Do we think & communicate (almost) entirely in fabricated stories?

pood said:

thread about the “unraveling” of space and time

Click to expand...

abaddon said:

rousseau said:

The knowledge about the material universe is there, it exists, but most people have a hard time accessing that knowledge, understanding that knowledge, and piecing it together in a way to see deeper truth.

Click to expand...

I think there has to be an objective reality, whether we access it or not. It can't just be a bunch of brains each with their own created worlds inside of them, and nothing else. But I don't agree with you about some "experts" who access "the noumena" using a limited tool like science. Maybe some science-based guesses can be made and math would be the better tool for it than language, for the reason that language is metaphors (so humans cannot get outside of stories while using it).

The universe as "material" is a story. No one knows that the universe is "nothing but matter" or "nothing but consciousness", or whatever other story about what the fundamental nature of phenomena they want to tell.

I'm not looking out of my eyes at the screen just now. The screen is "here" in the same space as all my thoughts and memories and feelings... the whole universe, as known to me, is "here" in that same space. When I stick with the first-person POV then there's no "me in here" and a "world out there".

But when I start talking about "external reality", it bifurcates reality into two -- the phenomena alleged to be inside our skulls and the noumena that is alleged to be outside our skulls. So this fellow that @pood mentioned, Wheeler, "agonized" because he thought he's inside his skull and then doubted any "outside".

IMO he should have doubted the dualism (in here/out there) better.

I mentioned metaphysical idealism in passing a few years back, and an engineer said "Idealism? That's solipsism!" I thought on that, and the more I did, the more clear it was that physicalism is solipsistic and idealism is not.

In the physicalist story, there are 8 billion different brains each doing their things wholly separate from each other (after all, what's the connection if mentality is confined to brains?).

In the metaphysical idealist story (and in cosmological panpsychism) there's one "brain", the universe, and we're events in it. So there's one consciousness and each little tidbit, that seems (but only just seems) like its own individual being, shares in it. So there isn't empty space between the activity of this brain and the activity of that brain...

However, if you feel more convinced of the physicalism story, science isn't your escape from the isolation it imposes. The reason is, as I was saying in my earlier post, science's consensus knowledge isn't agreement about the noumena but about the phenomena.

@pood's been making an important point. Science has a notable limitation -- it measures the behaviors of phenomena but cannot get to the fundamental nature of what the phenomena are.

This limit was a conscious choice back in Galileo's day. Spirit-matter dualism was the shared worldview at that time, and smart folk like Galileo knew spirit isn't measurable for being immaterial. So he and others decided that science's focus must be on matter, and spirit would be ignored by science - they left it in a different "magisteria". Then in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, folk decided, in effect, "let's just forget that whole other magisterium, the spirit or mind... all of reality is matter only!" Science cannot demonstrate that -- the maneuver is made in order to seem like they have a completed "true" story. But, again, science's "objectivity" is people inter-subjectively agreeing about what phenomena they experience. So if there's a noumena "out there" (which I doubt, since I lean towards believing idealism) then you don't get there from science.

Click to expand...

pood said:

I think what science actually practices is methodological naturalism rather than metaphysical naturalism, which is not a practice or a means of practice at all, but a philosophical assumption that may be false.

Click to expand...

abaddon said:

rousseau said:

The knowledge about the material universe is there, it exists, but most people have a hard time accessing that knowledge, understanding that knowledge, and piecing it together in a way to see deeper truth.

Click to expand...

I think there has to be an objective reality, whether we access it or not. It can't just be a bunch of brains each with their own created worlds inside of them, and nothing else. But I don't agree with you about some "experts" who access "the noumena" using a limited tool like science. Maybe some science-based guesses can be made and math would be the better tool for it than language, for the reason that language is metaphors (so humans cannot get outside of stories while using it).

The universe as "material" is a story. No one knows that the universe is "nothing but matter" or "nothing but consciousness", or whatever other story about what the fundamental nature of phenomena they want to tell.

I'm not looking out of my eyes at the screen just now. The screen is "here" in the same space as all my thoughts and memories and feelings... the whole universe, as known to me, is "here" in that same space. When I stick with the first-person POV then there's no "me in here" and a "world out there".

But when I start talking about "external reality", it bifurcates reality into two -- the phenomena alleged to be inside our skulls and the noumena that is alleged to be outside our skulls. So this fellow that @pood mentioned, Wheeler, "agonized" because he thought he's inside his skull and then doubted any "outside".

IMO he should have doubted the dualism (in here/out there) better.

I mentioned metaphysical idealism in passing a few years back, and an engineer said "Idealism? That's solipsism!" I thought on that, and the more I did, the more clear it was that physicalism is solipsistic and idealism is not.

In the physicalist story, there are 8 billion different brains each doing their things wholly separate from each other (after all, what's the connection if mentality is confined to brains?).

In the metaphysical idealist story (and in cosmological panpsychism) there's one "brain", the universe, and we're events in it. So there's one consciousness and each little tidbit, that seems (but only just seems) like its own individual being, shares in it. So there isn't empty space between the activity of this brain and the activity of that brain...

However, if you feel more convinced of the physicalism story, science isn't your escape from the isolation it imposes. The reason is, as I was saying in my earlier post, science's consensus knowledge isn't agreement about the noumena but about the phenomena.

@pood's been making an important point. Science has a notable limitation -- it measures the behaviors of phenomena but cannot get to the fundamental nature of what the phenomena are.

This limit was a conscious choice back in Galileo's day. Spirit-matter dualism was the shared worldview at that time, and smart folk like Galileo knew spirit isn't measurable for being immaterial. So he and others decided that science's focus must be on matter, and spirit would be ignored by science - they left it in a different "magisteria". Then in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, folk decided, in effect, "let's just forget that whole other magisterium, the spirit or mind... all of reality is matter only!" Science cannot demonstrate that -- the maneuver is made in order to seem like they have a completed "true" story. But, again, science's "objectivity" is people inter-subjectively agreeing about what phenomena they experience. So if there's a noumena "out there" (which I doubt, since I lean towards believing idealism) then you don't get there from science.

