Yes, but this problem is not being caused by me.
As I see it, most discussions of metaphysics have been stuck in a loop:
large claim → request for clarification or compression → this is read as refusal to engage → sharper accusation → defensive or mocking response → further confirmation that the forum is not truth-seeking.
I may be mapping this wrong. Treat this as a draft diagnosis, not a verdict.
It is completely wrong. At no point have I refused clarification, and I only refuse compression where such compression will lose critical information. The real problem is persistent bad faith communication by you:
- Lack of curiosity in opposing views
- Refusing changes in position based on new information
- Strawmanning the position of others
- Avoidance or omission of careful clarifications and evidence
- No attempts to find shared base realities and values
- Emergence of stalemates, polarization, and simplifications
You have made no attempt whatsoever to understand my position. All you are interested in is finding ways to attack it, because you do not want to accept that your own worldview (idealism? Panpsychism? Note that you’ve not declared which one it is…) is inadequate. Either way, you believe in disembodied consciousness, regardless of mountains of empirical evidence to the contrary, and you have no intention whatsoever of changing that position. Until now, you had assumed that you would go to your grave still believing it, right? If so, it is not surprising that you are having problems responding to what I am posting, is it?
One thing I think @GeoffDann is right about: if 2R is serious about a Second Renaissance, it cannot treat truth as merely a social negotiation. There has to be room for empirical constraint, contradiction, logic, and the possibility that some claims are simply false.
Yes. And I appear to be the only person here who is serious about this.
One thing I think Geoff’s critics are right about: perspective-coordination does not have to mean “truth is whatever the group negotiates.” It can mean that finite people with partial maps compare perspectives so that reality has more chances to correct them. I suppose Geoff would even agree with this.
Currently, partial maps and incorrect maps are the only maps on offer, apart from the one I am offering you.
So perhaps the real disagreement is not:
Truth vs perspectives
but:
What role should perspective-coordination play in a shared search for truth?
That seems like a much more productive question.
I am quite happy to explore that question.
I’d like to propose a clarification exercise. Not to settle the metaphysics, but to separate the disputes.
For any major claim in these threads, could we specify which category it belongs to?
- Publicly testable empirical claim
Example: a claim about neuroscience, cosmology, ecology, historical fact, or measurable prediction.- Philosophical/metaphysical claim
Example: physicalism is incoherent; consciousness cannot be reduced to matter; free will is real or impossible.- Subjective experiential claim
Example: “I have directly experienced synchronicity/praeternatural phenomena.”- Interpretive or civilizational claim
Example: 2R is too perspectivist; postmodernism corrupted truth-seeking; modern science hides metaphysical assumptions.- Normative/forum-practice claim
Example: people are obligated to engage; long posts deserve careful reading; AI-generated replies should or should not count.Each category needs a different standard.
I already do this (not in this thread, but the whole point of the NED is distinguish between things in this way).
A metaphysical theory may be coherent without yet being publicly established.
This is why you should not let AI do your thinking for you. Obviously 2PC is not “publicly established”. I am trying to establish it. It is new, and I always knew it would face immense resistance. This is how paradigm shifts work, and this is the biggest shift since the Enlightenment.
- Which parts of 2PC/NED do you think 2R must accept for 2R to remain viable, and which parts can remain open disagreement?
The NED is more fundamental than 2PC. Without that or something like it, 2R will go nowhere. But I created the NED before I had finished 2PC and it ultimately if you accept the NED, you will end up having to accept 2PC or something very similar, because there is no other way to incorporate the claim that brains are both necessary and insufficient for consciousness. Nagel already set the conditions – the question – in Mind and Cosmos, and I believe 2PC is the only viable answer.
- What would count as serious engagement with your model short of accepting it?
Actually showing that you’ve made an effort to understand it, instead of just trying to find superficial ways to justify a refusal to accept it.
- What would count as a legitimate reason for someone not to engage further, without that being evidence of postmodern avoidance, bad faith, or fear of truth?
Nothing. There is no legitimate reason for anybody here to ignore a proposed cosmological-metaphysical model which claims to resolve the 30 biggest problems in science and philosophy. The only reason would be if you aren’t interested in philosophy and the current crisis Western civilisation faces, which might well apply to 95% of the general population, but nobody here has that excuse, especially when multiple AI analyses have said that 2PC is exactly what 2R needs, and entirely compatible with Storm’s metamodernism.
- What specific empirical or logical finding would force a revision of 2PC?
Many things might force a revision, but without forcing a rejection of the basic structure. The basic structure could only be taken down by three things:
(1) Dark matter proven to be something other than the bound state of Dirac monopoles.
(2) Confirmed evidence of alien life.
(3) A genuine rival – a completely different resolution of all 30 problems, with the same explanatory power.
Nothing else can touch it, because its power for resolving existing anomalies is enormous. It is a single structure (the two phases) and mechanism (the embodiment threshold or equivalent) which cleanly resolves the 30 biggest problems in science and philosophy. How could anything else compete with that?
If you had actually tried to understand how 2PC works then I wouldn’t need to keep explaining this to you. The real problem is that you are not remotely interested in making the effort to understand 2PC because it contradicts your existing belief system. There is no other credible explanation for the way you have reacted to it. What you are actually trying to do is to find a way to downgrade 2PC from what I am describing it as (in bold above) and “just another competing theory”. If you actually understood it, you wouldn’t even bother trying to do this.
