Dualism or idealist monism as the best model for survival after death data

It seems to me that this is just "kicking the can down the road" so to speak, because then we now have to explain two additional required causal processes. The first one is where some form of Mind by psychokinesis or some other apparently paranormal schema and resultant force is doing the actual volitional shoving of matter and energy around to mimic our rational causal model. This process is just as mysterious: what is the inner nature of this shoving around process? 

Now we have to explain three things in toto: Mind itself,  psychokinesis, which is also a mystery, and finally as mystery #3, we also have to explain why these volitional actions of Mind mimic the present logical causal model to near perfection, rather than some other set of rules that could be immeasurably simpler and take much less total effort. This actual process of volitional causality seems to involve a much greater continual and greater mental effort than merely creating a mindless deterministic causal mechanism of great complexity (the latter being a logical deduction from observation ).

So, with this explanatory option there is no net gain in wisdom, in fact a net gain in ignorance.

I think your previous suggestion that "....we (could) say the "law" is merely descriptive of something internal to the nature of the "physical"", a Design option, is more viable since in being simpler it is more likely (being just one mystery) since it meets the Ockham's Razor principle of parsimony. This option is of the same very high existential order as the anthropic necessity for the laws of logic and mathematics to rule our reality - causality as just the "way things work" is as existentially fundamental and unknowable as the law of the excluded middle or the geometrical law of there being 3 spacial dimensions plus time's arrow.

The bottom line appears to be that the search for a deep understanding of causality is hubris and doomed to failure by the very way our reality is designed, where there are fundamentally humanly unknowable features of our reality designed in to our reality in order to enable sentient intelligent creatures like ourselves to exist in a (sometimes rewarding) environment. At least one apparently viable explanation for the motive for this Design would be the possible desire of this Designer to create beings that it can share existence with. 

One final observation: all of these possible explanations invoke the deadly mystery of a necessary eventual infinite regression, since that infinite regression in turn by implication just invokes the ultimate seemingly irrational mystery that reality evidently always existed and never had a beginning, never had a creator, only reinforcing the observation of the hubris of this enterprise.

We seem to largely be in agreement that physical causality needs mental causation to get started, while differing that the maintenance of physical causality needs some kind of Mind involved?

It would certainly be a better shave with Occam's Razor if there could be a designed-but-self-running physical causality conceived in a Deist/Watchmaker way, but I am just unconvinced the limitation of possibilities down to the one actual occurrence can be plausibly explained without the presence of a Mind.

 you can't apply force vectors to emotions and reasoning when trying to chart the outcome, and of course so much of our understanding and confidence in applied science rests on Maths which rests on Proofs which rests on Logic which is wholly mental.

The question then becomes whether there is some way to properly conceive of "physical" causation. After spending some time trying to see how it could be done I eventually came to accept there isn't any real solution, because for any Law you run into Talbott's problem of matter needing to have something in it that "listens" to said Law ->


Then we can say the "law" is merely descriptive of something internal to the nature of the "physical"...but I don't think this really helps, especially when we look at those particles in their "random" quantum behavior where even Penrose wonders if there's decision making going on.

There is a lot well-said there.

You provoke my exact methodological argument.  Yes, force vectors apply only to physical reality.  However, science is evolving to understand outcomes of emotions and reasoning perfectly well.  There are abstract predictors in computed information science about mental/emotional outcomes, just as are the abstract predictors about physical objects. 

There are firm stochastic predictions from outcome data about behavior and motivation.  The math for vectors in sociological, ecological and individual-base data chart in the same abstract spaces, as does the data from materials science and physics!  Vectors of disease transmission are just as real as are vectors of wind force.  One is information (data) from human choices and decisions and the other information (data) is from physical measurement.

Talbott's article is excellent analysis from two decades ago.  It is responding to the academic environment then.  Now, with an informational model for intentional mind emerging, things are different.  My humble take is that the "law" question is just reification of the math that cast materialism as possible.  Is the underlying "governance" just a semantic question?  Law is certainly only descriptive of real phenomenal structure, as you say.  The structure being in the work space of informational relations.  Relations like what is important in the environment.  Importance implies real-world meanings being primary variables.

As for Penrose and any other effort to embed mind in matter, I reject.  The informational realism model has mental action embedded in the universal wave function.  A separate environment to physical here and now measurements.  An environment where mind can gain information from the past, while in the present and directly effect outcomes in the future, before they happen.

We seem to largely be in agreement that physical causality needs mental causation to get started, while differing that the maintenance of physical causality needs some kind of Mind involved?

