What could make morality objective?

[Veritas Aequitas]

My critique is of 'mentalism' tout court. And my claim is that 'the mind, containing mental things and events' is a fiction, or a myth, or a metaphor. In our skulls, there is nothing but physical stuff: brain tissue, gurgling juices and blood, and electrochemical processes - synaptic firing of neurons.

If we look, we won't find thoughts, ideas, concepts, and so on. So - of course - thoughts, ideas, concepts and so on must be non-physical or abstract things. Eh, voila: the mind.

Moronic demand: okay, show us a physical belief. (Mind-warp.)

I think my question - is the mind a concept formed in the way concepts are supposed to be formed? - blows the whole shebang sky high. A yes or no answer is a lose lose.

I bet, if I open your skull, there are only mud and shit. Appear you are merely a walking corpse.

PH: there is nothing but physical stuff: brain tissue, gurgling juices and blood, and electrochemical processes - synaptic firing of neurons.

The above is the best from your [philosophical] kindergarten brain.

Are you aware that there are significant physical differences between a normal person who is alive and a corpse that had just been declared dead.

A corpse that had just been declared dead will still have physical stuff: brain tissue, gurgling juices and blood, and electrochemical processes - synaptic firing of neurons.

But a normal person who is alive has the same thing [as you stated above] but you are ignorant that a normal person who is alive has the above physical things as that corpse BUT has additional physical element, i.e. 'life forces' originated from the Big Bang that entangle to enable reality to emerge.

Note the analogy of a 'charged battery' and a dead battery, they both has the same physical elements but the charged battery has additional physical elements of electrical potentials and forces [which are also from the Big Bang].

As such, the abstract concept of 'appleness' is a real thing supported by active neural algorithm driven by life forces which originated from the Big Bang.

The human-based FSK 'mind' in this case is the evolved systematic framework of neural connectivities that enable the human person to be alive, think and act to drive human actions.

Your ignorance of the above is reflective of your persistent posting of blabberings without any supporting references at all.

[Veritas Aequitas]

Here's an example of mentalist blather, quoted by VA:

'Induction is the mental process of taking particular facts or instances and generalizing them to form new ideas. It is also called abstraction. The process omits particular details of the instances, and integrates based on a criteria or set of criteria.'
http://www.importanceofphilosophy.com/E ... ction.html

So induction/abstraction is a mental process, which, therefore, der, goes on in a mind. The mind has a criterion or set of criteria, takes particular facts or instances and generalises/integrates them to form new ideas. Or, er, concepts - cos they're different from ideas. Obviously.

This story's been around so long that to question it - to point out it's weirdness - can seem offensive.

An early homo sapien came along, pre-installed with a mind pre-installed with criteria, and the mind came across one damn particular tree after another, took those examples and inductively generalised and integrated them, using the criteria, to form a new idea/concept: 'tree'. And from then on, homo sapien could recognise an example of a tree. Before then - those were just undifferentiated particulars.

Question. Is the mind a concept formed in the way minds are supposed to form concepts?

You ignored this reality.

Science is based on induction which is abstraction.
The scientific-FSK relied upon induction - abstraction - to generate abstract concepts which exist relative the scientific-FSK as objective human-based FSK scientific facts.

Are you insisting, example, the scientific-chemistry-FSK fact that atoms exist is nonsense?
If you insist abstract concepts are woo or nonsense, you insisting all human-based scientific FSK facts are nonsense.

[Peter Holmes]

My critique is of 'mentalism' tout court. And my claim is that 'the mind, containing mental things and events' is a fiction, or a myth, or a metaphor. In our skulls, there is nothing but physical stuff: brain tissue, gurgling juices and blood, and electrochemical processes - synaptic firing of neurons.

If we look, we won't find thoughts, ideas, concepts, and so on. So - of course - thoughts, ideas, concepts and so on must be non-physical or abstract things. Eh, voila: the mind.

Moronic demand: okay, show us a physical belief. (Mind-warp.)

I think my question - is the mind a concept formed in the way concepts are supposed to be formed? - blows the whole shebang sky high. A yes or no answer is a lose lose.

So, I am assuming that 'your critique' is only on our screens. If you mulled over your critique, before writing it down, where was it?

Why think my critique is/was a thing of some kind that had to exist somewhere before I typed it here? If you express a thought, does that thought have to be a thing of some kind that exists somewhere before you express it? Wittgenstein called it bewitchment by the devices of our language.

(I suppose I have now just done this in some form....

Moronic demand: okay, show us a physical belief. (Mind-warp.)

But just trying to understand. Is yours a brain mind identity position or something else?)

There is no need to posit identity between a thing that does exist and another thing that doesn't.

I guess I would tend to view 'containing' as a metaphor. But if the only things that are real are found when we break open skulls, it seems like we are still missing some stuff we consider real, at least many of us, but perhaps not you. I assume whatever is real is somewhere.

So do I. Hence my question: what and where is the mind, and in what way does it exist? Physically? And if non-physically, what the hell is non-physical existence? And is there any evidence for it?

I guess I should add, you went from mind being a fiction to not finding mind 'in skulls' when we look. IOW if there is mind it is inside the skull. Why must mind be in skulls? Couldn't it be an aspect of selves/organisms, for example. (probably a tangent, but I've never liked the reduction of minds to brains. I think minds are aspects of entire organisms. Like eliminating the endocrine system from the picture seems silly to me. And there are also very large neuronal hubs around the heart and in the gut. Posture, facial expression, these affect what gets called mind. And so on. I dislike the reductionism to brain of whatever is going on in what gets called mental)

Agreed. And, trying to loosen the hold of a picture, Wittgenstein talked about thinking with our hands when we write. Trouble is, saying that mind is 'an aspect of selves/organisms' does nothing to explain what and where the mind is. If it's co-terminal with the body, isn't it just the soul secularised - and equally fictitious?

