In reply to Coel Hellier:
I note your interests from your profile:
> Advocating the most outrageously reductionist, materialist, atheistic and deterministic version of science and scientism that I can get away with!
> Am I ruling out "non-physical" things a priori? No I'm not; however, I am not aware of any evidence for "non-physical" things. Of course in saying that I've not even encountered a coherent definition of what such "non-physical" things are.
I think you are ruling out non-physical things a priori, because you depend on others for a definition of "non-physical", when your penchant for materialistic expositions should allow the conception for a set that could exist that is "non-physical".. ..indeed, I would suggest that many worlds hypotheses are rather more non-physical than physical and rely on the idealism of mathematical abstraction and consistency over empirical science. Neither can you conceive of evidence that could be non-physical. Well, i'd suggest that the mind itself could respresent such evidence because:
1) The coherence between mind and our apparent ability to understand the universe that might suggest an inherent frame of reference that has a basic coherence with physical law.. ..i.e. physical law is a representation of mind. Afterall, can such laws be said to exist?
2) Because the mind is our tool for accessing reality, and so mind has a necessary primacy in our relationship with the external world. In that sense the external world could be subordinate to mind, and not exist apart from it, or at least not entirely apart from it.
3) Our experience of self-hood, the subjective, which appears distinct from the outside world, and is a phenomenon that does not appear to be reducible in the way the hurricans are. Which btw is not necessarily to invoke dualism.
> Nope. The whole point of my stance is NOT to have a division between reality (or physical reality) and mind. So, no, I'm not assuming that.
I'm not distinguising mind from matter in any kind of ontological sense, I am saying that when you move from your knowledge of yourself in your inner world to an evaluation of the external world you assume that the outer world exists, and would continue to exist even in the absence of your ability to experience it, i.e. if you died, or all animals died and there was no such thing as language etc etc.
> No, I don't make that basic assumption. We consider whether reality is "consistent" based on evidence. As for reality being "objective", again, it is you who wants some big subjective/objective distinction, not me.
Well I disagree and I don't think you've honestly examined the basis for your position. The assumption of a basic order is what makes science worthwhile, that there is an order to elucidate. It is a self-fulfilling exercise, I agree, but it is not its own reason for making the initial commitment to such a view of reality.
> There you are again, positing some fundamental divide between "us" (presumably "mind") and "reality". That is not my starting point.
With all due respect Coel, that can't not be your starting point. You are a subjective creature, not an objective one, whether you like it or not. Again, this is not to invoke a necessary dualism, but it does recognise the honesty in the position that the subjective experience is the starting point for any interaction with the world, which, if committed to, does assume that there is a reality to discern, which can also be understood.
> No, that is not a starting assumption. We can deduce whether rational explanations exist by testing them against alternative possibilities.
That you can deduce whether rational explanations exist, does not stop it from also being a starting assumption.
> Nope, as I've said repeatedly, I am NOT making any starting assumption about the nature of stuff. That is something we *deduce* (as best we can) based on evidence.
What is nature that you have decided it is something that you can deduce something about it at all? In what way is the mind anything like a hurricane? Do hurricane's have a subjective sense? What is this "stuff"? What is matter that you believe it to be worth studying?
> Which is why I don't start with them. Sorry, not one of those 5 above is something that I do take as a starting assumption.
You might not admit it in the interests of more rhetoric, but they are. You are not a skeptic and not an idealist (or a dual aspect monist), so you have made a commitment to reality that is broadly speaking assuming that ones experience of the exterior world is physical, your answer to PMP's spoon bending example being further indicative.
> Evidence for what? If you mean "evidence for non-physicalism" then, for the eighteenth time, "non-physicalism" is not something I have the slightest conception about; I have absolutely no conception of what this claimed "physicalism" v "non-physicalism" divide is supposed to be about or supposed to mean, and thus, having no inkling of this concept, I don't see how I can describe evidence for it. If YOU want to argue for this distinction then YOU argue for it and provide evidence for it.
> For the NINETEENTH time, I have no understanding of what "physicalism" means, since I have no understanding of any "non-physical" thing to contrast it with. Therefore I am NOT basing my stance on a declaration of "physicalism" and don't even have a definition of "physicalism".
With all due respect, this seems highly disengenuous, you call yourself someone who advocates reductionistic and materialistic versions of science and scientism, and yet you reject any notion of the idea of what physicalism means? Come on! Physicalism is just a more nuanced form of materialism, as I'm sure you well know. You may need to rewrite your profile, and it would be nice to know given that you advocate materialistic conceptions what you understand by physicalism.
> What I am saying is that, as far as I am aware, the set "exists" is not divided into fundamentally ontologically distinct domains ("mind" v "matter" or whatever); as far as I'm aware everything that exists is the same type of stuff in that sense.
What is the set "exists"? Is it everything, or only that which you experience? Do physical laws exist? What position do you take on Hawking's: "because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself out of nothing". If physical laws exist, of what substance, "stuff" etc does a physical law take? What is the subjective experience?