Likewise there was no idea of physicality apart from mentality.JeffreyW wrote: ↑Mon Nov 22, 2021 9:50 pm From the above, I would take exception to your claim that these Pre-Socratic Greeks were naive Idealists. This would not be possible until Socrates. Homer’s gods were physical, not transcendent, beings of elemental power, living atop Mt. Olympus. Dionysus was a physical power inherent in music and wine. There simply was no idea of mentality apart from physicality. There was no notion yet of “common sense”, but simply a shared esthetic “being in the world”. It is in the fog of this confusion that we attempt to reconnect to our origins of Western thought, but I see a far distant beacon calling to a third option to the two you present. If we take the Pre-Socratics as inherently non-reductive physicalists rather than naive Idealists, we can perhaps find our way home to the esthetic experience of reality - the original grounding that we lost through metaphysics.
I wasn't saying the Pre-Socratic philosophers were naive idealists, rather I was referring to the general population of pre-Pre-Socratic times as naive idealists. By 'naive' I am simply referring to how one experiences the world prior to any critical reflection on it (of which, at the time, there was none). What I mean by saying they were naive idealists is that Homer's audience experienced an extra-sensory spirit when they looked at nature. They did not see the gods, but felt their spiritual presence "behind" the natural world. So to put this in modern terms (idealist, physicalist, dualist), I would say their naivete was idealist -- their world was the work of gods and spirits -- persons, not mindless forces.
With the Pre-Socratics we have something new, namely thinking about their world. To call them physicalists (in the modern sense of the word) is nonsense. There couldn't have been physicalists (who regard nature as reducible to the work of mindless forces and energy) until that extra-sensory sense of spirit had been completely driven out. That process took about 2000 years, a process that started with the Pre-Socratics thinking about, and hence creating a distance from, the natural world. Even so, Heraclitus' fire would have been thought of as a spiritual essence, albeit not distinguished from its physical essence -- I mean that its spiritual and physical essence were one and the same. As was still the case 500 years later when the word for spirit was 'wind'.
So you are right that they sensed themselves as beings-in-the-world, and that the introduction of a distinction between appearance and reality of Socrates (preceded by Parmenides) began the process of losing that sense. But the world they were in had yet to divide itself into physical and mental.
As for "common sense", I am using it as I defined it in my essay: "If by "common sense" we mean our pre-philosophical understanding of what things are like—an understanding that is held in common with most everyone around us." One might also point out that the phrase "common sense" did not exist in earlier times because there was nothing to contrast it with. Only with thinking could one come up with theories that were not commonsensical, like Parmenides' or Plato's, or modern physicalism or idealism.
I would like to keep the discussion here, since it has direct bearing on why I say that your claim that energy is more elemental than consciousness is a metaphysical claim. For if the people 3000 years ago felt energy as the work of spiritual forces, yet now we do not feel it, then common sense has changed. What I am getting at is that your reason for making your claim that it is not metaphysical is that it currently aligns with common sense. So I am pointing out that it didn't always, and may not in the future as our consciousness continues to evolve.[I also posted this response to my blog in case anybody is interested in continuing the conversation there.]