Soul X Body -> connect and disconnect, not in and out

[OGHoosier]

6 hours ago, CA Steve said:

Please explain how a non-material reality interacts with a physical one and the interaction is not measurable yet occurs?

I don't think measurability is a necessary condition for "having occurred." That is the central tenet of logical positivism, a school of thought which is ultimately incompatible with the existence of intentionality (the property of "being about something") as experienced by conscious beings. Being incompatible with a fundamental aspect of reality, positivism must be regarded as false. 

I would say that "measurability" is a epistemological issue, not an ontological one. Which is, of course, the underlying intuition behind your next question. 

6 hours ago, CA Steve said:

What evidence do we have that it actually occurred if it is not measurable?

Good question. Jonas gives three case studies in which mathematical concepts are indispensable in a causal explanation of a natural phenomenon. 

Quote

Honeycombs: :

Bees build their honeycombs out of hexagonal cells. This striking fact calls for explanation. Darwin argued that minimising the amount of energy and wax used for the construction of honeycombs generates an evolutionary advantage, such that the bees who are most efficient in the use of energy and wax will be selected (Darwin 1859). In 1999, Thomas Hales proved that ‘a hexagonal grid is the most efficient way to divide a Euclidean plane into regions of equal area with least total perimeter’ (Hales 2001, p. 4).

 

Cicadas: :

Certain types of North American cicada, Magicicadas, have prime-numbered life cycles. They emerge from the ground every 13 and 17 years. This striking fact calls for explanation. Due to a number of ecological constraints, for example the need to minimise intersection with periodic predators with different cycle periods, having a prime-numbered life-cycle is advantageous for the Magicicada (Baker 2005, 2009; Goles et al. 2001, p.33). The reason for this is the number-theoretic fact that prime numbers maximise their lowest common multiple relative to all lower numbers.^Footnote12

 

Sunflower seeds: :

Sunflowers arrange their seeds in a striking spiral pattern. The explanation for this is again a combination of evolutionary with mathematical facts. Fitting as many seeds as possible into the circular flowerhead constitutes an evolutionary advantage. Sunflowers grow their seeds at the centre of the flowerhead, with new seeds pushing older ones outwards. Whenever a new seed develops, it does so at some angle of rotation from the older one. Given this way of growing seeds, the optimal rotation angle, i.e. the rotation angle at which the highest amount of seeds can be fitted into the flowerhead, can be made mathematically precise: it is an irrational fraction of 360 degrees, roughly 137.5 degrees, which is equivalent to the complement of 360 φ mod 360 (where φ is the Golden Ratio; Lyon 2012, p. 4).

What distinguishes those examples from other scientific theories featuring mathematics is that the mathematical part of the explanation plays an explanatory role of its own, i.e. it constitutes part of the explanation of the empirical phenomenon. Moreover, it plays this role indispensably, i.e. there is no way of explaining the empirical phenomenon without reference to the respective mathematical facts.

In this case, the math is not merely descriptive, as it is when talking about quantities. The bees, the cicadas, and the sunflowers do what they do because of the things we call "irrational numbers," "the Golden Ratio," "prime numbers," etc. An explanation for these phenomena cannot be accomplished without the mathematics. Since it's explanatorily indispensable, we have to conclude that the math is describing an underlying something that is involved in causing things. However, the math itself is not material. You have an immaterial thing exerting causal influence on material things. 

I would generalize this to the whole laws of nature, the observable regularities of our world. Or specifically, the regular changes we observe in our world. What is it that makes atoms bond with each other when they were not previously bonded? Can it be something intrinsic to them? What makes objects do things? From whence cometh change? It seems that the universe is absolutely infused with semantic content, causal (even forceful) yet immaterial, pure information, the code commanding the sparks and silicon. 

Intelligence, light, and truth...this is all sounding rather familiar to me. 

