Biggest Puzzles in Philosophy
What are the biggest puzzles in philosophy to you?
Mine are:
Consciousness
Mental imagery/mental representations/thought
Qualia particularly pain
Infinities particularly the infinite past
The nature of meaning/rationality/intelligibility
Mine are:
Consciousness
Mental imagery/mental representations/thought
Qualia particularly pain
Infinities particularly the infinite past
The nature of meaning/rationality/intelligibility
Comments (176)
After death or the eternal debate on if there is or not anything afterwards.
But I guess that philosophical puzzle could be included both on "Consciousness" and "The nature of meaning/rationality/intelligibility"
Another puzzle, perhaps overriding all of these, is why it is believed that humans will ever be capable of solving these puzzles.
What reason is given that humans will ever be able to solve these puzzles.
I am friendly to the notion of the persistence of consciousness.
I think that death is a topic in the meaning of life as well. Meaning in the face of potential personal oblivion.
The problems of philosophy are reducible to the problem of reason:
.. These unavoidable problems of mere pure reason are God, freedom (of will), and immortality. The science which, with all its preliminaries, has for its especial object the solution of these problems is named metaphysicsa science which is at the very outset dogmatical, that is, it confidently takes upon itself the execution of this task without any previous investigation of the ability or inability of reason for such an undertaking.
(yin) the impossible is X
(yang) the unthinkable is Y
Nonetheless, I am reading books of Japanese witters for the last two years and their vision is different. More pure, clear, without mysticism. They accept it in a poetic/heroic manner. I want to approach that feeling one day.
I can measure the length of a box, but what am I measuring when it comes to time? And so begins the puzzling .
The point of philosophy is playing with the puzzles, not solving them. There aren't really any solutions.
For example, as regards science it is said we understand the following: Big Bang Theory, Hubble's Law of Cosmic Expansion, Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion, Universal Law of Gravitation, Newton's Laws of Motion, Laws of Thermodynamics, Archimedes' Buoyancy Principle, Evolution and Natural Selection, Theory of General Relativity and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. Yet such understanding is metaphorical, in that we understand the start of the universe as a "big bang", something we have experience of in our daily lives, whether fireworks, an explosion or a door slamming.
As regards society, it is said we have a good understand of the following: government, religion, education, economy, language, politics, culture, ethnicity, gender and recreation. Yet such understanding is of concepts that only exist in the mind, in that governments don't exist in a mind-independent world.
Our understanding is therefore based on either metaphor which only exist in the mind or concepts which again only exist in the mind. Even if we did better understand consciousness, such understanding can only ever be a better understanding of the concepts existing in our mind and can never be an understanding of what in a mind-independent world caused these concepts in the mind.
So, to better understand the nature of consciousness, the best we can do is look for better metaphors to explain it. The Truth only exists in language.
:up: How to answer unanswerables? How to eff ineffables? How to comprehend incomprehensibles? How to explain inexplicables? How to prove unprovables? How to ... basically ... do the impossible?
Good luck! If I'm not back in 3000 years, I'm dead!
What do you mean by a given matter?
A puzzle is something that is hard to understand. Maybe you are overconfident in your perceived understanding of reality?
The first philosophical puzzle I encountered was as a young child when I imagined going out into space. Hitting a brick wall and realising there must be something behind that wall that there was a conceivable infinite. I also thought about the concept of God creating the earth and realised there must have been an infinite time before God randomly decided to create the earth (The puzzle of the infinite past)
It wasn't until later on when I started to think about consciousness in my early 20's but I didn't have a name for it because nobody at any stage until I was 23 to 24 had mentioned the word consciousness. It wasn't mentioned in school or college.
Bizarre really that the source of all my experiences was never talked about as if it was irrelevant.
Strangely nobody I have randomly met ever seems to have spontaneously thought about these things including family members. it is like they have a lack of curiosity or don't like ruminating.
I think our best understanding may be mechanical where we can see how A causes B.
At the same time we are good at predicting humans behaviour and the behaviour of things in our environment.
That may be partly to do with the idea of constant conjunction where things co-occur reliably and we become good at predicting or inferring.
Our capacity to understand is itself something of a mystery. It may be shared by a few other animals to some degree who seem able to predict their environment. But in a mechanical world view there doesn't seem to be room to reflect on the truth of something or to use symbols. So The behaviourist tried to model everything with stimulus and response learning. But that was trumped by the cognitive revolution.
If understanding is knowledge about a subject, our understanding and knowledge can only go so far, until reaching an inevitable barrier beyond which they cannot pass. There is no topic that does not hit such a barrier beyond which is unknown and not understood.
We can infer what will happen through observing constant conjunctions, that because the sun rose in the east for the previous 100 days there is the inference that tomorrow it will also rise in the east, but this does not mean that we understand why the sun will rise in the east tomorrow.
We may understand and know the rules of algebra, such that 5 * 3 + 2 = 17 whilst 5 * (3 + 2) = 25, or we may understand the rules of language, in order to know when someone says "that's OK", whether they are praising me, criticizing me, expressing exasperation with me, encouraging me, or even saying youre disgusted with me. Yet such understanding and knowledge is founded on rules that we must accept and not question if wanting to keep on playing the social game.
Beyond the knowable is the unknown, which can only understand in terms of metaphor, figure of speech, myth, parable, fable, etc.
All our understanding and knowledge is thereby founded on metaphor, figure of speech, myth, parable, fable, etc.
Not at all. By a given matter I meant matters of philosophy that people consider to be a puzzle, eg, the nature of consciousness, and questions in epistemology, etc. Should I have not used the term 'given matter'? I joined this site to develop a better understanding of what some of the key questions and debates in philosophy are. I never assumed reality is knowable.
I'd always assumed so because our minds seem must be? inseparable from reality (pace Kant, Descartes, Plato) but I'd also realized that we only ever 'know reality' orient ourselves approximately, or superficially, via myths, metaphors, maps & models.
Nice. That's my provisional position at the moment. I think being here helped me to modify my thinking, and soften my earlier dogmatism. How often do you change or modify your views on philosophical questions?
Less and less the older I get. (Old dog vs new tricks paradox?) IIRC, the last major change was over fifteen years ago a radical shift in my thinking about and comprehension of metaphysics (thanks again, @Tobias) and subsequently lots of minor tweaks and refinements, mostly of my conceptual vocabulary. I've also discovered many and developed a few new arguments which I'm always trying to improve. The path itself is the destination, right?
Rigor mortis is postmortem mon ami! I'm done trying to find the true view (satya drishti or orthodoxa): my stance (view) is no stance (no view) - there's a war going on (thesis vs. antithesis) and like a stray dog, I visit both sides - sometimes I'm fed well, sometimes I'm shooed away. I'm a happy dog. Woof, woof!
:grin: I'm surprised that a man of your caliber isn't a Pyrrhonist/skeptic.
Just so you know, your memory is exceptional. I wonder if others have noticed.
Plato's academy eventually evolved into a school of skepticism as per some reports. Did all the work done upto that point lead upto it (knowledged searched, possibilities explored, discovered, later, that certainty impossible) or was skepticism something entirely novel (no Socratic/Platonic roots)?
You know, I accidentally (re)discovered Agrippa'a trilemma but, as you pointed out, the resultant aporia is distressing, like St. Augustine/St. Aquinas said it is, rather than tranquil (ataraxia). Perhaps I haven't really understood skepticism if that's the case.
That's a good stance to adopt. Prefix every statement with "I could be wrong, but ..."
:lol: :up:
[quote=Ashok Kumar]Better to be wrong with Galen than to be right with Harvey.[/quote]
Life first started to evolve on Earth about 3.5 billion years ago, and there is no reason to think it has stopped.
