What???? It has nothing to do with what I wrote. Where have I argued that something is not real torture? (for exmaple) Of course what that ruler when through was real torture. The issue, as I understood it, was whether one could ALWAYS or some people could ALWAYS hold out under ANY torture.

If for some reason you have gotten the impression I think that being killing in a burning hot metal chair is not torture, I failed to be clear. Of course that's torture. Of course he resisted if it was a he.

I thought I made it clear when I said I would likely have been broken by that torture. IOW that's me saying it is torture and that he managed to resist where I thought I might not be able to. That's me being open and honest about my own sense that I am not someone who is great at resisting. I am 100% sure that there are many people much, much better than me, and also that some people can be trained to be better, even me. None of that contradicts anything I have been saying.

When I say it's a poor torture, I meant as an example of a torture form demonstrating that there are people who can withstand any torture. You have been asserting that people can or probably can resist any torture. You gave an example of a torture, presumably to show how well people can resist and I pointed out that this is not a very effective type of torture compared to long term ones that include psychic driving.

And all this is in my posts.

This is a perfect example of the fallacy of equivocation by persuasive definition. It's only 'real' torture if it conforms to my definition...for which there cannot be counterexamples. — Pantagruel

Hm, in the context of my long discussion of torture with Eugen, I had long emphasized that long periods of time, combinations of various kinds of torture, are both more effective at getting people to say or do what you want, if only temporarily.

I am not saying that putting someone in a burning hot metal chair is not 'real' or real torture. I used the word poor. Eugen and I were having a discussion about if people could hold out. He then, as evidence, mentioned a ruler who was placed in a chair and I think died in under a day without making a sound, so the legend goes. I think that's poor torture (if one, for example, wants information or want to change their mind about something - the latter being the main focus of our discussion. I think that something, however painful, tha t lasts one day, is poor torture, in the context of my discussion with him, given the goals we were talking about.

I don't know where 'rea' came from.

It's only 'real' torture if it conforms to my definition...for which there cannot be counterexamples. — Pantagruel

I don't think you understand the context. It happens, but I was not in any way saying that what he described was not torture. That's torture.

If someone specifically intends to submit to the worst effects of the torture, then torture must be ineffective. Torture only succeeds where the human will fails. — Pantagruel

I don't know what you are talking about here. There are a lot of reasons people torture, so the second statement is not something I have said or agree with. I don't know if the first sentence is supposed to be what I am saying (actually not sure about either of them) or you are now presenting your opinions. I don't know what the context is of someone intending to submit to torture. I don't know how it relates to what I said.

What's the object being referred to? Epistemology is about my knowledge as a subject. Substituting "we" for "I" is based on the assumption that human minds are alike. — Echarmion

There you go, that would be another posited-as-objective facet.

"we don't know whether or not our experiences are objective". — Echarmion

I am not sure what you mean by the object being referred to. I was saying that what I just quoted, if it is saying that 'we don't (which might mean 'can't') know whether or not our experiences are objective' then it is making a claim about reality and an claim to objectivity. I actually think it might make more sense to replace 'experiences' in that sentence. I don't know what I would be saying if I said my experience was objective. My conclusion, my idea, my assertion, that seems more like something that could be objective when contrasted with subjective (ideas, conclusions...etc.) It's a bit like you don't have true or false things, but rather true or false statements.

To answer your last question: the fact that there are causes (and I agree they are there all the time) behind my values, this doesn't mean I will act according to my values. — Eugen

So your free will allows you to do things that do not fit your values and desires. That might be true, but it's not a freedom that offers me much. In this model I could choose to slap my wife for making a joke better than I did. I don't want to and it doesn't fit my values and I don't feel a bodily urge to do it, but I can choose to do this.

I don't know what this version of free will offers me. Note: t hat's not an argument against it being the case. It just is a version of freedom that offers me nothing of value. I want to do things I want to do. I want to do things I positively value (consciously or unconsciously).

As for the torture: I don't think you are right. You think you are. Neither of us will test it. Perhaps some day one of us will be proven right, though I doubt.