If you'd like another line of argument, you can review Jackson and Pettit's proof which I had in my last post. The conclusion is that, if only physical causes are allowed, then the special sciences do not provide causal explanations, which kinda murders most of modernity. That's too high a price to pay for me - a cleanly material universe is not worth that much (in fact it isn't worth anything at all.)

[CA Steve]

21 minutes ago, OGHoosier said:

Since it's explanatorily indispensable, we have to conclude that the math is describing an underlying something that is involved in causing things. However, the math itself is not material. You have an immaterial thing exerting causal influence on material things. 

Here is where I have a problem. It seems to me that all you are doing is using math to explain a physical phenomenon for which you have no better explanation and can only label as "something" or "thing". AFAIK math itself does not physically do anything. 

[OGHoosier]

1 hour ago, CA Steve said:

It seems to me that all you are doing is using math to explain a physical phenomenon for which you have no better explanation and can only label as "something" or "thing".

The problem is that there isn't a better explanation. I don't think there could even in principle be one. Bees make hexagonal cells because hexagons are the best way to capitalize on their Euclidean plane space while minimizing perimeter. Magicicadas have prime-number cycles because prime numbers maximize the lowest common multiple, therefore interactions with other periodically-active predators is minimized. Sunflowers produce their seeds at an irrational fraction of 360 degrees because it allows them to pack in the most seeds. The math is indispensable to explaining why these things happen. It is prior to evolution, even...evolution could in theory only aim at best performance. The math is the reason why this is the best performance, therefore it is prior to every other variety of inquiry. You could dissect the sunflower seed down to its last atom, catalogue its entire material structure, and you will find a chain of proximate physical causes (until you get down to quantum and causality becomes muddled lol), but you will never find anything which replaces math's role in the total explanation...and you will be utterly dependent on math at that point anyway! 

1 hour ago, CA Steve said:

AFAIK math itself does not physically do anything. 

There's a problem of definition here. Specifically, on what it means to "do anything."

Does math physically do anything? Depends. Can you pinpoint an exact moment on the instant replay where the math "does something?" No. But does "doing something" have to be a discrete point in time? Wouldn't that just be another artifact of language? Do the laws of nature "do something?" What even are they? One thing I can tell you. The laws of nature supervene on material on every scale, existing everywhere and nowhere. They cannot be material...but they are real.

I'd say math does something - or rather, what we describe using math does something. The laws of nature make things the way they are - that is "doing something" by definition. And yet they are not physical - they are instantiated in physical things, but you cannot materially define a law of nature. Which means that "physically doing things" cannot be the only mode of causal influence. 

How do I say it clearer? One could say that math is just descriptive, but the question then rises: descriptive of what? What is the real thing it describes? - and it clearly describes something real, since math is indispensable in the explanation of the cosmos on all scales. In fact, outside of natural-sense observation, math is all we have! Observation and theoretical necessity are the two modes by which science declares things to exist. And the real existence of mathematics - the symbolic language corresponding to something real - can be clearly seen to underlie natural phenomena on all scales. Mathematics might be a symbolic language (like all language) but it does describe something real, or else what are we even doing here?

The only other response, as I see it, is to give up causation at all. If the laws of nature do not exert a causal influence on reality, if the immaterial does not influence the material, then what we call the "laws of nature" are not laws at all. They're all just brute facts, with no possible explanation. Such a universe could not be explained, only described, predicted, and manipulated. Everything is a brute fact, nothing causes anything else, not even deeper laws or unifying theories. 

If we are willing to shlup even the very existence of causation out of doors to defend materialism, then we have decided that this position is dogmatically superior to even our most deeply ingrained intuitions. This makes no sense to me, since reason is merely the articulation of our intuitions! I've had enough of eliminative materialists telling me that my very existence is in fact an illusion. Who, exactly, is there to illude? I honestly find panpsychism more compelling than materialism - it's a theory that would actually allow explanation in the first place. 

Edited August 29, 2023 by OGHoosier

[mfbukowski]

5 hours ago, OGHoosier said:

Since it's explanatorily indispensable, we have to conclude that the math is describing an underlying something that is involved in causing things. However, the math itself is not material. You have an immaterial thing exerting causal influence on material things. 