We can show a donkey, which has a certain level of intelligence, the novel The Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway and not expect the donkey to understand the plot-line. No amount of patient explanation or education will enable the donkey our level of understanding.
An alien, having several million years of further evolution, will have their own knowledge and understanding. The alien can show the human some of their knowledge and understanding and quite reasonably not expect the human to understand. No amount of patient explanation or education by the alien will enable the human their level of understanding. As we have knowledge and understanding the donkey can never have, the alien will have knowledge and understanding we can never have.
It is not so much our fallibilism, in that our knowledge might turn out to be false, but rather, as has been said before, the unknown unknown, facts in the world that we are incapable of ever understanding even if staring us in the face.
It would either have a cause or be uncaused. It's cause would be caused or uncaused. Being uncaused would defy sense making.
As with Windows Free Cell game 11,982, some puzzles are insoluble. Why should we think that all puzzles are soluble.
Does an insoluble puzzle count as a puzzle at all?
I consider us escape artists (à la Witty's "flybottle" ... Epicurus' "tetrapharmakos" ... Plato's "cave" ... the Upanishad's "moksha" ...) :smirk:
:up: Let me add to that most illuminating list ... nirvana. We're all tryin' ta flee from it all, but we forget it's a treadmill, we never get anywhere but where we alreasy are, oui monsieur? But be still, mon ami, but be still! :cool:
Mine are:
jails
Merry go rounds
My hand writing at the age of six
nipples
That person at the party who always behaves as if you have been best of friends for a long time.
This list is satire of course, though all of these also puzzle me in some respect or other. That is the point. Things aren't puzzles in themselves. They are puzzles in certain contexts. They become apparent in certain constellations and appear puzzling. The way we question creates the puzzle. What philosophy does, at least according to me, is unpack the questions we ask and reflect on why we have come to ask them, with what motive and how our asking reveals the assumptions we hold about the world.
Quoting 180 Proof
:cool:
Something about reality/the world and our cognition allows us to give detailed and causal explanations of things that also allow us to successfully manipulate things and make accurate predictions.
I believe the world must be causally and logically consistent to exist and therefore contain discoverable coherent processes.
That might be me! :lol:
Who says we understand reality? Einstein refused the presidency/prime ministership of Israel. Was it because he understood reality or was it because he didn't?
[quote=A. Einstein]The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it's comprehensible.[/quote]
If we didn't we would probably be dead. We can predict reality's behaviour accurately. Our perceptions need to represent something accurately about reality so we can survive.
What would be the point of a hidden incomprehensible layer of reality?
The other situation is that we are in an illusion or a brain in a vat/matrix scenario.
The world appears logically consistent, which allows us, for example, to use Newton's second law F = m * a to predict future events. But does being able to predict what will happen mean that we understand why it will happen. We may know F = m * a, but do we understand why F = m * a ?
It must do, in the same way that there are impossible problems and impossible objects.
Wikipedia even has a list of impossible puzzles.
War between peoples has always been an impossible problem. If an impossible problem didn't count as a problem, then it would follow that war between peoples is not a problem.
I could say that there is an object on the table in front of me that is round and square. If this impossible round square object didn't count as an object, then how could I refer to the object that is on the table in front of me.
In language, there are impossible puzzles, impossible problems and impossible objects.
I think the problem with fundamental unknowns is that they undermine all knowledge leaving us with no secure foundations on which to build.
For example I think until we understand consciousness we cannot possibly know the true nature of reality or whether the contents of consciousness are veridical.
I have had solipsistic intuitions/feelings in the past. I think we need to defeat solipsism or face a kind of personal isolation where we are able to be skeptical about everything but cogito ergo sum/ourselves.
Also we end up with a relativity about facts and truth.
It seems to me that such puzzles, problems and objects are artefacts of linguistic reification. Of course whether or not an insoluble puzzle should count as a puzzle, an insoluble problem as a problem or an impossible object as an object just comes down to definition or stipulation, so it is not definitively decidable, and I would consider that question itself to be a pseudo-problem on that account, and to be merely a matter of what you or I might variously think is the most coherent and consistent way to talk about it.
So if I were to say " An "insoluble puzzle" is not really a puzzle" what could I mean to say beyond "Calling an "insoluble puzzle" a puzzle is not the most useful way to talk about it"?
Quoting Andrew4Handel
We are real beings inseparable from reality the same reason fish are able to understand the sea.
I don't think longevity has any correlation with understanding.
We can predict the behavior of some of what appears in our empirical world accurately. The empirical world is reality for us, and it is a collective representation or model. Can we accurately predict, or even talk about, anything beyond that?
I guess most politics simplify to lie, cheat, repeat, but I'm referring to actual/genuine statecraft which, in me humble opinion, requires more brain and heart than all of science combined.
https://medium.com/@editors_91459/turns-out-einstein-was-a-cold-hearted-misogynist-who-attempted-to-control-his-wifes-every-move-c3f1ff70bf8c#:~:text=The%20two%20were%20open%20to,demanding%20ones%20for%20his%20wife.
Quoting Bylaw
Quoting Bylaw
Whew. You have a thing about physicists. The ones I've known had none of these characteristics. :roll:
Before we get all worked up about the issue, I suggest we define difficulty in order to answer the question is politics harder than science?
Politics is easier than science. The reason: It's easier to lie and get away with it in politics.
:ok:
And then science vs politics is way too abstract to be meaninful. Is it harder to do what in each field, what jobs, what roles? Are we talking about 'harder for someone starting from scratch intending to be great in each field, which will be the harder task? What's hard for Einstein may be easy for Lincoln? What's easy for Lincoln may be hard for Einstein?
Depending on training, experience, temperment, natural gifts, atttitude, interests and more.
If something bores us, it is much harder for us. If you are interested in the elegance of equations you my plough ahead in research into light warves, where someone else with an interest in making practical changes in a legislative bill would find it so boring he or she falls asleep reading one paragraph of a peer's research on light.
I am not sure how to come up with an objective standard of hardness. I could make guesses about some fields, but these are so broad and one's skill set can always get better in both, I wouldn't know how to compare them.
I didn't bring up Einstein's possible interpersonal toxicity to bash Einstein. It was to point out just what I said about the difference between abstract empathy and the kinds of saavy and direct empathy or at least 'reading-other-people-using-mirror-neurons' skill politicians need.
And it was not a sign that I am worked up. It's part of my core apples vs. bicycles (what others might call apples vs. oranges) argument.
Just cause he was a genius in one field doesn't mean he'd be good in another field. For a wide range of reasons, some of which I have been describing.
And hey, could you respond to at least one of the points I made? Because what you did here was not doing that.
I don't have a thing about physicists. I was trying to show the different needs of two professions by showing what one could possibly get away with in one of them.
Did you understand my main points? Do you agree or disagree? Do you think politicians and physicists have the same skill sets and temperments and interests? Might one need different skill sets etc.? Can one be extremely competent in one field and not at all in the other? Might not temperment, natural gifts, interests and passions, different skill sets mean that one could be an incredible politician but a terrible physicist and vice versa?
As an aside, I found during the course of that thread that Descartes likely DID NOT commit the terrible acts of cruelty that had been ascribed to him on various Internet sites, but that these acts MIGHT have been carried out by students at a notorious French college purportedly influenced by Cartesian ideas about animals as automatons.
So, you're sayin', we use the same brain to do both politics and science, but they're apples and bicycles? An IQ and EQ test assesses cross-domain skills, oui? As far as I can tell, politicians almost always fail, but a horde of scientists have made it big. What does that tell you, mon ami? You're good at philosophy, but something tell me you'll excel in science but will be utterly disoriented as a president/(prime) minister.