And then consciousness: we open the skull and we find what you listed but not consciousness. Does it not exist?
Shouldn't we then be zombies? Why should we think animals or other people are experiencers? We can't find that process, whatever it is, in the meat.

And here's the rub. We can't find what we call consciousness 'in the meat', but we know it 'exists'; therefore consciousness must be non-physical. The demand 'show us physical consciousness' is like the demand 'show us a physical belief'.

Exactly the same delusion led Plato to conclude that 'justice' and 'piety', and so on must be things of some kind - so they must exist in the realm of forms to which philosophers can have access.

Here's the fallacious sequence:

A noun is the name of something.
Therefore, an abstract noun is the name of something.
Therefore, an abstract noun names an abstract or non-physical thing.
Therefore abstract or non-physical things exist.

[Iwannaplato]

Why think my critique is/was a thing of some kind that had to exist somewhere before I typed it here? If you express a thought, does that thought have to be a thing of some kind that exists somewhere before you express it?

It doesn't have to. I can work things out as I speak, or at least, that's how it can feel. But other times, sure, I am formulating something 'in my mind', I might even internally 'hear the words' sort of testing it out, before I say it. That's why I mentioned mulling.

So I gave a specific case, where one mulls in advance of typing.

Wittgenstein called it bewitchment by the devices of our language

Well, perhaps he was right in this case. If he goes into this issue and you have a link....

There is no need to posit identity between a thing that does exist and another thing that doesn't.

I guess I would tend to view 'containing' as a metaphor. But if the only things that are real are found when we break open skulls, it seems like we are still missing some stuff we consider real, at least many of us, but perhaps not you. I assume whatever is real is somewhere.

So do I. Hence my question: what and where is the mind, and in what way does it exist? Physically? And if non-physically, what the hell is non-physical existence? And is there any evidence for it?

See, the end. Where did this idea of the physical come from. I think it's an abstraction. And even more than that, it just keeps changing through time. It's certainly not like what we once, when teenagers perhaps, thought rocks and chairs were like.

I guess I should add, you went from mind being a fiction to not finding mind 'in skulls' when we look. IOW if there is mind it is inside the skull. Why must mind be in skulls? Couldn't it be an aspect of selves/organisms, for example. (probably a tangent, but I've never liked the reduction of minds to brains. I think minds are aspects of entire organisms. Like eliminating the endocrine system from the picture seems silly to me. And there are also very large neuronal hubs around the heart and in the gut. Posture, facial expression, these affect what gets called mind. And so on. I dislike the reductionism to brain of whatever is going on in what gets called mental)[/quote]

Agreed. And, trying to loosen the hold of a picture, Wittgenstein talked about thinking with our hands when we write.

OK, crack open the hands and show me thinking.
But again, I could be mulling.
Further I think this causes a problem. I don't then think you could call it 'your critique'. You'd just be atoms, hearing sounds or reading text, then a chain of molecule impacts leads to your hands typing. There might be some epiphenomal witness. But it's hardly your critique. It's like domino three in a line claiming that domino 12 is his or hers.

Trouble is, saying that mind is 'an aspect of selves/organisms' does nothing to explain what and where the mind is. If it's co-terminal with the body, isn't it just the soul secularised - and equally fictitious?

If I close my eyes and remember my first school, where is the image?

And if it's an aspect of selves, I think it's unlikely it's 'in the hands' or the hands or thinking. I wouldn't leave them out entirely, but I think their down the causal chain from where thinking is.

And then consciousness: we open the skull and we find what you listed but not consciousness. Does it not exist?
Shouldn't we then be zombies? Why should we think animals or other people are experiencers? We can't find that process, whatever it is, in the meat.

And here's the rub. We can't find what we call consciousness 'in the meat', but we know it 'exists'; therefore consciousness must be non-physical. The demand 'show us physical consciousness' is like the demand 'show us a physical belief'.

I haven't made any claims about consciousness. My point is that you used to crack open the skull test. I'm asking where consciousness is. If we crack open a brain we do not find in the meat and blood consciousness.

And as a kind of important aside, the idea bodies are abstracted from experiencing. First we have experiencing, in our experience, that is. I am not making the claim that experience comes before other things, just that it is primary to all conclusions we have about the world. Out of all these experiences we decide to label some thing bodies. Then dualists put the soul or mind in the bodies. But actually we first have experiencing. Now this doesn't mean that experiencing isn't actually some facet of bodies.

But our process of arriving at things went from experiencing to bodies. We are so used to the body model that we then see mind and consciousness as facets of bodies. Idealism might just be more parsimonious. I am not arguing for idealism, but I want to push back on what I think is a very hard-wired model about what is parsimonious. Parsimony does not equal truth. There are other important criteria. But I think when most modern people mull over something like this they think the starting point is bodies. Not really. There's abstraction involved in calling things bodies or matter or whatever physical thing or process we are talking about.

Exactly the same delusion led Plato to conclude that 'justice' and 'piety', and so on must be things of some kind - so they must exist in the realm of forms to which philosophers can have access.

I can see it being similar in some ways, but I don't experience justice or piety as things or processes (unless we get into abstracting from society.

Here's the fallacious sequence:

A noun is the name of something.
Therefore, an abstract noun is the name of something.
Therefore, an abstract noun names an abstract or non-physical thing.
Therefore abstract or non-physical things exist.

Sure, body and matter are nouns.

I mean, look at what matter now includes. At what criteria things called matter no longer needs to meet.

