclusion:

The only form of materialism that isn't logically incoherent is eliminative materialism, which is bonkers. We should therefore reject materialism and scientific materialism. We do not need to reject scientific realism (because it avoids claiming that the mind-external world is material), but we do need to think very carefully about the implications of this conclusion for science itself. Specifically, it has ramifications for evolutionary theory and cosmology. Hence: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mind-Cosmos-Materialist-Neo-Darwinian-Conception/dp/0199919755

Scientism is what happens when people don't understand the argument in this post (expect responses along the lines of "Wall of text! [insert irrelevant unconnected argument in defence of materialism here]". It too should be rejected.

I have just read a book called "Quantum Ontology", about the metaphysics of quantum mechanics. The book concentrates on three theory classes: spontaneous collapse, hidden variable and MWI. There are major problems with all three (spontaneous collapse leaves us wondering what makes collapse happen, hidden variable seems to be either incomplete or deeply unintuitive, MWI suggests that human beings are continually splitting into multiple timelines). It mentions there are some other theories but dismisses the Von Neumann - Wigner interpretation (AKA "consciousness causes collapse") in a wave of the hand. The grounds given for this casual dismissal is that "evolution is a purely physical theory" and that it is impossible to explain how conscious beings could have evolved if consciousness collapses the wave function. It also claims the theory involves "deeply problematic interactionist dualism". To me this seems to be a very weak objection. Why?

Firstly, I believe it has been shown that materialism is logically false, and that this has major implications for both evolution and cosmology. At the very least, the refutations of materialism are serious enough that we cannot simply pretend they don't exist. The Hard Problem is real. And yet Thomas Nagel's "teleological naturalism" explanation for the evolution of consciousness is itself deeply mysterious.

Secondly, the interactive dualism itself isn't a major problem. Henry Stapp is a perfectly well respected physicist, and Von Neumann was a polymath and undisputed genius. Not an argument from authority, just pointing out he can't be dismissed casually.

So now we are left with the primary objection: how could conscious beings have evolved if consciousness collapses the wave function? In other words...if consciousness causes collapse then what collapsed the wave function before consciousness evolved?

Far from being a show-stopping problem, the answer is surely obvious: nothing did. We actually end up with a situation where, before the appearance of conscious animals, something functionally identical to MWI was true: there were no conscious beings in the world, so the wave-function never collapsed. This is, in fact, MWI without its biggest drawback, because it doesn't involve the problem of "many minds".

So far we have escaped the Hard Problem of consciousness, and got a complete version of QM (unlike hidden variable and spontaneous collapse) and escaping the Hard Problem. But this theory provides an answer to no less than five other mysteries:

Why do we appear to be alone in the universe?

Why is the Earth such a goldilocks planet?

How did abiogenesis happen?"

How could Thomas Nagel's "teleological naturalism" work? I mean...why?

Why did the Cambrian Explosion happen?

The situation would be thus:

When the universe began, there were no conscious animals in it. If consciousness causes collapse, this means that there was no collapse, which equates to MWI. So every planet had gazillions of MWI histories. So not only do you have trillions of planets where stuff might happen, where the right conditions for life to evolve only needs to happen on one of them, but you've also got gazillions of branching histories where every possible quantum outcome occurs. In such a situation, if it is physically possible for conscious life to evolve (and we know it is) then it is absolutely guaranteed to happen. It's a bit like buying a near-infinite number of lottery tickets, except you don't have to pay for them. The ultimate free lunch. No miracles required. This would be a completely naturalistic process. We can call it "the Goldilocks Process (GP)", and though the result might look miraculous, it would actually be completely deterministic (as MWI is).

Everything would change the moment the first conscious animal appears on a planet (and it seems Earth won the lottery), the wave function for the whole of the cosmos observable from Earth would collapse, and the GP would cease. The result would be just one planet in the whole cosmos where conscious life exists, which explains why we can't find any sign of life elsewhere and why the Earth is a goldilocks planet. Not just the evolution of consciousness but abiogenesis also now becomes a naturalistic dead cert, even if it happened only once in the entire universe. This makes an intelligent designer God completely redundant. It also explains exactly how Nagel's teleology works.

And what about the Cambrian Explosion (CE)? Well, if this theory was true then we'd expect evolution to have two distinct phases -- one before the appearance of consciousness, when the GP was in play, and one after its appearance, with an inflection point where the two phases meet. And isn't that precisely what the CE is?? The reason all the major branches of life appeared at roughly the same time is that the evolutionary process had fundamentally changed. The GP had stopped, and been replaced by conscious animals collapsing the wave-function. This resulted in an initial burst of all sorts of new life forms, which eventually settled down into a new pattern.

I'd be very interested to discuss any part of this theory in more detail.

> What do we have left? I lost my belief in physicalism for a few months but I have no idea what view it most likely would be true.

I think the best option is neutral monism, but actually it doesn't matter. Who cares what reality is made of? What actually matters is how it behaves -- whether or not naturalism is true.

> Can we really deny physicalism while accepting naturalism? I feel that if physicalism is wrong then it seriously increases the likelihood that naturalism could be wrong

If physicalism were true then it seems obvious that naturalism is true. If physicalism is accepted to be false then naturalism might be true, but it is not longer obviously true.

Thomas Nagel has ruled out physicalism but still defends naturalism. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mind-Cosmos-Materialist-Neo-Darwinian-Conception/dp/0199919755

If we deny physicalism then the only thing holding up naturalism is skepticism ("So long as we have no evidence for supernaturalism, I choose to believe naturalism").

