Thanks for the suggestions, all!

These were exaclty the sort of recommendations I was looking for so I could begin tracking down books, and then building further lists from that. I was sort of coming up dry, so this is definitely a meaty selection of books that helps a bunch. (I'll keep posting my own suggestions as I come across more too)

The last game which reminded me of the old Zelda games was Titan Souls, which was unbelievably difficult, frustrating and repetitive, but so worth it for the sense of relief and accomplishment when you complete the game. The whole game consists of those classic boss fights. (And no words are used in that game, either). — Chief Owl Sapientia

Sounds like the sort of game I'd like.

Boss fights were a big part of Hyper Light Drifter, but so was the exploration and dungeon crawling.

Speaking of Zelda, the new Legend of Zelda game, Breath of the Wild, looks so good, and it has received exceptional reviews, with scores of 10/10. But I only have a PS4, and won't be getting a Nintendo console just for one game. — Chief Owl Sapientia

Yeah, while I agree that it looks like a very cool and fun game, I certainly won't be buying a console for it.

It'd be nice if they'd consider a windows release.

Hyper Light Drifter




I just beat this game. It has it's own unique flavor, but it has been compared to the old Zelda games -- and not unfairly, either. You journey through a fantastical land besot by some kind of danger. The specifics are never elucidated -- there aren't ever any words used, it's all told by pictures -- but the story is familiar enough that you get a feeling for what's going on.

Tons of fun. I'd recommend it to anyone.

http://www.heart-machine.com/

to grant a robot qualia requires a change in its programming, not its matter. — tom

I we want to give a robot subjectivity - i.e. "what it is like" knowledge, we have to program it that way. Swapping out a hard-drive, or adding more memory is not going to affect the running of the program that achieves this. What particular hardware constitutes the robot is irrelevant, but panpsychics clain it is relevant! — tom

We know that the robot, as a robot, does not possess subjectivity because we programmed it that way. — tom

The hard problem may indeed be hard, but I think the problem of how to create knowledge - of any kind - is the fundamental problem. — tom

I'm kind of grouping these since they are related.

I think, broadly speaking at least, whether a robot can identify a red card from all other colors is not the same sort of thing which the hard problem of consciousness is talking about. We can imagine a philosophical zombie, for instance, being able to identify red cards from all other colors. And the philosophical zombie is already more sophisticated than a robot in that it has all of our functional capacities -- which is (again, broadly speaking) how Chalmer's characterizes naturalism -- it just lacks consciousness, the "feel"-iness of first person experience.

We do not program the robot to have knowledge of qualia. We program it to identify cards which reflect light at such and such wave-length, then to send some kind of indicator that it has done so to us.

Also, I would say that 'qualia', while certainly related, are different from pan-psychism in that we could defend pan-psychism without, in turn, defending the more particular notion that qualia exist. (at least as entities -- of course we can use the word 'qualia' to simply refer, in general, to particular instances of subjective experience without committing ourselves to separately existing causal entities called qualia)

How do all the fundamental particle consciousnesses combine to create a unified consciousness, and why does that require a brain? i.e. how does a single unified consciousness emerge? This is the same question we have without panpsychism! — tom

I think this is a problem of psychological identity, which is something one can ask regardless of their stance on pan-psychism.

Even if there is no subjective experience we have people who profess to have a unified consciousness, and in general we observe that people who make such reports tend to have brains, so we can ask how this phenomena occurs.

So, I'd just say that what pan-psychism sets out to answer isn't this question.

Are atoms more conscious than fundamental particles? How about mobile phones?

Are humans 'more' conscious than dogs?

Honestly, one reason to adopt pan-psychism is it gets rid of this question. With emergence we might ask, at what point does a system gain consciousness? Does it come in degrees?

But I think a consistent pan-psychism would simply say that 'more' or 'less' aren't quite applicable here. It's a 'yes/no' question, and the answer is always 'yes', insofar that what we are naming is an entity (since clearly we can also speak of things which do not exist, and would thereby not be conscious)

It's just that the subjective experience of an electron differs from that of an atom differs from that of a cell-phone differs from that of a robot differs from that of a human.