But the least you could have done was concede that a burning hot metal chair that leads to a death at most in a few days is not a test of anything. It's primarily pain and fear over a short period of time.
I think you are quite incorrect about how incredibly effective sound tortures are and since we can vary the sounds, which is what they do generally, the repetition argument holds no water. You can have random pauses, radical changes in volume, intersperse moments of pleasant music so the person relaxes, and do the same with lights, smell, hit cultural taboos and so on.

4. In my opinion, with proper training and mental strength, one could resist any psychological torture. So the last frontier remains the physical pain. — Eugen

I would guess the combination is the hardest.

Simply making someone lose his/her mind - this was actually a problem for torturers in Pitesti. They actually stop torturing those who went crazy and treated them. Only after they re-became normal they re-started torture. If you want to deal with a schizophrenic and convince them of something... good luck! — Eugen

Yeah, you stop for a while, then you can put things in or start again. And you don't make them schizophrenics, you give them psychotic breaks, PTSD, dissociate disorders.

But this is all details. Neither of us can demonstrate what can be ruled out.

I don't want to talk about it any more.

I would say instead of a reference point - not saying that's wrong, just noticed it wasn't how I thought - that their assertions meet some criteria. So, justification. And a particular time. And for many, this would all be open to revision, but it's useful, it seems, to take things as objective, even if some or even many of them turn out to be incorrect.

All assertions and the listening to and interpreting of assertions includes subjective elements. Our words do, and more.

I suppose I am a pragmatist. More focused on process than the ontology of a statement. It's truth with a big T or something, but more, what do we do and how does that work for us as far as we can tell. Rather than assertions getting timeless attributes, standing there beaming out their Truth.

I notice that that is how I seem to work.

The claim isn't necessarily "we are subjective beings". It could just be "we don't know whether or not our experiences are objective". They might be, but we cannot just assume they are. — Echarmion

If this is an assertion about epistemology...iow something in the family 'given the fact that we perceive in this manner and...(other reasons). then we cannot know if our assertions are objective or subjective'
then that is still an objective statement. If we simply 'I don't know if my ideas are X' then it might not be since one is reporting on one's experience and not concluding something objective.

If we can have evidence that constants and laws have changed, then we can have evidence for the contrary. — SophistiCat

Yes, I agree. One can have evidence, and there is evidence that laws have been around for a long time, with at least a great deal of consistancy, and even at some distance from earth. IOW consistancy through space and time. There is also evidence coming in that some have not.

But my first sentence is talking about the idea that if there is a pattern or constant then it is either eternal or does not change in whatever finite time we have.

THAT is the assumption. There can be, then evidence to support this, sure. But the very concept of a natural law, rather than not weighing in that patterns that get called laws must be eternal, is an assumption.

No contradiction. I think using the idea of natural laws as a heuristic has been helpful, but it may be confused and we can be aware of just as, say, Newton's conception of space and time and rules he developed within that model were extremely useful, but it turns out his concept of absolut space and time were wrong.

It's a paradigmatic assumption. I am not blaming scientists for having gone with it. We work from local to more distant time and place. But that assumption that these things do not change is not parsimonious since one need not make that assumption and one can still use all the, for example, mathematical models that work now and seem to have been in place for a while. It's not less parsimonious NOT to make that assumption. Less assumptions cannot be less parsimonious.

Is there any serious objection to my statement that I am currently using a computer? — Pneumenon

First it's not that someone would object, necessarily to the facty thingie, it's all the interpreted experiences of 'you doing that' and what it means that will necessarily be subjective. Subjective does not mean wrong, it means that what you and we think when you make that statement and we read it likely differs for each of us (the image in our mind, coupled with a very distant feeling (since it is not a detailed, specific or unique bit of information)...iow the internal phenomenological experience we will all have will be idiosyncratic and subjective. None of this means we disagree or would then act in ways that others would think showed we were not connected well, objectively, to what is going on. Second, and I suppose overlapping, is that there a philosophical positions implicit in that simple statement. Again, they need not be wrong, but what is implicit in 'you are using' rather than 'the computer and I are interacting it causing me do things, me causing it to do things'. We likely have more or less folk theories of what it is happening. They may be right, partiall right, facets of 'what is happening', the view of a timebound homonid who thinks in absolute time and space and not the only way to think of it. None of this means that the image, should we think in images, of you sitting at a computer typing (probably?!) is wrong, but implicit ideas about reailty are built in that may or may not be right, or as objective as something else.