Further, a monism got abstracted out of a cornucopia of phenomena, and the observations that justify this are not clearly matter - they are experiences. I am not saying they are not matter, but rather that whatever matter used to mean, was a gathering of diverse phenomena in experiences. And now it means an even broader range of phenomena in experiences.

Matter is a metaphor, but for what? And why one substance?

[Peter Holmes]

Why think my critique is/was a thing of some kind that had to exist somewhere before I typed it here? If you express a thought, does that thought have to be a thing of some kind that exists somewhere before you express it?

It doesn't have to. I can work things out as I speak, or at least, that's how it can feel. But other times, sure, I am formulating something 'in my mind', I might even internally 'hear the words' sort of testing it out, before I say it. That's why I mentioned mulling.

So I gave a specific case, where one mulls in advance of typing.

Wittgenstein called it bewitchment by the devices of our language

Well, perhaps he was right in this case. If he goes into this issue and you have a link....

There is no need to posit identity between a thing that does exist and another thing that doesn't.

I guess I would tend to view 'containing' as a metaphor. But if the only things that are real are found when we break open skulls, it seems like we are still missing some stuff we consider real, at least many of us, but perhaps not you. I assume whatever is real is somewhere.

So do I. Hence my question: what and where is the mind, and in what way does it exist? Physically? And if non-physically, what the hell is non-physical existence? And is there any evidence for it?

See, the end. Where did this idea of the physical come from. I think it's an abstraction. And even more than that, it just keeps changing through time. It's certainly not like what we once, when teenagers perhaps, thought rocks and chairs were like.

I guess I should add, you went from mind being a fiction to not finding mind 'in skulls' when we look. IOW if there is mind it is inside the skull. Why must mind be in skulls? Couldn't it be an aspect of selves/organisms, for example. (probably a tangent, but I've never liked the reduction of minds to brains. I think minds are aspects of entire organisms. Like eliminating the endocrine system from the picture seems silly to me. And there are also very large neuronal hubs around the heart and in the gut. Posture, facial expression, these affect what gets called mind. And so on. I dislike the reductionism to brain of whatever is going on in what gets called mental)

Agreed. And, trying to loosen the hold of a picture, Wittgenstein talked about thinking with our hands when we write.

OK, crack open the hands and show me thinking.
But again, I could be mulling.
Further I think this causes a problem. I don't then think you could call it 'your critique'. You'd just be atoms, hearing sounds or reading text, then a chain of molecule impacts leads to your hands typing. There might be some epiphenomal witness. But it's hardly your critique. It's like domino three in a line claiming that domino 12 is his or hers.

Trouble is, saying that mind is 'an aspect of selves/organisms' does nothing to explain what and where the mind is. If it's co-terminal with the body, isn't it just the soul secularised - and equally fictitious?

If I close my eyes and remember my first school, where is the image?

And if it's an aspect of selves, I think it's unlikely it's 'in the hands' or the hands or thinking. I wouldn't leave them out entirely, but I think their down the causal chain from where thinking is.

And then consciousness: we open the skull and we find what you listed but not consciousness. Does it not exist?
Shouldn't we then be zombies? Why should we think animals or other people are experiencers? We can't find that process, whatever it is, in the meat.

And here's the rub. We can't find what we call consciousness 'in the meat', but we know it 'exists'; therefore consciousness must be non-physical. The demand 'show us physical consciousness' is like the demand 'show us a physical belief'.

I haven't made any claims about consciousness. My point is that you used to crack open the skull test. I'm asking where consciousness is. If we crack open a brain we do not find in the meat and blood consciousness.

And as a kind of important aside, the idea bodies are abstracted from experiencing. First we have experiencing, in our experience, that is. I am not making the claim that experience comes before other things, just that it is primary to all conclusions we have about the world. Out of all these experiences we decide to label some thing bodies. Then dualists put the soul or mind in the bodies. But actually we first have experiencing. Now this doesn't mean that experiencing isn't actually some facet of bodies.

But our process of arriving at things went from experiencing to bodies. We are so used to the body model that we then see mind and consciousness as facets of bodies. Idealism might just be more parsimonious. I am not arguing for idealism, but I want to push back on what I think is a very hard-wired model about what is parsimonious. Parsimony does not equal truth. There are other important criteria. But I think when most modern people mull over something like this they think the starting point is bodies. Not really. There's abstraction involved in calling things bodies or matter or whatever physical thing or process we are talking about.

Exactly the same delusion led Plato to conclude that 'justice' and 'piety', and so on must be things of some kind - so they must exist in the realm of forms to which philosophers can have access.

I can see it being similar in some ways, but I don't experience justice or piety as things or processes (unless we get into abstracting from society.

Here's the fallacious sequence:

A noun is the name of something.
Therefore, an abstract noun is the name of something.
Therefore, an abstract noun names an abstract or non-physical thing.
Therefore abstract or non-physical things exist.

Sure, body and matter are nouns.

I mean, look at what matter now includes. What criteria matter no longer needs to meet.
[/quote]
Lots to address here. But let my try one thing to start. What do you think of these claims?

1 We use the noun phrases body and matter and the physical to refer to...

2 Each of these noun phrases names (or is) an 'abstraction' from all the many different things that we call 'body' or 'matter' or 'the physical'. So there's an abstract thing that the noun phrases body or matter or the physical name.

4 In the same way, we use the noun phrase dog to refer to an abstraction from all particular dogs. Therefore, the abstract thing 'dog' exists.

5 So abstract things exist.

[Iwannaplato]

Lots to address here. But let my try one thing to start. What do you think of these claims?

