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

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.


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.

Okay, I must have misunderstood you. However, it's precisely because of the non-realism that it's meaningless to speculate about something being 'non-physical.' Bernardo Kastrup embraced idealism to avoid getting 'entangled' in physical nonsense.

Okay, I must have misunderstood you. However, it's precisely because of the non-realism that it's meaningless to speculate about something being 'non-physical.' Bernardo Kastrup embraced idealism to avoid getting 'entangled' in physical nonsense.

It is not "meaningless" whatsoever ~ this reality has a clear dual aspect to it. The clearly physical, the so-called objective, shared world. which we know of through our five senses, and the clearly mental, through which all sensory knowledge, physical and mental ~ thoughts, emotions, etc ~ are known.

Idealism does not dispense with the physical, mind you ~ it is just a particular kind of phenomena within the overall senses. Phenomena which have particular shared qualities ~ which we can abstract away under "physical".

It is not "meaningless" whatsoever ~ this reality has a clear dual aspect to it. The clearly physical, the so-called objective, shared world.

Whether an objective world exists independently of our minds is purely a philosophical question. And the dual aspect that you allude to is not clear at all either since you then run into the interaction problem meaning that your perceived classical physical world is incomplete as it lacks a mechanism for the spiritual to interact with the “physical”. For that reason idealism is a lot more tenable. “Clearly physical” is a nonsense term. It’s not possible to make any inference about “clearly physical” without a consciousness observer. That’s the key QM consequence.

So you haven’t really understood QM after all when you immediately fall back into the classical world pittrap outdated for a hundred years.

I was talking about Quantum Mechanics in the sense that Physicalists completely misunderstands it in their hubris, and how it's not really anything that Physicalism can point to as evidence for anything, due to it not being able to logically fit anywhere in their worldview.

Whether an objective world exists independently of our minds is purely a philosophical question. And the dual aspect that you allude to is not clear at all either since you then run into the interaction problem meaning that your perceived classical physical world is incomplete as it lacks a mechanism for the spiritual to interact with the “physical”. For that reason idealism is a lot more tenable.

That is why Neutral Monism appeals to me more than Dualism or Idealism these days ~ it doesn't have the interaction problem, while it also solves the problem of mind-as-we-know-it not being a fit candidate for creating reality.

“Clearly physical” is a nonsense term.

The apparently external world of the senses can be called physical in the sense that we have a bunch of stuff we've classed as "matter", as it shares all similar properties of being composed of molecules and atoms which behave and interact in stable, experimentally-knowable ways, and we also have the sometimes invisible, though measurable forces, which are classed as "physical" due to their known effects on purely matter. So, it makes sense to class matter as being physical.

“Clearly physical” is a nonsense term. It’s not possible to make any inference about “reality” without a consciousness observer. That’s the key QM consequence.

Indeed. And yet, I see Physicalists trying to desperately get around this by claiming that in QM, an "observer" can just be a recording instrument, that recording instruments can also collapse the superposition. What never seems to occur to them is that every such instrument was created and designed with intention of recording... so they have been perhaps unconsciously conferred some vague potential through intentionality in their design and creation.

That is why Neutral Monism appeals to me more than Dualism or Idealism these days ~ it doesn't have the interaction problem, while it also solves the problem of mind-as-we-know-it not being a fit candidate for creating reality.

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Indeed. And yet, I see Physicalists trying to desperately get around this by claiming that in QM, an "observer" can just be a recording instrument, that recording instruments can also collapse the superposition. What never seems to occur to them is that every such instrument was created and designed with intention of recording... so they have been perhaps unconsciously conferred some vague potential through intentionality in their design and creation.

I'm on my mobile, so please bear with this somewhat clumsy breakdown of my response to your post.

As I understand it, "neutral monism" represents an even higher level of abstraction of reality than idealism. While it might be a safer philosophical position, its implications are not entirely clear to me.

I now see that you define the "physical" as what our senses interpret as the “outer world”. However, we must remember that what our senses perceive might not accurately reflect what is truly out there. My reference was to an objective reality that exists independently of our senses.

I believe physicalism is a waning position. It seems that panpsychism is becoming the more widely accepted alternative in academic circles, though I could be mistaken.

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”?

Adding to, but with some potential difference, what @Valmar said...I think there's a general - though not complete - agreement that physical refers to the stuff of this universe that Physicalists tell us has no mental character. This would include no qualia.

I use "corporeal" to make the distinction, where that which is in the world could have aspects like redness and other qualia. Yet these aspects are beyond physics ability to describe.

However I don't think the First Person PoV, the Aboutness of Thought, nor Reason are corporeal or physical.

I think there's a general - though not complete - agreement that physical refers to the stuff of this universe that Physicalists tell us has no mental character. This would include no qualia.

These physicalists you are referring to became an extinct species decades ago as we don’t known if any observer-independent world exists. “Physical Stuff” is simply ill-defined unless you make certain assumptions about the nature as reality as part of your ontological framework. Modern materialist philosophiescomes in several flavors with each flavor having it’s own set of assumptions. MWI is one of these but there are others.