Why are there no semi-conscious things. Or rather, there must be semi-conscious things, how do we identify them?

Because everything is conscious :D -- so there is nothing to identify.

Why do I lose consciousness when I'm asleep, given that I am physically the same? Do my fundamental particles also sleep?

I'd have to be a fundamental particle to say whether or not I sleep. By all observations, at least, I'd infer 'no' -- but there's no reason to rule it out, I suppose.

Also, this question hinges on two different meanings to the word 'consciousness' -- one such meaning is 'awareness', as in "I am conscious of Matt's feelings for me" meaning the same thing as "I am aware of Matt's feelings for me". When you lose consciousness in your sleep you lose awareness. But you do not lose out on what it is like to sleep. We feel dreams, after all, at least the one's which we happen to remember after waking up. I don't see why we wouldn't feel the one's we don't remember just because we don't remember them or why sleep, itself, doesn't have a subjective side just because we don't quite remember what it is like afterwords.

It seems to me that given enough understanding of memory and sleep that we could actually engineer ourselves to retain such memories.

I actually dislike his approach, here, because it seems to me to be committing the very mistake that generates the hard problem of consciousness in the first place. We wonder, how are we able to feel when matter is naturally inert? And proto-conscious properties are just a way of making consciousness something which is inert and analysable, when in fact consciousness is not well described as either. (I'm going from memory of The Conscious Mind here in this response. Let me know if I'm off base in saying this with respect to the paper) ((And there is an epistemic sort of drive, from myself, in saying this -- it seems to me that consicousness, by its very nature, is not analysable in the way that materials are into atomic units which tell us why they are as they are. We can break it apart, but something changes in so doing, and in fact the same 'parts' can feel differently from instance to instance, yet still be important to understanding how something feels. proto-consciousness just defers the explanatory gap from where it already is in current science.))

I think you have to kind of commit all the way. There is a first-person side for every existing entity. Adding "proto-properties" adds nothing to this explanation, at least in a scientific sense.

Reason we learn to identify consciousness with our heads is because all the evidence correlates with the brain and not the foot. — Marchesk

Let's back up a bit here. In this particular discussion the distinction between consciousness and where I am located at within my body is important, since the original article is talking about the hard problem of consciousness and pan-psychism, which is not the same as the self.

The part of our body which we identify with as the seat of our "true being", or the location of the mind, or the self, or some such, does not have evidence in favor of it. It's an act of identification in the sense of "to identify (with)". Even if the self exists, it doesn't make much sense to say that there is evidence in favor of the self -- it's not the same sort of thing as, say, dinosaurs, for which we have evidence for.

So it is hazardous to begin describing consciousness based upon our conception of the self because, 1, that's not what consciousness is in the first place, and 2, while there is something that it's like to be our self (and are thereby there is consciousness of the self, ala the hard problem), there is plenty of things which we are conscious of (hard problem definition) which our self is not aware of, such as PTSD. You still feel the affects of PTSD even when your self does not identify with said condition.

Now, neurons are a common cause posited for consciousness. But that has little to do with the seat of the self, considering that our neurons do, in fact, run to our foot, yet we do not identify our self with the foot.

But if panpsychism is true, then neurons (and only neurons in certain regions) in the skull shouldn't be special when it comes to consciousness.

Not when it comes to consciousness, no. Though when it comes to human experience pan-psychism wouldn't exclude the importance of neurons.

On your third question -- Epicurus believed the mind to be located in the chest -- where we tend to have a two-part mind, one in the head and the other in the chest. So, presumably, the body-part identification of your mind is a cultural phenomena.

I don't know if 'foot' would be a possible body-part to genuinely feel you are identified with, but I don't see a reason to exclude it either if, in fact, body-part identification is something you learn from the culture you're born into.


On the first question -- I think, insofar that we believe such-and-such to be an entity at least, that panpsychism would call it conscious. But I'm not sure that the parts of entities would be conscious.

So, an electron can be identified with 4 numbers -- principal number, orbital angular momentum, magnetic number, and spin. But the orbital angular moment of an electron is not posited to have consciousness, whereas the electron is.