It would certainly be a better shave with Occam's Razor if there could be a designed-but-self-running physical causality conceived in a Deist/Watchmaker way, but I am just unconvinced the limitation of possibilities down to the one actual occurrence can be plausibly explained without the presence of a Mind.

It seems to me that the rules of causation could be automated, at least for the macroscopic physical domain (as opposed to the quantum mechanical subatomic particle domain). The primary rule for the physical causation algorithm would be to require the occurrence of proximal physical contact in space and time of one piece of matter by another, or some field energy impacting a piece of matter or another energy. The prior trajectories and prior history of such causal interactions having causally determined the latest physical contact event. This algorithm of course would have to be an exceedingly computation intensive process to cover all of physical reality, but it still wouldn't seem to require a mind. It would of of course require mind to get set up and started in the first place. 

This physical contact involved set of rules for physical causation would seem to be able to effectively create the observed macroscopic world, where such a rule set would seem to very exactly explain the macroscopic behavior of matter, and physical contact is really a field interaction. 

But of course there is the matter of the supposed centrality of consciousness and sentient observation in the quantum mechanics affecting the subatomic world and therefore also deeply affecting and resulting in the macroscopic world. Since the early days of quantum mechanics, some physicists and philosophers have argued that resolving the measurement problem requires an appeal to the minds of conscious observers. However, this contention has always been controversial, and apparently is no longer the consensus. 

One wild theory suggests that consciousness may entirely explain quantum mechanics, by in every submicroscopic event forcing the subatomic particles to choose one concrete outcome. One of the most perplexing aspects of quantum mechanics is that tiny subatomic particles don't seem to "choose" a state until an outside observer measures it. The problem with this contention is that this "observation" process must necessarily be anything that "measures states" by interacting with the process, whether or not it is a sentient observer or a mechanical interaction. The notion of "observer" should not be misunderstood. In quantum physics parlance an "observer" can be a detector, a screen, or even a stone. Anything that is affected by a process.

It seems to me that this position is massively validated by the countless observations of quantum mechanical interactions and their macroscopic outcomes occurring in remote locations in the world and the Universe far from any human conscious observation. That leaves of course the possible contention that some universal Intelligence is doing the necessary observations, but this looks like an excuse since it requires postulating another additional entity.

If this latter mechanical interaction interpretation of quantum mechanics is actually the case, then all that is needed is that the rules of causation need to be greatly complexified to include the rules that determine these QM level interactions.

Have any experiments been performed to resolve this question?

It seems to me that the rules of causation could be automated, at least for the macroscopic physical domain (as opposed to the quantum mechanical subatomic particle domain). The primary rule for the physical causation algorithm would be to require the occurrence of proximal physical contact in space and time of one piece of matter by another, or some field energy impacting a piece of matter or another energy.

I think the challenge here remains - why should this stop alternative possibilities from happening?

A "primary rule" is just "law of nature" by another name. Now I think this can be grounded by some entity or entities maintaining the world's rules but that would be a constant process. For example the Catholic Theologian Edward Freser would call this a Concurrent Cause ->

"Natural theology also establishes that there is a natural order of “secondary causes” that is both distinct from but depends upon God as primary cause.  Natural, secondary causes are real causes (so that occasionalism is ruled out), but they can act only insofar as God imparts causal power to them (so that deism is also ruled out).  This is the idea of divine concurrence with natural causes.  When worked out it entails, on the one hand, that there is a natural order of things that can be known and studied whether or not one affirms the existence of God.  Given just that natural order, certain things are possible and certain things are impossible, and the “laws of nature” revealed by natural science tell us which is which.  But on the other hand, the doctrine of divine concurrence tells us that since this entire natural order operates only insofar as the divine primary cause concurs with it, there is also the possibility of a supernatural order of things -- an order of things over and above the natural order, for the sake of which the latter might be suspended.  (Notice that “supernatural” here has a technical meaning that is unrelated to the sorts of things popular usage of the word suggests.  It has nothing to do with vampires, werewolves, zombies, and the like -- which, if they existed, would be part of the “natural” order in the relevant sense, rather than supernatural.)"

Regarding:

The prior trajectories and prior history of such causal interactions having causally determined the latest physical contact event. This algorithm of course would have to be an exceedingly computation intensive process to cover all of physical reality, but it still wouldn't seem to require a mind. It would of of course require mind to get set up and started in the first place. 

This physical contact involved set of rules for physical causation would seem to be able to effectively create the observed macroscopic world, where such a rule set would seem to very exactly explain the macroscopic behavior of matter, and physical contact is really a field interaction.