Awesome! A person of his caliber could never have committed a mistake as silly as that! That's the detective in me speaking.
You didn't mean 'defective'?
:lol: Possible.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yep, let's not rule Descartes out yet. He's a suspect even if not the prime suspect.
Let us not judge lest we ourselves be judged or let us judge kindly so we may ourselves be judged kindly.
Well, we certainly use the same brain for whatever we engage in. Each of us, that is, have but one brain.Quoting Agent SmithI think that's a pretty incomplete test. Yes, it would tell us stuff about our ability to develop skills in a number of fields. I mentioned other qualities also. EQ measures certain things, but it does not measure our interests and passions, for example. Me personally, I wouldn't be interested in a lot of the activities politicians have to engage in, so it doesn't suit me. Which would make every step in skill acquisition harder for me. Some parts of physics, especially the approach Einstein took with his thought experiments, would be ok, but not the math. I was decent at math, but not very interested after a while. Neither field suits me. And oddly my skill set probably suits politics better. All of my work has involved flexible communication and reading people - though much less negotiation and the Machievellian end - but the parts of that job that I would hate go way past any distaste I have for any parts of physics. Just ot use myself as an example.
The evaluation 'harder' involves a lot of things not on such a test.
Quoting Agent SmithAnd you're point is? Does this mean that poltics is harder because more fail. Or politicians are dumber and scientists would succeed as politicians cause they did in science or.....?Quoting Agent SmithI think it's more important for the discussion if you tell me what it tells you?
Quoting Agent SmithI wouldn't be disoriented. I would hate it and I would know why I hated it. And I doubt I would succeed in it. Neither science nor politics suit me as professions. But if I had to choose, I'd go for science, perhaps a marine biologist or, like the people who hang out in nature staring at baboons or elk. All day in a lab would break my soul. But I did quite well on the tests in high school and college that might mislead one into thinking I'd be good in a lab. I'm a science sprinter, but not a marathon runner in science. And you need to be a marathon runner in whatever field you choose.
Apologies if my response touched a nerve. Unintended ... or was it? I dunno! Allah Rahim.
Very playful! :up:
Perhaps the bigger puzzle is how do we decide whether a puzzle, such as the puzzle of consciousness, is an impossible puzzle or not.
May be an even bigger puzzle is, the mother of all puzzles is, that it's turtles (puzzles) all the way down. Good morning Montana, it's 8:00 AM and sunny. Just the kinda weather to break bad news in. A team of puzzlers at MIT claims that There is no final puzzle we could solve to get a handle on reality.
Solipsism, consciousness and the problem of cause and effect
I am conscious of the colour red, taste something sweet, feel something smooth, hear a slight crackle and smell something fruity. I know these sensations, and believe they have been caused by the apple in front of me.
Solipsism is the position that the consciousness of these sensations certainly exist in the mind and have been caused by the mind itself rather than anything external to the mind. My belief that solipsism is not true is the same reason that I believe consciousness can never be understood, and relates to the problem of cause and effect.
If solipsism were true, then I created everything that I know, such that I created the novels War and Peace, Don Quixote, all the compositions of Bach and Mozart, all the paintings by Derain and Van Gogh, all the scientific discoveries of Feynman and Einstein, etc. As I have difficulty winning at chess, I find it hard to believe that I have such godlike powers.
According to Newton's first law of motion, a stationary object cannot move unless it is acted upon an external force. The Principle of Sufficient Reason, a term coined by Leibniz, and central to Spinoza's philosophical system states that every fact has a reason for obtaining and there are no "brute facts". If something existed for no reason, then the fact it existed would be inexplicable. Aristotle claimed that a person when perceiving anything must also perceive their own existence, suggesting that consciousness entails self-consciousness. However, Schopenhauer wrote, in agreement with Kant, that the subject should become an object for itself is the most monstrous contradiction ever thought of. As an object cannot spontaneously cause itself to move in the absence of an external force, a conscious thought cannot spontaneous cause itself to come into existence in the absence of an external cause. Colin McGinn has said that consciousness is "a mystery that human intelligence will never unravel", in that no matter how much scientists study the brain, the mind is fundamentally incapable of comprehending itself, a position called New Mysterianism.
If the concept of cause and effect is fundamental to our beliefs, it follows that not only that Solipsism is not true but we will never be able to understand consciousness.
Sounds like Gödel's incompleteness theorem.
Kurt Gödel, genius made him, genius killed him.
Gödel died from a fear of poisoning, and malnutrition killed him. Most geniuses are killed by old age.
That's a more accurate statement than mine! :up:
Perhaps, but as Raymond Chandler said A writer who is afraid to overreach himself is as useless as a general who is afraid to be wrong.
Again I see this as coming down to definition, If you define consciousness as something like the felt sense of being or existence, something experienced subjectively, then a third person understanding of it would be impossible in principle.
How could you establish a causal relation between the physical body, understood causally, mechanically and the elusive, impossible to pin down nature of the experience of being conscious?
It would seem the best that could be hoped for would be determining the neural correlates of various states of consciousness as reported by subjects , but that doesn't answer the so-called hard problem.
1. Knowledge
And by knowledge I mean being able to properly measure deductive and inductive knowledge. We may naturally solve this as we further evolve AI, or it will figure it out for us.
2. Morality
I mean an objective morality that would apply regardless of being human or having a culture.
3. Art
Again, an objective understanding of art. What defines it?
To your points, I think consciousness and its related ideas are for neuroscience to solve. What consciousness is fairly clear at this point. We're simply the part of our brain that regulates certain other larger areas of our brain. We're the brain's CEO if you will. Of course, how do we know this? Once again, the problem of knowledge needs to be answered.
I believe the primary reason consciousness is debated in philosophy is because people are still looking for a soul. Its not really a philosophical discussion, but a faith based and emotional discussion. Once neuroscience ends that avenue, I'm sure people will look elsewhere.
Infinity is solved by solving knowledge. How do you know what infinity is? Is infinity an actual thing, or is it a conceptual framework of an algorithm?
Finally, rationality is once again, knowledge. As we can see, there is no greater need in philosophy then solving epistemology.
:up:
We cannot know the whole if we only know a part. We may know a rock, but as there is no information within the rock that it is part of a mountain, we cannot know the mountain by knowing the rock.
If infinity was an actual thing, such as infinite time, we may know a finite time, but as there is no information within a finite time that it is part of an infinite time, we cannot know an infinite time by knowing a finite time.
The only other way to know an infinite time is by experiencing an infinite time, which would take far too long.
Similarly with space, numbers, etc.
Therefore, infinity may be an actual thing, but we can never know. All we can ever know is the concept of infinity.
As with most scientific concepts about which we have knowledge, including the Big Bang Theory, Hubble's Law of Cosmic Expansion, Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion, Universal Law of Gravitation, Newton's Laws of Motion, Laws of Thermodynamics, Archimedes' Buoyancy Principle, Evolution and Natural Selection, Theory of General Relativity and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, such knowledge of infinity can only be metaphorical.
I'm curious what you mean by a morality regardless of being a human. Can you clarify?
Quoting Philosophim
Are you a physicalist?
Quoting Philosophim
I have some sympathy for this as a potential resolution for some of our seemingly intractable questions. Any ideas for some directions? Do humans in your view have access to facts/truth beyond the quotidian (and even then...)?
Personally, I don't see any real breakthroughs happening in my lifetime and even then I wonder how much we'd understand when most of us still can't understand Kant? Possibly at some level it doesn't much matter. :wink:
:up:
Quoting RussellA
Quoting RussellA
You have concluded our world is mind-independent?