So I think it would depend on what we admit as an entity. If we believe there is no self, for instance, then perhaps your conscious life just happens to include the conscious life of your foot too. Or, if we believe there is an ontological self, then that would be the reason your foot is not conscious -- it's just a part of you (your second question).

Golly, it's been wayyyy long since I've read Hume. I remember being very impressed with his argument though when I did read him. But I also remember learning later that I had misread him too.


My main disagreement was with his take on causality. I wasn't sure how to tackle the problem differently, because his argument isn't fallacious or anything, but it just seemed like there had to be something wrong somewhere since -- i knew that heat caused water to boil, for instance, and it didn't make sense that tomorrow the water would freeze due to heat.

It seemed to me, at least then, that a fallabalistic account of knowledge could accommodate Hume's causation skepticism. But I don't know if I could say that now. It just seemed a "quick fix", if anything at all.

Really, I think you'd need a different account of causation.



But, that specific problem seems pretty far astray from your lament with Hume. Yours seems more general, in that Hume's account of knowledge is largely the product of analysis -- the breaking of categories and things and concepts into its constituent parts, as well as the sort of hammer-scourge which skepticism has on other kinds of questions or inferences which are not exactly certain or even close to certainty, but still worth considering and wondering about in a philosophical fashion.

Do I have you right?

I did do that with paint.net color picker first :D. They were, indeed, grayish-greenish, and as I put blue on the blank canvas it began to look red.

One could argue that, though we wouldn't classify said pixels as red that they do have red as part of their make-up, but I thought it more interesting to just take the example at its word, so to speak, and try and argue against the strong case.

Good point in saying it's the image, not the dress -- though it might be the case that the dress could appear this or that way in different environments, too.

I guess the question here would be -- while it is not often the case that we come across ambiguous images, why are there ambiguous images?

Michael seems to be stating that color, at least, is added by the brain, and the brain adds colors in different ways in different environments, so the same object can appear to be different colors.

I was attempting to say you could explain this with a part-whole distinction -- the dress does seem problematic to my tactic, so I was going for the "both/and", just depending on how you look at it.


But I guess it comes down to -- what do you make of ambiguous images? Is it simply that they are ambiguous, and there is nothing more to it than that?

I'm just reporting on what the neuroscientist said about it. He's the expert. — Michael

Sure. I didn't mean to say you had to be an expert and lay it out for me -- only that these are the questions I think people should ask when they hear or are tempted to say "the brain did it"

Anything I've read thus far, though I may be ignorant and am willing to read anything more, may involve more steps than that, but it comes down to a similar event. We'll follow the light to the cones where differentials generate potential energy which transfers up into the part of the brain associated with visual processing where. . . we find the black box again.

And it's not as simple as two colours "sitting next to each other" appearing as a different colour. Remember the dress? People saw different colours - some white and gold, others blue and black - even though the stimulus was the same. And that's because the stimulus isn't the only thing that's responsible for the perception of colour. Our bodies play an essential role in that dress being either white and gold or blue and black. — Michael

Couldn't the dress be both? It would just depend on how you look at it, no?

Like the vase/talking faces.


I think color blindness would be a stronger example for your case, because at least there is a demonstrated hereditary association. But I'd posit the same thing here -- only that we have to dig a little deeper into our bodies to "see as" the colorblind do, and currently lack the technology to do so.

Even the whole itself doesn't have all the properties we see it to have (the red hue). That's added by our brain's processing. As explained here, "You brain says, 'the light source that I'm viewing these strawberries under has some blue component to it, so I'm going to subtract that automatically from every pixel.' And when you take grey pixels and subtract out this blue bias, you end up with red." — Michael

When did I have a conversation with my brain? Or does it speak to itself?

Obviously this way of talking is supposed to convey something -- but what does this personification of the brain convey? What in the world does it mean to say "Your brain says 'the light source that i'm viewing these strawberries under has some blue component to it, so I'm going to subtract that automatically from every pixel'"?