Now, if we are having a chat, none of that matters much. We get it and we don't get lost given that we live all the time in folk ontologies. Nor is it likely that we show up at your house to find you using the computer to smash watermelons. No, so that sentence isn't going to cause problems in most situations it will be used. But it contains subjective elements. Fortunately most of these are fairly universal, unless perhaps one is in a very, very different culture. But universal and objective are not the same. And in a philosophical context some of those folk ontologies are up for question.

There's no God's eye view of what you are describing: no view that is not bound in time, without a primates way of thinking of it. Not a view from all angles at that action. It is a selective, interpreted view. This too can be objective or partially objective. But it is suffused with subjectivity at the very least also.

As you might remember I am hardly a antinatalist, and I don't think I can be classed as a pessimist, but I am right with you in this thread. These guys are trying to do an end run around actually making arguments against one of your arguments. They have shifted to a meta-argument. Antinatalism includes the presence of emotion X, or antinatalism is caused by a preponderance of mood/attitude/emotion X, so we can class it as irrational. There are two problems with this: one you've pointed out and I agree entirely...all philosophical other revelant positions and ethical stances include emotions and values. The other point being that essentially this is all ad hom. They are focused on your emotions rather than your arguments.

How do you negate a mood if it is imbued as an ethical pathos? — Shawn

You have to point out that it lacks justification beyond mood, or enough beyond mood. You may be right, but then if you are, it will show up in the weaknesses of the arguments. You do the work. You finish the OP with this question, which could be a call for other people to come with rational arguments that demonstrate that the pessimist you mentioned has a weak philosophical position. But there's the work, whether they do it or you do. Once you've done that THEN you can label their position as mere mood. It doesn't really matter, however, if a particular mood leads to a philosophical position if the argument in favor of that position is a strong one. We're all motivated by emotions and moods, no computers here.

Yet the number of all those possible photos is not infinite. Therefore, if the universe / space is infinite, it can only be due to repetition since the number of unique things that can exist is apparently finite. — Zelebg

The 'apparantly leaves you a lot of swing room. I think your argument makes sense, if the building blocks and rules and so on can't be different in other parts of the universe. I don't think this is an argument against infinity, but an argument against one kind of infinity: and infinity of different things. The infinite universe would have to repeat. But the repeating does not negate its infinite volume, for example.

Parsimony, obviously. If an explanation works well enough, why complicate it without reason? — SophistiCat

I don't think that's parsimony. It's just an assumption. There is no need to make the assumption that laws are eternal. We can work with what seem like rules now, and black box whether these rules may have changed or may change. You do not have to commit to something you don't know. Further there is evidence that constants and laws have changed.

Tell me if you embrace the claim that the improbability of our existence entails an explanatory gap — Relativist

It might be on a subliminal level. But it's not an argument I make. It could simply be that life lucked out. The only universe that is happens to have conditions that allow for life, perhaps even make it likely or very likely. Of course I'm (also) a pantheist, beyond being a theist in a more traditional sense, though not one that would make any of the big religions consider me a member.

Perhaps some people couch it as 'expected', for me Fine Tuning arguments entail that is not some potentially never would have happened little side effect of the inevitable stuff. Something that is explicit or implicit in many physicalisms (not that it need be) or perhaps better put by a large number of physicalists, including many scientists.

I used to have a list of links. I'll do a little googling....
https://physicsworld.com/a/changes-spotted-in-fundamental-constant/
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2010/august/sun-082310.html
http://news.discovery.com/space/is-the-sun-emitting-a-mystery-particle.html
https://www.livescience.com/29111-speed-of-light-not-constant.html
https://bigthink.com/philip-perry/is-the-speed-of-light-slowing-down

Sorry, not finding more or better ones. I actually wrote to Rupert Sheldrake if I found anything that supported his view. Sometimes he'd always seen them, but not always, which was fun for me. There were a number of signs that laws may change and also constants, some of the evidence strong.

There is evidence. Rupert Sheldrake has had this idea for a long time and recently there has been evidence found that contants and laws change, at least some of them.

There could be someone who disagrees with both of you.

