The A Priori Case for the Paranormal? [companion discussion thread]

I think the challenge here is the degree to which the a priori considerations are taken in tandem with evidence.

If someone is a hard core Physicalist, it feels less likely any of the accumulated Survival/Psi evidence would convince them on its own.

There is no evidence for the paranormal to the hard core physicalist. It would seem that Chalmers is one since ascribing consciousness to an epiphenomenon of physical neurological brain activity really amounts to that position re. consciousness, and consciousness is the key candidate for there being anything at all fundamentally nonphysical.  I think you underestimate the closed-mindedness involved here. To the hard core physicalist there is a huge mass of observational and measured evidence for materialism, and no real evidence for the contrary, usually to the point where it is considered a waste of time to even look at the paranormal.

There is no evidence for the paranormal to the hard core physicalist. It would seem that Chalmers is one since ascribing consciousness to an epiphenomenon of physical neurological brain activity really amounts to that position re. consciousness, and consciousness is the key candidate for there being anything at all fundamentally nonphysical.  I think you underestimate the closed-mindedness involved here. To the hard core physicalist there is a huge mass of observational and measured evidence for materialism, and no real evidence for the contrary, usually to the point where it is considered a waste of time to even look at the paranormal.

IIRC there are at least a few parapsychologists who do in fact think there's a Physicalist explanation.

However, I feel like scientists & science-facing advocates who warmed up to parapsychology - at least to the point of saying it deserves to be researched and is legitimate science - have all come through a philosophical change first. Figures such as Stuart Kauffman, Henry Stapp, Sam Harris, Bernardo Kastrup to give some examples.

I do know the transhumanist Ben Goertzel was convinced by looking at Psi data, but he wasn't a Physicalist since he has his own metaphysical view of Patternism. Turing believed in the Psi data - it comes up in his "Turing Test" paper - and Einstein seemed to believe in at least on[e] psychic. But these seem quite rarer, today, than the shift in philosophical position bringing in the willingness to even look at Psi/Survival data.

There will always be the unpersuadable, who likely will insist they are in a materialist computed simulation even after death...but proponents should target the more open minded.

[Laird]

James Ross's Immaterial Aspects of Thought [is] worth a read (along with a companion paper by Feser), but the summary provided by Rocket Philosophy is a good starting place to get the gist of what he's saying.

I've read and reread these. I think Edward Feser's paper does the best job of presenting the argument. Still, I have reservations about it (the argument, that is). Firstly, I'm not convinced that this consideration of thought truly is a special case distinct from - or at least deserving of special attention within - the general case that any given conscious experience is not (necessarily) entailed by any given physical state: that, given knowledge solely of a brain state and of all of the laws of physics, it is not possible to infer what the person whose brain it is is experiencing, whatever that is - whether it is a feeling or, as in this (purported) special case, a (logical) thought (or thought process).

Secondly, along similar lines, I'm not convinced that the distinction between the "determinacy" (of thought) versus the "indeterminacy" (of matter) is a special case distinct from - or at least deserving of special attention within - the general case that conscious experience is qualitatively distinct from physical state, and the supposed distinction in any case seems kind of sketchy to me. The sort of examples given for comparison seem to bear this out: physical machines algorithmically adding numbers together are simply qualitatively distinct from the conscious experience of adding numbers together, whether one or the other is "determinate" or "indeterminate". That this supposed determinacy-indeterminacy distinction adds anything significant in this respect is not clear to me.

Thirdly, the examples given seem to me to be rather weak, and much stronger versions are available to materialists. Maybe the examples given are not quite straw men, but their weakness seems to do the argument a disservice. It seems, drawing inspiration from my earlier post in this thread, on the face of it to be open to a more sophisticated materialist to say, "Well, obviously I'm not saying that the ('determinate') conscious process of adding numbers is akin to the ('indeterminate') physical process of a calculator running a basic summation algorithm. Rather, let's look to large-language models: when these physical processes reason - to the extent that they can be said to be doing that, and that extent is growing greater day by day - it is not via some trivial, hard-wired algorithm like a calculator; no, when these physical processes, say, sum numbers, it is via an intricate and complex neural network which simulates via that intricacy and complexity the so-called 'determinate' understanding of conscious thought."

I don't think that that claim holds up on close examination, but I do think that it at least deserves explicit consideration.