Colors which set next to one another change the way said colors look. Similarly so with what surrounds some color. So it is with this picture. Why do you believe that the brain "adds" red to the strawberries? (and, for that matter, why doesn't the brain add gray? I imagine you believe that it does -- but then why is this picture different? What does it demonstrate?)


I tend to find "your brain did it" explanations of perception to be something of a black box -- only worse, because even the inputs aren't defined. (images? pixels? wavelengths? information?) The brain is clearly involved, but "your brain adds red to the image because of the blue surrounding it, like it always does in all environments with blue lighting to maintain the colors which objects are thought to have" just doesn't cut it for an explanation. It's no different from saying "red next to blue looks more red", but somehow a third actor -- the brain -- gets involved and does this.

Only if there is no difference between the parts and the whole, though.

If the strawberry image just is the pixels, then I would agree with you. But if the strawberry image is composed of pixels, then wholes can have different properties than their parts, and we could reduce the object of perception to mind-independent things which causally explain the perception.

I'm not saying I want to do the latter -- but if we perceive a whole, then the whole could be mind-independent and cause said perception, even while the constituent parts don't share its properties.

Hrmm, I usually see panpsychism being proposed contra naturalism, though. At least, self-described naturalists would often object to panpsychism, differentiating themselves by saying they are "non-reductive naturalists" or some such if they agree the problem of consciousness is a problem, but don't want to concede that naturalism is false.

I don't think you'd find this satisfactory, of course. Obviously it would depend on what is meant by 'naturalism', and you mean 'naturalism' differently than these self-described naturalists. But I'm noting it because it seems noteworthy to me that self-described naturalists would object to panpsychism -- there is a relevant difference for them, even if it isn't one which is strong enough for yourself.

I'm tempted to lay your emphasis like "We have experience" to say that we are the sorts of being which have experiences, but that doesn't mean

the only thing we know about the intrinsic nature of matter is that some of it – the stuff in brains – involves experience.

is false.

That our brain is involved in experience -- and not identical to or even specified in what kind of relation it might stand towards experience -- can be inferred by the fact that ingesting chemicals, like coffee for instance or even large quantities of food, has an a/effect on experience. What we call matter interacts with the brain through the blood stream, and experience changes. So it's a fair inference from the first-person side of things, at least.

And at the very least his intended audience -- people who would believe that panpsychism is "just crazy" -- are likely to share this belief with him, even if they do not know it to be the case (I would disagree with the strength of his assertion, but that seems tangential)

From there the rest of his argument follows just leveraging the desire for consistency which panpsychism offers. Since they believe brains are involved in experience, rather than ask how it is experience arises from what has no experience (as per the belief of the audience), just conceding that everything has some kind of experience (though not necessarily mind, intent, or other features which are very much a part of our experiences) gets rid of the question all together.

This is just to say that it's not from the behavior of electrons which the panpsychist infers that electrons have experience, but rather from the desire for an explanation of how it is we experience when we previously presumed matter did not experience. "How do the electrons in a rock suddenly become a mind in a different configuration?" being the target question which panpsychism deflates.

Damnit! I so do like being thought of.

;)

I'm not sure if that's directed at me or just something to keep things on track. I'll clarify why I asked how Heister is using ideology just in case.

Heister stated:

I'd argue that ideals come first in the informing of one's thinking. — Heister Eggcart

Which I took to mean ideals come first (relative to ideology) -- so I figured there must be a difference between the two, in the OP, though common usage wouldn't make a distinction.

It seems a terrible answer, but it really does just depend.

Useful for what?

I don't know what principles you're reflecting on here that have been lost, though, either -- politics has always been clanish or tribal-ish in the United States. Even the revolutionary war was disagreed with by a significant portion of the population.



I am a leftist. Or, an anarcho-communist. Or, a libertarian socialist. Or whatevs -- I understand that the names of ideology can obscure individual beliefs, and that it's a bit silly to think that there is some kind of platonic form of an ideology which our beliefs imitate. These are historical artifacts full of accident and even caprice.

This set of names accurately describe my political beliefs, in an ideal sense. Being able to identify my values and beliefs actually gives more room for compromise and negotiation, at least any that is meaningful, because it delimits what I'm willing to concede on. Or, it gives more clarity to action, when I am unwilling to concede.