Yes. Your resist torture for something palpable, like protecting your family, or for something less palpable, like an ideal or simply because you hate your enemy. Why would you do this or not? I have no idea, I just know that some went through the torture and pain until the end. — Eugen

Sure, some have. I don't think their tortures were likely to have been patient enough, not like the nice base the psychic driver experiments used in Canada.

But that issue, the effectiveness of torture, or the ability to choose to resist it, is not the issue I was addressing there (though I have been in other posts) I was focused on the issue of choice that is not driven by desire. I don't know what that means. The only reason to choose to override the determined parts of the body (as you view it) that just want the pain to end, would to be satisfy other desires, often to protect what one loves. Well, that's a desire. I don't see what it means to make a free choice that is not based on desire. And desires involve bodies, emotions, what would metaphorically (and perhaps literally also) be called decisions of the heart.

There was this Romanian ruler killed by Austro-Hungarians. He was put in a steel armchair that was slowly heated with fire, they put a hot steel crown on his head and torture him in any possible way until he died because of the hot chair. History says he didn't even make a whimper. I don't know if that's true or not, but he definitely didn't talk and he defied his torturers until the end. — Eugen

OK with a reminder that my point was the above, that I don't know what free will advocates are talking about when they see free choice as somehow above desires, this is a perfect example of poor torture. If the idea is turn someone against their own values. Sounds like he likely died within one day. This is like comparing throwing a kitchen knife at someone's head to neurosurgery. Instead of starting by burning his ass and legs, they could keep him from sleeping for a month. Then put him in stress positions. Play loud music and shine bright lights on him or like was done in Waco at the KOresh compound, play sounds of animals being killed for hours a day. Then do interrogations that are not meant to cause pain but rather confusion. Then used drugs force sleep on them, so they are ony awake a couple of hours over every few days. Then...well, one can mine my earlier posts for more. Occasionally, sure, rape them. It's amazing what rape can to a male ruler. And do it on and on and tell him that they are stealing his manhood. Occasionally, sure, do some pain stuff. Burns create incredible challenges for the survival of the body. There are many ways to inflict pain that do vastly less damage, so you can send them back into brainwashing, sensory overload, manipulation, lies, stress positions and isolation. I would guess I am not as tough as that guy. But I consider it possible tremendous rage and love of my family might keep me silent for a day. I don't think so, but I can't be sure. It's a blunt attack on a person. And patience and destruction of the self take time.

But as I've previously said, there are different types of actions, and the capacity to act against your instinctual and unconscious brain, when you against all the physical signals that could be monitored in your brain, when all your chemistry orders you to do something but you're taking the opposite path, well, for me that's free will. — Eugen

It seems to me the choice is based on what one values, the love of family - so how they treated you, social ideas, the love you feel for them, empathy......

CAUSES.

The problem for free will advocates is to show that somehow things that went before did not cause what comes after.

The love that is built up over time - and I think it would be odd to say one chooses to love one's children - would be a cause from the moment before the decision to resist.

The ideal that I got from my parents and culture about not giving in that is also a cause in such situations, comes from the moment before and has in turn, going back further in time been caused, slowly over time, by external factors and by my inborn temperment. A cause.

I am not sitting in some causeless realm randomly choosing to resist torture over my body's impulses. I am following desires and ideals that were present before they starting torturing me.

CAuses.

I am not a determinist. That position has other problems.

But free will people seem to think what has come before, for example in this situation, does not cause what comes after.

Well, that would mean I make a decision not based on my desires, which were there before, not based on my past, which was there before, not based on my culture, which was there before, not based on my psychology, which was there before, not based on my values, which were built up before, not based on my relationships, which were present before I was taken to the torture room.

No I make a causeless decsion, free from the past, which includes free from all of me.

Honestly, Eugene, this will be my last post, because I feel lke we are going in circles even if we do agree about some things, and I get frustrated when I feel like people don't want to look at something scary, while I do look at it. Determinism is scary. I can't prove it wrong, but I don't feel it has been proven. However when I see arguments like yours, I know they don't make sense. And I think you are smart enough to know that you haven't demonstrated free will, just postulated it. Perhaps there is free will, but your argument does not makes sense. And what value would a free will be if the choices I made were not directly caused by things prior to my making that choice? It would not be based on my values and desires. It'd be random.

I'm out.