My world consists of what I know, and everything I know exists in my mind. What I know are feelings such as pleasure and pain, concepts such as governments and chairs, sensations such as the colour red and a grating noise and beliefs such as the principle of cause and effect and that my sensations have been caused by something external to me.
I know that there is a world that exists in my mind, and I believe that there is a world that exists independently of my mind.
I also believe that within this world that exists independently of my mind, there are other minds, such as John's and Mary's.
My belief is that this something external to our minds is not another mind but is mind-independent.
My conclusion is that our world, the world of me, John and Mary, consists of minds and between these minds is something that is mind-independent.
Only the contents of your mind hold the status of knowledge?
Quoting RussellA
Quoting RussellA
Everything external to your mind holds the status of belief?
Is your belief Justified True Belief (JTB)?
Quoting RussellA
Do you believe the contents of your mind depend upon the mind-independent world as their source?
Do you believe the mind independent world, not being a mind itself, cannot and therefore does not know itself? {Acknowledgement -- For the mind independent world, not being a mind itself, "itself" is meaningless.}
If you believe the mind independent world is the source of the contents of your mind, but is not itself a mind, do you also believe the mind independent world cannot and therefore does not know you exist?
If your answer to the above is "yes," do you also believe the link goes in one direction only (mind independent world to RussellA's mind) and, moreover, do you believe that mind independent world conveys to your mind its contents without any intentions whatsoever?
Morality should transcend humanity. It should apply to other plants, animals, and even the physical interactions of the universe. The moral question boils down to, "What ought to be." When people focus on human morality that will always be a subset of morality in regards to the entirety of existence. And since human morality is a subset of what would be an objective morality, focusing only on humanity will not answer the greater picture.
Quoting Tom Storm
I don't know what you mean when you say physicalist. I tend to avoid labels because they mean too many different things to different people. If you want to know what I believe, what I stated is my viewpoint. If that viewpoint leaves you with questions, feel free to ask and I will answer to the best of my ability.
Quoting Tom Storm
I wrote a pretty lengthy forum post and set of small papers on here exploring knowledge. It took many years of study and development, but I am extremely happy with it in my personal life. I use it to solve issues in my own life, and its a strong base to study and build from. Most people don't bother to read it to understand it, they just read it to try to shut it down in the first section. Only one forum goer actually bothered to read the whole thing and discuss it with me in depth, Bob Ross. He largely agreed with me on the broad strokes, but we had some issues on the language and some of the details I will forever respect him for it! If you want to take a stab at it, its here. https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/9015/a-methodology-of-knowledge/p1
In sum what is boils down to is noting that knowledge is a tool. It is based on the most rational conclusions we can make from our inner personal experience, as well as our inductive interactions with society. I am most proud of it not only because it presents a successful deductive approach to knowledge, but a rational approach to inductive knowledge which allows a hierarchy of cogency. Its ok if you don't read it though, its the norm.
Great post, I agree RussellA. Perhaps infinity is the abstract concept of understanding there are always things to be known beyond our limitations.
Quoting Philosophim
Sounds interesting. There's not much philosophy I can make sense of, but I'll check it out. :up:
Quoting Philosophim
[i]Soul is the part of you that truly believes
Soul-belief comes to children naturally
After childhood it threatens to slip our grasp
Soul is the heart of vulnerability[/i]
I write the above four lines hoping they'll bring a response from you
Hmmm... I realize this is not for me, but I don't think this sentiment is accurate. I never believed in a soul as a child. And I grew up in the Baptist tradition. Soul was just a word or metaphor adults used - something from the religious conditioning of their culture - pulled out occasionally to denote a concept they didn't understand or to stand in for the word 'people'. As in '1500 souls were lost on the Titanic.'
Quoting ucarr
I'm not sure this means anything, unless you force it to. What, in this sentence, are the words 'heart' or 'vulnerability' referring to?
Quoting ucarr
Quoting Tom Storm
Heart -- Remember how you told your best pal Marty in high school that Ruthie was your dream girl in this momentary lapse to insanity you even divulged hot summer night the week before classes started back how you woke from a Ruthie dream at three a.m. feeling that wet stain in your pajama pants and even had to make up story to mama concerning your late night lemonade run to the fridge with spilling to explain the soaked pajama crotch you steeped and wrung out before retuning to sack?
And then in hallway going to next class next day Luther, star school jock ribs you with "Hey, Georgie Porgie sweet on Ruthie wants an orgy. I'll make your orgy Georgie Peorgie!" "Naw, man!" You say when suddenly Marty says "Yeah, Georgie -- I mean, George. You love Ruthie dream girl, boy!" ?
And then you grab Marty's collar enough to throttle him down to hell as he falls dying choking on the linoleum the hottest chicks Midge and Miriam crack up as you turn not red but death-purple?
That's heart, man. The secret chamber padlocked and barricaded. It's the place at where we are really.
Well, where there's heart there's vulnerable. Matched set. Twins. Thaied for life.
Vulnerable -- simply means you can die. You can be embarassed, hurt, throttled, crushed, smashed, murdered, killed, annihilated -- did I mention destroyed?
Simple Test -- Wanna know if a soul you got? Ask yourself one question: Am I vulnerable?
No. As a mind-independent world causes changes to my mind, my mind causes changes to a mind-independent world, a case of Enactivism.
In Enactivism, cognition arises through a dynamic interaction between an acting organism and its environment. The environment of an organism is brought about, or enacted, by the active exercise of the organism itself. Living beings and their environments stand in relation to each other through mutual specification or co-determination.
Quoting ucarr
Yes. If a raindrop hits a leaf and moves the leaf, there is no intention on the raindrop's part to move the leaf.
Quoting ucarr
No. If I have the sensation of the colour red, there is no doubt in my mind that I have sensed the colour red. I don't need to justify to myself that I have experienced the colour red, as I know it beyond doubt. It is knowledge, not because it is a justified true belief, but because I know that it is a true belief.
Other things I know beyond doubt is that for every effect there is a cause, in that self-causation is not possible, and that there is a world outside my mind, in that I am not a Solipsist.
I can intellectually question what I know to be a true belief, and wonder whether they are in fact true beliefs. But regardless of any intellectual questioning, there is still no doubt in my mind that they are true beliefs. For example, I may experience the colour red in my mind, and intellectually question whether in fact I really am experiencing the colour red, but no amount of intellectual musing will alter my visceral knowledge that I know beyond doubt that I am experiencing the colour red. I may in fact be wrong in my belief that I am experiencing the colour red, but being wrong doesn't change the fact of my knowing beyond doubt.
In Kant's terms, my knowing certain things beyond doubt is innate and a priori within the structure of my brain, a product of millions of years of evolution, where the brain has evolved in synergy with the world external to it.
Therefore, I know beyond doubt my sensations, I know beyond doubt these sensations as effects have had a cause, and I know beyond doubt some of these causes are external to my mind.
But as these causes are external to my mind, I may have beliefs as to what they are, but I can never know beyond doubt what they are. I can justify my beliefs as regards anything external to my mind, but I can never know whether these beliefs are true or not.
Pragmatically, it may not matter whether these beliefs about a world external to my mind are true or not, as long as my beliefs are sufficient to enable me to continue to more or less keep on living as an individual, and as part of a species that is able to survive as a cohesive group through time. A species does not need to know what is true in an external world in order to survive within it.
In answer to your question, by belief is not JTB. In my mind I have true beliefs that don't need justifying, and external to my mind I may justify my beliefs, but can never know whether they are true or not.
Our cognitive capacities including our ability for self awareness and our ability to philosophise. Our minds. Our existential dilemmas and meaning making/pursuits.