Click to expand...

rousseau said:

abaddon said:

rousseau said:

The knowledge about the material universe is there, it exists, but most people have a hard time accessing that knowledge, understanding that knowledge, and piecing it together in a way to see deeper truth.

Click to expand...

I think there has to be an objective reality, whether we access it or not. It can't just be a bunch of brains each with their own created worlds inside of them, and nothing else. But I don't agree with you about some "experts" who access "the noumena" using a limited tool like science. Maybe some science-based guesses can be made and math would be the better tool for it than language, for the reason that language is metaphors (so humans cannot get outside of stories while using it).

The universe as "material" is a story. No one knows that the universe is "nothing but matter" or "nothing but consciousness", or whatever other story about what the fundamental nature of phenomena they want to tell.

I'm not looking out of my eyes at the screen just now. The screen is "here" in the same space as all my thoughts and memories and feelings... the whole universe, as known to me, is "here" in that same space. When I stick with the first-person POV then there's no "me in here" and a "world out there".

But when I start talking about "external reality", it bifurcates reality into two -- the phenomena alleged to be inside our skulls and the noumena that is alleged to be outside our skulls. So this fellow that @pood mentioned, Wheeler, "agonized" because he thought he's inside his skull and then doubted any "outside".

IMO he should have doubted the dualism (in here/out there) better.

I mentioned metaphysical idealism in passing a few years back, and an engineer said "Idealism? That's solipsism!" I thought on that, and the more I did, the more clear it was that physicalism is solipsistic and idealism is not.

In the physicalist story, there are 8 billion different brains each doing their things wholly separate from each other (after all, what's the connection if mentality is confined to brains?).

In the metaphysical idealist story (and in cosmological panpsychism) there's one "brain", the universe, and we're events in it. So there's one consciousness and each little tidbit, that seems (but only just seems) like its own individual being, shares in it. So there isn't empty space between the activity of this brain and the activity of that brain...

However, if you feel more convinced of the physicalism story, science isn't your escape from the isolation it imposes. The reason is, as I was saying in my earlier post, science's consensus knowledge isn't agreement about the noumena but about the phenomena.

@pood's been making an important point. Science has a notable limitation -- it measures the behaviors of phenomena but cannot get to the fundamental nature of what the phenomena are.

This limit was a conscious choice back in Galileo's day. Spirit-matter dualism was the shared worldview at that time, and smart folk like Galileo knew spirit isn't measurable for being immaterial. So he and others decided that science's focus must be on matter, and spirit would be ignored by science - they left it in a different "magisteria". Then in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, folk decided, in effect, "let's just forget that whole other magisterium, the spirit or mind... all of reality is matter only!" Science cannot demonstrate that -- the maneuver is made in order to seem like they have a completed "true" story. But, again, science's "objectivity" is people inter-subjectively agreeing about what phenomena they experience. So if there's a noumena "out there" (which I doubt, since I lean towards believing idealism) then you don't get there from science.

Click to expand...

I'm not really understanding what your objection is to the universe being made of matter. As you put it - the universe isn't nothing but matter - so you seem to be hinting at a kind of rejection of physicalism, an abhorrence of physicalism. I don't really consider myself a 'physicalist', and I don't say things like 'it's all just matter', but the universe is clearly made of matter that follows natural law. What else would it be?

When we talk of spirituality I think what we're really talking about is something that's unique to humans, but not ubiquitous in humans. Many people do not lead spiritual lives, but some absolutely do. Spirituality has nothing to do with the substrate of the physical world, and everything to do with intent. People who live their lives based on principles that are outside of pure economics, I would argue, are spiritual.

Science is able to do an extremely good job of describing the material world and how it functions, but it isn't limitlessly predictive. You can usually predict what a squirrel is going to do, the same isn't always true of people. I think that's where we enter the domain of what science can't touch. But general laws are still there.

Click to expand...

pood said:

rousseau said:

abaddon said:

rousseau said:

The knowledge about the material universe is there, it exists, but most people have a hard time accessing that knowledge, understanding that knowledge, and piecing it together in a way to see deeper truth.

Click to expand...

I think there has to be an objective reality, whether we access it or not. It can't just be a bunch of brains each with their own created worlds inside of them, and nothing else. But I don't agree with you about some "experts" who access "the noumena" using a limited tool like science. Maybe some science-based guesses can be made and math would be the better tool for it than language, for the reason that language is metaphors (so humans cannot get outside of stories while using it).

The universe as "material" is a story. No one knows that the universe is "nothing but matter" or "nothing but consciousness", or whatever other story about what the fundamental nature of phenomena they want to tell.

I'm not looking out of my eyes at the screen just now. The screen is "here" in the same space as all my thoughts and memories and feelings... the whole universe, as known to me, is "here" in that same space. When I stick with the first-person POV then there's no "me in here" and a "world out there".

But when I start talking about "external reality", it bifurcates reality into two -- the phenomena alleged to be inside our skulls and the noumena that is alleged to be outside our skulls. So this fellow that @pood mentioned, Wheeler, "agonized" because he thought he's inside his skull and then doubted any "outside".

IMO he should have doubted the dualism (in here/out there) better.

I mentioned metaphysical idealism in passing a few years back, and an engineer said "Idealism? That's solipsism!" I thought on that, and the more I did, the more clear it was that physicalism is solipsistic and idealism is not.

In the physicalist story, there are 8 billion different brains each doing their things wholly separate from each other (after all, what's the connection if mentality is confined to brains?).