Along similar lines:

A different way of looking at the issue is an argument often attributed to CS Lewis, but also made by Popper. The causal chain of the physical determines successive events. If the mind is reducible to matter, then all thought is determined by physical causal chains...but this would mean one's reasoning is not ultimately dependent on the semantic logical chains.

But then how could any reasoning really claim to be rational?

A longer summary of Popper's argument can be found on Feser's blog

These sort of sentiments are what motivated my post of about a year ago in Titus Rivas's "Analytical argument against physicalism" thread. I chose to consider mental causal chains involving affective states (the pain of a headache in particular in the example I gave) rather than cognitive reasoning precisely because, along the lines I've suggested above, it seems more open to the materialist (or epiphenomenalist, as in Titus's thread) to argue that physical structures can, in an intricate and complex way, encode meaning, such that all that's required are some very simple metaphysical rules relating those intricate and complex physical structures to the conscious experience of that encoded meaning - to in a sense "decode" or "read off" the meaning into conscious experience - than it is open to the materialist/epiphenomenalist to argue that via some intricate and complex structure, matter can encode affect (feeling), because affect doesn't seem to be the sort of thing that's amenable to encoding in that way - it seems in its simplicity to be much more apparently divorced from physicality than are meaning and understanding, and thus, when mixed up with cognition (in the form of self-reporting on the affect), as in the example in my post, it becomes effectively impossible for the materialist/epiphenomenalist to provide a compelling explanation for the supposed coherency of the parallel causal chains (physical and mental).

That said, as I indicated above, I don't think that that materialist/epiphenomenalist claim re meaning being encoded in complex and intricate physical structures and being able to simply be "decoded" or "read off" into conscious cognitive experience, albeit more plausible, ultimately holds up.

Anyhow, maybe this response of mine is misplaced, or missing something(s), or otherwise excessively and unfairly critical. I'm open to a response in turn to that effect. I don't want to invest any more time and thought into it than I already have though - I need to move on to other things - so I'm going to post it as-is.

Finally, this was, in any case, all very interesting to consider, even if my ultimate response is a little lukewarm, and this "a priori" series that you've put together is well worth it. I'm enjoying the process of working through it.

Interestingly I actually feel something like the opposite.

Qualia to me could be part of a corporeal world - which would mean they are only not "physical" in the sense that they are part of this reality but outside the domain of physics to capture. Though I do think even there the  First Person PoV of qualia does seem impossible to capture in Third Person terms.

OTOH I sort of agree with you, in the sense that Reason involves Intentionality and Subjectivity, and so the argument is not over and above the arguments about the immateriality of those two. However Reason seems to intertwine both of these, in that you have thoughts about the subject you're reasoning about and seeing what feels like it is the most rational consideration.

That said, I do think Reason is itself something quite mysterious, as it's quite difficult to have a logical argument justifying what separates Logical statements from other statements. And as a math major, I found it fascinating how I could see a problem [involving proofs about Permutations] and darkly laugh about how I was doomed only to find the answer coming to me from...somewhere.

Now all that said, the one quibble that occurs to me is that the physical is ultimately syntactical, whereas the mental is semantics. And as Ross notes, to try and approximate or ape logical statements is to try and cross that bridge. Yet how could we even evaluate the ability of the physical system to emulate logical statements without already having Reason as our guide?

[Laird]

This might be a better way of expressing my sentiments, in particular with respect to the "determinacy versus indeterminacy" distinction:

Imagine the scenario in which the materialist says, "The way we perceive the universal form of a circle is via this little ring of neurons", and the anti-materialist rejoins with, "But neurons are finite, and so it's indeterminate whether that ring of neurons is really a circle or a many-sided polygon, whereas the thought of a universal circle is determinate. Checkmate, materialist!"

Or imagine the scenario in which the materialist says, "The way we conceive of addition is via this little neural circuit, which, just like a digital calculator, sums up numbers represented by electrical potentials at synapses", and the anti-materialist rejoins with, "But it's conceivable that for numbers over 5000, that neural circuitry always returns the result of 5, so it's indeterminate whether it's performing addition or quaddition, whereas our conception of addition is determinate. Checkmate again, materialist!"

Does any materialist actually think that that's anything like the way we perceive the universal form of a circle, or the logical operation of addition? Given that the answer is, "Obviously not", and that the materialist is far more likely to say that instead it involves complex and intricate neural structures that have no obvious and immediate relationship with circles or adding algorithms, then of what value or utility is this "determinate versus indeterminate" distinction?