Quoting Tom Storm
In my earlier response to you I was referring to a person's moral or emotional nature or sense of identity
Let's look at numbers, morals, the human brain and the world.
Do you think moral truth, as perceived and understood by humans, is local to the human brain, or does it also have a presence in the world independent of human cognition?
Is it your belief that human mind and physical world enact and maintain an ecological handshake?
Quoting ucarr
Quoting RussellA
Is it your belief that rainfall in the rainforest that grows the plants results from random forces such as air currents, barometric pressure, temperature and the seasons?
Quoting RussellA
Is it your belief the world caused you?
Quoting RussellA
Okay. So external world causes some of your sensations.
Quoting RussellA
Is it your belief your brain causes some of your visceral knowledge -- I know I'm seeing red. -- a priori without any help from external world?
So, there's a handshake between you and external world. The sense impressions of your sensory mind result from that handshake. Your rational mind, however, operates independently of mindless external world, creating knowledge of sense impressions a priori.
Do you find the above summary acceptable?
:up: I think so too, but the Quantum puzzle (solved) doesn't (seem to) fit the General Relativity puzzle (solved). The Theory of Everything remains uncracked except theoretically using Strings where the problem, ironically, is reversed from no choice (no model) to overchoice (a near infinite number of models). Odd that! :chin:
@Gnomon - String Theory generates a Theory of Everything that makes no observable predictions. Is Enformationism not similar in that respect?
:up:
Science is materialism's posterchild.
Anyway, I'm surprised that no one's mentioned paradoxes so far (4[sup]th[/sup] page now).
I don't have good reason to think there are moral truths or moral facts - just intersubjective or communities of agreement about behaviours - codes of conduct if you like, which vary according to context and culture. It seems to make sense for killing, theft and lying to be proscribed or heavily regulated amongst a social species like humans - a community is unlikely to survive or thrive in the conditions of a failed state or failed tribe.
Quoting ucarr
Then the word 'soul' is of no practical use.
There's no good reason to think 'suffering' is not a moral fact?
There's no good reason to think 'a natural person knows what makes natural persons suffer and therefore that she can avoid making a natural person suffer or reduce her suffering' is not a moral truth?
I am comfortable with the notion that causing suffering or allowing suffering to continue is morally wrong. I'm uncomfortable with the word truth.
Well, aren't facts (non-tautologous) truth-makers?
Btw, "transcendent" being indistinguishable from imaginary or fictional, I agree there are no such "truths" (moral or otherwise).
Quoting ucarr
Quoting Tom Storm
Are you rejecting soul in favor of other words you regard as more appropriate labels for perishable human identity such as: mortal, frail, fragile, delicate, finite, terminable etc?
Quoting Tom Storm
Quoting Tom Storm
Is there any context, set of circumstances or the like in which soul could work as a practical label you could accept?
Quoting Tom Storm
If a friend active within an intersubjective community to which you also belong should happen to say "Intersubjective agreement is the soul of worthy codes of conduct." would you find such usage acceptable?
If you were tasked with putting words to such a cry for help, what words would you use?
Précisément! If all this is a dream, let it be a lucid dream!
I don't use the word soul or any substitute for it. It's a non starter for me, a poetic or historical term. A soul is an imperishable essence, so it has no role I can think of in fragility or frailty. I think the word human is a synonym for frailty - but also for resilience.
Quoting ucarr
I don't think so. Although I could use it ironically or archaically as in, 'Music soothes the soul'. I use Latin words too but that doesn't mean I am a Roman senator.
Quoting ucarr
I would say, what do you mean? Perhaps what is intended in that sentence is: 'Intersubjective agreement is the substance of all codes of conduct.' An intersubjective community is simply a group that agrees about values and worldviews - whether physicists or the Mormons.
Quoting ucarr
More or less. Something that has taken 3.7 billion years since life first evolved on Earth, in that life must be the product of its environment. If the environment had been different, life would most likely have turned out differently. As regards the Venn Diagram, the mind doesn't overlap with the world, the mind is part of the world.
Quoting ucarr
More or less, in that these forces are mindless, although not random. I don't believe in spontaneous self-causation, I believe that every effect has a cause and the world is deterministic. Randomness is a human concept for events that are too complex for us to analyse what is happening, a system may be chaotic but it is still deterministic, whereby effects are preceded by causes.
Quoting ucarr
Yes. The age of the Earth is about 4.5 billion years and it is believed that 4.3 billion years ago the Earth may have developed conditions suitable to support life. The oldest known fossils are about 3.7 billion years old, and homo sapiens, the first modern humans, evolved between 200,000 and 300,000 years ago.
The process whereby humans have evolved has been underway for at least 3.7 billion years, a process physically determined by the world in which such evolution has taken place.
Quoting ucarr
Not really. Innatism is the doctrine that the mind is born with ideas, knowledge and beliefs. The opposing doctrine, Empiricism, is that the mind is a blank slate at birth and all knowledge is gained from experience and the senses.
There are costs and benefits from both innate and learned knowledge. In a changing environment, an animal must constantly be gaining new information in order to survive. However, in a stable environment this same individual need only to gather the information it needs once and rely on it for the duration of its life.
Descartes makes the analogy that innate knowledge may be compared to an innate disease, in that an innate disease signifies that a person may be at risk from contracting such a disease later in life. Similarly, innate knowledge does not mean that the person has been born with such knowledge, just that such knowledge wasn't expressed. Innate knowledge requires experiences to be triggered or it may never be expressed. For example, a person is not born with the knowledge of the colour red, but are born with the innate ability to perceive the colour red when experiencing it for the first time
A human's innate knowledge, in other words a priori knowledge, is the end product of over 3.7 billion years of evolution, ie, Enactivism
The rational mind has grown out of the world, and is therefore not something separate to it.
You've been giving me some clear and meaningful answers. I appreciate your candor. Your thinking on these issues is helping me with my thinking about same.
Quoting Tom Storm
Okay. For you soul has no practical use or, at least, no practical use within scientific or philosophical contexts.
Quoting Tom Storm
Quoting Tom Storm
Given your above understandings, is it reasonable to conclude they suggest you might regard the pairing: human soul as being a contradiction, an oxymoron?
Quoting ucarr
Quoting Tom Storm
Okay. If another person uses soul to mean {something ? human soul}, but instead something like substance, would find such usage tolerable?
Quoting Tom Storm
Regarding essence, I understand the word as having two main attributes: a) unavoidable; b) invariant. What do you say?
What is the meaning of existence? How did I get here? How should I act?
I think questions arise at least partly through discontent. Would we have any progress scientific artistic or otherwise if people were content?
Various scientists throughout history have predicted the end of scientific enquiry and been proved wrong.
"In 1897, the physicist William Thomson, Lord Kelvin : "There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement." This was prior to the discoveries of quantum physics
I can cite various other scientists over confident at the explanatory reach of their current knowledge base.
Camus said: "There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide"
I agree with this to some extent. We could easily come to the conclusion life is not worth living like hundreds of thousands of people do each year. Science cannot convince us life is meaningful and seems to be trying to do the reverse recently.
Life only appears to have any value subjectively through the individual aspiration.
I think part of the irony of success is how it breeds discontent.
After success, the terrifying question looms: "Now what?" The terror in living is how it is an unspooling skein of "Now whats?"
Yes. We need each other. However, counterbalance, equilibrium and detente are difficult. They require skill of negotiation and compromise.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Philosophy at its core, one might argue, concerns wisdom about living the good life. If suicide per Camus is the philosophical problem, then his character bore the stamp of deepest skepticism.
Quoting RussellA
Are you telling me mind is a discrete unit within a system we call world?