In the metaphysical idealist story (and in cosmological panpsychism) there's one "brain", the universe, and we're events in it. So there's one consciousness and each little tidbit, that seems (but only just seems) like its own individual being, shares in it. So there isn't empty space between the activity of this brain and the activity of that brain...

However, if you feel more convinced of the physicalism story, science isn't your escape from the isolation it imposes. The reason is, as I was saying in my earlier post, science's consensus knowledge isn't agreement about the noumena but about the phenomena.

@pood's been making an important point. Science has a notable limitation -- it measures the behaviors of phenomena but cannot get to the fundamental nature of what the phenomena are.

This limit was a conscious choice back in Galileo's day. Spirit-matter dualism was the shared worldview at that time, and smart folk like Galileo knew spirit isn't measurable for being immaterial. So he and others decided that science's focus must be on matter, and spirit would be ignored by science - they left it in a different "magisteria". Then in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, folk decided, in effect, "let's just forget that whole other magisterium, the spirit or mind... all of reality is matter only!" Science cannot demonstrate that -- the maneuver is made in order to seem like they have a completed "true" story. But, again, science's "objectivity" is people inter-subjectively agreeing about what phenomena they experience. So if there's a noumena "out there" (which I doubt, since I lean towards believing idealism) then you don't get there from science.

Click to expand...

I'm not really understanding what your objection is to the universe being made of matter. As you put it - the universe isn't nothing but matter - so you seem to be hinting at a kind of rejection of physicalism, an abhorrence of physicalism. I don't really consider myself a 'physicalist', and I don't say things like 'it's all just matter', but the universe is clearly made of matter that follows natural law. What else would it be?

When we talk of spirituality I think what we're really talking about is something that's unique to humans, but not ubiquitous in humans. Many people do not lead spiritual lives, but some absolutely do. Spirituality has nothing to do with the substrate of the physical world, and everything to do with intent. People who live their lives based on principles that are outside of pure economics, I would argue, are spiritual.

Science is able to do an extremely good job of describing the material world and how it functions, but it isn't limitlessly predictive. You can usually predict what a squirrel is going to do, the same isn't always true of people. I think that's where we enter the domain of what science can't touch. But general laws are still there.

Click to expand...

I don’t think there is an “objection” here to the universe being made of matter, but a questioning of the underlying meaning of matter. Einstein pursued a line of thought that matter/energy was nothing more than particular configurations of spacetime, and as noted in the “unraveling” thread, many scientists today question the fundamentality of spacetime itself. The metaphysical idealist position is that the universe is made primarily, or wholly, of mental states. Schopenhauer, long before modern physics, advanced the idea that the world did not exist until the first eye opened.

Click to expand...

abaddon said:

pood said:

This idea is also called “cognitive closure,” that we are closed to discovering any deeper truths because of the limits of our brains.

Click to expand...

And the limits of language. Language is a pile of metaphors so when we describe anything we use prefab stories to do so -- images from war, for one example, are there in the most allegedly "factual" or "objective" descriptions and it affects our attitude to the whole world. So, we infuse our tales of "the world" with our cultural values. But literal-minded realists think they're talking "facts" about an "external reality" without much, if any, thought about how much we create our very perceptions with that input of values.

To describe anything is to evaluate it.

"External reality"... It's like we're guessing about what's outside of Plato's Cave without ever having stopped staring at shadows on the wall. Realists imagine the sensory signals get projected on a kind of screen inside their heads. But those go through an interpretative process so the representation of a world "inside your head" is a creative act, not a mirroring. So the nearest to "objectivity" anyone can get is agreement on experiences. "Did you and you and you also see [what happened in my brain]?" "Yes we [imagine that] we saw the same thing [in our brains] that you saw [in your brain]" = consensus knowledge.

Click to expand...

rousseau said:

pood said:

rousseau said:

abaddon said:

rousseau said:

The knowledge about the material universe is there, it exists, but most people have a hard time accessing that knowledge, understanding that knowledge, and piecing it together in a way to see deeper truth.

Click to expand...

I think there has to be an objective reality, whether we access it or not. It can't just be a bunch of brains each with their own created worlds inside of them, and nothing else. But I don't agree with you about some "experts" who access "the noumena" using a limited tool like science. Maybe some science-based guesses can be made and math would be the better tool for it than language, for the reason that language is metaphors (so humans cannot get outside of stories while using it).

The universe as "material" is a story. No one knows that the universe is "nothing but matter" or "nothing but consciousness", or whatever other story about what the fundamental nature of phenomena they want to tell.

I'm not looking out of my eyes at the screen just now. The screen is "here" in the same space as all my thoughts and memories and feelings... the whole universe, as known to me, is "here" in that same space. When I stick with the first-person POV then there's no "me in here" and a "world out there".

But when I start talking about "external reality", it bifurcates reality into two -- the phenomena alleged to be inside our skulls and the noumena that is alleged to be outside our skulls. So this fellow that @pood mentioned, Wheeler, "agonized" because he thought he's inside his skull and then doubted any "outside".

IMO he should have doubted the dualism (in here/out there) better.

I mentioned metaphysical idealism in passing a few years back, and an engineer said "Idealism? That's solipsism!" I thought on that, and the more I did, the more clear it was that physicalism is solipsistic and idealism is not.

In the physicalist story, there are 8 billion different brains each doing their things wholly separate from each other (after all, what's the connection if mentality is confined to brains?).

In the metaphysical idealist story (and in cosmological panpsychism) there's one "brain", the universe, and we're events in it. So there's one consciousness and each little tidbit, that seems (but only just seems) like its own individual being, shares in it. So there isn't empty space between the activity of this brain and the activity of that brain...

However, if you feel more convinced of the physicalism story, science isn't your escape from the isolation it imposes. The reason is, as I was saying in my earlier post, science's consensus knowledge isn't agreement about the noumena but about the phenomena.