But the macroworld is built on the micro, or so physicists tell me. And the microworld is quite bizarre as noted by the fact that 4% of photons reflect back rather than pass through glass. Is there probabilistic law rather than a deterministic one for this or any other indeterminism?

Furthermore:

The problem with this contention is that this "observation" process must necessarily be anything that "measures states" by interacting with the process, whether or not it is a sentient observer or a mechanical interaction. The notion of "observer" should not be misunderstood. In quantum physics parlance an "observer" can be a detector, a screen, or even a stone. Anything that is affected by a process.

I know some physicists feel this way, that "observer" could possibly just be a computer with a detector...but AFAIK it isn't clear if this is an adequate answer. From a Sci-Am article by Stapp, Kafatos, and Kastrup:

"One of the keys to our argument for a mental world is the contention that only conscious observers can perform measurements.

Some criticize this contention by claiming that inanimate objects, such as detectors, can also perform measurements, in the sense described above. The problem is that the partitioning of the world into discrete inanimate objects is merely nominal. Is a rock integral to the mountain it helps constitute? If so, does it become a separate object merely by virtue of its getting detached from the mountain? And if so, does it then perform a measurement each time it comes back in contact with the mountain, as it bounces down the slope? Brief contemplation of these questions shows that the boundaries of a detector are arbitrary. The inanimate world is a single physical system governed by QM. Indeed, as first argued by John von Neumann and rearticulated in the work of one of us, when two inanimate objects interact they simply become quantum mechanically “entangled” with one another—that is, they become united in such a way that the behavior of one becomes inextricably linked to the behavior of the other—but no actual measurement is performed."

However, my concern with grounding causation doesn't rest on QM, rather QM just makes stark the issue. The challenge to me remains that for anything that happens, there seems to be infinite possibilities that didn't happen...even if we're talking about a micron-or-less shift in measurement.

The issue is we have only one account of causality from the inside, which is our volition, and any other explanation for possibility selection seems to fall flat. 

I do agree the mundane world seems to run, at a macro level, without constant mental direction...Maybe certain entities are akin to what @Laird suggested, bodies with their mentality suffused through them...and perhaps the more powerful of these can actually remove their mentality from part of themselves while leaving the "physical" with some causal relations, like in the myths where god(s) use their own bodies to make Creation. This could possibly work, but honestly would have to think a bit more on this...

As for Penrose and any other effort to embed mind in matter, I reject.  The informational realism model has mental action embedded in the universal wave function.  A separate environment to physical here and now measurements.  An environment where mind can gain information from the past, while in the present and directly effect outcomes in the future, before they happen.

To be clear Penrose has, AFAIK, no definitive statement about this. He just looks at superposition and notes what he calls a "decision" is being made, by which he means some possibility is selected for.

He allows for the possibility of a conscious decision.

Now *I* would ask what else but volition can ensure one possibility from the infinite number of possibilities is selected, which is why I hold to the Volitional Theory of Causation.

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I think the challenge here remains - why should this stop alternative possibilities from happening?

A "primary rule" is just "law of nature" by another name. Now I think this can be grounded by some entity or entities maintaining the world's rules but that would be a constant process. 
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But these "rules" of causation or natural laws would be simply the way our reality is laid down to autonomously work - they just couldn't work in any other way. No constant supervision by a conscious entity required. A simple analogy would be a clock - it is so designed that all the clockwork of gears and shafts and levers and springs inevitably result in one mechanically computed minute and second following the next in time order. No conscious overseer and enabler entity is required to constantly keep it from making mistakes and reversing the arrow of time, for instance. It autonomously works this way second to second and minute to minute because that is the way it was designed. I suppose that a "meta-rule" or "meta-law" might also be required to initially foundationally establish that some sort of rules or laws of reality can in fact be laid down such that things simply can't work in any other way. I suppose that your position might be that there is no Designer with the power to do that, thereby requiring causation to be volitional second to second.