The truth. Materialism is demonstrably false, and there's an intellectual revolution waiting in the wings: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mind-Cosmos-Materialist-Neo-Darwinian-Conception/dp/0199919755

Science made claims over more territory than it ever had a right to. Or rather some people did, in the name of science. This had the effect of provoking all sorts of other groups - not just religious groups but all sorts of others (eg critical theory, postmodernism, climate change deniers) also making claims beyond their epistemic remit. Somewhere in this giant ideological bunfight, the truth got lost, and now we live in a post-truth world where most people believe whatever they like, or don't know what to believe. Almost nobody seems to agree with me, but I think we need to start again with a new understanding of how science related to non-science. A sort of "epistemic umbrella", which also needs to incorporate economics and politics. (If we are going to force science and religion to stop an illegitimate/pointless epistemic war, then we can't permit economics to go on peddling fantasies either - it has to recognise science (ecology) too...and if economics is forced to acknowledge ecology, this in turn changes politics. But to do this, we need a solid foundation of knowledge, and only a new deal between science and religion can provide this, IMO.

>Not if we're talking about what we're committed to by science, in this case, all we have to consider is "a contention from science".

But it isn't a contention from science. If we are going to take into account claims made by science, then we need to examine those claims carefully. And in this case, which involves quantum randomness, then we have to conclude that science has to be very careful what it is claiming.

Science is not committed to any one particular account of the metaphysics of quantum randomness. Some scientists might be.

>2) according to the science, that living things attain sophistication requires randomness

Yes, but science doesn't distinguish between objective and subjective randomness in quantum mechanics. This is one of the things this book is about:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mind-Cosmos-Materialist-Neo-Darwinian-Conception/dp/0199919755

>4) according to the science, there can only be free will if deterministic theories are false

This claim is metaphysical, not scientific. Science has nothing to say about free will. Again, it boils down to metaphysical interpretations about quantum randomness. We cannot get away from this.

Thank you for politely continuing the dialogue.

> without evidence, just assertion

If it is not too much trouble, in the future could you please just ask for the evidence rather than accuse me of making assertions.

I think that thoughts are no longer matter because they do not have the properties of matter. For example, thoughts do not take up space or time and cannot be converted into energy. Thoughts have properties that matter does not have. For example, I have a thought about this discussion, but matter doesn't have the property of "aboutness". Thoughts have qualia, matter does not. Here is an analogy. Imagine a man is born colorblind. He becomes the most brilliant scientist of all time, mastering neuroscience, medicine, physics and philosophy. He can now identify exactly what happens when you sense something. He can show how the matter in the brain changes exactly when, for example, you recognize the color red. But there is one thing the scientist will not know... what red looks like. The thought of sensing red includes properties... namely redness... which cannot be described fully by a physical analysis. You could know the wavelength on the light spectrum, but you wouldn't know red.

Because of this, a thought cannot be material. It has immaterial qualities. There may be neural correlates to thoughts but they are not identical to the thoughts themselves because they lack the properties I described above.

For sake of discussion, you appear to be supporting "reductionism" with relation to consciousness. I highly recommend you read reknowned atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel's book Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist, Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False. He took a lot of flak for writing this book... and then people pretty much agreed he was right. (He is still an atheist, btw)

> we are more than the sum of our parts

This is not what I am saying. I am saying we are different from our parts. Let's try something simple...

Imagine you have 2 glass beakers, 1 with 4oz of Liquid A and another with 4 oz of Liquid B. We will call this State of Affairs 1 or (SOA1) Now, imagine you pour 4oz of Liquid A into the beaker with Liquid B. When they combine, they form a precipitate that floats to the top. We will call this State of Affairs 2 or (SOA2)

SOA1 and SOA2 have identical physical components. However, they are now arranged differently such that one has the property of solid and liquid (SOA2) while the other has the property only of liquid (SOA1).

They have different properties, they are no longer identical. They are different from just their fundamental parts.

But what makes them different are their properties, not the underlying matter. As you said, if we burned them down they would be left with the same atoms. The question then is, when I say the contents of SOA2 are both wet and hard (referring to the liquid and the precipitate), how can that statement be true? On the Correspondence Theory of Truth, then "wet" and "hard" need to correlate with something in reality? But these are properties, not things in and of themselves. You can't go to the store and buy "wet".

So, what is wrong --- the correspondence theory of truth, that properties exist, or that the SOA2 is both wet and hard? All 3 can't be true if the world is only matterial.

> There are an infinite number of points between me and my bathroom

Please read the link I sent you. There is a whole world of information on infinities. Of course bounded infinities exist. That is not the question. The question is whether infinite causal chains exist. If you aren't going to read the material (which I wrote, and is a blog post, not the whole book by Pruss), we wont have a productive conversation.

> There is no evidence of creation ex nihilo

Actually, there is. The Universe sure does appear to come into existence around 14 billion years ago. And there doesn't appear to be anything before it.

Also, to be clear, the theist doesn't believe that that the Universe came into existence uncaused. We believe it had an efficient cause: God made the Universe.

I would suggest: Mind & Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False by Thomas Nagel.

Here is the first few paragraphs of the summary/synopsis excerpt from Amazon if you are interested:

>The modern materialist approach to life has conspicuously failed to explain such central mind-related features of our world as consciousness, intentionality, meaning, and value. This failure to account for something so integral to nature as mind, argues philosopher Thomas Nagel, is a major problem, threatening to unravel the entire naturalistic world picture, extending to biology, evolutionary theory, and cosmology.