@pood's been making an important point. Science has a notable limitation -- it measures the behaviors of phenomena but cannot get to the fundamental nature of what the phenomena are.

This limit was a conscious choice back in Galileo's day. Spirit-matter dualism was the shared worldview at that time, and smart folk like Galileo knew spirit isn't measurable for being immaterial. So he and others decided that science's focus must be on matter, and spirit would be ignored by science - they left it in a different "magisteria". Then in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, folk decided, in effect, "let's just forget that whole other magisterium, the spirit or mind... all of reality is matter only!" Science cannot demonstrate that -- the maneuver is made in order to seem like they have a completed "true" story. But, again, science's "objectivity" is people inter-subjectively agreeing about what phenomena they experience. So if there's a noumena "out there" (which I doubt, since I lean towards believing idealism) then you don't get there from science.

Click to expand...

I'm not really understanding what your objection is to the universe being made of matter. As you put it - the universe isn't nothing but matter - so you seem to be hinting at a kind of rejection of physicalism, an abhorrence of physicalism. I don't really consider myself a 'physicalist', and I don't say things like 'it's all just matter', but the universe is clearly made of matter that follows natural law. What else would it be?

When we talk of spirituality I think what we're really talking about is something that's unique to humans, but not ubiquitous in humans. Many people do not lead spiritual lives, but some absolutely do. Spirituality has nothing to do with the substrate of the physical world, and everything to do with intent. People who live their lives based on principles that are outside of pure economics, I would argue, are spiritual.

Science is able to do an extremely good job of describing the material world and how it functions, but it isn't limitlessly predictive. You can usually predict what a squirrel is going to do, the same isn't always true of people. I think that's where we enter the domain of what science can't touch. But general laws are still there.

Click to expand...

I don’t think there is an “objection” here to the universe being made of matter, but a questioning of the underlying meaning of matter. Einstein pursued a line of thought that matter/energy was nothing more than particular configurations of spacetime, and as noted in the “unraveling” thread, many scientists today question the fundamentality of spacetime itself. The metaphysical idealist position is that the universe is made primarily, or wholly, of mental states. Schopenhauer, long before modern physics, advanced the idea that the world did not exist until the first eye opened.

Click to expand...

If that's the case it feels like a tangential point. All I'm trying to say is that the material universe can be modelled, for the most part, which doesn't seem to be negated by this definition of metaphysical idealism. I'm not making a metaphysical claim that everything is just matter, but I am claiming that everything in the known universe follows natural laws which can be known, or at least what is known now can be known.

Click to expand...

pood said:

rousseau said:

pood said:

rousseau said:

abaddon said:

rousseau said:

The knowledge about the material universe is there, it exists, but most people have a hard time accessing that knowledge, understanding that knowledge, and piecing it together in a way to see deeper truth.

Click to expand...

I think there has to be an objective reality, whether we access it or not. It can't just be a bunch of brains each with their own created worlds inside of them, and nothing else. But I don't agree with you about some "experts" who access "the noumena" using a limited tool like science. Maybe some science-based guesses can be made and math would be the better tool for it than language, for the reason that language is metaphors (so humans cannot get outside of stories while using it).

The universe as "material" is a story. No one knows that the universe is "nothing but matter" or "nothing but consciousness", or whatever other story about what the fundamental nature of phenomena they want to tell.

I'm not looking out of my eyes at the screen just now. The screen is "here" in the same space as all my thoughts and memories and feelings... the whole universe, as known to me, is "here" in that same space. When I stick with the first-person POV then there's no "me in here" and a "world out there".

But when I start talking about "external reality", it bifurcates reality into two -- the phenomena alleged to be inside our skulls and the noumena that is alleged to be outside our skulls. So this fellow that @pood mentioned, Wheeler, "agonized" because he thought he's inside his skull and then doubted any "outside".

IMO he should have doubted the dualism (in here/out there) better.

I mentioned metaphysical idealism in passing a few years back, and an engineer said "Idealism? That's solipsism!" I thought on that, and the more I did, the more clear it was that physicalism is solipsistic and idealism is not.

In the physicalist story, there are 8 billion different brains each doing their things wholly separate from each other (after all, what's the connection if mentality is confined to brains?).

In the metaphysical idealist story (and in cosmological panpsychism) there's one "brain", the universe, and we're events in it. So there's one consciousness and each little tidbit, that seems (but only just seems) like its own individual being, shares in it. So there isn't empty space between the activity of this brain and the activity of that brain...

However, if you feel more convinced of the physicalism story, science isn't your escape from the isolation it imposes. The reason is, as I was saying in my earlier post, science's consensus knowledge isn't agreement about the noumena but about the phenomena.

@pood's been making an important point. Science has a notable limitation -- it measures the behaviors of phenomena but cannot get to the fundamental nature of what the phenomena are.

This limit was a conscious choice back in Galileo's day. Spirit-matter dualism was the shared worldview at that time, and smart folk like Galileo knew spirit isn't measurable for being immaterial. So he and others decided that science's focus must be on matter, and spirit would be ignored by science - they left it in a different "magisteria". Then in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, folk decided, in effect, "let's just forget that whole other magisterium, the spirit or mind... all of reality is matter only!" Science cannot demonstrate that -- the maneuver is made in order to seem like they have a completed "true" story. But, again, science's "objectivity" is people inter-subjectively agreeing about what phenomena they experience. So if there's a noumena "out there" (which I doubt, since I lean towards believing idealism) then you don't get there from science.

Click to expand...

I'm not really understanding what your objection is to the universe being made of matter. As you put it - the universe isn't nothing but matter - so you seem to be hinting at a kind of rejection of physicalism, an abhorrence of physicalism. I don't really consider myself a 'physicalist', and I don't say things like 'it's all just matter', but the universe is clearly made of matter that follows natural law. What else would it be?