Quoting RussellA
This is a good and important clarification.
Quoting RussellA
Is this a way of saying, in part, every existing thing has an antecedent?
Quoting RussellA
Is this a way of saying every state of a system, say nature for example, is inevitable? Moreover, does this allow us to say that if we had unlimited powers re: analysis of the true causes of events, no matter how complex, we'd eliminate the future in the sense that we'd always know every possible state of a system?
Quoting RussellA
Is apparent randomness the loose cannon in the perennial debate {free will vs. pre-determination}? Per your above statement, can you answer the following question: if appearance of randomness can be conquered, will the debate be resolved in favor of pre-determination?
Quoting ucarr
Quoting RussellA
Some will say a concomitant of your above quote is an embrace of the notion life can arise from non-life. Do you embrace this notion?
Quoting ucarr
Quoting RussellA
Quoting RussellA
Quoting RussellA
In the above statements I perceive you to be telling me innate knowledge is a kind of genetic predisposition for knowing certain things. It is a kind of seed of consciousness genetically embedded within the brain. Certain specific empirical experiences, acting like water and sunshine, cause the seed of consciousness to sprout into practicable knowledge.
Do you find my assessment acceptable?
Quoting RussellA
Optional Question -- Since the below question concerns a complex subject that needs its own separate treatment, you may not want to answer it.
Once the person has the empirical experience of seeing the colour red and she remembers it, and, on top of this remembrance, develops additional impressions and, on top of these, develops additional evaluative and judgmental thoughts, her mind is now operating independent of external world?
This personal POV of an enduring self, WRT the logical determinism of science, as you probably know, now carries the label: The Hard Problem (of neuro-science).
Do you have anything to say about this?
Another puzzle, perhaps overriding the above, is that humans forget that they create these puzzles themselves and then try to solve them as if they exist in their own, independently of them.
Really I just provided 'human' as part of our ongoing conversation. This is not a formulation I generally carry around with me in my thinking. As an outcome of our conversation it seemed to me that humans are pretty vulnerable - being fragile and silly animals and all that.
Being neither a scientist or a philosopher I can't comment on how useful the word soul is but it doesn't appear useful to me. If one were an ontological idealist or a practitioner of non-dual thinking, it's likely soul would also be of no use. It's a Greek/Judeo-Christian construct and limited.
Quoting ucarr
When someone uses the word soul one interprets their meaning. Generally it will be used by a Christian, so the meaning will be fairly clear. If a literary type uses the word then one will understand it as metaphor.
Philosophy (and religion) has spent a lot of time on the notion of reality as it is in itself - 'soul' is an outcome of such speculative thinking - the religious idea that the human being is in itself a soul. A soul for saving. I am not convinced that humans ever get to capital 'T' truth or access reality as it is in itself. Or if there even is an 'in itself' to find. For me all knowledge is made by humans and has limitations. 'Soul' strikes me as a poetic or aesthetic approach to the idea of being - it posits that the ground of all people is an essence of some kind which is part of the divine reality and immutable. I don't have good reasons to accept that particular narrative.
Quoting ucarr
I don't have reason to believe in this idea of essence or even understand what it means - this was just a definition some people might use. I rarely use words like 'invariant'.
Camus in Myth of Sisyphus says that few people will die for the sake a scientific truth but people will die because they judge life to not be worth living. And people will sacrifice their life for an ideology.
Quoting Tom Storm
Okay. Essence is not one of your favorite words. Other people talk about it, but such conversations have never drawn you in.
What about essential? Do you sometimes find practical uses for this form of the word? Consider this example: The Jack London Reader: Essential Reading for Action-Adventure Enthusiasts. Is this usage something you can respect, perhaps even make occasional use of?
Quoting Tom Storm
Quoting Tom Storm
If a sarcastic and witty friend said to you, "Foolishness, fragility and spouting off are essential parts of human nature." how would you reply?
Do you think this is a good thing?
It's not a matter of favorite or not. I don't recall a particular conversation about essence. As a would be existentialist in the 1980's, it came up a bit in relation to Sartre - the famous 'existence precedes essence'. It's a word people use in different ways. If someone is using it for soul it doesn't resonate particularly.
Quoting ucarr
Not sure why we exploring words. It's essential one wears a seatbelt when driving a car. It's a word which can be used in a myriad of ways.
Quoting ucarr
If the comment interested me, I might ask why my friend felt that and listen to their reasoning. But of itself that is not a particularly interesting observation. I have no particular commitments to views on human nature and I am fairly certain I am not an essentialist.
Not really, more that the mind is an intimate part of the world, along the lines of the article Panpsychism, Panprotopsychism, and Neutral Monism by Donovan Wishon. I'm somewhere between panprotopsychism and neutral monism.
Quoting ucarr
Yes, in principle, the future could be calculated, though the computer needed to analyse the world would probably need to be as big as the world, taking chaotic systems into account.
Quoting ucarr
Yes. This goes back to neutral monism, which is the doctrine that both minds and physical entities are constructed from more basic elements of reality that are in themselves neither mental nor physical.
Quoting ucarr
Yes, exactly.
Quoting ucarr
A car when driving on a road is external to the road but is still dependent upon the road.
Quoting ucarr
As regards the hard problem of consciousness, as an animal such as a cat, dog or donkey could never understand the European Commission, no matter how much it was explained to them, I don't think humans could ever understand what consciousness is. Even if a super-intelligent and super-knowledgeable alien visited Earth, and tried to explain the nature of consciousness to us, we would still be incapable of understanding. We may be able to learn more about the role of neurons in the brain, but what consciousness is would still elude us.
Why does my opinion matter? I am citing Camus on the power of ideology to motivate versus science.
I think evil is something that makes life hard to live and fighting against evil or harm may be worth sacrificing ones life. It is painful to live with injustice and flagrant greed.
Quoting ucarr
Quoting RussellA
Is this type of thinking non-binary WRT the physical/mental binary?
Quoting ucarr
Quoting RussellA
Is this a way of saying an analysis of the world, as it becomes viable, merges into the world. If so, is one of the implications that analysis of world is finally just self-referential world? From this does it follow that the self-referential part of world is exampled by humans?
Quoting ucarr
Quoting RussellA
Is it correct to say these neutral basic elements are in reality to some degree alive and that, therefore, it's meaningful to talk about degrees of aliveness? If these two things are real, then the life/non-life binary is displaced?
Quoting ucarr
Quoting RussellA
Consciousness therefore has some degree of grounding in chromosomes and genes?
Quoting RussellA
The mind_world interface is something like the intricate tessellations of an M C Escher drawing? A tile -- in this case reality -- covers a surface -- earth -- with no overlaps or gaps?
Quoting RussellA
I see your take on the problem of consciousness is that for humans the correct position is necessarily agnostic in the strict sense of knowledge-not.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
I'm seeking your thoughts on self-sacrifice for sake of ideology.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Do you accept conventional wisdom that says ideology typically contains a moral component?
Furthermore, do you believe moral logic trumps scientific logic as motivator of the fight against evil?
I don't know what moral logic is. And I don't know if all ideology has a moral component.
Camus seems to just be highlighting that what motivates people is meaning rather than facts. If your meaning leads to self sacrifice it might be undesirable. However life seems to be built on sacrifices.
I am somewhat nihilistic, personally, without an ideology.
I think that death is inevitable and how you approach it may differ. A hedonist might want to make life as enjoyable as possible until its last moment regardless of morality. A transhumanist wants to extend life as long as possible
. Someone who believes in an afterlife may want to live a good life to ensure an afterlife reward or may be willing to suffer under the the belief the afterlife will be better.