It seems to me that the core issue here is how meaning and understanding (of universals and logic), are even possible given (mere) physical matter, and that the "determinate versus indeterminate" distinction doesn't help to elucidate to any great extent why this is a problem for materialism.

On reflection, though, I do think that you are justified in posing this as a distinct third problem for materialism on top of those of qualia and intentionality.

I do agree that the question of determinacy is a problem for all thoughts about things, since material structures are about whatever we want them to be. Even the illogical thoughts are a problem as much as the clearest and most rational ones.

However, I am not sure how a materialist could explain the way in which we can conceive of mathematical objects like perfect circles given said perfect circles' lack of presence in the material world. And the logical syllogisms and recognition of fallacies also seem like problems, arguably worse ones since it is unclear how the physical level of syntax approaches the semantics of the logical.

Whatever physical structures supposedly allow comprehension of Reason can't just appear otherwise it seems like Design has interjected itself to make the human from the ape. Yet how does Nature move toward recognition of the syllogisms across the selection process? 

This would mean that logical Universals are not universal at all, and that aliens may have their own logic...yet while this argument gets put forth SETI is sending Mathematical Truths into the void for a reason...

Now I do admit Reason is a tricky thing, a quale that arises from a certain ordering of thoughts. And sometimes, as some of my weaker past exam scores can attest to, that quale is associated with an incorrect ordering of thoughts. This can happen even on the same exam paper where the same quale produces correct proofs.

Nevertheless I do think it's safe to conclude Reason - for all its mystery - is non-physical?

Nevertheless I do think it's safe to conclude Reason - for all its mystery - is non-physical?

There is no single, clear ontological model of what "physical" means that is universally accepted. So how can you conclude anything about what’s “non-physical”?

There is no single, clear ontological model of what "physical" means that is universally accepted.

Perhaps because Physicalism likes to muddy the waters, deliberately or otherwise, so as to keep their options open, to make it easier to "defeat" Idealism and Dualism with vague handwaving. Especially bad is the statements of "believing" in the laws of physics for their definition of Physicalism. It would be in bad faith if it weren't so obvious how philosophical inept many Physicalists are ~ especially those that disavow being called Physicalists while fitting the definition of one to the tee.

Thinking logically... what is "physical" can be perhaps clearly defined by what is material ~ molecules, atoms, photons, and the actually observed sub-atomic particles, not including mathematical constructs like quarks ~ and the forces we can observe with our senses and instruments that affect matter.

So how can you conclude anything about what’s “non-physical”?

Minds do not clearly or easily directly affect the physical beyond their immediately correlated, clearly-defined possessed physical forms. Telekinesis is an example of perhaps direct affecting of matter (irrespective of what you think of the concept), and yet it is not a physical force, in that it is never consistent observed in any pattern of material behaviour, in physics.

So, what is non-physical is what falls outside of the set of material things, and the forces that govern such material things.

Thinking logically... what is "physical" can be perhaps clearly defined by what is material ~ molecules, atoms, photons, and the actually observed sub-atomic particles, not including mathematical constructs like quarks ~ and the forces we can observe with our senses and instruments that affect matter.

I like that you write “perhaps”. Because you implicitly assume there’s an objective reality to these observed quantities. But actually this is only true in the classical understanding of physics which we know now isn’t a valid understanding of “physical”. You are basically attacking an ontology that became obsolute a hundred years ago.

I like that you write “perhaps”. Because you implicitly assume there’s an objective reality to these observed quantities.

I assume no such thing. The reality of physical and material things is rather more accurately described as inter-subjective. What we understand as "physical" is not independent of our collective human observations and agreement of what our senses show to us. We cannot say with any confidence that non-humans perceive the world exactly how we do, and it would be baseless to try, bordering on naive realism.

But actually this is only true in the classical understanding of physics which we know now isn’t a valid understanding of “physical”. You are basically attacking an ontology that became obsolute a hundred years ago.

Then you didn't understand what I wrote ~ I am describing Physicalism, plainly, if you would think more clearly about my words.

Despite the claims of Physicalists, they cannot claim quantum physics, because the stuff of the quantum barely even qualifies as "physical" when compared to classical physics. Worse, the logical conclusions of many discoveries that have come out of quantum physics research invalidates many Physicalist claims, despite the desperate clinging to keep the ideology relevant.