When we talk of spirituality I think what we're really talking about is something that's unique to humans, but not ubiquitous in humans. Many people do not lead spiritual lives, but some absolutely do. Spirituality has nothing to do with the substrate of the physical world, and everything to do with intent. People who live their lives based on principles that are outside of pure economics, I would argue, are spiritual.

Science is able to do an extremely good job of describing the material world and how it functions, but it isn't limitlessly predictive. You can usually predict what a squirrel is going to do, the same isn't always true of people. I think that's where we enter the domain of what science can't touch. But general laws are still there.

Click to expand...

I don’t think there is an “objection” here to the universe being made of matter, but a questioning of the underlying meaning of matter. Einstein pursued a line of thought that matter/energy was nothing more than particular configurations of spacetime, and as noted in the “unraveling” thread, many scientists today question the fundamentality of spacetime itself. The metaphysical idealist position is that the universe is made primarily, or wholly, of mental states. Schopenhauer, long before modern physics, advanced the idea that the world did not exist until the first eye opened.

Click to expand...

If that's the case it feels like a tangential point. All I'm trying to say is that the material universe can be modelled, for the most part, which doesn't seem to be negated by this definition of metaphysical idealism. I'm not making a metaphysical claim that everything is just matter, but I am claiming that everything in the known universe follows natural laws which can be known, or at least what is known now can be known.

Click to expand...

Well, could be a side issue, but I don’t think there are any natural laws at all. What we call “law” or “natural laws” are mostly successful descriptions of things that we can measure and test, which may be a small subset of whatever reality is. And most of these descriptions, like the thermodynamic “laws,” may turn out to be statistical in nature and not at all invariant.

Click to expand...

rousseau said:

pood said:

rousseau said:

pood said:

rousseau said:

abaddon said:

rousseau said:

The knowledge about the material universe is there, it exists, but most people have a hard time accessing that knowledge, understanding that knowledge, and piecing it together in a way to see deeper truth.

Click to expand...

I think there has to be an objective reality, whether we access it or not. It can't just be a bunch of brains each with their own created worlds inside of them, and nothing else. But I don't agree with you about some "experts" who access "the noumena" using a limited tool like science. Maybe some science-based guesses can be made and math would be the better tool for it than language, for the reason that language is metaphors (so humans cannot get outside of stories while using it).

The universe as "material" is a story. No one knows that the universe is "nothing but matter" or "nothing but consciousness", or whatever other story about what the fundamental nature of phenomena they want to tell.

I'm not looking out of my eyes at the screen just now. The screen is "here" in the same space as all my thoughts and memories and feelings... the whole universe, as known to me, is "here" in that same space. When I stick with the first-person POV then there's no "me in here" and a "world out there".

But when I start talking about "external reality", it bifurcates reality into two -- the phenomena alleged to be inside our skulls and the noumena that is alleged to be outside our skulls. So this fellow that @pood mentioned, Wheeler, "agonized" because he thought he's inside his skull and then doubted any "outside".

IMO he should have doubted the dualism (in here/out there) better.

I mentioned metaphysical idealism in passing a few years back, and an engineer said "Idealism? That's solipsism!" I thought on that, and the more I did, the more clear it was that physicalism is solipsistic and idealism is not.

In the physicalist story, there are 8 billion different brains each doing their things wholly separate from each other (after all, what's the connection if mentality is confined to brains?).

In the metaphysical idealist story (and in cosmological panpsychism) there's one "brain", the universe, and we're events in it. So there's one consciousness and each little tidbit, that seems (but only just seems) like its own individual being, shares in it. So there isn't empty space between the activity of this brain and the activity of that brain...

However, if you feel more convinced of the physicalism story, science isn't your escape from the isolation it imposes. The reason is, as I was saying in my earlier post, science's consensus knowledge isn't agreement about the noumena but about the phenomena.

@pood's been making an important point. Science has a notable limitation -- it measures the behaviors of phenomena but cannot get to the fundamental nature of what the phenomena are.

This limit was a conscious choice back in Galileo's day. Spirit-matter dualism was the shared worldview at that time, and smart folk like Galileo knew spirit isn't measurable for being immaterial. So he and others decided that science's focus must be on matter, and spirit would be ignored by science - they left it in a different "magisteria". Then in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, folk decided, in effect, "let's just forget that whole other magisterium, the spirit or mind... all of reality is matter only!" Science cannot demonstrate that -- the maneuver is made in order to seem like they have a completed "true" story. But, again, science's "objectivity" is people inter-subjectively agreeing about what phenomena they experience. So if there's a noumena "out there" (which I doubt, since I lean towards believing idealism) then you don't get there from science.

Click to expand...

I'm not really understanding what your objection is to the universe being made of matter. As you put it - the universe isn't nothing but matter - so you seem to be hinting at a kind of rejection of physicalism, an abhorrence of physicalism. I don't really consider myself a 'physicalist', and I don't say things like 'it's all just matter', but the universe is clearly made of matter that follows natural law. What else would it be?

When we talk of spirituality I think what we're really talking about is something that's unique to humans, but not ubiquitous in humans. Many people do not lead spiritual lives, but some absolutely do. Spirituality has nothing to do with the substrate of the physical world, and everything to do with intent. People who live their lives based on principles that are outside of pure economics, I would argue, are spiritual.

Science is able to do an extremely good job of describing the material world and how it functions, but it isn't limitlessly predictive. You can usually predict what a squirrel is going to do, the same isn't always true of people. I think that's where we enter the domain of what science can't touch. But general laws are still there.

Click to expand...

I don’t think there is an “objection” here to the universe being made of matter, but a questioning of the underlying meaning of matter. Einstein pursued a line of thought that matter/energy was nothing more than particular configurations of spacetime, and as noted in the “unraveling” thread, many scientists today question the fundamentality of spacetime itself. The metaphysical idealist position is that the universe is made primarily, or wholly, of mental states. Schopenhauer, long before modern physics, advanced the idea that the world did not exist until the first eye opened.