I know some physicists feel this way, that "observer" could possibly just be a computer with a detector...but AFAIK it isn't clear if this is an adequate answer. From a Sci-Am article by Stapp, Kafatos, and Kastrup:

Some criticize this contention by claiming that inanimate objects, such as detectors, can also perform measurements, in the sense described above. The problem is that the partitioning of the world into discrete inanimate objects is merely nominal. Is a rock integral to the mountain it helps constitute? If so, does it become a separate object merely by virtue of its getting detached from the mountain? And if so, does it then perform a measurement each time it comes back in contact with the mountain, as it bounces down the slope? Brief contemplation of these questions shows that the boundaries of a detector are arbitrary. The inanimate world is a single physical system governed by QM. Indeed, as first argued by John von Neumann and rearticulated in the work of one of us, when two inanimate objects interact they simply become quantum mechanically “entangled” with one another—that is, they become united in such a way that the behavior of one becomes inextricably linked to the behavior of the other—but no actual measurement is performed."[/i]

However, my concern with grounding causation doesn't rest on QM, rather QM just makes stark the issue. The challenge to me remains that for anything that happens, there seems to be infinite possibilities that didn't happen...even if we're talking about a micron-or-less shift in measurement.

all that quantum probabilistic stuff has had the crap kicked out of it (generalised) by Nima and friends work on scattering amplitudes, they don't use any reference to quantum mechanical processes AT ALL to calculate scattering amplitudes.

[Laird]

I guess I just can't follow you here. It seems to me that subjective experience by its very nature is completely private and inner, and simply has no objective aspect, it has absolutely no "looks like from outside", no quality of being an "external representation" of any objective physical thing. You simply can't physically separate yourself from a perception (composed of mind-stuff) and draw a representation of it. You fundamentally can't see or feel tactilely a thought, which is composed of mind. 

The ultimate inner nature of mind or a subjective experience composed of mind, is a mystery, but it is definitely of a different fundamental nature, a different existential category, than an objective fact of the world. Example: the subjective experiencing of the color red is not physical, whereas the objective reality of the red colored object is a physical reality in the physical world whose different aspects include mass, dimensions, and wavelengths of reflected light subjectively perceived as the color red. 

The objectively physically real object is composed of matter and energy which are in an entirely different existential category than whatever subjective perception is composed of, and therefore the objectively physically real object cannot be an "external representation" of the subjective perception or thought. Like the fact that the mass of an object is fundamentally not an external representation of its perceived color. Its mass has little or no relation to its color.

 
The subjective experiencing of the perception of the color red is an ineffable "thing" with absolutely no weight or physical dimensions, and therefore this subjective state of consciousness and perception simply has no physical aspect or quality. Any more than the subjective perception of the weight of a piece of steel when held in the hand has any actual objective reality of mass or dimensions.

I'm trying to say it in different ways, but basically the ineffable essence of the subjective perception itself is for a fact somehow completely composed of an immaterial "something" we term consciousness or mind, that cannot be objectively and physically seen, felt or smelled. Therefore, subjective perception simply has no objective physical aspect or quality.

A little belatedly, because I've had to think about this, and have also had visitors:

I'm not asserting that the proposed objective aspect of subjective experience that I've termed "mental energy" has such physical properties as mass, although it would certainly have dimensions. I don't know whether or not wavelength would be a potentially applicable property, but I expect not. The nature of mental energy in this respect is simply to have substantive form, with the form correlating perfectly with the inner experience.

You've got me thinking though about what that form would look like (how to describe it), and it's quite difficult to imagine. Some aspects of experience are easier to "formalise" than others: for example, the form (as mental energy) of a visual experience could conceivably be something like a three-dimensional reflection of the actual visual field, but what form would an emotional state take, and how would its form cohere and integrate with the form of the concurrent visual experience?

I think we'd have to posit a multidimensional space of more than three dimensions, which could be an interesting realm to explore. Mental energy's being multidimensional over more than three dimensions would, though, make it harder to identify with (as) the spiritual/astral/etheric body which separates from the physical body during OBEs, because that spiritual body seems to be three-dimensional. It also seems to be able to take on different forms, including a point (invisible) form, and if it was a direct correlate of inner experience, one would expect experience to become non-existent during the period that the spiritual body took on point (invisible) form, but it doesn't.

In any case, as I mentioned earlier, I borrowed this idea from my interpretation of Analytic Idealism, and maybe it's a bad fit for dualism. It should probably be discarded if it is neither necessary nor has explanatory power, or if it really is impossible to imagine its form, or if there is a better alternative.

"Mental energy" seems to be necessary for Analytic Idealism on my interpretation given that the process of "dissociation" of personal psyches from the universal mind is said to be due to certain dimensional structures which develop in that universal mind, which to me implies that the universal mind consists in some sort of substance which takes form - a substance which, of course, I've ended up referring to as "mental energy".

Given that dualism does not entail dissociation, it does not have that same need for mind to take on an objective substantive form, but that leaves open the possibility of some other need, or of it providing enhanced explanatory power.

Let's start with exploring the first possibility: that "mental energy" - the substantive "outer" form of inner experience - is a necessary concept even on dualism's premises.