>
>Since minds are features of biological systems that have developed through evolution, the standard materialist version of evolutionary biology is fundamentally incomplete. And the cosmological history that led to the origin of life and the coming into existence of the conditions for evolution cannot be a merely materialist history, either. An adequate conception of nature would have to explain the appearance in the universe of materially irreducible conscious minds, as such.

>
>Nagel's skepticism is not based on religious belief or on a belief in any definite alternative. In Mind and Cosmos, he does suggest that if the materialist account is wrong, then principles of a different kind may also be at work in the history of nature, principles of the growth of order that are in their logical form teleological rather than mechanistic.

>
>In spite of the great achievements of the physical sciences, reductive materialism is a world view ripe for displacement. Nagel shows that to recognize its limits is the first step in looking for alternatives, or at least in being open to their possibility.

And on Thomas Nagel, per Wikipedia:

>Thomas Nagel is an American philosopher. He is University Professor of Philosophy and Law, Emeritus, at New York University,[1] where he taught from 1980 to 2016.[2] His main areas of philosophical interest are legal philosophy, political philosophy, and ethics.[3]
>
>Nagel is well known for his critique of material reductionist accounts of the mind, particularly in his essay "What Is it Like to Be a Bat?" (1974), and for his contributions to deontological and liberal moral and political theory in The Possibility of Altruism (1970) and subsequent writings. He continued the critique of reductionism in Mind and Cosmos (2012), in which he argues against the neo-Darwinian view of the emergence of consciousness.

A highly interesting and influential work on consciousness, which seems to be exactly what you're looking for. Let me know what you think!

>What are some of the best logical reasons for rejecting materialism?

There is only one, and that is enough. There is no place for subjectivity - for consciousness - in a materialistic reality. Consciousness exist, therefore materialism is false. It's that simple, but in order to demonstrate the problem logically you have to nail down people's own definitions of terms like "material universe" and "consciousness."

The best book written recently about it is this one: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mind-Cosmos-Materialist-Neo-Darwinian-Conception/dp/0199919755

>On this, we're in full agreement. I've seen consciousness described in so many ways, many utterly useless, in scientific papers, that nailing that down to something we can agree on should be the first step (though not an easy one). Doing science or philosophy on a semantic problem is a waste, as you say.

OK. I believe there is only one escape route from this bind, and it was provided by Kant. There is an underlying problem with our concept of "material". This isn't even questioned 99.9% of the time.

Science describes the history and behaviour of a material cosmos. In that sense, we know what "material" refers to - it is a realm of galaxies made of stars and planets, on one of which exists living creatures, and the whole thing is made of atoms and stuff like that. That's "the material world". This conceptual scheme works perfectly for nearly all of science. It breaks down in two places. The first is quantum theory, where the difference between an observed material entity and an unobserved one is absolutely crucial. And the second is consciousness, where the difference between the material world we directly perceive ("qualia"), and the one we presume to exist "beyond the veil of perception" ("mind-external reality") is absolutely crucial.

These distinctions are parallel with Kant's "phenomena" and "noumena". The fundamental conceptual problem science is facing when it comes to consciousness is that the difference between "material" in a phenomenal sense, and "material" in a noumenal sense has become critical, and yet science as we know it can't cope with this distinction. Once we acknowledge this, I believe it is possible to find a way forwards.

>People don't want to say "everything in the universe seems material, but we (living things, or sufficiently intelligent things, or whatever) are something else,"

Sure, this feels "wrong" to many scientists. As does quantum mechanics. I personally believe they are going to have to accept it, however wrong it feels. It may turn out that the existence of life in this cosmos is not a meaningless accident. Maybe the universe only exists in order to support conscious beings. This is never going to be science, but that doesn't mean it gets in the way of science either. It just means that reality is even richer than materialistic scientists think it is.

>That's not to say it's wrong, just that it's going to be difficult to overturn the viewpoint. If it happens, I look forward to exploring the new frontiers of our understanding.

Have you read Nagel's book? https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mind-Cosmos-Materialist-Neo-Darwinian-Conception/dp/0199919755

Nagel is providing the naturalistic option for a way forwards. If you want to explore beyond that, then you will be doing it on your own. The scientific community can't come with you - not as a community anyway.

>Science has, rightly, gotten a lot of criticism over the past few decades, mainly because it thought overly highly of itself and needed to be put in its place.

I think this needs to examined more closely. Some scientists have thought overly highly of science and those people need to be put in their place. That's why I mentioned Richard Dawkins, who is the walking embodiment of this problem. It is very important to distinguish between science itself and Dawkinsian scientism. This cannot be done by attacking science. That strategy backfires - it plays straight into the hands of the Dawkinsians. Rather, you have to go for the unexamined assumptions that form the foundation of his worldview. Specifically, that means materialism.

The intellectual tool to do this has been provided. Very few people have noticed.

>Nowadays, I reckon a lot of philosophers including CT people would subscribe to something like scientific instrumentalism.

Well, philosophy isn't a popularity contest, and I am not surprised CT people would be drawn to instrumentalism. For me, instrumentalism is one of the things that needs to be debunked. It's too weak to defend science from its enemies, and unnecesarily so. In other words, if you think you can defend scientific realism, and you don't have an anti-scientific political agenda, what possible use would you have for instrumentalism?

>Finally, The Gender Question is indeed quite taboo these days and around these circles. I myself posted a piece on this sub arguing against the social construction of sex (which appears to have been deleted?)