I have not yet read the whole article, but as I see it this might be backwards.

What is the common denominator here of all these descriptions?

They are creations of he human mind!

Rorty:

Quote

 Truth cannot be out there- cannot exist independently of the human mind- because sentences cannot so exist, or be out there.  The world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not.  Only descriptions of the world can be true or false.  The world on its own- unaided by the describing activities of human beings- cannot."   Richard Rorty- Contingency Irony and Solidarity, P 5.

The more we try to get outside our perceptions, the more we see is a mirror of our own ways or organizing worlds (common with God's but obviously less "educated"!)

What came up with the human mind/spirit/intelleigence/consciousness?

Where does the notion that 1+1=2?

Where do we find "one" in nature?  All there is to observe is sand and the seas, fish in the nets, trees on the land- but where is "ONE"?

It is an abstraction focusing on ONE of these objects and abstracting it.   That one tree exists in a relational interaction with all that is around it- by all of nature in fact.

You cannot separate ONE tree without breaking it off from all its relations in time and space- the nests of birds- the termites within, the falling leaves of other trees perhaps lodged in the branches- it's location in time and space- all of these relations we have to ignore to see "one tree" and "another tree" to make two trees.

We cannot possibly get outside the box of our own intellects in which we are imprisoned.   We control our attention and can separate the tree from its own reality and make it into a solitary thing, which added to another solitary and manufactured human concept, torn from its relations- can be described as "two trees"- but THAT is not "nature as it is"!

We only get to "2" by slicing reality and abstracting the concept, tearing it out of reality as we experience it, and creating a world of abstraction which exists nowhere but in the box of the human skull.

Yes that abstraction has turned that experienced natural tree into boards for houses, wood for fires, furniture and guitars.

Abstraction is human creation.  "Let us go down and create a world for their is matter there"-  and all of the world in which we NOW live is a world created by the human mind-  

Houses and trees and pyramids require HUMAN REASON to be created from raw materials.

There were no "triangles" until we invented them- Pythagoras was primarily responsible for DESCRIBING the relations of this imaginary "thing"

And on it goes and on it grows!

THIS is the same TYPE of creation our Father used to create words- but these are all human INVENTIONS, not human "descriptions".

In what sense does an unknown animal "exist" until it is found by humans and defined into its zoological position?   It must be "out there" but if it has not yet be DEFINED by human intelligence what is it?  Is it a Camel or a clam?  Is it "like" a this or that?  Is it a mammal or a microbe?

So my position is, as Rorty states, yes of course one could end up in the loony bin without admitting there are "thngs out there"- we do not need to re-prove the "argument from the stone"

It is as always it is the human mind which DESCRIBES which also creates- even for three blind men and an elephant.

If there is no description, there is no "thing".

Quote

....we have to conclude that the math is describing an underlying something that is involved in causing things....

Not according to Hume and Kant and the Pragmatists and Phenomenologists and Postmodernists!

[mfbukowski]

6 hours ago, OGHoosier said:

Since it's explanatorily indispensable, we have to conclude that the math is describing an underlying something that is involved in causing things. However, the math itself is not material. You have an immaterial thing exerting causal influence on material things.

1, Please DESCRIBE an "immaterial thing".

2. Does this theory account for Hume's view of "causation" being nothing more than correlation of events?

I do not believe that has been disproven and it seems to be a cornerstone of philosophy since it was stated.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume/#Cau

 

Edited August 30, 2023 by mfbukowski

[OGHoosier]

13 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Please DESCRIBE an "immaterial thing".

That's a trick question. I already don't think I have the vocabulary to describe it, primarily because the language I have access to is primarily derived from the physical, but my insufficient thesaurus need not constrain the ontological status of mathematics.

17 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Does this theory account for Hume's view of "causation" being nothing more than correlation of events?

Hume's view of causation negates the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which I regard as critical to the exercise of human reason and indeed science itself. So I reject it. I do confess a certain uneasy pragmatism in that rejection, though, so you may have the last word yet.