In this respect, I think there's a clue in your saying that 'the subjective perception itself is for a fact somehow completely composed of an immaterial "something" we term consciousness or mind': composition - even if of consciousness or mind - seems to imply or at least be consistent with some sort of (objective) substantive form. Could this (inevitable?) language of yours - albeit qualified by "immaterial" - hint at the necessity of this concept?

Consider also that it is an objective fact that you and I subjectively experience (assuming you're not simply an advanced AI). I get that it's not a straightforward deduction from subjective experience being an objective fact to subjective experience having an objective substantive form, but it is suggestive, and we also know that our experience is at least differentiated, and thus also suggestive of form.

Regarding the second possibility, that of explanatory power:

Consider that as you yourself acknowledge, consciousness is (objectively) causally efficacious, not just internally, but externally too. Is this causal efficacy best explained by positing that inner, intangible experience is the correlate of an objective substance to which it gives form? It seems easier to understand the causal efficacy of a formal substance than of something ineffable.

Consider, too, the subconscious in its various guises and functions. Consider more specifically the example of "zoning out" - thinking about something else - while driving, and then later returning one's attention to the road, and sometimes being able to recall the last few seconds of driving despite one's awareness having been elsewhere. It seems difficult to explain that subconscious activity as merely "ineffable experience", because it literally was not experienced (it was subconscious), leaving only "ineffability" - and yet, it is in all other respects the same as an experience. This suggests that it is, in some sense, not "ineffable" but in fact "effable", having some objective substantive form which "functions" within (as) the mind though not as a conscious experience.

None of this is rigorous nor, perhaps, especially compelling argumentation; I'm just putting out some ideas for consideration. I'm interested to know what you think, and in what anybody else who sees fit to chime in thinks.

Incidentally, in an earlier post, you lamented the unpopularity of mysterianism, but according to Wikipedia, mysterianism is "a form of nonreductive physicalism", for which I wouldn't have expected you to advocate...

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Incidentally, in an earlier post, you lamented the unpopularity of mysterianism, but according to Wikipedia, mysterianism is "a form of nonreductive physicalism", for which I wouldn't have expected you to advocate...
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My use of the term "Mysterianism" was in the sense of the traditional definition of the term, not what is termed "New Mysterianism":

(From Wiki, at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_McGinn): "New, or epistemological, Mysterianism is contrasted with the old, or ontological, form, namely Mysterianism, that consciousness is inherently mysterious or supernatural. The New Mysterians are not (the) Cartesian dualists (that the Old Mysterians are).  The argument (of the New Mysterians) holds that human minds cannot understand consciousness, not that there is anything supernatural about it."

"New Mysterianism", according to Wiki (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_mysterianism ):

(A) "New mysterianism, or commonly just mysterianism, is a philosophical position proposing that the hard problem of consciousness cannot be resolved by humans. The unresolvable problem is how to explain the existence of qualia (individual instances of subjective, conscious experience).... Some "mysterians" state their case uncompromisingly (Colin McGinn has said that consciousness is "a mystery that human intelligence will never unravel"); others believe merely that consciousness is not within the grasp of present human understanding, but may be comprehensible to future advances of science and technology."
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(B) "In terms of the various schools of philosophy of mind, (new) mysterianism is a form of nonreductive physicalism."

Statement (B) about New Mysterianism is essentially giving a why for holding such a belief. This "why" presumably lies in the physicalist contention that mind simply does not really exist - it is some sort of illusion, since absolutely all that exists is composed of matter and energy in motion. Something that does not really exist fundamentally can't be understood by definition.

My use of the term "Mysterianism" was in the sense of the traditional definition of the term, not what is termed "New Mysterianism":

(From Wiki, at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_McGinn): "New, or epistemological, Mysterianism is contrasted with the old, or ontological, form, namely Mysterianism, that consciousness is inherently mysterious or supernatural. The New Mysterians are not (the) Cartesian dualists (that the Old Mysterians are).  The argument (of the New Mysterians) holds that human minds cannot understand consciousness, not that there is anything supernatural about it."

"New Mysterianism", according to Wiki (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_mysterianism ):


Statement (B) about New Mysterianism is essentially giving a why for holding such a belief. This "why" presumably lies in the physicalist contention that mind simply does not really exist - it is some sort of illusion, since absolutely all that exists is composed of matter and energy in motion. Something that does not really exist fundamentally can't be understood by definition.

Non-reductive physicalism is also a thing with multiple proponents. Non-reductive physicalists believe that the mind and body are two separate but interconnected entities. The mind interacts with the brain and affects physical reality, but it is not solely determined by or reducible to physical interactions.