The following analogy is very important:
What 2PC does is to take 30 puzzle pieces (the 30 biggest problems in science and philosophy, and currently treated as 30 different problems), and assembles them into a new model of reality whereby they stop being puzzles and make a coherent whole. However, this whole picture fundamentally contradicts your existing belief system, so instead of accepting that it is the correct solution, you are trying to argue that there are multiple competing proposals for a solution, and therefore it shouldn’t be accepted (yet). This only makes sense if you’ve made so little effort to understand that solution that you haven’t actually seen what the completed picture looks like. In reality, there is no other solution that successfully integrates even five of these puzzle pieces, let alone all 30. The moment you see that picture, you will not be able to unsee it. It is a gestalt shift
You can use AI to do this, but in order to do that honestly then you need to use the AI to help you understand 2PC and why it matters, instead of just using it to attempt to attack it. You have not done this. If you had, then we would not be having this discussion.
- When you say 2R has a broken relationship with Truth, what behavior would show that this is changing?
A collective attempt to understand 2PC: how it actually works, and why the alternatives on offer, including panpsychism and idealism, do not work. You need to understand all 30 problems – their specific shapes – and how each problem is solved by the same metaphysical architecture.
- What is the difference between refusing to engage and setting a reasonable boundary around one’s time?
I have plenty of time. I accept that many other people are not so lucky, but that cannot be a justification for refusing to try to understand what I am saying.
- What is the difference between a hard truth-claim and a domination move?
Hard truth claims are backed up with science and reason.
- What is the difference between skepticism and dismissal?
Skepticism requires a genuine understanding of what is being rejected. Creationists aren’t “evolution skeptics” and climate change deniers aren’t “climate change skeptics”. In both cases, the so-called “skeptics” have made no effort to understand what they are denying, and in both cases it is for the same reason: accepting evolution or climate change would force a complete rethink of their belief system, and they simply aren’t prepared to do that. And because we live in a postmodern, post-truth world, there is insufficient social pressure to force them to do it. They think they have every right to go on believing whatever rubbish they like. This is the Meaning Crisis.
- What is the difference between seriousness and contempt?
Same answer. If you are serious then you need to make the effort to understand the position you are trying to attack.
- What kind of forum practice would let ambitious, heterodox theories be tested without requiring everyone to become a full-time reviewer?
Good question! AI might help, but this has got to be done according to certain rules. We need to know the prompt, the context, and see the entire response. I have consistently tried to do this.
We cannot require people to believe what they have not experienced.
We also cannot require people to ignore someone’s experience merely because it is not publicly reproducible.
The question is how to hold both constraints at once.
We can ignore people’s experience all day long if it is not reproducible. That is exactly why I do not expect anybody to believe synchronicity is real based on somebody-else’s experiences. I didn’t believe it until it happened to me.
“This may be real; some people may know it directly; others are not obligated to believe it without the relevant experience; and public claims still need public standards.”
My suggested next step: let’s not try to settle everything at once. Pick one claim and classify it.
We are already doing this. That is why Robert started a thread of each of the 8 principles (or the first 6 so far…)
Who here is actually defending physicalism, and who is merely asking for a clearer burden of proof?
JonahW is defending it, and his refusal to engage with a very detailed proof, and my unwillingness to accept that situation, was why I was suspended from this forum for a year.
What observable forum behaviors support that?
The collective defense of postmodern relativism, and collective unwillingness to approach truth. 2R operates by trying to find better ways to disagree with each other, when what is actually required is to collectively seek truth.
I do not think the goal should be premature consensus. A better first goal would be better disagreement.
And that, precisely, is the problem. You want to go on avoiding consensus ad infinitum, because you are not willing to accept that brains are necessary for minds, when in fact the only way forwards that can work is for you to admit that there is a very large body of neuroscientific evidence which demonstrates beyond any reasonable doubt that brains are indeed necessary. Idealism and panpsychism are solutions to the Hard Problem of Consciousness which do NOT work as coherent models of the whole of reality. The entire purpose of 2PC is to end this situation conclusively, forever, by finally providing a metaphysical model which works. A big step forwards would be for you to actually admit that this is what is actually going on.
The problem is really very simple: idealism and panpsychism are inadequate, because they deny neuroscience. They are only considered serious contenders because we have no better answers. The whole point in 2PC is that it is NOT like all those inadequate answers, because it actually resolves the 30 biggest problems in science and philosophy – cleanly, parsimoniously and unequivocally. The only way forwards is for you to understand enough about 2PC to either accept what I am saying, or provide a decent justification for not accepting it. This is actually how analytical philosophy has always worked, and I would very much like to find a forum like this where I could defend 2PC in that context. Unfortunately, no such forum exists. The only forums for philosophy are guarded by gatekeepers who will not let me in, because I am defending a theory which hasn’t been peer reviewed. And of course, the peer reviewers wouldn’t accept it either, because it is so radically inter-disciplinary. Same applies to cosmology forums. This is exactly what Kuhn says happens when paradigm shifts happen.
If you really want to make progress on this then the single most important thing we can do is closely examine a single claim supported by a great deal of empirical evidence: brains are necessary for consciousness. I promised Rufus I would not start any more threads, but you could start one. Or is this not the real “elephant in the room”?