1 We use the noun phrases body and matter and the physical to refer to...

I'm not sure what the claim is yet. I'm assuming you meant this as a kind of question. I think they refer to sets of experiences we've had (and also many, now, that we haven't, but using our experiences of some things as a base for us to imagine).

2 Each of these noun phrases names (or is) an 'abstraction' from all the many different things that we call 'body' or 'matter' or 'the physical'. So there's an abstract thing that the noun phrases body or matter or the physical name.

I would say, right now, that they are abstractions drawn from experiences, we've created sets of diverse experiences, and we now create a word for these. I am not saying they are only experiences, but if I look at what language is doing - which is actually not so easy to do - it seems to elicit a flash experience of set of experiences or a kind of marker experience I built up over time around the word. And again: I am not saying there is nothing out there, but I think words elicit experiences, especially if we are going to be parsimonious.

4 In the same way, we use the noun phrase dog to refer to an abstraction from all particular dogs. Therefore, the abstract thing 'dog' exists.

or all experiences of animals or 'animals'.

5 So abstract things exist.

How is this not like Plato?

Though actually I'm not sure if you are saying: see, here's a problem with what you (iwanna) are saying
or
see there isn't a problem with what I (PH) am saying.

My point is not that abstractions don't exist, but they all seem to get pulled our of experience, and experience isn't obviously physical. It's this complicated shifting process.

From this I can conclude that everything is physical.

But what does that word mean?

It somehow refers back to experiences I've had and shorthand placeholders for these batchings that get elicited when I hear/read the word.

Part of where my reaction comes from is I did a self-study of the phenomenology of metaphors (well it was a whole study of metaphor in general, in different disciplines). But in one part I investigated the phenomenology of encountering novel metaphors. And had to slow down to experience what happens then. And then a lot of research into dead metaphors. We often have a dualism when thinking of language - literal vs metaphorical. But I don't think that dualism holds.

My goal is not to destroy physicalism or to demonstrate a dualism.

I'm mainly a pragmatist - I say this as a default, it's not like I arrived at this position deductively. I notice I seem to have that as a base. But I'm also a bit of a slut, so sometimes realist, sometimes dualist, sometimes idealist and more. My point is more like I am not sure you get to simply assume physicalism given your arguments against mind. Because I think body falls also.

We are so used to physicalism in much of the West. I mean, even religious people are physicalists even if they lop a dualism on top of it.

But we are so used to it, it seems like if you introduce mind you are introducing something new and so we occam razor it. But I sit somewhere where physicalism is a contruction out of something more fundamental 'experience' and the meaning of any word in any physicalist model circles back to something that is there prior to physicalism as a model or thought or abstraction: experience. So, to me ANY substance or substances are additions. The physicalist sees the dualist as adding. I see them both adding. You could argue that physicalism is only adding one substance, but it is also taking active steps to say that everything is this one thing. Dualisms are saying there are two things and to some degree explaining why some of my experiences seem like X and some seem like Y. This also has problems, sometimes for me.

For me I just can't see the use in not talking about mental events. Dreams, disappointment, plans, mulling over my critique before speaking or typing, confusion, remembering.

And keep in mind that while I am focusing on experiencing here, I am also influenced by science. I mean, electronic fields, massless particles, particles in superposition. These are all matter, now, or physical.

When you want to say, more or less, we are just physical.

What does that word even mean? It keeps changing. Less and less of what we once thought of as criteria need to be there.

And then isn't substance now about what something does rather than what it is.

Basically if something causes something we call it physical regardless of its qualities.

And then we call the vast range of phenomena physical and say it is one substance. Huh?

And this second part here. Where I moved away from our 'in situ' situation as experiencers is a move into realism. That's realism. In realism we keep shifting the goalposts about what is physical. Anything we encounter and think is real, we call physical and now have a newer broader sense of what that means.

But it's one substance. What is THAT abstraction referring to?

It ain't substance, it's some kind of verbing commonality that is also incredibly abstract. Hey, all this is stuff is the same.

Even though some of it will knock you over (car) and some of it will pass through you and then through the earth without touching anything. And that's not even the weirdest stuff that gets called matter. And there is no sign that we will stop adjusting what can be matter or physical.

You tell some Medieval theologian about neutrinos and say you consider them matter and that theologian may well say, ok, well, sounds rather transcendent to me, maybe angels are something like that. I'll keep my categories but perhaps there's a bridge between our senses of what is possible and real.

[Skepdick]

So do I. Hence my question: what and where is the mind, and in what way does it exist?

What does the queston even mean? What are you even asking?

In what way does a dog exist?
In what way do you exist?
In what way do your thoughts exist?
In what way does existence exist?

There's existence and that's it. To speak of "ways of existence" is to multiply beyond necessity against Occam's warning.

There's nothing to be said about non-existence because we can't even imagine what that's like.

[Veritas Aequitas]

And here's the rub. We can't find what we call consciousness 'in the meat', but we know it 'exists'; therefore consciousness must be non-physical. The demand 'show us physical consciousness' is like the demand 'show us a physical belief'.

Exactly the same delusion led Plato to conclude that 'justice' and 'piety', and so on must be things of some kind - so they must exist in the realm of forms to which philosophers can have access.

Ignorant again.
According to Plato universals, forms and ideals exist as real feature of reality independent of the human mind or human beings.

Your what is fact, i.e. feature of reality, just-is, being-so, that is the case, is claimed to be realities independent of the human mind and human beings.

Therefore, your what is fact is the same as Plato's universals and ideals, and forms existing as real feature of reality independent of the human mind or human beings.

Here's the fallacious sequence:
A noun is the name of something.
Therefore, an abstract noun is the name of something.
Therefore, an abstract noun names an abstract or non-physical thing.
Therefore abstract or non-physical things exist.