But, I would note that I don't think I would use the phrase "identify with" -- in particular, the "with" indicates that these names are somehow a part of my personal identity. My political beliefs are, and they fit such and such a category, but I don't feel particularly attached to the nominations -- if the categories were to become something else, then I don't see my moving just because my clan moved (unless provided with good reason, of course)

Also, I'm not exactly certain what you mean by "ideology" since you're differentiating it from "ideals" in your opening. From what I laid out here you can see that I think of ideals and ideology as, if not identical, certainly not different from one another. Perhaps ideology is composed of ideals, or some such -- I'm not sure of the relationship. But your formulation seems to make them exclusive to one another.

I don't think the man off the street thinks in terms of realism, idealism, physicalism, monism, etc.

But I wouldn't then say they have no metaphysical beliefs, either. If we're talking about practical metaphysical beliefs of the every day, then I think it would be wrong to think in those categories. God, soul, freedom? Definitely a concern of pretty much everyone. But the fundamental nature of these things, whether they are material or not? Nah.

But God, soul (or mind, if you will), and freedom are certainly metaphysical topics -- they are dominant parts of the nature of reality. And they are the sorts of things which influence the way people behave, too (or, at least, are connected to -- I think the direction can go both ways, i.e. when people stop believing in God they start to behave differently, and when people stop believing in libertarian free will, they begin to judge differently)

It can help to write out some thoughts. Why not give it a try?

People will be more amenable to conversing with a post of substance and exchanging ideas if not in the form of an obvious class essay question. (And, hey, if you're actually reading the articles and discussing them, you wouldn't even be cheating -- just getting feedback).

Yes, I think so.

Though when you say:

I was thinking more about idealism, materialism (either of which can be eliminative or reductive), neutral monism, etc. — Mongrel

I'm less inclined to believe so. Or, at least, I believe such beliefs can have practical effects, but it wouldn't be easy to ascertain. @The Great Whatever pinpoints why -- such beliefs are not so easily separated from their practical effects, and we may choose metaphysical beliefs after the fact because of the type of person we are, rather than come to believe such and such metaphysical position and then come to find its practical consequences.



But what I would call a pop-metaphysics, or a folk metaphysics (to borrow a term from phil-o-mind), would be much broader than these particular theses on the ultimate nature of reality. It would include beliefs about the soul, beliefs about how minds work, beliefs about the existence or non-existence of various institutions, beliefs about the self... it doesn't seem to be a closed set. From self-described spiritualists performing Tarot readings to self-described rationalists consulting therapists, to use one pole that seems to be part of pop-metaphysics, one can find many variations on beliefs about the nature of reality and the reasons for the beliefs about said reality.

Hrm. I guess the semester has started up again, hasn't it?

:D

It seems to me that the OP sets the initial 'boundaries' of a discussion, and that the author of said OP has the priority to alter those boundaries over others.

If I'm stepping into someone else's discussion then, albeit unsuccesfully at times, I will try to stay within what I perceive the author to be interested in.

If I were to introduce something, then it seems that the relation would have to go "downwards" -- meaning, the OP sets what is most general and topic for this discussion, and we can introduce things that are more specific, but it wouldn't make much sense to go upwards in generality (at least, generally speaking).

Yes and no at the same time and in the same way — Sapientia

Obligatory obfuscation.

I think I can safely assume that just because homosexuality is innate doesn't make it 'justified' (aka naturalistic fallacy, or appeal to nature.) — NukeyFox

The twist here is that you're taking away one of the main points against homosexuality -- that it is not natural. If you believe the one is committing the naturalistic fallacy, then you'd believe the other is doing so as well.

Innateness does not a justification make -- but the reason people argue this has more to do with objections to homosexual acts.

What most people mean when they say it is innate isn't as much about whether it conforms to nature, though. I'd say that people mean that there is no choice in the matter. People don't choose their sexual orientations. This is also a counter-point to one of the reasons homosexuality is considered immoral, since it goes against God's law and we all have a choice whether or not to follow God's law.