I think free will is like technology: it represents a part of evolution and it was originally meant to improve lives, but use it in the wrong way and it will be much worse than not having it. — Eugen

Who uses it who is not determined? What wouldn't that person freely choose according to socio-biological desires? Do they freely choose to do things they do not desire? To me the whole free will thing is moot, in the context of what we are talking about, because I have no reason to go against my desires. Or in a sense, myself. I would only fight torturers and try not to reveal something because of my desire to fight them/protect something I care about etc. Desires motivate.

That's a minimal definition of a creator: having a desire, and the ability to act on that desire. This is the sort of deism Antony Flew ultimately embraced. — Relativist

Which was an aristotilian deity, outside the chain of being and some sort of pure intellect. I don't think we need either the implied dualism or this kind of pure intellect. Perhaps we do, perhaps it would entail a separate creator, but I can't see how this could be demonstrated. (given my own beliefs, which are theist, I don't have a problem with the conclusion, I just think whatever the argument would be speculative and likely carry assumptions out of our everyday lives into cosmological issues.) I don't think Hawking's cosmology which is FT based is theistic or even deistic. (though I will concede in advance I am not sure I truly get it. But I see no diety in there.)

1. Given the brain has a digital structure (on/off neurons) how is it that it generates vague concepts? — TheMadFool

They're not on off and it's not just neurons. Google glial cells and intelligence. Glial cells have been discovered to play a role in mind and intelligence and this runs in a different way from neurons. But even some neurons have graded responses.

And then there's

While action potentials are usually binary, you should note that synaptic communication between neurons is generally not binary. Most synapses work by neurotransmittors, and this is a chemically mediated graded response that, for example, act on voltage-gated ion channels. So even though action potentials are often binary, communication between neurons are most often not, and action potential firing can involve the integration of synaptic information from many different neurons. Therefore, the brain as a whole cannot be reduced to a binary system.

and then you have the whole endocrine system which has graded responses and this affects neurons and glial cells.

I can only agree mind is also part of the brain. But hunger is not the same as wanting to lose weight. — Eugen

I don't think I suggested they are.

Feeling of hunger vs Feeling of losing weight, moment of time t -> hunger chemicals vs losing weight chemicals, if, at the moment t, hunger chemicals > losing weight chemicals -> you'll eat and your conscious brain/mind will only witness — Eugen

Sure, and I am not a determinist. But a parallel unpleasance comes from free will.

I am hungry. I remember that I want to lose weight. My hunger is the animal in me. Using free will I override the animal (mechanical) part of myself and choose a higher value.

I don't think that has helped us in the least. It has increased actual battles in the self and between brain portions, a bit like how religions sided with those parts of the brain that could suppress the so-called beast in us.

That information influences the unconscious brain and it makes it stay away from food. — Eugen

To me it is just frontal lobes looking down on other parts. We are very smart nuanced mammals. I don't weigh in on the free will vs determinism for reasons I have taken up elsewhere, but I see your philosophy as a kind of taking the side of the frontal lobes and disidentifying with portions of yourself. Of course you can do this if you want, but I think it adds to splits and it goes against my desires, even, in the long run, have my frontal lobes realized that they don't want to disidentify with the limbic system the brain stem, etc. But it has taken CONTRAST for the lobes to get this. and also long noticing the problems with brain or self or mind factions.

I also agree that "me" is more than mind. I am also my brain and my hands — Eugen

You're also that part of yourself that you think is utterly determined.

it cannot act in times of hunger without the "what I call mind" part of the brain. — Eugen

And I think what you are calling mind is the frontal lobes. still brain, still body. For a couple of thousand years at least we have been told that those lobes are good and the other parts are bad, problematic, need to be suppressed and controlled and so on. Yes, by religions, but also by the scientific and 'see-themselves as rational emotional phobic portions of the human race. Both ask for a disidentifcation, where one part of the brain says 'I am the person, the rest isn't really' and also with different ways we are supposed to suppress those other parts. One part of the self disengaging from, saying it superior to, other parts.

I think this has done untold damage. But, then, personally, I have found it much more valuable to work towards unification.