Quelle surprise.

It is not easy to get people to rethink their most fundamental unexamined assumptions, that is for sure. That is partly why I start with ontology and epistemology. (1) is really important. Western culture is shot through with materialism, and it has turned out that materialism is metaphysically false. This is unimaginable for somebody like Richard Dawkins. He has not the slightest inkling that there is any possibility at all that he's got this wrong, and yet he is wrong. Logically wrong.

The scientific materialist conception of reality has no place for consciousness. Consciousness shouldn't exist if it is true, and yet clearly it does exist. IOW https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness isn't just hard - it is completely impossible. It has no solution. But if it has no solution then we've got a fundamental problem in evolutionary biology explaining how concious animals evolved and a fundamental problem in cosmology explaining the relationship between consciousness and the universe. Thomas Nagel's book is written from the POV of an atheist or metaphysical naturalist who has accepted the reality of these problems. He's the first major atheist/naturalist to do so. Others will eventually be forced to follow, I think.

His conclusion is that there must, at the very least, be some sort of naturalistic teleology in play. IOW, evolution was always destined to produce conscious beings. This is not the result of "intelligent design", but of a sort of metaphysical causality that materialistic science has no conception of. The implications of this rethink of the nature of reality are very large indeed.

The blurb:

>In Mind and Cosmos Thomas Nagel argues that the widely accepted world view of materialist naturalism is untenable. The mind-body problem cannot be confined to the relation between animal minds and animal bodies. If materialism cannot accommodate consciousness and other mind-related aspects of reality, then we must abandon a purely materialist understanding of nature in general, extending to biology, evolutionary theory, and cosmology. Since minds are features of biological systems that have developed through evolution, the standard materialist version of evolutionary biology is fundamentally incomplete. And the cosmological history that led to the origin of life and the coming into existence of the conditions for evolution cannot be a merely materialist history. An adequate conception of nature would have to explain the appearance in the universe of materially irreducible conscious minds, as such. No such explanation is available, and the physical sciences, including molecular biology, cannot be expected to provide one. The book explores these problems through a general treatment of the obstacles to reductionism, with more specific application to the phenomena of consciousness, cognition, and value. The conclusion is that physics cannot be the theory of everything.

It logically kills off any possibility of a scientific theory of everything, and opens the door to all sorts of metaphysical possibilities that are currently closed to people based on a flawed conception of what science is.

There is nothing new about anti-materialism, but the arguments that took place in antiquity were exactly that. A great deal has happened since then, notably the scientific revolution, which rehabilitated materialism in a new way, and quantum mechanics, which has questioned it again.

The new objections to materialism were best expressed by people like David Chalmers, and especially Thomas Nagel. I have no intention of trying to explain my own position, in detail, on this sub, right now. It's not possible to do so. I'd need 10,000 words to even get started.

Where people tend to go wrong when it comes to anti-materialistic arguments is to flip straight from "OK, so materialism is false" to "in which case, what is true?", and then get involved in a pointless argument about how cartesian dualism and various forms of idealism aren't any better. If they are a bit more nuanced then they might end up exploring neutral monism. This is all a red herring. Why? Because it doesn't matter what reality is made of. What matters is how reality behaves. If idealism is true but the cosmos behaves exactly as if materialism is true, then why does it matter?

So in fact this is really about causality rather than ontology. Nagel's book explains the relevance best: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mind-Cosmos-Materialist-Neo-Darwinian-Conception/dp/0199919755

Except Nagel is outlining the most naturalistic metaphysical option once materialism is accepted to be false. It doesn't have to be the only option. What this has done is open up theoretical space regarding metaphysics and causality. Metaphysics becomes a "black box", where all sorts of things might be going on, provided they don't contradict empirical science.

This is the briefest possible summary. What I am proposing is simply not possible to explain in one post. I can answer specific questions, but I can't explain my entire philosophical position and what it has got to do with collapse and the future. One thing at a time!

I work on Sundays, especially in the autumn.

> getting new ideologies to replace them is probably counter-productive (since ideologies and religious are the problem, not the solution).

OK, this requires further examination. I am not so sure they are always the problem, nor can I see any other way to do this. I believe the problem is not ideologies per se, but that currently there are few (or no) appropriate ones available.

Trying to get people to drop their existing worldview without offering them something else - even just a foundational structure - is going to be impossible. That structure has to be very carefully considered so that it keeps out things that ought to be kept out, but allows sufficient scope to let in things that aren't harmful, even if they aren't to everybody's taste.

This is particularly important for a specific group of people: the materialistic atheist/skeptic/determinist types. They have already rejected all worldviews that aren't compatible with hardline materialism, and feel threatened by many of them. I believe it is going to be necessary to knock the foundation out from under their specific belief system, and unless they are simultaneously offered an alternative they don't view as a threat, then they will cling to their existing irrational foundation. That alternative isn't a religion. It's this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mind-Cosmos-Materialist-Neo-Darwinian-Conception/dp/0199919755/

>Things are made of behaviors that are made of behaviors
>
>Well this claim is disputable. One might simply reply that science only observes behaviors but has a blind spot on ontological reality. This was a criticism even Russel (and others) raised.

I don't mind making claims that are disputable, as long as they are reasonable. Do you accept that it is possible that there are only behaviors, and that such a description is coherent and useful, if possibly open to being wrong? I am quite pleased that you see that this behaviors-only view is informed by and compatible with science - that was my primary goal.