Your charge of 'fallacious' based on the above arguments is groundless and has no basis of reality, rather your argument is based on abstract concepts which you deny exist.
You are so ignorant you are kicking your own back.

You are missing a lot of critical variables with your arguments, here is the revised version;

1. What is fact, truth and knowledge is conditioned upon a human-based-FSK [HB-FSK].
2. A noun is the name of something [re HB-Linguistic-FSK]
3. Therefore, an abstract noun [HB-Abstraction-FSK] is the name of something.
4. Therefore, an abstract noun names [re HB-Linguistic-FSK] an abstract or non-physical thing. [HB-Abstraction-FSK]
5. Therefore abstract or non-physical things exist [HB-Abstraction-FSK] as a HB-Abstraction-FSK fact, truth or knowledge.

You just cannot jumped to the conclusion,
"Therefore abstract or non-physical things exist."
without the above qualifications to its specific FSK.

As I had argued, what is objective with abstract concepts is grounded to human beings and way back to the Big Bang.

[Veritas Aequitas]

What do you think of these claims?

1 We use the noun phrases body and matter and the physical to refer to...

In this very complex issue, rigor is necessary.
You missed out the terms noun, body, matter and the physical, as conditioned upon their human based FSK, i.e. noun [linguistic FSK], body [biology], matter [Physics] and the physical [Physics FSK].

2 Each of these noun phrases names (or is) an 'abstraction' from all the many different things that we call 'body' or 'matter' or 'the physical'.
So there's an abstract thing that the noun phrases body or matter or the physical name.

Note all the above are conditioned upon its specific human-based FSK.
What is named body or matter or the physical via the linguistic FSK are themselves 'abstraction' via its FSK.
As such, "the-described" is itself an human-based FSK abstraction.

4 In the same way, we use the noun phrase dog to refer to an abstraction from all particular dogs. Therefore, the abstract thing 'dog' exists.

Note particular-dogs themselves are abstraction [say level 1], i.e. via the human science-biology FSK.
Then we have the abstraction [level 2] re a the species "dogness" abstracted from level 1 abstractions via the human science-biology taxonomy FSK [an abstraction FSK].

Note the difference between fundamental biological research within the science-biology-FSK to verify and justify what a dog and many particular-dogs are with their unique distinct features.
Then it is up to the science-biology-taxonomy-FSK to categorize the species "dogness" which I argued is supported by the physical neural correlates in the brain of humans in consensus.

5 So abstract things exist.

You are too ignorant and rhetorical by avoiding to be more rigoristic in including the critical variables of the specific human-based FSK involved.

Conclusion should be;
5. So, human-based FSK abstract things exist which must be linked to the Big Bang.

[Peter Holmes]

Lots to address here. But let my try one thing to start. What do you think of these claims?

1 We use the noun phrases body and matter and the physical to refer to...

I'm not sure what the claim is yet. I'm assuming you meant this as a kind of question. I think they refer to sets of experiences we've had (and also many, now, that we haven't, but using our experiences of some things as a base for us to imagine).

2 Each of these noun phrases names (or is) an 'abstraction' from all the many different things that we call 'body' or 'matter' or 'the physical'. So there's an abstract thing that the noun phrases body or matter or the physical name.

I would say, right now, that they are abstractions drawn from experiences, we've created sets of diverse experiences, and we now create a word for these. I am not saying they are only experiences, but if I look at what language is doing - which is actually not so easy to do - it seems to elicit a flash experience of set of experiences or a kind of marker experience I built up over time around the word. And again: I am not saying there is nothing out there, but I think words elicit experiences, especially if we are going to be parsimonious.

4 In the same way, we use the noun phrase dog to refer to an abstraction from all particular dogs. Therefore, the abstract thing 'dog' exists.

or all experiences of animals or 'animals'.

5 So abstract things exist.

How is this not like Plato?

Though actually I'm not sure if you are saying: see, here's a problem with what you (iwanna) are saying
or
see there isn't a problem with what I (PH) am saying.

My point is not that abstractions don't exist, but they all seem to get pulled our of experience, and experience isn't obviously physical. It's this complicated shifting process.

From this I can conclude that everything is physical.

But what does that word mean?

It somehow refers back to experiences I've had and shorthand placeholders for these batchings that get elicited when I hear/read the word.

Part of where my reaction comes from is I did a self-study of the phenomenology of metaphors (well it was a whole study of metaphor in general, in different disciplines). But in one part I investigated the phenomenology of encountering novel metaphors. And had to slow down to experience what happens then. And then a lot of research into dead metaphors. We often have a dualism when thinking of language - literal vs metaphorical. But I don't think that dualism holds.

My goal is not to destroy physicalism or to demonstrate a dualism.

I'm mainly a pragmatist - I say this as a default, it's not like I arrived at this position deductively. I notice I seem to have that as a base. But I'm also a bit of a slut, so sometimes realist, sometimes dualist, sometimes idealist and more. My point is more like I am not sure you get to simply assume physicalism given your arguments against mind. Because I think body falls also.

We are so used to physicalism in much of the West. I mean, even religious people are physicalists even if they lop a dualism on top of it.

But we are so used to it, it seems like if you introduce mind you are introducing something new and so we occam razor it. But I sit somewhere where physicalism is a contruction out of something more fundamental 'experience' and the meaning of any word in any physicalist model circles back to something that is there prior to physicalism as a model or thought or abstraction: experience. So, to me ANY substance or substances are additions. The physicalist sees the dualist as adding. I see them both adding. You could argue that physicalism is only adding one substance, but it is also taking active steps to say that everything is this one thing. Dualisms are saying there are two things and to some degree explaining why some of my experiences seem like X and some seem like Y. This also has problems, sometimes for me.