47 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

There were no "triangles" until we invented them- Pythagoras was primarily responsible for DESCRIBING the relations of this imaginary "thing"

This feels off to me - a little question-beggy - but I won't contest it now. I will instead grant the point about triangles and propose that we consider hexagons. The ones that bees make, because of Hales Theorem. Or whatever reality is described by Hales Theorem. They were making them before humanity had the concept of "hexagon" or of Hales Theorem. The reality described by Hales Theorem therefore cannot be mind-dependent in the way you suggest a triangle is mind-dependent. 

[mfbukowski]

51 minutes ago, OGHoosier said:

That's a trick question. I already don't think I have the vocabulary to describe it, primarily because the language I have access to is primarily derived from the physical, but my insufficient thesaurus need not constrain the ontological status of mathematics.

Hume's view of causation negates the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which I regard as critical to the exercise of human reason and indeed science itself. So I reject it. I do confess a certain uneasy pragmatism in that rejection, though, so you may have the last word yet.

This feels off to me - a little question-beggy - but I won't contest it now. I will instead grant the point about triangles and propose that we consider hexagons. The ones that bees make, because of Hales Theorem. Or whatever reality is described by Hales Theorem. They were making them before humanity had the concept of "hexagon" or of Hales Theorem. The reality described by Hales Theorem therefore cannot be mind-dependent in the way you suggest a triangle is mind-dependent. 

Can you account for the interaction, then between the material and spiritual?

How as physical beings, can we account for spiritual beings affecting matter?

How can we check the "spirit world" to observe the "correctness" of human descriptions?

It just seems like Platonism to me.

Dualism itself brings with it inherent problems.

[mfbukowski]

10 hours ago, OGHoosier said:

That's a trick question. I already don't think I have the vocabulary to describe it, primarily because the language I have access to is primarily derived from the physical, but my insufficient thesaurus need not constrain the ontological status of mathematics.

Hume's view of causation negates the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which I regard as critical to the exercise of human reason and indeed science itself. So I reject it. I do confess a certain uneasy pragmatism in that rejection, though, so you may have the last word yet.

This feels off to me - a little question-beggy - but I won't contest it now. I will instead grant the point about triangles and propose that we consider hexagons. The ones that bees make, because of Hales Theorem. Or whatever reality is described by Hales Theorem. They were making them before humanity had the concept of "hexagon" or of Hales Theorem. The reality described by Hales Theorem therefore cannot be mind-dependent in the way you suggest a triangle is mind-dependent. 

I have underlined sections above which to me, seem to contradict your thesis, showing again and again that insufficient language is precisely what is missing from that which remains "unknown"

If we could construct a reasonable paradigm for these items, and then "test" (science/experimentation- more talk and refinement of the descriptions) we would be able to say that we "know" how the material and immaterial interact.

To me that shows that it is language that creates reality as we describe it.

How can it be otherwise?

Tell me how an internal combustion engine works without using language!

If we can't describe a "thing", for all practical purposes the thing remains no-thing. We can't talk about it rationally- and that is what is happening here.

There is nothing that can be said about them.

And of course "things" existed before we did, including hexagons but it took Hales to DEFINE them

Same thing with chairs and waterfalls. Those very words create pictures in your mind, and we want to discuss and define the language about them better.

 

[mfbukowski]

12 hours ago, OGHoosier said:

I will instead grant the point about triangles and propose that we consider hexagons. The ones that bees make, because of Hales Theorem. Or whatever reality is described by Hales Theorem.

This captures the problem, I think.

What shape is a pyramid? We call it "pyramidal", clever folks that we are.

From above? From the sides? How many angles are there in a pyramid?

What shape are you?

How is that different than being "in shape"?

Language is a sorry way to describe stuff, but it 's all we got!

This is Plato- and so is the idea of "instantiation".

A lot of very smart folks believe it, but for me it puts the form for cart before the form for horse.