Yes science only observes behaviors, and it is able to say a great deal about the world with just that. While it is good to keep an eye out for these blind spots, I am still waiting for the god or platonic object of the gaps to rear its head and be relevant. Do you claim to know there is actually something in the blind spot worth caring about?

>It highlights the world in a very different way... which might not fit the narrow mechanistic vision we all try to fit everything now, but there is no reason to think such mechanistic view is true, in fact there are good reasons to think it's not correct. Thomas Nagel (not a religious guy at all) presents a good case in his book Mind and Cosmos 1

Thanks for that source. I have added it to my audible list, but I can tell from the title and and little poking around wikipedia that someone is about to argue for the mind to somehow be special and magical and mystical, as separate from the rest of the cosmos. I have heard the name Nagel thrown around too much to not read this.

>First I think it's pretty clear that the distinction between a table and a tree does exist, since tree grow, but tables are something that are necessarily imposed by humans on a tree.

A tree and a table are different whether that table was made by humans or by natural forces. You can make a table that grows, at least in theory, just as you can have a brain-in-a-vat thought experiment. You could also just grow a tree into a table. If your metaphysics is limited by what humans do, it will have a built-in lack of imagination.

To contradict your point, the difference between the table and tree is just one of arrangement and behavior. A car that is running because it has fuel and spark doesn't have a magical life essence or a quality of moving - its parts are just moving because they are arranged right. A broken car behaves different from working one, as its arrangement is different. I will say it again - Any unique arrangement of matter has unique causal powers. What you are doing is drawing special importance to some arrangements and behaviors over others. To me they are all just arrangements. The difference between living and dead, conscious or not, thermonuclear or not, reactive alkali or not, radioactive or not, these are all important things to notice, but they don't exist in different worlds or different sets of descriptions. They are all behaviors that result from behaviors. You can fill libraries with the very important differences and details here, but you cannot claim that properties or consciousness or qualia are metaphysically special. All that is results from the mechanistic behavior of things. My additional claim beyond garden-variety materialism is that you can eliminate the mech and just say behavior.

>The "field view" seems to reflect what we observe experimentally, but this does not mean necessarily it is ontologically true ... Right about 120 years ago scientists thought their physical view of the world was complete and done

It sounds to me like two completely different topics here. One is accuracy of a model to fit data, either existing data or new data coming out. I just asked you to not confuse the map and the terrain, and here you are doing it. We went from a model that fit the data well under a materialistic paradigm, to a better model that fit better data well still under a materialistic paradigm. What has changed is map, what has not changed is science's continued confidence that the terrain is mechanistic and can be described ever better by only doing better and better models with better and better data. At no point was materialism upended, and it is materialism we are talking about here, not any one scientific model.

What do you mean by ontologically true, anyway? It doesn't sound like it matters how accurate the latest model is to the latest observations of reality. Is a better map more ontologically true to the terrain? Or are you talking about some feature of reality that cannot be described by an infinitely precise model, because it really works by magic? If so, no level of precision or completeness of science will sway you.

I think essentialism is another attempt to add meaningless dualism with another name attached to it. I would check out this "Real Essentialism", but 50 bucks for a paperback is steep.

The OP was articulate, intelligent and well-researched and in the comments well defended. Your position is also cautiously noncommittal and does, I think, stand up very well under the tribunal of impartial reason.

I do not expect you to agree with anything that follows but: Therein I think lies the explanation for the conduct of many, though of course not all, atheists in the comments.

In evaluating an argument with theistic implications many nonbelievers are going to feel the sudden force of massive paradigm pressures and often this will be proportionate to the quality of the argument; i.e., the better the argument, the more obstreperous and unreasonable some of them may become. Even more so if the poster is flaired agnostic and so, from their point of view, innocent of religious indoctrination.

I think this general point is terribly important and terribly under-represented in religious debate. Theism, as N. T. Wright puts it, is a "self-involving hypothesis." Faced with a potentially plausible argument for the existence of God (and remembering Socrates' policy that we must, "Follow the argument wherever it takes us") a man already greatly indisposed to the idea of God faces three choices:

>1. Follow the argument and possibly have to change his life. (He is indisposed to this.) > >2. Follow the argument and, worse case scenario, refuse to live according to his principles. (Most will be indisposed to this.) > >3. Defy Socrates and refuse to follow the argument.

It is easy to see why some nonbelievers may prefer to take a hint from the Sophists and ignore the deliverances of rational intuition in preference for a post hoc rationalisation of something they have already decided on nonrational grounds.

Thomas Nagel, for example, has famously said this. Admirably, he admits his bias and seeks to overcome it in giving an impartial account of the mind which, he says, is recalcitrantly nonphysical. In the book just linked he himself makes the same point I am making and offers it as an explanation for the monomaniacal, neurotic physicalism in the philosophy of mind and the dull refusal to look beyond the embattled physicalistic paradigm. (From pneumatophobia, Moreland has suggested, a man naturally takes refuge in hylomania.)

Apologies for the rant. :D

You should check out Nagel's Mind and Cosmos. It may fall short of defeating naturalism but it's interesting philosophy, short, and worth a read.

https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Cosmos-Materialist-Neo-Darwinian-Conception/dp/0199919755

In his book about how naturalism is wrong.

After flirting with nihilism and existentialism for a long time I, personally, came to the conclusion that the notion that all of this is here without any sort of explanation or without any direction or purpose runs directly against common human intuition. It seems to me to be a belief on par with properly basic beliefs such as the reality of the past, reality of the external world, etc. Perhaps it's a step up, and not quite that basic, but I digress.