Click to expand...

If that's the case it feels like a tangential point. All I'm trying to say is that the material universe can be modelled, for the most part, which doesn't seem to be negated by this definition of metaphysical idealism. I'm not making a metaphysical claim that everything is just matter, but I am claiming that everything in the known universe follows natural laws which can be known, or at least what is known now can be known.

Click to expand...

Well, could be a side issue, but I don’t think there are any natural laws at all. What we call “law” or “natural laws” are mostly successful descriptions of things that we can measure and test, which may be a small subset of whatever reality is. And most of these descriptions, like the thermodynamic “laws,” may turn out to be statistical in nature and not at all invariant.

Click to expand...

Fair enough. I'm more likely to go the opposite way, I'm of the opinion that the knowledge gathered by academia (not just science) as well as religion gives us an intricate understanding of reality.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

Click to expand...

pood said:

rousseau said:

pood said:

rousseau said:

pood said:

rousseau said:

abaddon said:

rousseau said:

The knowledge about the material universe is there, it exists, but most people have a hard time accessing that knowledge, understanding that knowledge, and piecing it together in a way to see deeper truth.

Click to expand...

I think there has to be an objective reality, whether we access it or not. It can't just be a bunch of brains each with their own created worlds inside of them, and nothing else. But I don't agree with you about some "experts" who access "the noumena" using a limited tool like science. Maybe some science-based guesses can be made and math would be the better tool for it than language, for the reason that language is metaphors (so humans cannot get outside of stories while using it).

The universe as "material" is a story. No one knows that the universe is "nothing but matter" or "nothing but consciousness", or whatever other story about what the fundamental nature of phenomena they want to tell.

I'm not looking out of my eyes at the screen just now. The screen is "here" in the same space as all my thoughts and memories and feelings... the whole universe, as known to me, is "here" in that same space. When I stick with the first-person POV then there's no "me in here" and a "world out there".

But when I start talking about "external reality", it bifurcates reality into two -- the phenomena alleged to be inside our skulls and the noumena that is alleged to be outside our skulls. So this fellow that @pood mentioned, Wheeler, "agonized" because he thought he's inside his skull and then doubted any "outside".

IMO he should have doubted the dualism (in here/out there) better.

I mentioned metaphysical idealism in passing a few years back, and an engineer said "Idealism? That's solipsism!" I thought on that, and the more I did, the more clear it was that physicalism is solipsistic and idealism is not.

In the physicalist story, there are 8 billion different brains each doing their things wholly separate from each other (after all, what's the connection if mentality is confined to brains?).

In the metaphysical idealist story (and in cosmological panpsychism) there's one "brain", the universe, and we're events in it. So there's one consciousness and each little tidbit, that seems (but only just seems) like its own individual being, shares in it. So there isn't empty space between the activity of this brain and the activity of that brain...

However, if you feel more convinced of the physicalism story, science isn't your escape from the isolation it imposes. The reason is, as I was saying in my earlier post, science's consensus knowledge isn't agreement about the noumena but about the phenomena.

@pood's been making an important point. Science has a notable limitation -- it measures the behaviors of phenomena but cannot get to the fundamental nature of what the phenomena are.

This limit was a conscious choice back in Galileo's day. Spirit-matter dualism was the shared worldview at that time, and smart folk like Galileo knew spirit isn't measurable for being immaterial. So he and others decided that science's focus must be on matter, and spirit would be ignored by science - they left it in a different "magisteria". Then in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, folk decided, in effect, "let's just forget that whole other magisterium, the spirit or mind... all of reality is matter only!" Science cannot demonstrate that -- the maneuver is made in order to seem like they have a completed "true" story. But, again, science's "objectivity" is people inter-subjectively agreeing about what phenomena they experience. So if there's a noumena "out there" (which I doubt, since I lean towards believing idealism) then you don't get there from science.

Click to expand...

I'm not really understanding what your objection is to the universe being made of matter. As you put it - the universe isn't nothing but matter - so you seem to be hinting at a kind of rejection of physicalism, an abhorrence of physicalism. I don't really consider myself a 'physicalist', and I don't say things like 'it's all just matter', but the universe is clearly made of matter that follows natural law. What else would it be?

When we talk of spirituality I think what we're really talking about is something that's unique to humans, but not ubiquitous in humans. Many people do not lead spiritual lives, but some absolutely do. Spirituality has nothing to do with the substrate of the physical world, and everything to do with intent. People who live their lives based on principles that are outside of pure economics, I would argue, are spiritual.

Science is able to do an extremely good job of describing the material world and how it functions, but it isn't limitlessly predictive. You can usually predict what a squirrel is going to do, the same isn't always true of people. I think that's where we enter the domain of what science can't touch. But general laws are still there.

Click to expand...

I don’t think there is an “objection” here to the universe being made of matter, but a questioning of the underlying meaning of matter. Einstein pursued a line of thought that matter/energy was nothing more than particular configurations of spacetime, and as noted in the “unraveling” thread, many scientists today question the fundamentality of spacetime itself. The metaphysical idealist position is that the universe is made primarily, or wholly, of mental states. Schopenhauer, long before modern physics, advanced the idea that the world did not exist until the first eye opened.

Click to expand...

If that's the case it feels like a tangential point. All I'm trying to say is that the material universe can be modelled, for the most part, which doesn't seem to be negated by this definition of metaphysical idealism. I'm not making a metaphysical claim that everything is just matter, but I am claiming that everything in the known universe follows natural laws which can be known, or at least what is known now can be known.

Click to expand...

Well, could be a side issue, but I don’t think there are any natural laws at all. What we call “law” or “natural laws” are mostly successful descriptions of things that we can measure and test, which may be a small subset of whatever reality is. And most of these descriptions, like the thermodynamic “laws,” may turn out to be statistical in nature and not at all invariant.