For me I just can't see the use in not talking about mental events. Dreams, disappointment, plans, mulling over my critique before speaking or typing, confusion, remembering.

And keep in mind that while I am focusing on experiencing here, I am also influenced by science. I mean, electronic fields, massless particles, particles in superposition. These are all matter, now, or physical.

When you want to say, more or less, we are just physical.

What does that word even mean? It keeps changing. Less and less of what we once thought of as criteria need to be there.

And then isn't substance now about what something does rather than what it is.

Basically if something causes something we call it physical regardless of its qualities.

And then we call the vast range of phenomena physical and say it is one substance. Huh?

And this second part here. Where I moved away from our 'in situ' situation as experiencers is a move into realism. That's realism. In realism we keep shifting the goalposts about what is physical. Anything we encounter and think is real, we call physical and now have a newer broader sense of what that means.

But it's one substance. What is THAT abstraction referring to?

It ain't substance, it's some kind of verbing commonality that is also incredibly abstract. Hey, all this is stuff is the same.

Even though some of it will knock you over (car) and some of it will pass through you and then through the earth without touching anything. And that's not even the weirdest stuff that gets called matter. And there is no sign that we will stop adjusting what can be matter or physical.

You tell some Medieval theologian about neutrinos and say you consider them matter and that theologian may well say, ok, well, sounds rather transcendent to me, maybe angels are something like that. I'll keep my categories but perhaps there's a bridge between our senses of what is possible and real.

Thanks. I've been going over what you say here and in your previous post. And I want to narrow it down to a few premises - which I may well not have right yet - so please sort me out. (Btw, my 5-point argument was supposed to be flawed - to demonstrate the problem. Sorry that was unclear.)

I take the heart of it to be that what we call the physical has changed so much that the word - or its referent - is unclear. Some thoughts:

1 That what we call a dog is 'really' atoms, which are 'really' sub-atomic particles, which are 'really' probabilistic quantum events (or whatever) doesn't mean that we can no longer call a dog a physical thing.

2 To say any noun is an abstraction is not to say that the abstraction exists - that 'dogness' or 'being-a-dog' is a real thing. That's mistaking what we say for the way things are - a sort of deluded projection.

3 I think you say that what we call 'the physical' is an abstraction from experience, but that not all experiences are physical. Can you give an example of a non-physical experience, and explain why it's non-physical? Why is 'having' an image of your old school in your brain a non-physical experience? Would seeing your old school now be a non-physical experience? (The myth of the mind is potent.)

4 If what we call the physical doesn't exist, or if we can never know what it is - because we're limited, or because it keeps changing, or because there is no reality-in-itself, etc - then talk of the non-physical is incoherent. No polar contrast = no dichotomy. (And, of course, talk about an observer of non-reality is special pleading.)

[Iwannaplato]

I take the heart of it to be that what we call the physical has changed so much that the word - or its referent - is unclear. Some thoughts:

1 That what we call a dog is 'really' atoms, which are 'really' sub-atomic particles, which are 'really' probabilistic quantum events (or whatever) doesn't mean that we can no longer call a dog a physical thing.

That's not really what I'm saying. Partly because I wasn't talking about what we call dogs, or other specific 'things' 'entities' in the world. I was talking about in philosophical contexts. Further, why not just call the dog a thing or entity? But even more specific, the context of my challenge was where it seemed like we were assuming that 'physical is meaningful' and any other claim to a substance being added - such as mind if that is presented as another substance - is adding, while I think 'physical' is adding, being presumed as default, and also lacks parsimony in all the ways it's use default rules out diversity. IOW yes would could evaluate parsimony of proposals and treat the number of substances as what we count. Physicalism has one substance, therefore it is more parsimonious than dualism has 2. 1<2, so therefore monism trumps duallism. But there's a set of reductions that are a higher number with physicalism and it is less parsimonious. Again there are other criteria than parsimony, but I think implicit in many complaints about dualism that there is this bias to counting just one facet of a position.

2 To say any noun is an abstraction is not to say that the abstraction exists - that 'dogness' or 'being-a-dog' is a real thing. That's mistaking what we say for the way things are - a sort of deluded projection.

Sure. I don't think I have a problem with this. Real and real thing, one might also, say are not the same.

3 I think you say that what we call 'the physical' is an abstraction from experience, but that not all experiences are physical.

Not exactly. I was pointing out that experience itself is not obviously physical. I am attacking the presumption of physicalism from two angles, one phenomenological and then also from a realist stance. I am attacking it's current default status in many subcultures. I think a part of the standard physicalism defense against other isms is that 'we just aren't assuming as much as you guys'. I don't see that at all.

4 If what we call the physical doesn't exist, or if we can never know what it is - because we're limited, or because it keeps changing,

I think those are fundamental problems with using a word. I think if those are granted a tremendous onus goes to the person using that word.

or because there is no reality-in-itself, etc - then talk of the non-physical is incoherent.

Yes, but you're shifting the context. I responded to a challenge to the use of mind and mental states, by saying that physical has similar problems and is not a coherent term itself.

I wasn't saying that people must accept the non-physical. And note how even that framing considers a term I consider not to have a clear meaning and to have a shifting means as the default.

Me personally, I don't really have a default. I do however find it extremely useful to speak about mental states, minds and so on. And I think it would be misleading in many context, if not most, to say brain states. Not because I know that physicalism is wrong, but because it would confuse my listeners/readers.

I'm not a dualist (most of the time) trying to convince a monist (you) that we should be dualists. I'm reacting to what seems like a physicalist criticizing what he considers dualist language on what I consider grounds that give his own physicalism lots of problems.