Now, some (see Thomas Nagal's "Mind & Cosmos") argue for natural teleology, in which purpose is inherently embedded in the universe and does not need a transcendent mind such as God to give it purpose. Personally, I agree with a very hefty amount of Nagal's positions, but find his critique of the theistic explanation lacking.

For a theistic perspective on the issue, I highly recommend William Lane Craig's following article and podcast episode that addresses this.

You seem to be suggesting some kind of creative evolution, which, despite its unpopularity, can have some strong arguments for it. If you're up for any reading, and curious about this idea and where the support from it comes from, I'd read Nagel's Mind & Cosmos, Bergson's Creative Evolution, or Scheler's The Human Place in the Cosmos.

Ill pick those up. Have you read Thomas Nagel's Mind and Cosmos?

> Yes being incomprehensible by essence-energies is special pleading.

You're going to have to explain yourself here. Being incomprehensible is not an ability or a property, if anything its a reference our inabilities rather than anything about God at all. No idea how you get this idea of there being any sort of special pleading here.

> I asked if you buy this, you never did answer...

You've asked for evidence and all sorts of other things but I've only been trying to tell you what the Orthodox Christians teach.

> God of the gaps...

Stop following your script. I'm not saying God explains anything at all. Do we have the theory of everything? Have all questions in science have been answered as well as philosophy, we're all done here? Last I checked we're still searching for a theory of everything... You claim way more than you can support. You shouldn't be a naturalist if you acknowledge how little we actually know...

> Doesn't matter if you reject it, you are giving non-natural properties to a god. Special pleading again.

I've given no properties to God. From the beginning I noted that the Orthodox teach God's essence to be ineffable. The Orthodox do not believe we can ascribe anything to God's essence in any language or idea.

> Yep you did, and you did so in the paragraph above. Sorry, calling your point some other label doesn't change it from being such.

Show me a direct quote, prove your accusations. All I've been talking about is the essence-energies distinction.

> Nope, it is not about me, and immaterial to the discussion.

So you're full of it, got it. "What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence" -Christopher Hitchens

> How quaint that you thing Ivy League gives any weight to an argument as well.

Straw man. I never said that at all. I'm not saying credentials makes me right, they're mere indications of the reliability of my sources. Anybody who knows about quality of education knows Ivy League universities are notorious for being the most selective, most endowed (better resources and more access to said resources, all that jazz), and having award winning faculty like Nobel Laureates etc. Come on now, let's stop pretending like Ivy League Universities are nothing when we know they're among the greatest academic institutions in the world.

> Who said bob's university is not accredited? And for somebody who claims to know, you really don't. You do understand there are differences on how different schools inside a university run and how different fields apply scholarship, do you not?

Who said Bob wasn't accredited? I was merely talking about differences between universities and they do matter as you even acknowledge with accreditation... Your mere reaction right here proves I was right all along and you actually agree with me. Certain universities are better to go to than others, its a fact. Some universities are crap and have shoddy professors and don't prepare you for the field etc. Now I'm not saying going to a university automatically makes another smarter or anything, but it's just a fact of life that the guy who has a Ph.D. from Harvard is going to look a little better than the guy who has a Ph.D. from Pheonix University alright. I mean come on dude, let's just be realistic here. Did you get your alleged doctorate from a not so great institution and that's why you're all weird about this topic?

> Except the fat that everything we do know does...

Uh no we don't, exactly why we don't have a theory of everything lol this paradigm clearly has its limits and its becoming more and more apparent. Hence you have guys like Thomas Nagel (Ph.D., Harvard) showing just where the weakness are in his work Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False published on Oxford University Press in 2012.

> You can't ignore this and say because things are still unknown, that it is god. That argument has failed throughout history and is still invalid today. It is the god of the gaps argument again.

I'm not giving this argument at all. Gosh how many times do I have to tell you this? Stop with the script already and just listen for once.

It's about degree of academic standing. Difficulty is subjective, buddy. I know a biologist with a Ph.D. from USC and the one class he almost failed in his undergrad years was art history. He struggled with the class immensely and needed a tutor while everyone else was breezing by. Meanwhile he's kiling it in biology and physics and everyone goes to him for help lol difficulty is subjective I'm afraid. Sorry ole bean.
Oxford University is one of the greatest academic institutions in the world, it is globally ranked as top tier this is no secret. I trust Oxford's rankings rather than some random dude on the internet (that's you!).
I don't see how this is about politics at all, it doesn't seem like 4 justifies that at all and I don't know how you got there. It seems this is too much for you handle so you had to cook up some political conspiracy to explain what you see in Oxford's rankings.
Math is definitely not science. This isn't about my views its just a fact. The math department is NOT the science department. Have you even been to a university?? Science uses math, science utilizes assumptions in math and applies math and so forth, but is NOT mathematics itself.
Again, difficulty is subjective. Though as we can see by Oxford's standards you're wrong. I'm not necessarily saying one degree is better than the other but that your rankings of degrees is contradicted by Oxford. You can disagree but then again you're just some random dude on the internet vs. Oxford University so yeah...

> Except you have you claim to know he is real,

Nope never made that claim ever.

> you claim that you can know him if you believe in him

Never said this either.

> you claim to know how he thinks

Never said this as well.

> you claim a lot of knowledge about an unknowable being.

And I also didn't make this claim. You're just following your script again...

