This is excellent: "Scientific measurements only reveal to us consistent patterns of sense-perceptional phenomena in time-space framework. The theoretical area of natural sciences finds mathematical equations that model and approximate the observed patterns with mathematical expressions. These models are very useful for practical purposes because they can predict the behavior of natural systems. However, I do not believe that these math models have anything to do with the "noumenal" source of those phenomena. They only give us approximate math models of how the phenomena behave, but do not explain what they "noumenally" are and what their noumenal source is." (Eugene: Can you write me at
donsalmon7@gmail.com - this is one of the best, most succinct summaries of the essence of physicalism I've seen - a lot easier to read than many of Bernardo's essays too!)
Jim, you are criticizing what other people are saying, but so far you haven't said what physicalism is. I spent a few weeks at the "Naturalism" Facebook group run by Tom Clark. Neither he nor anybody else - as I predicted - could even come close to defining what "physical" means. Jim, you spoke of 'everyday" experience, and I assume you would just say, "Well, a ball is physical." I assume you would agree that the way the word "physical" is used in the previous sentence is not the way physicalists use the word when they say ultimately everything is "physical." What does that mean? If there is something "physical" that is the substratum of all else, what is it? And you can't say "Quidbits" as one FB group member (a full professor of philosophy no less) said. This goes back to Eugene's observation regarding scientific measurements.
And a few folks mentioned naive realism. physicalists are the very opposite of naive realists. Take physicalist neuroscientists - no colors, no sounds, no tactile feel; nothing but, well, we're back to Tegmark's math. Bernardo gave us a beautiful image for people who think math - or the big craze: "information" - is reality. This is like saying the essence of Lewis Carroll's Cheshire Cat is the smile that remains after the cat is removed.
Finally, Ben asked the most interesting question. Jan (my wife) and I have several blog posts and videos about attention. You're referring to a specific kind of attention, what Les Fehmi calls detached, narrow-focus attention. It's been the predominant societal form of attention in the West for at least 6 centuries. Dr. Iain McGilchrist suggests the shift from a wider, more immersed form of attention underlies the shift from the Middle Ages to the Modern age (also from Catholicism, with its roots still in mythos, to the more rationalist Protestant religion).
I see folks here are familiar with Barfield. Barfield describes the shift in terms of the medieval person feeling the sky as a garment one wears; whereas the modern person feels as if the sky is some far off, separate "thing" and as if he/she is, as Kierkegaard said, as if an alien placed here with no sense of rootedness or home.
Ben, if you want to get more practical, Culadasa, a Buddhist teacher and former neuroscience professor, has written of two forms of attention in his book "The Mind Illuminated." He speaks of "peripheral awareness" - that is 360 degree awareness, effortlessly taking in all of phenomenal experience in one "swoop." Then there is "selective attention."
Loch Kelley, a teacher of non dual awareness, did a fascinating exercise with a group of 80 people. He divided them into 2 groups, 40 each. They both were instructed to do a basic Zen breath counting exercise:
Inhale, count 1
Exhale
Inhale, count 2
Exhale
and so on up to 10
When you get to 10, go back to 1.
If you lose count, go back to 1.
That's it.
With one major difference: The first group was told to put all their effort into focusing exclusively on the breath (this is Culadasa's "selective attention". The second group was told to open their awareness to the full range of experience, and simply have one tiny portion of attention gently noticing the breath count.
RESULTS
Group 1 - not 1 single person was able to maintain the counting without losing track.
Group 2 - every single person - all 40 - reported that not only did they not lose track at all, but it felt effortless.
This is Barfield's distinction between the attention common to medieval folks and that commonly employed today. The sense of constant time pressure, the underlying feelings of irritation and frustration, the constant triggering of the fight or flight response, are all seen in neurological studies as the result of the almost constant living in the mode of selective attention.