And your example is eating/diet. We can have a mirror image of this. I grew up around other races. I had no idea there was racism. My limbic system told me they were human like me and I automatically felt empathy and the full range of good and bad feelings about them just as I did mainly for other kids, since I have more interaction with them than adults. Later various things tried to engage my frontal lobes to suppress my natural identification with, say, black children. Racist propaganda generally needs the frontal lobes. You can't have a holocaust without incredible propaganda and arguments. You need words and categories and justification and these can then override the obvious.

I don't want to side with one part of my brain over the other parts. They are meant to act as a unit, though from the moment of birth babies start getting subtle non-verbal and later as toddlers explicit and verbal judgments of emotional expression and certain kinds of body movements. We've been trained so long in the split, we think it is natural and the only way to live.

You're assuming too much. The FTA, if it were successful, would only entail a creator who wanted life. It does not entail a creator who gives a damn what they do to each other. — Relativist

It might not even entail a creator, just some kind of universal desire for life. Like entropy is something you observe in microsystems and perhaps in the whole thing. But here instead of entropy would be a strong built in tendency to make life. Life being built in, rather than the randomly created perhaps it might not have been of how science is somehow taken to indicate.

Seriously, I do wonder what would happen if some breakthrough discovery was made which showed that multiverse theories, and the Everett theory, were for once and for all considered to be beyond the pale, out of respectable bounds. — Wayfarer

If you showed physicists evidence that put multiverse theories beyond the pale then advocates in nearly all cases would stop being advocates.

That henceforth, there would be no more grants, and no more tenures, for advocates of same. — Wayfarer

Right, though I am sure there could be other kinds of speculative physics that people can and would turn to. And I would guess that many of the current advocates are just as likely to be good teachers and other physicists, so I am not sure why anyone should worry about it.

string theory/multiverse — Wayfarer

These two need not be conflated.

Physics has made great advances through contemplation and thought experiments. I don't see any reason to worry about this. Of course like anything it can go too far or if the hypothesis itself cannot produce, ever, observable results, as far as they know, they perhaps other lines are better followed. It is unclear whether one might be able to find evidence of a multiverse. Some say yes. But trying to resolve inconsistancies and anomolies in current models is a good thing to do, hence the idea of the multiverse to maintain determinism.

I'd need to see evidence and not just deductive arguments, that having the current levels of speculation in physics is a problem. IOW if we accept deduction, rather than empirically based criticisms of the amount of speculation, the complaints themselves start to fall into the very category they are complaining about. Demonstate (through God knows what kind of experiments with control groups) that if we shift to punishing speculative physics more, physics and we will be better off.

Before we have that experiment carried out a few times, then the criticism is just speculation based on what seems to be true on paper.

Well, we even have diversity in this one. With other less fine tuning the universe would be 6 foot cube of neutrinos, and the cube wouldn't able to be impressed by this either.

And the counter-argument that there are countless ‘other universes’ that don’t exhibit natural order of the kind science observes seems to me one of the most inane ideas in current culture. — Wayfarer

The thing about the multiverse is it is one way to eliminate the seeming problem with FT AND to maintain determinism. It could also deal with the oddness (seeming or otherwise) of there being something specific rather than all possible things.

One of my hobbies (or obsessions) is to debate theists on their Fine Tuning Argument for God (here's my current one - I'm called, "Fred"). I've read a number of papers, including the SEP article, and I've read debates and seen videos where its defended. I have observed that the most common rebuttal to it is the multiverse hypothesis. I don't think that's the best approach because it concedes too much - in particular, it concedes that life needs to be explained. — Relativist

The real context here is not theist vs. non-theist, but one group of physicists (and not a group of theists) arguing with others. FT came out of non-theist physicist concerns that the chance of a universe right for life seemed so radically small it bothered them. Right or wrong it seriously bothered a group of non-theist physicists. And it bothered other physicists enough to try to find a rebuttal, some of these along with some of the first group thinking that a multiverse offered an elegant solution. Later theists heard about FT and used it also.

But this is not a theists came up with FT and then non-theists took up the fight. The cognitive dissonance was within physics and with the scientific community first.

but it can only act through mind. Cut the power of mind to act against hunger and you'll eat like a wolf. — Eugen

in philosophy, generally, and for me, I find hunger as part of my mind, my experiencing of myself, part of the feelings and thoughts I have,. Rather than over here, in my mind, I have my desire for community connectedness and over there in my body I have my desire for food. Of course if you are distracted by your own words and think you are only logical, then anyone could not notice that their desire for, let's say, harmony with neighbors is also embodied. I have but one exeriencer, which is mind, which is me and it is embodied.