Science could be used to enhance life but it has also been seen as robbing life of meaning and turning us into automatons to be manipulated. Or uncovering a lack of freewill.
In the end this is all going to be filtered through personal consciousness which I think leaves us with an existential dilemma concerning meaning making.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
No intention to convey anything fancy. I simply meant wanting to correct something believed to be immoral.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
If you'll accept a take on ideology in the sense of ideal, which is to say a principle to be aimed at, then you can see how ideology, in this sense, contains a moral component.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
In response to your above quote I'm wondering if you're distinguishing meaning from fact by connecting the former with intentions and goal-oriented behavior.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
In this above quote I see a swirling complexity of thoughts including: much of the value of human life rests upon the foundation of meaning_purpose; scientific facts either erase or defeat meaning_purpose; science is sometimes weaponized against humanity in the form of dehumanizing manipulation; freewill is essential to the type of human power that leads to meaning_purpose and fulfillment.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Here I see meaning making as essential to human quality of life. If this is partly true, can you elaborate on the role and importance of meaning making and also upon its existential dilemma?
If you have some sympathy for non-essentialism, can you assess nihilism and the range of possible identities it affords humans? Being ridiculous for a moment, let me assert humans cannot become cats.
I suspect nihilism is impossible. People always believe in something. But as an academic exercise - or a position we might claim to hold - nihilism can take many forms; it can be cheerful and buoyant, or despairing and suicidal.
Quoting ucarr
Sure. And cats can't become humans. I have no problem with definitions and classifications. The issue is how far can you push these to arrive at intrinsic qualities. It's these I am skeptical about. But I am not a philosopher or scientist, so I can't say I'm an anti-essentialist, I'm just an interested onlooker with a skeptical eye.
Are you an essentialist? A theist? And why?
Thanks for this. It's a clarification useful to my understanding.
Quoting Tom Storm
I'm not an essentialist. I just learned of its existence through my dialog with you, so I haven't committed to it. However, I do find it interesting and I can see, in a tentative way, how it is useful as an educational tool. If one assumes humans are alike essentially, an efficient curriculum can be established. As you say, however, it's not wise to go too far in making all humans the same.
I was brought up in the traditional Christian Church. Also, I've been best aided with some of my biggest problems in life by Christians. I'm in no hurry to kick them and their beliefs to the curb.
Having said that, I must now confess that as I gain understanding of atheism -- and a lot of other isms -- I'm delving deeper into the need to think over Christianity closely. Thinking over Christianity closely seems to be my main motivation for coming to this website.
Quoting Tom Storm
I agree with this.
In the world are elementary particles, such as electrons, and elementary forces, such as the gravitational force. My consciousness doesn't exist independently of these elementary particles and forces that make up my body, but has emerged from them, in that if my body moves from the kitchen to the living room, my consciousness doesn't stay in the kitchen.
So, my consciousness is inextricably linked with the elementary particles and forces that make up my body. Either consciousness is external to these elementary particles and forces and is somehow attached to them, as a label is attached to a bunch of fruit, or consciousness is part inherent within these elementary particles and forces, as an apple is part of the tree from which it grows.
If consciousness is an inherent part of these elementary particles and forces, then this suggests neutral monism, in that that both minds and physical entities are constructed from more basic elements of reality that are in themselves neither mental nor physical. If consciousness is external to these elementary particles and forces, either consciousness has existed at least as long as these elementary particles and forces or consciousness came into existence at a later date.
If consciousness has existed at least as long as these elementary particles and forces, yet is external but still attached, this again suggests neutral monism.
If consciousness came into existence at a later date, we have the problem of explaining how something can come from nothing. As I personally don't believe in spontaneous self-causation, I don't accept this as a possibility.
That leaves, for me, neutral monism as the best explanation.
Quoting ucarr
Even though the world may be deterministic, the Butterfly effect shows that the world is too complex to be able to predict in the long term, even by Laplace's Demon, in that a minute localized change in a complex system can have large effects elsewhere.
Perhaps because of the chaotic complexity of the world, only a computer the size of the world could undertake any such calculation. As Douglas Adams wrote in The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy: "In their travels, Arthur comes to learn that the Earth was actually a giant supercomputer, created by another supercomputer, Deep Thought. Deep Thought had been built by its creators to give the answer to the "Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything", which, after aeons of calculations, was given simply as "42". Deep Thought was then instructed to design the Earth supercomputer to determine what the Question actually is".
I don't know what you mean by self-referential.
Quoting ucarr
That seems to be the position of panpsychism, whereby the mind is a fundamental and pervasive feature of the universe.
However, panprotopsychism seems more sensible, whereby fundamental physical entities, while not themselves minded, have special features that give rise to conscious minds when they are arranged into a sufficiently complex physical system. The mind emerges from these fundamental physical entities under certain, and mysterious, circumstances. It would be strange to think that the food we eat, that eventually makes up the physical structure of our our bodies had to be alive in order for us to be alive.
Quoting ucarr
Yes, in that as consciousness is grounded in chromosomes and genes , these are in turn grounded in elementary particles and forces.
Quoting ucarr
Perhaps the mind is like a wave on an ocean, where the ocean is the world.
Quoting ucarr
More a "theist" as regards a belief in consciousness, in that I know that consciousness exists, but I don't know what it is.
Talking about the secular approach to life, I found Sean Carroll's The Big Picture: From the Big Bang to the Meaning of Life informative.
On the one hand, as astrobiologist Michael Russell says, the purpose of life is to hydrogenate carbon dioxide in order to increase the entropy in the universe. But on the other hand, Sean Carroll introduces the concept of Poetic Naturalism, whereby we can accept both the microscopic world of elementary particles, forces and space-time and the macroscopic world of apples, causation, purpose and the arrow of time as long as we change our frame of reference. By changing our frame of reference we can accept both a deterministic world and a world of purpose, reason and what is ethically right or wrong.
Sorry for the late response. I'm not sure what you're asking me here. All of those things are reactions of your brain. Neuroscience doesn't deny the powerful feelings we have about the world such as purpose and love. Its just that's the source of where it all comes from, and is not an ethereal ghost.
As I see it, our conversation, an interview in which you answer questions, has to date distilled five big questions:
01) What is the ground of consciousness?
Quoting RussellA
Quoting RussellA
Quoting RussellA
Your answer says elementary particles and forces -- and their emergent property, consciousness -- have their ground within a neutral monism that is neither mental or physical.
02) What is consciousness?
Quoting RussellA
Quoting ucarr
Quoting RussellA
Your answer says humans relate to consciousness as an act of faith in the existence of something unknowable.
03) What is the interrelationship between mental and physical?
Quoting RussellA
Your answer says mental and physical are integral parts of each other.
04) Is there free will or fate?
Quoting RussellA
Quoting RussellA
Quoting RussellA
Your answer hedges ambiguity somewhere between determinism and chaos. Your quote from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy suggests the quest for this answer will mire itself inside an infinite regress.
05) Can life arise from non-life?
Quoting RussellA
Quoting ucarr
Quoting RussellA
Your answer, because it refers to question 01), has two parts: firstly, it pairs neutral monism with panprotopsychism: neutral monism says the ground of consciousness is neither mental nor physical whereas panprotopsychism says the ground of consciousness is physical; 02) secondly, it says mind (life) emerges from these fundamental physical entities under certain and mysterious circumstances. In summation, your answer says emergence of life from fundamental physical entities is mysterious.
Quoting Philosophim
No problem. Thanks for taking time out from your busy schedule.
Quoting Philosophim
I'm seeking your thoughts on my four statements. This you have now done to some extent.
Quoting Philosophim
Okay. I see you regard soul as presented in the context of my four statements as being a psychological term. No doubt I'm talking about emotions arising from everyday experience.