As a kind of pragmatist I face a diversity of phenomena. Physicalists want to reduce everything to one substance, dualists of various kinds to 2. I can find both useful in certain situations. I can find language associated with each ism useful in many situations. I see both isms as making a lot of claims and generally wanting me to adhere to their specific language use. I've seen both models, at least examples of the latter used to rule out phenomena on their certainty about substance issues, even though both tend to have shifted their idea about their substances over time. I remain unconvinced either one has a clear idea of the substances they say are real and in the case of physicalism is the only real thing.

I see no reason to follow the dictates of either one in my language use or internal models in all contexts or even most and also not in a philosophy discussion. It often feels like physicalism vs. the various dualism is a kind of theological dispute, with one side at least, sometimes both, thinking they are not in any way theologians.

I am also not sure what I, or really anyone else, loses if they don't adhere to a substance number.

[Peter Holmes]

I take the heart of it to be that what we call the physical has changed so much that the word - or its referent - is unclear. Some thoughts:

1 That what we call a dog is 'really' atoms, which are 'really' sub-atomic particles, which are 'really' probabilistic quantum events (or whatever) doesn't mean that we can no longer call a dog a physical thing.

That's not really what I'm saying. Partly because I wasn't talking about what we call dogs, or other specific 'things' 'entities' in the world. I was talking about in philosophical contexts. Further, why not just call the dog a thing or entity? But even more specific, the context of my challenge was where it seemed like we were assuming that 'physical is meaningful' and any other claim to a substance being added - such as mind if that is presented as another substance - is adding, while I think 'physical' is adding, being presumed as default, and also lacks parsimony in all the ways it's use default rules out diversity. IOW yes would could evaluate parsimony of proposals and treat the number of substances as what we count. Physicalism has one substance, therefore it is more parsimonious than dualism has 2. 1<2, so therefore monism trumps duallism. But there's a set of reductions that are a higher number with physicalism and it is less parsimonious. Again there are other criteria than parsimony, but I think implicit in many complaints about dualism that there is this bias to counting just one facet of a position.

2 To say any noun is an abstraction is not to say that the abstraction exists - that 'dogness' or 'being-a-dog' is a real thing. That's mistaking what we say for the way things are - a sort of deluded projection.

Sure. I don't think I have a problem with this. Real and real thing, one might also, say are not the same.

3 I think you say that what we call 'the physical' is an abstraction from experience, but that not all experiences are physical.

Not exactly. I was pointing out that experience itself is not obviously physical. I am attacking the presumption of physicalism from two angles, one phenomenological and then also from a realist stance. I am attacking it's current default status in many subcultures. I think a part of the standard physicalism defense against other isms is that 'we just aren't assuming as much as you guys'. I don't see that at all.

4 If what we call the physical doesn't exist, or if we can never know what it is - because we're limited, or because it keeps changing,

I think those are fundamental problems with using a word. I think if those are granted a tremendous onus goes to the person using that word.

or because there is no reality-in-itself, etc - then talk of the non-physical is incoherent.

Yes, but you're shifting the context. I responded to a challenge to the use of mind and mental states, by saying that physical has similar problems and is not a coherent term itself.

I take you to mean that calling a thing physical is as unclear as calling a thing non-physical. Is that right? If so, I disagree. It's easy to provide a clear explanation of what we call the physical.

I wasn't saying that people must accept the non-physical. And note how even that framing considers a term I consider not to have a clear meaning and to have a shifting means as the default.

Me personally, I don't really have a default. I do however find it extremely useful to speak about mental states, minds and so on. And I think it would be misleading in many context, if not most, to say brain states. Not because I know that physicalism is wrong, but because it would confuse my listeners/readers.

Agreed. Talk about minds containing mental things and events saturates everyday language. But, pending evidence for the existence of anything non-physical, such talk is metaphorical. When we remember the old school yard, there is no actual, physical image in our brains. Or do you think there is?

I'm not a dualist (most of the time) trying to convince a monist (you) that we should be dualists. I'm reacting to what seems like a physicalist criticizing what he considers dualist language on what I consider grounds that give his own physicalism lots of problems.

I'm still not clear about the problem(s). Sorry.

As a kind of pragmatist I face a diversity of phenomena. Physicalists want to reduce everything to one substance, dualists of various kinds to 2.

I don't think physicalism is reductive. Absent evidence for the existence of anything non-physical, it isn't reductive to say: well, here's what we call the physical.

I can find both useful in certain situations. I can find language associated with each ism useful in many situations. I see both isms as making a lot of claims and generally wanting me to adhere to their specific language use. I've seen both models, at least examples of the latter used to rule out phenomena on their certainty about substance issues, even though both tend to have shifted their idea about their substances over time. I remain unconvinced either one has a clear idea of the substances they say are real and in the case of physicalism is the only real thing.

Okay, maybe this is a snag. Physicalism need not entail denial of the non-physical, any more than atheism entails denial of the supernatural. And I think the 'pending evidence' position is the only rational one in both cases.

I see no reason to follow the dictates of either one in my language use or internal models in all contexts or even most and also not in a philosophy discussion. It often feels like physicalism vs. the various dualism is a kind of theological dispute, with one side at least, sometimes both, thinking they are not in any way theologians.

Understood. I think you're right about the similarity between belief in the existence of the non-physical, and belief in the existence of fairies and gods. Two sides of a coin? And, of course, people can find talk about gods useful. Whatever floats one's boat on the sea of nothingness.

I am also not sure what I, or really anyone else, loses if they don't adhere to a substance number.

To me, its more what hampering baggage can come with irrational beliefs.

Just to say - thanks again for your responses, which I find most interesting.