These two will get in conflict and you're saying that in the end, mind will be nothing more than something that just observe what the body decides, — Eugen

now my desire to end ain is body, not mind, not me. I find all of these things as one thing, me. I want the pain to stop. In my mind, as my mind. As a body, and in my body those feelings.

To make another analogy, the victim despises her rapist, but still has an orgasm produced by her body. — Eugen

Very rarely, though it does happen, and if we are talking about more grooming type rapes - rather than the stranger pulls you into the bushes one shot events - then the chances go up a lot that a woman may have an orgasm. I am not sure if the analogy to rape holds or not in as fitting my position. I don't really this part.

I am desire. I am emotions. I am thoughts. I am a body, I am a mind.

That's all me. And my desires yes, can be more frontal lobe run as opposed to brain stem or limbic system run. But frontal lobe desires can lead to things like the Holocaust. You cannot document and organize the systematic eradication of a people and cut off empathy without using the frontal lobes. Without centering in them. Frontal lobe decisions can be monstrous or great. I don't buy the higher lower desire thing. (You did not use those metaphors, but it seems like there is something similar underlying your argument.

As if I should feel distaste for eating like a wolf. Wolves share food with weaker members. They are family and community members and these qualities are likely a big reason we domesticated them more and more. The only problem with eating like a wolf is that my stomach and intestines don't deal with raw meat and big chunks very well. Animals eat in ways suitable for their digestive systems and diets. I don't think the
natural
human would eat like a wolf. The natural human stressed by modern life that does not fit its needs, does not allow the natural kinds of physical actiivities its mind and body need, that overstimulates those things often late into the night with digital devices and too much light, that with an animal (us) that didn't get what it quite needed as a child, may very well wolf down food. Handling this as a frontal lobe is going to be the jailer of the limbic system never really solves the problem. In fact many of the problems have been caused by judgments that the frontal lobes know what they are doing and by pathologizing the other parts of the brain.

Empathy, and curiosity, for example come from below the frontal lobes, and in fact you need to suppress these things (via racism or schooling) using the frontal lobes, if you have certain goals. I am much more interested in solutions moving towards unity, not hierarchy.

Well, it seems the FTA has a flaw. It claims that the universe is fine tuned for life as a whole but that would mean the universe was fine tuned for microbial pathogens as well as humans but these two examples of life are counterexamples of the universe being fine tuned for either. I mean microbial pathogens shouldn't exist if the universe were fine tuned for humans and humans shouldn't exist, with their antibiotics, antifungals, antivirals and all, if the universe were fine tuned for microbes. — TheMadFool

The point is not that the universe is perfect for life, but that it is perfect enough for life to evolve even if individual organisms can suffer, while others of the species manage to procreate. And it seems to me you are interpreting FTA as necessarily part of a benevolent God model. This need not be the case. The problem is the utterly, incredibly low chance that a universe would be hospitable to life or even complex patterns at all. THAT is what shocked many physcists. And while few of them were theists, they suddenly felt they needed an explanation for why amongst all the seemingly possible universes this one balanced on a point where life could evolve. And, they, not advocates for a benevolent deity, began looking at reasons it might be like this. Answes included multiverses or at least a more extended universe where other conditions elsewhere that were not conducive to life also existed in parallel or at a distance from our neck of the woods. People who had no interest in proving a deity or believing in one found the conditions of the universe so strange they started to look around for possible explanations. Other people, outside these physicists, with other beleifs and paradigms also became interested in this issue. But extremely smart, non-theists, solidly within the scientific paradigm, were the ones who first felt there's a problem This is too radically unlikely. And for some it was precisely to ward off religious interpretations they rushed to find some other way of explaining this - such as a multiverse where different sub universes have different fundamental laws and constant. And some of them, despite not being theists, do believe in a strong version of fine tuning .. That for reasons unknown the universe IS tuned to make life.