These physicalists you are referring to became an extinct species decades ago - (except those who subscribe to Many Worlds) as we don’t known if any observer-independent world exists. “Physical Stuff” is simply ill-defined unless you make assumptions as part of your ontological framework.

There seem to be plenty of people who think consciousness, along with everything else, is born of stuff in this universe that lacks any mental character?

But even if there are no Physicalists, this question of the physical versus the mental would still be there? Most of the ways people try to reconcile how our conscious selves are created seem poor to me, with the Panpsychic options being better than the Physicalist/Materialist positions but still not very good?

As I understand it, "neutral monism" represents an even higher level of abstraction of reality than idealism. While it might be a safer philosophical position, its implications are not entirely clear to me.

Indeed, it is more abstract, through necessity of the deficiencies of Dualism and Idealism. If the origins cannot be explained by either, then it must be more distant than we can grasp. However, this reality we perceive has obvious dualistic roots, though the ultimate reality is far less certain.

I now see that you define the "physical" as what our senses interpret as the “outer world”. However, we must remember that what our senses perceive might not accurately reflect what is truly out there. My reference was to an objective reality that exists independently of our senses.

We indeed have no means of knowing what the true reality is. If we weren't certain before, explorations of quantum physics all but confirm that we do not perceive reality as it truly is, to say nothing of the very different perceptions we know various non-human entities have. Bacteria and amoebae navigate their environments, yet they have none of the senses we are familiar with personally.

I believe physicalism is a waning position. It seems that panpsychism is becoming the more widely accepted alternative in academic circles, though I could be mistaken.

Panpsychism has some fatal flaws ~ one being that if consciousness, mind, is just another fundamental force, then it should be detectable as something physical, just as the Physicalist asserts. It means that consciousness, mind, must be physical... playing right into Physicalist ideology. The only difference is that consciousness, mind, is no mere epiphenomenon in the case of Panpsychism. For Panpsychism, it is a legitimately existing force within physics, though one shrouded in so much mystery, one not even detectable.

We've previously gone over the idea of Laws of Nature, and how the idea they restrict the behavior of Nature is rather problematic. As such, it's not a good argument to say the Laws of Physics would prevent any paranormal event from occurring.

But there's another side to this, which is the question of how causation works at all and whether we should think of all causation as mental causation. Of course if all causation is mental, then this would greatly support Psi and arguably Survival as well.

The first thing to consider, however, is why causation is a problem? ->

  -Mumford, Stephen; Lill Anjum, Rani. Causation: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) (pp. 9-10). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.





So we can see there is something to be explained in Causation, as the connection between events in a temporal chain does not provide the "oomph" - as Tallis calls it - for how one state enables subsequent states. Additionally, for everything that *might* happen, why does a particular and limited set of states actually end up as the effect?

The only causation we at least seem to be acquainted with is our own mental causation, where I can will my hand to rise or choose to shift my body in other ways. So as a conscious agent I at least seem to be a possibility selector.

As noted in WJ Mander's The Volitional Theory of Causation:


Another way of thinking about consciousness as being required for causality is discussed in Gregg Rosenberg's book A Place for Consciousness in Nature: Probing the Deep Structure of the Natural World. The link above goes to a Gateway to the book that includes PDF links to a few chapters but the basic gist has been broken down by Stephen Esser. From the book itself:


Finally, yet another way of explaining causation as mental invokes the argument that God has to be the ultimate author and continual determiner of cause-effect relations:


This is one Proof of God, and I'll briefly touch on some others in the next post.

I guess I'll differ with this interpretation of the real nature of causality (that it actually is at base mental).

It seems to me that observation and common sense enter in to it, in that physical cause and effect (not mental willing or other involvement) governs the changes and movements of objects in the world, and the operation of the machinery of man's construction which by the way is essential now for his existence.

In other words, in our actual nitty gritty constantly interacted with physical reality at our level of dimensions or sizes things very very much actually behave as if physical contact and the subsequent inevitable transmission  of force from one object to another absolutely governs the way the world works. It turns out that the scientifically discovered core physical mechanism of this is that for example, one solid object stops and impels momentum when impacting another solid object because the same polarity electric fields of the atoms and molecules at the surfaces of the objects physically repel each other, and these forces imparted to the solid objects by the contact are the vast cumulative summation of these countless individually miniscule molecular/atomic/subatomic repelling forces.

All this is mechanistic and completely independent of mental causes, except for two exceptions: (1) when the mechanistically repelling electric charge forces generated between moving objects are in turn ultimately generated by the conscious volition and action of a conscious being through movement of his/her limbs and body. Only in this sense is causation at least very partially mental. The other exception, (2), is that if the Idealism issue in philosophy of mind is true, all of material reality in our world is ultimately at absolutely ground state really mental "stuff' of some perhaps humanly incomprehensible kind. Of course the Idealism exception (2) goes further in saying that  absolutely everything in reality is mental, not just causation.