Click to expand...

Fair enough. I'm more likely to go the opposite way, I'm of the opinion that the knowledge gathered by academia (not just science) as well as religion gives us an intricate understanding of reality.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

Click to expand...

Not sure what intricate understanding of reality religion provides. As for science, it observes, tests, and measures aspects of reality amenable to such, and builds models of the world, but at best these models are rough approximations, like a map to the territory. And much of the territory may not be mappable, but of course in that case, that particular territory would be irrelevant to us. And I leave open the possibility that even these science maps are maps of our mental states.

A dog would map a library by the scent of its books, conclude they’re not edible, and that would be a good enough model of reality for her. But it would have nothing to do with what books really are (to us).

Click to expand...

bilby said:

Quantum Mechanics is our most accurate predictive model of reality ever. It can only be described by mathematics, but the very first question even the most mathematically gifted people ask, when they study QM, is "But what does it really mean?", by which they mean "But what stories can we tell based on it?".

Then they go off on tales of Schrödinger's Cat, and of the indivisible photon that travels from A to B by two different paths simultaneously, and of the casino in a plate of glass, wherein bets are laid on whether each photon will be reflected or transmitted. None of which is a more accurate or precise or useful description of reallty than the mathematics they are abandoning.

But fundamentally we don't consider mathematical descriptions of reality to be meaningful. Meaning is derived only from stories.

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rousseau said:

pood said:

rousseau said:

pood said:

rousseau said:

pood said:

rousseau said:

abaddon said:

rousseau said:

The knowledge about the material universe is there, it exists, but most people have a hard time accessing that knowledge, understanding that knowledge, and piecing it together in a way to see deeper truth.

Click to expand...

I think there has to be an objective reality, whether we access it or not. It can't just be a bunch of brains each with their own created worlds inside of them, and nothing else. But I don't agree with you about some "experts" who access "the noumena" using a limited tool like science. Maybe some science-based guesses can be made and math would be the better tool for it than language, for the reason that language is metaphors (so humans cannot get outside of stories while using it).

The universe as "material" is a story. No one knows that the universe is "nothing but matter" or "nothing but consciousness", or whatever other story about what the fundamental nature of phenomena they want to tell.

I'm not looking out of my eyes at the screen just now. The screen is "here" in the same space as all my thoughts and memories and feelings... the whole universe, as known to me, is "here" in that same space. When I stick with the first-person POV then there's no "me in here" and a "world out there".

But when I start talking about "external reality", it bifurcates reality into two -- the phenomena alleged to be inside our skulls and the noumena that is alleged to be outside our skulls. So this fellow that @pood mentioned, Wheeler, "agonized" because he thought he's inside his skull and then doubted any "outside".

IMO he should have doubted the dualism (in here/out there) better.

I mentioned metaphysical idealism in passing a few years back, and an engineer said "Idealism? That's solipsism!" I thought on that, and the more I did, the more clear it was that physicalism is solipsistic and idealism is not.

In the physicalist story, there are 8 billion different brains each doing their things wholly separate from each other (after all, what's the connection if mentality is confined to brains?).

In the metaphysical idealist story (and in cosmological panpsychism) there's one "brain", the universe, and we're events in it. So there's one consciousness and each little tidbit, that seems (but only just seems) like its own individual being, shares in it. So there isn't empty space between the activity of this brain and the activity of that brain...

However, if you feel more convinced of the physicalism story, science isn't your escape from the isolation it imposes. The reason is, as I was saying in my earlier post, science's consensus knowledge isn't agreement about the noumena but about the phenomena.

@pood's been making an important point. Science has a notable limitation -- it measures the behaviors of phenomena but cannot get to the fundamental nature of what the phenomena are.

This limit was a conscious choice back in Galileo's day. Spirit-matter dualism was the shared worldview at that time, and smart folk like Galileo knew spirit isn't measurable for being immaterial. So he and others decided that science's focus must be on matter, and spirit would be ignored by science - they left it in a different "magisteria". Then in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, folk decided, in effect, "let's just forget that whole other magisterium, the spirit or mind... all of reality is matter only!" Science cannot demonstrate that -- the maneuver is made in order to seem like they have a completed "true" story. But, again, science's "objectivity" is people inter-subjectively agreeing about what phenomena they experience. So if there's a noumena "out there" (which I doubt, since I lean towards believing idealism) then you don't get there from science.

Click to expand...

I'm not really understanding what your objection is to the universe being made of matter. As you put it - the universe isn't nothing but matter - so you seem to be hinting at a kind of rejection of physicalism, an abhorrence of physicalism. I don't really consider myself a 'physicalist', and I don't say things like 'it's all just matter', but the universe is clearly made of matter that follows natural law. What else would it be?

When we talk of spirituality I think what we're really talking about is something that's unique to humans, but not ubiquitous in humans. Many people do not lead spiritual lives, but some absolutely do. Spirituality has nothing to do with the substrate of the physical world, and everything to do with intent. People who live their lives based on principles that are outside of pure economics, I would argue, are spiritual.

Science is able to do an extremely good job of describing the material world and how it functions, but it isn't limitlessly predictive. You can usually predict what a squirrel is going to do, the same isn't always true of people. I think that's where we enter the domain of what science can't touch. But general laws are still there.

Click to expand...

I don’t think there is an “objection” here to the universe being made of matter, but a questioning of the underlying meaning of matter. Einstein pursued a line of thought that matter/energy was nothing more than particular configurations of spacetime, and as noted in the “unraveling” thread, many scientists today question the fundamentality of spacetime itself. The metaphysical idealist position is that the universe is made primarily, or wholly, of mental states. Schopenhauer, long before modern physics, advanced the idea that the world did not exist until the first eye opened.