It makes abstraction more real than the reality: we live in a world of shadows of forms.

I want a world of robust EXPERIENCE!

For me, no bueno!

 

[mfbukowski]

13 hours ago, OGHoosier said:

That's a trick question. I already don't think I have the vocabulary to describe it, primarily because the language I have access to is primarily derived from the physical, but my insufficient thesaurus need not constrain the ontological status of mathematics.

Hume's view of causation negates the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which I regard as critical to the exercise of human reason and indeed science itself. So I reject it. I do confess a certain uneasy pragmatism in that rejection, though, so you may have the last word yet.

This feels off to me - a little question-beggy - but I won't contest it now. I will instead grant the point about triangles and propose that we consider hexagons. The ones that bees make, because of Hales Theorem. Or whatever reality is described by Hales Theorem. They were making them before humanity had the concept of "hexagon" or of Hales Theorem. The reality described by Hales Theorem therefore cannot be mind-dependent in the way you suggest a triangle is mind-dependent. 

One more:

Before we have a vocabulary, there is nothing to talk about.

By the WORD were all things created 

How do words derive themselves from the physical?

Edited August 30, 2023 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

On 8/28/2023 at 5:25 PM, OGHoosier said:

I never really got this objection to Cartesian dualism. Non-material realities interact with and order material things all the time. We call them "mathematical realities" or "laws of nature." 

I'd recommend this excellent public-access paper by the German philosopher Silvia Jonas: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11406-021-00356-0#Sec4 . Particularly significant are the sections entitled "Meta-Natural Explanations of Empirical Realities," "Mathematical Explanations of Material Facts," and "Explanations Featuring Mathematics." All emphasis mine.

I'm omitting a lengthy discussion of the "programming role", a concept taken from Frank Jackson and Philip Pettit (Jackson, F., & Pettit, P. (1990). Program explanation: a general perspective. Analysis, 69(2), 107–117.) That is worth reading, but it is dense and technical. Jonas does cite a very persuasive argument to the effect that causally relevant causes are not necessarily causally efficacious, ie things can cause phenomena without actually being in the physical chain of events that cause said phenomena.

I'm honestly not so sure about the suitability of the concept of the "programming role", but for the purposes of this discussion, that is unnecessary. I am not particularly worried about accounting for how physically inert causes can still be relevant - we're playing with mysteries beyond our ability to comprehend, I suspect. However, I do think that Jackson and Pettit prove that a causally relevant property need not be causally efficacious - in other words, a cause need not be part of a physical chain of events in order to cause a physical phenomena. 

To assume otherwise is to overthrow all science outside basic physics, which seems more ludicrous to me than the belief that the world as we know it is not a closed circuit of physical causation.

Conclusion: Descartes partially vindicated, materialism btfo, and the causal immateriality of consciousness rendered plausible.  

As for the applications of these things to Latter-day Sainthood, I'd recommend Samuel Morris Brown's Mormons Probably Aren't Materialists (Dialogue, vol. 50 no. 3). I will quote the following:

I don't know what a spirit is or what it does. I know that we have them, and that there is a LOT I do not understand. At this point, though, I'm downright confident that consciousness is not material, and I believe that what I referenced above demonstrates that immaterial things can affect material things. 

I have been slow to fulfill my promise to remark  on this article, but I have not forgotten.

I am still leaning toward good old Pragmatism, which puts the practicality and evolution due to practicallity before the math.

When I was very young, my parents wanted to build a new house, their first after living in rentals.  They bought a lot from a farmer carving up his land to make some money for retirement during the baby boom demand for new housing.  I was the baby.

They went to my uncle, an architect, to find the least expensive plan he could come up with.

He told them that a circle was the most efficient use of space both in the interior and exterior.

My folks thought that would be a little weird to be the only round house in a new development, so went for a square instead.

I am having trouble even imagining that somehow a recently "discovered", (by a human mind) theorem can be considered a "cause" for the efficacy of a practical practice known and used to humans- and bees- for at least  hundreds of thousands of years, by humans alone.