> If he were truly unknowable, everything you have said has to be false, as you don't know. Which is our point, you don't know.

You clearly didn't check out the links I provided earlier regarding the essence-energies distinction.

> There is something to know, but you would not be able to tell us, so what you say is nothing more than made up.

That's just plain ole invalid. Your conclusion doesn't follow here. If there was something I knew that couldn't be communicated it wouldn't imply that's made up. Please check out the material I gave on the essence-energies distinction.

> I would measure simplicity by the length of the required building instructions. For example we were to recreate a simulation of the thing in a computer program.

First off, we both know that positing 1 entity is simpler than positing trillions and trillions. There is no denying that trillions and trillions is a greater number than 1. You can't deny this. And how could you possibly do this with consciousness?

>Repetition of a particle is simple to explain, but the mind of God is not not so simple to explain, otherwise we could create God simulations to help us.

We can't do this with consciousness, we can't replicate it. We can't just make something conscious.

> We don't really understand how complex our minds are or how they work.

What we do know is that the mind is the element, part, substance, or process that reasons, thinks, feels, wills, perceives, judges. Matter being able to have this is completely nonsensical at matter would be 3rd person by definition right? Still waiting for you to define matter, you've been ducking and dodging this for awhile now. Scared?

> But you cannot experience the tensions inside the rock.

Yes you can. But I already pointed out your false analogy. I can look at a rock and then look at another rock in the same fashion. I cannot do this with other minds at all. You can't deny this.

> Prominent scientists have signed declaration that creatures are conscious like us:

This doesn't negate what the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy stated at all. Our "physical" descriptions leaves unanswered the question of whether or not the creature is conscious. This is one of many reasons physicalism is being challenged more and more by contemporaries such as Dr. Thomas Nagel (an atheist by the way) who wrote a book published on Oxford University Press in 2012 entitled Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False on how materialism is unraveling the more we study and think about consciousness.

> This is based also on physical brain observations.

Which gives no justification that the creature is actually conscious or not. See the problem of other minds.

> But when we can link consciousnesses physically in a decade or two, do you then agree that minds are physical?

First you have to define what the hell you mean by physical. You keep ducking and dodging in a very dishonest fashion. Second, the article I linked you on the problem of other minds addressed this already: "Even if they were to be as it were “plugged in” to another's mental states, they would need what they do not have, direct knowledge that what they are “plugged in” to is, indeed, the inner life of another. They would know directly that there is a pain that they are experiencing but that would not give them the knowledge, the guarantee, that indeed someone else is experiencing that pain. So, the asymmetry that generates the epistemological problem of other minds is that each of us sometimes knows directly that we are in the mental state we are in and we never know directly that someone other than ourself is in the mental state they are in."

This is why you should read what I link... Don't ignore what I send you, it refutes what you say no matter much you want to ignore it.

> I mean that they express such ideas. It would be strange that they would express such ideas without a reason. What could cause that to happen? If I don't have the sense of zyxness and I have never heard anything about it, how could I be describing it to somebody who does have it, and so well that the person is fooled to think I have it?

How do people in your dreams do this? Does this mean they must exist and have consciousness like you do??

> But the point is that they mention it at all.

Which does not imply that you're right in any shape or form. They may be conscious they may not be conscious. Again, you need justification not a mere explanation that you feel comfortable with. Theists have explanations but we need justification do we not?

> They don't have it, they don't know what it is, how come they are talking about it as if they knew what they are talking about?

Who knows. It doesn't mean they're conscious or even real.

> I have been arguing that all those other scenarios are so much weaker for multiple reasons that it would be irrational to not ignore them

You have no way to assess that. You're just saying this is right and your only support is fiat. You're just declaring this. You're positing your own explanation that is weak because it violates Occam's Razor, is undefined, and conflicts with what we know most intimately: consciousness.

> If one of them is true, there is absolutely no way we would have accidentally guessed it.

Same for materialism. materialism is just another metaphysical system among many.

> The only chance of us being even remotely correct about anything is if things are very closely as they seem, and if the very simplest explanation is correct.

So solipsism then?

> Everything I have argued is about the most plausible, reasonable, probable, justified, consistent or simple case.

False. I've shown how your idea is vacuous, superfluous, unjustified, and conflicts with what we know most intimately: consciousness. Again, you need JUSTIFICATION not an explanation. Get it right.

> And why it is reasonable to reject those skeptical scenarios until there is a very good reason to accept them as plausible.

Wrong, you need justfication first. That's how the burden of proof works. All you've been doing is try to give an explanation but what you need is JUSTIFICATION. Please give actual justification for scientific realism and materialism now. No more dishonest hiding behind explanations, give me justification or get out. “That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.” – Christopher Hitchens.

>Your conclusion does not follow.

My conclusion is that if God communicated to people most would believe in his existence, most would know what he wants. since the vast majority of people throughout history have been theists and attempt to follow his moral code. Furthermore the Bible states that

You simply put in a condition that doesn't logically follow - everyone must believe in the same exact details. Why is that necessary if God simply wants to give people knowledge of His existence, His moral code, and an opportunity to seek him and a rewarder of those that seek Him.

>I'm not saying [theism or Christianity a mathematical impossibility or a logical impossibility] I am saying that just as you cannot choose to the believe that 2+2=5 even if the reward was heaven, a person cannot to choose to change their beliefs regarding whether they think a god exists.

LOL. Yet you use a mathematical impossibility or a logical impossibility to try and make your point!!

>Your beliefs can only change once you are convinced another belief is more likely correct.