These appeals are more counters to reasons why homosexuality is wrong than they are justifications for homosexuality.

Think -- how would you justify heterosexual acts? What, precisely, is it that makes heterosexual acts permissable? Surely you see the difference between heterosexual acts and, say, psychopathy? No?

Right, but then that was the plan all along. The communist male milking facilities are clearly a historical necessity demanded by the dialectic.

I'm in no way homophobic (I'm bi myself) but this issue really bugs me. So what do you think? Is there a way we can justify homosexuals? — NukeyFox

What, exactly, needs justifying?

It strikes me that those who believe homosexual acts are morally wrong are the one's that need to justify their statement. This is because, in general, all acts default to "permitable" in a free society, and we at least purport to live in or desire such a society.

At that point it seems rather clear. There are roughly two reasons given for homosexuality'simmorality. That it is against nature, or that it is against God. The former is dubious, given the plethora of purposes which sexuality is put towards (thinking of the procreation argument, here), and that animals, in fact, engage in homosexuality (since, for whatever reason, people believe they don't and think this justifies the claim that homosexuality is against nature). For the latter, give the context of a free society, one can claim to follow a God who forbids homosexuality, but it's understood to be a personal commitment rather than a broad social commitment. This granting the already dubious belief that humanity is able to put down in writing what the greatest of all possible beings cares about, and that the greatest of all possible beings really cares about the sexual mores of a particular grouping of humans who will, in God's timeline, be a blip on a blip and is soon to pass away.

I do believe jorndoe is riffing off of St Anslem's proof of God.

Pretty much always puts me in a good mood.

That was really cool.

Oh, I don't know what's what. I'm just saying ideas and positions I like more, or find more satisfying. Definitely not claiming to know what I'm talking about her. I'm just thinking out loud. — Wosret

Heh, me either. I'm more asking after your thoughts here than some kind of definition. Your clarification, while vague, is actually helpful. :)

All of this leads to unpalatable places, in my view. — Wosret

That might just be the difference, then. I frequently find myself thinking that people in different times and places live in different worlds. That isn't to say we can't find points of comparison, or become immersed in their world, but to me this is not unpalatable as much as what seems to be the case.

Prior to contact and an attempt to build a bridge -- make a "ruler" of sorts -- we do live in different worlds. We might then say that there must be some underlying sameness that allows us to build such bridges -- the "points of comparison" -- as long as we are able to create standards, like length, I think that we can make sense out of comparing incommensurables.

Length is particularly enlightening, from my perspective, because it falls into this quasi-real category. Length is not an entity, but an abstraction of entities, and yet the length of this or that doesn't change by merely changing the way we measure length.

I think I'm beginning to stray off topic so I'll just leave it at that until I can think of something more topical to say. :D

Thing is though, that a comparison for difference and similarity has to be crisp in my view. — Wosret

I will say that 'bleen' isn't something that I believe needs to be ruled out. I don't believe that this is bleen, or that grue, but "500 years ago all the colours everyone else saw could have been entirely different" is true. Emphasis on "could", of course -- and without specifying to what degree this is plausible, but they could have been.

I'm just noting this to say this is clearly a difference in attitude between us, rather than to say that this is the correct way of looking at things.


But I would ask -- what is a crisp comparison, and how is it different from a vague comparison or a heuristic?

(there's some self-referential problems occuring in this, but I don't think that line of thinking is interesting at first. It's just worth noting that in asking for a comparison between difference and similiarity it sounds an awful like asking for the difference between the two)

I'm just playing with some thoughts here:

I have near me a plastic bottle filled with isopropyl alcohol, and a cardboard box filled with paper security envelopes. The contents of each container are in a different phase to one another -- solid and liquid, respectively -- and the cardboard is more porous than the plastic container is. (though, to touch, it has a similar feeling because box has been printed on, and the process makes the outside of the cardboard somehow feel smooth and wax-ish like plastic)

Two measures -- third "things" -- which relate them are both length and volume. Mathematically these are related, of course, but there's certainly a distinction to be had between those ways of relation. The bottle of isopropyl alcohol is 1.66 cigarette packs tall, while the envelope box is 1.2 cigarette packs tall -- and we may ask for some fourth thing to clarify the cigarette pack, such as a ruler, but 'cigarette pack' is good enough for our purposes. Continuing this process it turns out the envolope box is about 1.2 cig-packs cubed, and the bottle is about 1.06 cig-packs cubed. But the appearance and function of the bottle suggests that it is more voluminous than the envelope box. It doesn't fit within my desk drawer as easily as the envelope box does. It also carries liquid, which suggests volume, where envelopes -- while technically having a volume -- certainly do not suggest volume.

