The Limits of Objectivity: A Philosophical Inquiry into the Nature of Existence

[Tim]

@LRT

In the mechanical worldview, existence holds no meaning or purpose beyond the biological need to pass our genes to the next generation.

You are conflating the means of life’s existence with the meaning of its existence.

@LRT

Yet even that purpose is fleeting.

Fleeting does not mean without value. I think your own bias towards permanence is showing.

@LRT

In contrast, a dualistic worldview opens the door to endless possibilities of purpose and meaning.

That would appear to be mere assertion.

@LRT

Within it, our actions, experiences, and accumulated knowledge may endure beyond the physical realm; perhaps preserved and utilized indefinitely. Meaning might be real.

More mere unsubstantiated assertion.

We seem to be enduring a proliferation (a plague?) of flowery and substance-free rhetorical claims: “true objectivity”, “true meaning”, substance dualism, free will, life-after-death, etc, etc.

The only assertion that has had any scientific evidence offered for is that of epigenetics. However the bare existence of epigenetics does not appear to be controversial within the scientific community. What appears to be controversial is whether epigenetic changes can persist long enough to affect evolution (or whether it simply ‘washes out’ within a couple of generations). It is not clear that the papers @LRT offers addresses this controversy.

These sorts of issues seem to be fairly pervasive with ‘Third Way’ claims. @LRT might therefore more productively spend time researching the unaddressed criticisms of its critics than the claims of its proponents.

[John_Harshman]

@LRT

Our relationship with death would undergo a profound transformation.

Only if the soul also has an afterlife, which doesn’t necessarily follow from its existence.

@LRT

Free will would become a more coherent concept, as the mind would no longer be solely driven by deterministic brain states.

Sorry, but that’s no more coherent. Free will requires decisions that are neither determined, random, nor a combination of the two, and immateriality of the process does nothing to make that coherent.

None of your other points follow either; I’m just tired of saying it.

Nor do any of them seem to constitute an answer to my questions. Do you agree that these are not reasons to believe in dualism? And I still need an explanation of your point. Is it just that if dualism is correct, that would change our view of things, and that you would find that change pleasant?

[John_Harshman]

@LRT

Note: Used Claude AI to find references, which is a bit better than using the internet.

Those are indeed real references, at least the ones that I’ve checked, though the citations are not complete. How many of them have you actually looked at, and do they actually show that epigenetic modifications last long enough to be relevant to evolution in any taxa? But thanks for answering my request.

[I note that the first is paywalled, but the others can be found. But do any of them show that epigenetic variation not due to genetic variation can be inherited on a long enough time scale to be significant in evolution?]