[Iwannaplato]

I take you to mean that calling a thing physical is as unclear as calling a thing non-physical. Is that right? If so, I disagree. It's easy to provide a clear explanation of what we call the physical.

That's sort of part of what I'm saying. I think the term is a placeholder for an expanding set of things that are considered real. It seems to be talking about substance, but I don't think it is. But anyway, what's your definition?

Agreed. Talk about minds containing mental things and events saturates everyday language. But, pending evidence for the existence of anything non-physical, such talk is metaphorical. When we remember the old school yard, there is no actual, physical image in our brains. Or do you think there is?

Why would I be defending a physicalist position? I'm not a physicalist. Then where is the image? Last 'physical' is metaphorical. Especially in relation to many things considered physical now. But even before the weird expansions in the 20th century.

The term originated in ancient Greek philosophy, and was later used in Christian theology and Western philosophy. In pre-Socratic usage, physis was contrasted with νόμος, nomos, "law, human convention".[1] Another opposition, particularly well-known from the works of Aristotle, is that of physis and techne – in this case, what is produced and what is artificial are distinguished from beings that arise spontaneously from their own essence, as do agents such as humans.[2]

It's a dead metaphor, yes, and one that has shifted over time in its meanings and scope.

You keep making it seem like I asserted there are non-physical things. This puts me on a spectrum of positions I don't hold, least in some permanent non-context way. I think all this substance talk is confused, metaphorical and restricting.

I said that it makes perfect sense to me to refer to mental states. And when I dig into brains I don't find them. You're assuming that means I must believe there are non-physical things, which I don't consider a meaningful category, precisely because it is based on the category 'physical' which is an ever expanding set of 'things' and changing criteria. Also, a slightly different issue, we don't know what all 'of nature' is, yet. And then I don't think 'physical' refers to substances. And last, it's treating physicalism the default. I want to refer to mental events, and this is betraying the default so I must have belief X.

I see a couple of groups, for example, one telling me it is all one thing, the other telling me it is two things. AGain, I'm faced with diversity. I don't think either group is convincing around substance.

Perhaps scientists will find evidence of what people are calling ghosts. Or find something less associated with dualists. Whatever it is, if the current trend continues, they will call it physical, regardless of substance and properties. What we lose if we simply call it real or verfied, I have no idea.

Again, I think an old battle is being waged.

I have incredible evidence of mental states. But note, and speaking about it does not require me to take a stand on physicalism or dualism or anti-physicalism. I don't really accept those doctrines or even categories. I close my eyes and see an image little girl I knew in a park when I was 3. Crack my skull open and you won't find that image.

If I say that, the response seems to me - demonstrate that the non-physical exists.

Wait, wait. I am just pointing out that the criterion you aimed doesn't work. Unless you think there is no image.

IOW anything said here is taken as either being on the Republican side or the Democratic side.

So, if I say something the Republicans don't like then I am a Democrat and must prove the Democratic line. And vice versa. Woh. I remain unconvinced by either of those two out of many possible batched positions.

Understood. I think you're right about the similarity between belief in the existence of the non-physical, and belief in the existence of fairies and gods. Two sides of a coin? And, of course, people can find talk about gods useful. Whatever floats one's boat on the sea of nothingness.

You may be being coy here, but that's not what I meant. In case you weren't being coy, I was referring to the physicalists as also acting like theologians. This is physical, it's not non-physical!

To me, its more what hampering baggage can come with irrational beliefs.

Where I sit, I get hampering baggage from pretty much everyone. I'm certainly not going to start saying, even in philosophical contexts, last night I had an intense set of neuronal patterns during REM stages of sleep. I behaved as if I had seen an non-physical image - read: neuronal pattern called by lay people a memory - of my deceased mother - which triggered lacrumabundus. And so on.

Just to say - thanks again for your responses, which I find most interesting.

Great, likewise.

EDIT: A slightly different overview of what I am saying. I have two groups with different ontologies. They both tell me, usually, that there are either 1 or 2 substances. Both react to me as if I must be on their 'enemy' team, if I do not accept something they say. All their arguements will be framed as if their position is default. To me they both seem ontologically weak and confused. Not necessarily wrong, but actually more like 'not even wrong' following, at least metaphorically Peter Woits Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory . I do not take either one as the default.

When you respond to me it is as if I must prove there is more than 1 substance. We take for granted that this is the default and I need to show the existence of one more (or several). But I don't see that 1 as either coherent or demonstrated. I don't have a number. I'm not a substance number guy. And actually I don't scientists are anymore either, but I think they hand onto substance because we are still thinking we have to take substance sides because of the Catholic Church or whatever.

And dualists have another set of defaults I must bear the onus to disprove around substance.

I can only hope to somehow get across what it's like if one reads debates between what I consider people holding metaphysica positions - ontology being a part of metaphysics. (and by the way I don't see metaphysics as a pejorative term, the emphasis here is I am not inside that debate. It's a bit like two ships anchored near my tribes coastal village and you both think that the choice is between your beliefs or the other ship's. And, you both think the other is wrong. And both of you use similar assumptions - you've got the same vocabularies, different defaults.

And we're just hanging out our fish to dry and thinking 'They must live somewhere very different from where we do.'

Cause it's like encountering the Pre-socratics, No, everything made of Fire, No water. No....
All with pet substances. Now the pet substance is 'anything we find and consider real,' which seems to mean something like 'stuff,' but as an adjective.

[Skepdick]

I take you to mean that calling a thing physical is as unclear as calling a thing non-physical. Is that right? If so, I disagree. It's easy to provide a clear explanation of what we call the physical.

So do it already.

What's "physical" about your beliefs?

[popeye1945]

Every human creation is conceptual until made manifest in the outer world.