[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by Interesting Ian

Why shouldn't you be able to? This just seems to be your claim that the physical should not be able to interact with the non-physical. In which case why do you think this? Is it derived from your experience of the world? Or is it an a priori presumption you hold? If the latter how do you justify this?

You said:

Those experiences which have an external origin can be said to be have a location (appropriately defined). These will include physical objects, but also pains. Those experiences internally generated eg thinking about something, cannot be said to have any location in any meaning of the word.

So you are saying that thinking is an internally generated experience that is no-where. How can I affect your thinking by poking your brain, which is some-where? What sort of connection is there between something that is some-where and something that is no-where? Is there is kinda-somewhere-but-not-really place where they meet? Can I walk from the some-where thing along that path to the no-where thing?

My question about the physical interacting with the mental has to do with dualism. If you can convince me that there is only one fundamental existent, the mental, then I won't ask how its various aspects can interact. However, your statements above sound like dualism to me.

For more or less the same reason why it doesn't make sense to ask how the Universe is able to exist from one second to the next.

Color me baffled.

~~ Paul