I see the theorem as an abstraction of a known principle that has been understood for the lengths of time we are discussing.

Three cornered hats may have been fashionable at one time, but became, I am certain, impractical to wear in battle.

But I suppose I have to read the rest of the article. 🙃

https://inhabitat.com/why-our-ancestors-built-round-houses-and-why-it-still-makes-sense-to-build-round-structures-today/#:~:text=There is some nifty natural,and potentially ripping off) corners.

 

A little late for an edit-don't know who read what already BUT let me add a PS:

Rorty yet again: 

Quote

 

Truth cannot be out there- cannot exist independently of the human mind- because sentences cannot so exist, or be out there.  The world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not.  Only descriptions of the world can be true or false.  The world on its own- unaided by the describing activities of human beings- cannot."   Richard Rorty- Contingency Irony and Solidarity, P 5.

 

Now let me "Translate" it- I will put the changes in red text

 

Quote

Truth cannot be out there- cannot exist independently of the human mind- because equations/theorms cannot so exist, or be out there.  The world is out there, but descriptions in language and math of the world are not.  Only descriptions of the world can be true or false.  The world on its own- unaided by the describing activities of human beings- cannot."   Richard Rorty- Contingency Irony and Solidarity, P 5.

Math is simply another language used to describe things, as I am still seeing it.

Edited September 1, 2023 by mfbukowski

[Calm]

24 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

He told them that a circle was the most efficient use of space both in the interior and exterior.

Not with the way space is actually used though with furniture.

[mfbukowski]

13 minutes ago, Calm said:

Not with the way space is actually used though with furniture.

Unless your furniture is round.

The real problem is that planned communities are pretty much always based on grids.

THAT is the Mormon Way especially. 

1223 E. 2400 S.

THAT took a while to get used to- it felt like a Star Trek episode.

Easy to find, but I'd rather live on Beach Tree Lane.

[mfbukowski]

44 minutes ago, Calm said:

Not with the way space is actually used though with furniture.

I used to design and create furniture and musical instruments like guitars while I was in college.  I was also in lower level management, helped setting up machines and figuring out quicker ways to make more stuff cheaper. 

The real problem is that we we use wood to build so many things- and guess what!  Wood grows in trees, which are LONG and rectangular.

It is really hard to bend wood.  It can be done- of course, but it is not easy.   But that I think is one big factor in both building houses and creating furniture. Less labor.

You run the tree through a machine, and you have a board or boards of the right dimension in one step.   Easy and practical.   Because roads have lanes, trucks are longer than they are wide.  You stick that rectangular stuff you have made for your rectangular house into the rectangular truck and drive it down the rectangular road until you get to the rectangular store, and then into your rectangular house.

And so, yes, it is all pragmatism all the way down. 

If we build stuff based on theories, that is called "art" and then it ain't cheap any more. 

 

 

 

[Calm]

58 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Easy to find, but I'd rather live on Beach Tree Lane.

I agree.

[mfbukowski]

8 minutes ago, Calm said:

I agree.

And still better would be "24 Beach Tree Lane".

That low number makes ME imagine a short, curly street perhaps up on a hill.   If it was 2476 E. Beach Tree Lane, ferget about THAT!

[Calm]

1 hour ago, mfbukowski said:

And still better would be "24 Beach Tree Lane".

That low number makes ME imagine a short, curly street perhaps up on a hill.   If it was 2476 E. Beach Tree Lane, ferget about THAT!

I love living on cul de sacs or cuddly sacs as we called them with my daughter.

[Tacenda]

On 8/31/2023 at 11:36 PM, Calm said:

I love living on cul de sacs or cuddly sacs as we called them with my daughter.

And perfect for playing kick the can! 

Love that you called them cuddly sacs with your daughter!

 

[Calm]

41 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

And perfect for playing kick the can! 

Love that you called them cuddly sacs with your daughter!

 

Brings a smile to my face too.

Edited September 2, 2023 by Calm