Length is a basis of comparison, and volume is calcuable (in limited circumstances) from lengths, but the comparison of length and volume are different between the two objects. What is similar, however, is that 'length' and 'volume' -- both conceptual notions -- are serving as a way to compare two distinct entities. We can further specify these conceptual notions (perhaps you thought that my usage of cig-boxes just wasn't up to the task), but the idea of a "ruler", a third entity functioning as a point of comparison, is only brought in to this process of comparison because we already have a notion of length, and realize that though 'length' is no entity unto itself, it is a notion which allows us to compare entities.


composition -- 'paper', 'plastic' -- and function -- in these two examples, containment -- seem to me to be bases of comparison between entities as well.

I don't know if I'd want to ascribe all that to language use, per se. That seems a bit speculative -- though I could see the ability to pick out entities, naming them (more or less), being ascribed to language use.

We can of course consciously, deliberately construct categories, but we'll just be trying to formalize our intuition, rather than actually describing a literal ubiquitous feature. — Wosret

I think this is a different sort of question from your opening post though, no? Whether we are actually describing a literal ubiquitous feature is different from how we relate, thereby finding sameness, in entities which are different, no?

OK I think I got a handle on your distinction now. It didn't pop out for me in reading your OP, so thanks.


I think your first argument is question begging. P3 basically states the conclusion you said you wanted to defend in your 2nd paragraph.

Special deontic obligations are legitimate only when grounded in agreement. — darthbarracuda

Which is what you define second-order moral agents to be able of doing -- and are basically defined as second-order moral agents by this, no? At least, as you clarify later, it seemed to me that the contractual nature of morality is derived from the fact that it is inconsistent when taken unquestionably -- which we must necessarily do, hence why we are 2nd-order moral agents.

But do you see the circle in the reasoning there?



The second argument is more interesting, in my opinion. Since we are ignorant of the future, and inherent special deontic responsibilities are the sorts of responsibilities one must follow regardless of what the future may entail, and because it is unreasonable to expect a person to act against their well-being, it is unreasonable to expect people to act on inherent special deontic responsibilities as it may lead to them -- due to their ignorance of the future -- to act against their well-being (with specific reference to acts which risk life, it seems to me you are saying). (I'm just restating it to make sure that I have you right)

But just because it is unreasonable to expect people to act on such and such that doesn't mean they don't have such and such. It is unreasonable to expect people to follow the law within their land, but they have the legal obligation to follow the law or be punished all the same. We know people will break the law, of course. Similarly so, the deontologist could argue that we know people will be immoral, but that does not then mean that they don't have these responsibilities even though it is unreasonable to expect people to follow them.

What is it to act in a first-order moral way, and how does that differ from the second-order moral way?

I'm not familiar with the distinction between first- and second- order moral agents.

It's hard to diagnose any sort of mental illness anyway, much more so through what limited amount we are able to share via a text-message board. So it's probably best for me to say "I do not know the cause of your feelings"

In the case that this is depression...

Chronic pain gets better, but it doesn't really go away. There are habits and activities you can establish in your life to make it feel better, but even with said habits established you have good days and bad days. And if you fall out of those habits then you'll have worse days. And it may take a long time to figure out which habits work best.

o. i thought you had posted it in the wrong thread.

sweet game.

;)

But then, maybe I shouldn't be spending money on more games.

Ah... wat do? Too many choices. — Sapientia

Honestly, I save more money spending money on games than going out to see people. :D It's part of the reason I play games (aside from the fact that I enjoy them, of course) -- because I'm in "wait and save" mode.