Click to expand...

If that's the case it feels like a tangential point. All I'm trying to say is that the material universe can be modelled, for the most part, which doesn't seem to be negated by this definition of metaphysical idealism. I'm not making a metaphysical claim that everything is just matter, but I am claiming that everything in the known universe follows natural laws which can be known, or at least what is known now can be known.

Click to expand...

Well, could be a side issue, but I don’t think there are any natural laws at all. What we call “law” or “natural laws” are mostly successful descriptions of things that we can measure and test, which may be a small subset of whatever reality is. And most of these descriptions, like the thermodynamic “laws,” may turn out to be statistical in nature and not at all invariant.

Click to expand...

Fair enough. I'm more likely to go the opposite way, I'm of the opinion that the knowledge gathered by academia (not just science) as well as religion gives us an intricate understanding of reality.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

Click to expand...

Not sure what intricate understanding of reality religion provides. As for science, it observes, tests, and measures aspects of reality amenable to such, and builds models of the world, but at best these models are rough approximations, like a map to the territory. And much of the territory may not be mappable, but of course in that case, that particular territory would be irrelevant to us. And I leave open the possibility that even these science maps are maps of our mental states.

A dog would map a library by the scent of its books, conclude they’re not edible, and that would be a good enough model of reality for her. But it would have nothing to do with what books really are (to us).

Click to expand...

Sociology would call religion an early form of science. Not all is useful and most of it's been eclipsed by modern science, but IMO eastern religions say some things which are still useful.

On what basis do you say that science only provides a rough approximation of reality? I don't really understand this claim in the light of the enormous amount we do know about reality and how predictive that knowledge has been. Can you give an example of some domain that we might not have broached yet? From where I'm standing our collective knowledge looks pretty robust.

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Elixir said:

Is it any different for the wisest among us? I hope so but I have my doubts.

Click to expand...

pood said:

rousseau said:

pood said:

It can be argued that ALL our ideas about the world, including those derived from science, are simply narratives, and that scientific findings no more touch on the “true” world, perhaps Kant’s noumena, that do other stories. One current philosopher likens our impressions of the world to icons on a desktop computer, where we have no access to what is going on under the hood.

Click to expand...

I'd argue that based on current knowledge it's possible to get pretty close to the true world, but actually reaching that understanding is hard because you're getting outside the Overton window. You're not going to find these descriptions in books or regularly communicated.

Click to expand...

This is the realist vs. anti-realist debate in science. Another possibility is that we’re not smart enough to figure out what is really going on at some fundamental level. I believe it was William James who likened us to a dog in a library. The best that the dog can do is tell that books are something, but the dog can never know what they really are. This idea is also called “cognitive closure,” that we are closed to discovering any deeper truths because of the limits of our brains.

Click to expand...

pood said:

abaddon said:

rousseau said:

The knowledge about the material universe is there, it exists, but most people have a hard time accessing that knowledge, understanding that knowledge, and piecing it together in a way to see deeper truth.

Click to expand...

I think there has to be an objective reality, whether we access it or not. It can't just be a bunch of brains each with their own created worlds inside of them, and nothing else. But I don't agree with you about some "experts" who access "the noumena" using a limited tool like science. Maybe some science-based guesses can be made and math would be the better tool for it than language, for the reason that language is metaphors (so humans cannot get outside of stories while using it).

The universe as "material" is a story. No one knows that the universe is "nothing but matter" or "nothing but consciousness", or whatever other story about what the fundamental nature of phenomena they want to tell.

I'm not looking out of my eyes at the screen just now. The screen is "here" in the same space as all my thoughts and memories and feelings... the whole universe, as known to me, is "here" in that same space. When I stick with the first-person POV then there's no "me in here" and a "world out there".

But when I start talking about "external reality", it bifurcates reality into two -- the phenomena alleged to be inside our skulls and the noumena that is alleged to be outside our skulls. So this fellow that @pood mentioned, Wheeler, "agonized" because he thought he's inside his skull and then doubted any "outside".

IMO he should have doubted the dualism (in here/out there) better.

I mentioned metaphysical idealism in passing a few years back, and an engineer said "Idealism? That's solipsism!" I thought on that, and the more I did, the more clear it was that physicalism is solipsistic and idealism is not.

In the physicalist story, there are 8 billion different brains each doing their things wholly separate from each other (after all, what's the connection if mentality is confined to brains?).

In the metaphysical idealist story (and in cosmological panpsychism) there's one "brain", the universe, and we're events in it. So there's one consciousness and each little tidbit, that seems (but only just seems) like its own individual being, shares in it. So there isn't empty space between the activity of this brain and the activity of that brain...

However, if you feel more convinced of the physicalism story, science isn't your escape from the isolation it imposes. The reason is, as I was saying in my earlier post, science's consensus knowledge isn't agreement about the noumena but about the phenomena.

@pood's been making an important point. Science has a notable limitation -- it measures the behaviors of phenomena but cannot get to the fundamental nature of what the phenomena are.

This limit was a conscious choice back in Galileo's day. Spirit-matter dualism was the shared worldview at that time, and smart folk like Galileo knew spirit isn't measurable for being immaterial. So he and others decided that science's focus must be on matter, and spirit would be ignored by science - they left it in a different "magisteria". Then in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, folk decided, in effect, "let's just forget that whole other magisterium, the spirit or mind... all of reality is matter only!" Science cannot demonstrate that -- the maneuver is made in order to seem like they have a completed "true" story. But, again, science's "objectivity" is people inter-subjectively agreeing about what phenomena they experience. So if there's a noumena "out there" (which I doubt, since I lean towards believing idealism) then you don't get there from science.

Click to expand...

I think what science actually practices is methodological naturalism rather than metaphysical naturalism, which is not a practice or a means of practice at all, but a philosophical assumption that may be false.

Click to expand...