One can choose not to critically examine one's own worldview or underlying presumptions thus undermining one's ability to be convinced of anything other than one's assumptions.

Or one can be like Thomas Nagel and hope against hope atheism is true while acknowledging that naturalism is most likely false : I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.

>There is no reasonable evidence to support the supernatural claims of Christianity

FIFY: There is no reasonable evidence to support the naturalistic claims of atheism.

>I don't plan to continue this thread much further - this isn't a terribly good time or place to summarise a first year moral philosophy textbook for you, nor would doing so benefit you in the same way that reading that textbook and thinking about it would.

Weird you should drop into Condescending Philosophy Major Mode, because we're actually agreeing vehemently on everything of substance.

>There is no "moral reality" in the way that there are atoms or energy levels or other physical things.

Not quite. We haven't found one when we've investigated. It's worth remembering that even at the time of the Enlightenment, the field of moral philosophy started with a mixture of divine command and natural-law as its "informed priors" (the frame for its questions). Darwinian evolution dealt a major blow to natural-law/natural-teleology theories, as well.

The finding that we cannot locate an "atom of morality" or a universal optimization target (at least, one that fits our moral intuitions better than the Second Law of Thermodynamics) is a posteriori. Unfortunately, some people drop into Condescending Philosophy Major Mode and insist that their moral intuitions have so much epistemic value that naturalism must be completely wrong.

And these people have tenure!

>Yet almost everyone lives by some kind of moral code,

Well yes, of course.

>and almost everyone thinks something rather nice has happened over the last few hundred years as we drove back ignorance, racism, sexism, slavery, oppression and so forth.

With emphasis on the almost. There are still serious moral philosophers who may like modernity, but take positions that are technically opposed to it.

>Arguably civilisation couldn't work at all unless most people most of the time followed moral rules, or if it could work there would be massive overheads in policing everyone.

It also requires massive policing overheads when you try to run it very, shall we say, wickedly. It shouldn't be too unsupported to assert that nice rulers require more police than mean rulers.

>So how do we justify moral beliefs in a universe that hasn't been so kind as to give us an atom of evil or a wavelength of sin or anything similar? Well, if you want the long version then study moral philosophy. The very short version is we just make something up, or we do something reasonably sophisticated with game theory to get to a very similar place assuming self-interested agents capable of big picture thinking.

Yes, this is exactly what I said. We can take an anti-realist stance ("make something up"), or we can take a very sophisticated, reforming sort of realist stance that involves precise naturalistic grounding (game theory and psychology are aspects of nature too, you know).

But in either case, the Is/Ought Gap, or Moore's Open Question Argument in its other form, are simply not Hard Problems in the sense of demonstrating that the gap is impossible to bridge. In the a-posteriori absence of mystical moral particles, morality is left amenable to natural, empirical investigation via very precise theories of which empirical facts count as moral facts (or via outright anti-realism, which denies that there exists any gap between normative ethics and moral psychology, and thus denies the normativity of ethics in general). The problem is that some trained, professional academic philosophers remain actually committed to the position that the strength of their realist intuitions constitutes evidence against naturalism, or attempt to rationalize ways in which naturalism self-undermines.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mind-Cosmos-Materialist-Neo-Darwinian-Conception/dp/0199919755

See Thomas Nagel Mind & Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False. Nagel is a world class philosopher of the mind and a staunch atheist. This is not punting to theism to explain evidential gaps in science. It addresses an intractable problem for the physical science of the mind which no amount of evidence can resolve. Hence my repeated refrain, "exhaustive physicalistic description."

Please engage with the actual arguments instead of trotting out tired slogans.

:) ... Well, I can understand that in the "other things" some nasty stuff could be hiding, but what's with the"evolution-denier" label, as if questioning evolution is something stupid?

I mean, would you call atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel (one of the greatest contemporary philosophers, whose writings are required reading in Academia) an anti-intellectual?

I'm asking because this is the title of his latest best-seller:

Mind & Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False.

I am aware of all of that. I am not the first person to claim that the Hard Problem is fatal for all non-eliminative form of materialism.

Here's an atheist claiming it:

r/https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mind-Cosmos-Materialist-Neo-Darwinian-Conception/dp/0199919755

And no, the moderator in question is not right to go around deleting everything he/she disagrees with. There's a pattern to his/her behaviour. A lot of the posts that get deleted are anti-materialistic, anti-deterministic and pro-mysticism, but the justification given is that "they aren't philosophy" or "are opinions rather than arguments". It is quite obvious that the individual in question is some sort of materialist/atheist/determinist and abuses their position of authority (as a moderator, not a philosopher) whenever they see something which challenges their own belief system.

> this first part is basically materialism and its generally seen as a long since accepted truth

No! Scientific realism is not materialism. I am a scientific realist, and an anti-materialist. I think materialism is logically false: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mind-Cosmos-Materialist-Neo-Darwinian-Conception/dp/0199919755

I am an epistemic structural realist. I believe science tells us something about the structure of mind-independent reality. Materialism claims that mind-independent reality is made of matter, and that nothing else exists.

>frankly i think your response to gender theory is not a criticism but a mere dismissal.

Yes, that's exactly what it is. I respond in the same way to climate change denial and creationism.

> i think you should just pick up gender trouble

I'd sooner pull my own fingernails out with a pair of rusty pliers.

> its serious, dense, and frankly very difficult theory.

So are some forms of creationism and climate change denial. That doesn't mean I should waste my time reading it.

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