Quoting Philosophim
I recognize the truth of what you say.
Quoting Philosophim
Here I understand you to be saying the brain is the source of the described experiences, not the soul. Moreover, you're implying such experiences are grounded in a physical brain, not an immaterial entity labeled soul.
Do you think there's a meaningful distinction between soul as spirit and soul as concept, even with both posited as immaterial?
What are those statements (link)?
Quoting ucarr
Interesting exchange. How do you answer those questions?
I don't see why not. I believe emotional and general language is extremely useful and enriching as long as it does not supersede the physical reality underneath it all. At the end of the day talking about ourselves as brains may not be nearly as exciting or motivating as talking about "the human spirit" or "the soul of humanity". Essences capture feelings that objects do not.
Quoting 180 Proof
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/779178
Okay. Abstract concepts expressed in language can never take the place of the physical reality language describes.
Quoting Philosophim
Okay. Realism directed at physical objects posits them as mind independent existences whereas essences are phenomenalist abstractions that arise from observance of objects.
The latter can be emotionally gratifying, perhaps giving rise to exultation and a sense of overarching spiritual oneness, but they have no causal impact upon the former.
Yes.
Soul as defined in the context of my four statements connects to two essential attributes of an innate identity of a self: a) unavoidable; b) invariant
Example: a paramecium, when observed under a microscope, avoids an electrically charged probe that causes it pain. Sensitivity to pain and the ability to suffer, I submit, manifest the baseline identity, i.e., manifest the soul of all sentient beings. Since all sentients suffer pain and seek to evade it, it follows that, WRT sentients, these attributes are: a) unavoidable; b) invariant.
Panpsychism?
noun
the doctrine or belief that everything material, however small, has an element of individual consciousness.
-- The Apple Dictionary
Quoting ucarr
Quoting ucarr
Why do you surround vulnerable and soul with quotation marks?
Quoting 180 Proof
Common sense.
I quoted your words.
It's also "common sense" that the Earth is flat and the Sun rises and sets, all swans are white and hammers always fall faster than feathers, etc.
Invaluable to me in sorting out my own ideas.
Quoting ucarr
I'm wavering between panprotopsychism and neutral monism.
Donovan Wishon in his article Panpsychism, Panprotopsychism, and Neutral Monism
describes panpsychism, panprotopsychism and neutral monism as: "The first is panpsychism, which is the doctrine that mind is a fundamental and pervasive feature of the universe. The second is panprotopsychism, which is the doctrine that fundamental physical entities, while not themselves minded, have special features that give rise to conscious minds when they are arranged into a sufficiently complex physical system. The third is neutral monism, which is the doctrine that both minds and physical entities are constructed from more basic elements of reality that are in themselves neither mental nor physical."
But I also believe in the Mysterianism of Colin McGinn, in that the hard problem of consciousness cannot be resolved by humans.
Quoting ucarr
For me it is more than faith, where faith is a strong belief, in that I am absolutely certain that I am conscious. I know without doubt that I am conscious. From then on it gets more complicated.
There are different levels of knowledge, in that I can know I'm conscious without knowing why. I can know the form of an object without knowing its content, as Pandora knew the form of the large storage jar without knowing the curses it held within it
I am sure that at the heart of the hard problem of consciousness is the Binding Problem, or in Kant's terms, the unity of perception. Consciousness is unknowable because there is nothing else in our experience that enables us to understand how a disparate set of parts can be perceived as a unified whole. We have no key to explaining the gestalt property of consciousness, whereby a perceived object or event is dynamically bound together from its properties into a unified mental representation. For example, our representation of a tree can be expressed in neural activity that is widely distributed through the cortex. Objects such as trees can only be represented in the brain by many neurons spatially separate, yet we are conscious of the tree as a unified whole at one instant of time. The mystery reduces to that of how can one be conscious of a unified whole at one instant in time that is made up of parts that are spatially separate.
I don't know what the answer is, but I feel the answer must avoid the pseudoscience of Quantum Mysticism, those metaphysical beliefs that seek to relate quantum mechanics to all and sundry problems, whether consciousness, intelligence, the spiritual or the mystical.
Quoting ucarr
I believe in the principle of Laplace's Demon, such that if a demon knows the precise location and momentum of every atom in the universe, their past and future values can be calculated from the laws of classical mechanics.
However in principle, such a calculation would be to all intents and purposes impossible because of what we know from chaos theory, whereby even small changes to a complex system can give rise to extreme consequences. Given the start position of a complex system, if we wanted to predict a distant future, the calculation would probably have to account for differences in position of the order of the planck length.
As regards free will, there are some things about which I have no choice, such as eating, though I do have the choice as to what I eat, pasta or pizza. On the one hand, intellectually I believe that the world is determined, yet on the other hand, viscerally, I believe I have free will.
How to resolve such a contradiction. Sean Carroll proposes Poetic Naturalism. As we understand through metaphor, Big Bang Theory, Hubble's Law of Cosmic Expansion, Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion, Universal Law of Gravitation, etc, Carroll's approach is effectively the use of different metaphors for different domains of knowledge. When talking about the physical world we use the metaphor determinism, when talking about the world of the mind we use the metaphor free will. In this sense, talk about a deterministic world in which we have free will is not contradictory, as such terms are metaphors. In fact, it could be argued that all our understanding is metaphorical, in that all language is fundamentally metaphorical.
Quoting ucarr
Yes, Colin McGinn's Mysterianism. As a cat, dog or donkey could never understand the working of the European Commission, humans can never understand the nature of consciousness (in fact, probably an easier problem that understanding the workings of the European Commission). As Sean Carroll suggests, perhaps understanding requires a change in our frame of reference. The fundamental problem is that in order for humans to understand consciousness, consciousness need to understand itself. Not a new idea, as "know thyself" is one of the three Delphic maxims inscribed in the forecourt of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi.
Quoting 180 Proof
Do you believe: vulnerability = vulnerable, soul = souls?
Quoting 180 Proof
com·mon sense | ?käm?n ?sens |
noun
good sense and sound judgment in practical matters: [as modifier] : a common-sense approach | use your common sense.
-- The Apple Dictionary
Do you categorically reject common sense?
I'm indebted to you for letting me query you in-depth. I've benefitted much from the experience. It's been an education for me. I hope we'll dialogue again.
No.
No.
Quoting Agent Smith
Are "all doors" actually locked?
:lol: I dunno but Mr. Anderson, Morpheus, and Trinity are looking for The Keymaker.
Another one of The Architect's macguffins. Remember, Smith: "There is no spoon" (i.e. there is no Matrix). :smirk:
:smile: There are only forks! :lol:
Précisément!
Quoting 180 Proof
Quoting 180 Proof
Quoting Agent Smith
Quoting 180 Proof
Quoting Agent Smith
Quoting Agent Smith
Quoting 180 Proof
A chilling wind blew across Manhattan that afternoon as they wheeled Malcolm out of the Audubon strapped atop a stretcher. A delay held up the departure of the ambulance for long minutes as little Chuey inched through the milling crowd up to the great man now supine. Im not dead, he told the pop-eyed boy. Was his smile charming the frigid air? Heck. Only the red film covering his teeth suggested anything amiss. You believe me, son? Aint got not beliefs, snorted Chuey. The eyes of the annointed started slowly closing, a calming peace now spreading across his face. Best answer. Receive my blessing. Assalamu Alaikum. Something made Chuey speak. Wa alaikum assalam. Loud banging sounds as the stretcher collapsed into the speeding-away ambulance. Aint got no beliefs, Chuey repeated. And then, but now I got reason to act like I do.
:death: :flower:
:grin: