underlying substrate (post-kantian)

 

 

 

 

 

Critical questions

: Reductive physicalism does not explain the irreducibility of phenomenology into physical vocabularies.

: Non-reductive physicalism does not explain how the mental could be epistemically irreducible into the physical if the mental is indeed wholly ontologically grounded in the physical.

: NCC1 ↔ phenomenal consciousness1 holds.

: Per Robert Hanna's psychocentric predicament, even if NCC1 <=> consciousness1 holds absolutely, the intelligibility of this biconditional principle requires consciousness2.

: Meanwhile, NCC2<=> consciousness2.

: So there is no intentionality or metaphysical investigation not corresponding on one on one basis to NCC.

: Even if the pairing holds absolutely, consciousness still cannot be described fully in purely physical terms in principle.

 

 

Underlying Substrate Thesis

= The mental is wholly ontologically grounded in the underlying substrate ("u-substrate"), which manifests as the physical for the mental.

: "The mental is grounded in the physical" ≈ "The mental is grounded in the u-substrate."

: The mental features retentive relationality, while the physical features structural relationality.

: The physical is independent of the mental to the extent that the u-substrate is independent of the mental.

: However, the physical in its representational aspect of the u-substrate is not independent of the mental.

 

Relationality

: Relationality means connectivity among a plurality of individuations.

: The metphaysical relationality of the u-substrate wholly grounds the retentive relationality of the mental.

: Meamwhile, "retentive relationality is grounded in structural relationality of the physical" ≈ "retentive relationality is grounded in the metaphysical relationality."

: delta = "metaphsyical relationality - structural relationality" exists.

: For natural science, the delta don’t exist.

: However, philosophy informs natural science that this might not be the case ontologically.

: The delta can be figured out only through philosophical reasoning.

: We might not be able to discover the delta through empirical studies, because we only have access to the u-substrate in the form of the physical.

: However, since we do not have access to the u-substrate in itself, which is in principle philosophically impossible, to the best of our knoweldge, the thesis that the causal powers of the mental are inherited from the microphyiscal is closest to the objective truth.

 

The physical

: a close approximation to the u-substrate, which manifests in its structural relationality that can be tracked by the retentive relationality of the mental.

 

The mental

: What is generated by the u-substrate and recognizes the u-substrate in the form of the physical.

: That which performs direct experience (e.g., perception) of the physical and higher order intentionalization ("reasoning" about the "perception" or "reasoning" about the "reasoning" itself, or reasoning about the reasoning about an ontologically real/fictitious property)

 

 

 

Intentionalization

= forming "aboutness" regarding a mental/physical object from a standpoint

: We can intentionalize fictitious objects as well as the physically real objects.

: However, the physically real objects differ from the fictitious ones in that they manifest objectively.

 

Retention

= retaining intentionality regarding "a" up to forming intentionality regarding "b" to merge them together into a whole.