Just because they have a cause doesn't make them fantasies. — Eugen

I didn't say anything about fantasies. I wasn't saying anything to denigrate them. When I said
'fancy' I did not mean 'fantasy' but rather complicated or nuanced. My point was that they are, regardless of their qualities, desires. I referred to all desires. I would not want to go against my desires in general. Why would I WANT that? If I want to be a good man, for example, that's a desire. If I want my actions to cause harm or to serve the greater good or whatever even more refined, ideal, supposedly egoless goal one can come up with, these are desires. We are humans, we can have all sorts of things as desires.Fancy as a noun can refer to fantasy, but as an adjective:

elaborate in structure or decoration.
"the furniture was very fancy"

Just because there may be other desires these desires seem to override, does not make them any less desires, even very simple animals can be torn between desires, albeit less fancy ones. And hidden behind seemingly noble desires can be any motives such as the desire to not be what dad said I was or the desire to be special or not evil. IOW interpersonal goals with really rather primitive social mammal relational aspects.

If the body asks for food and you don't eat, it doesn't happen because of another stronger instinctual impulse that oppose the former. — Eugen

If you want to lose weight it is generally, for example, because you desire to live longer or you desire to look more attractive. Desires. Since we are social mammals, our desires can have a lot to do with other people. They are still desires. Often about how we want to think of ourselves or feel ourselves to be.

You are right, I gave a wrong example. It is more like a rapist violating his victim and saying "now she wants me". — Eugen

I don't think so. You are viewing it as NOT BEING some specific claim by the torturer. For some reason you are focusing on the torturer, here, rather than, as I am, on the effects of torure. Like the torturer is really claiming to be charismatic or a great arguer and you don't think he is. I agree with you, and I am not saying that. It doesn't matter how the torturer might boast, in these inaccurate frames, about what he did. That's not what I'm focused on. I am not focused on any claims by the torturer. I am just saying the torturer can force X. Can make x happen. If he, and presumably most are a he, frames what he has done in the wrong way, this doesn't change what can or will happen to us if we experience skilled torture.

That's very different from wanting. — Eugen

In those final moments they will want to agree with the voice that offers water or sleep. They will want the pain to stop, they will want to say X is good and even believe it when they did not believe it before.

And I don't know if that happened because of sloppy torture. — Eugen

And I can't know for sure. But I think we can all be broken.

Free will represents exactly the power to act against these desires when they're against your targets, principles or ideals. — Eugen

Those are just fancy desires. I desire to be good to others and not just myself. I desire to achieve such and such a goal because of X. It's just more desires. Desires are not just about food and sex, etc.

But this is not convincing, this is simply forcing. — Eugen

Well, that's what I mean. I mean, if your convincing cannot be stopped then it is forcing. But yes, my whole point is that the mind can be forced.

It's like killing someone and say " now he doesn't believe in God anymore". — Eugen

Except they are alive and will contradict their previous belief. So, it's not like that.

Not you, some people would, there are plenty of examples out there. — Eugen

They might want to in the abstract, but if they are honest and know themselves and have decent introspection, they will know that they will not want this at a certain point. People have all sorts of fantasies and misconceptions about themselves. I mean, I have been through some shit in childhood that would have broken a lot of people. I am hardly a hedonist or an avoid painist. In fact I think I have at times had too high a tolerance for emotional pain. Physical pain, at least some kinds I am a wuss, other kinds, I can take a lot. Stick needles in my eyes, well, I am gonna talk. If you mind/brain is starved for what it must have, while also being forced to experience pain/horror and isolation those people break just like I would. There are sloppy torturers, but if you have a competent modern expert, they break everyone.

They just don't give a damn about themselves in the biological sense when it comes to ideals. — Eugen

In short term decisions, sure. Dive in front of the bus to save someone else's kid. Rush into fire to save fellow soldiers. And of course resist torture up to a point in relation to ideals. I have made some very dangerous spontaneous choices that put me at great risk to help others. But none of this is like being tortured over a long time to where you barely know yourself and people can start putting shit in. It's not about having ideals and priorities. It's what one needs to be whole.

So assuming the mind will always decide, are you sure every human being, regardless of their personality, would rape, torture and burn their family alive if a torturer persuaded them to do so? — Eugen

Oh, that I'm not sure of. Cause then ther person has to be functional. I think it is possible that if you systematically rape someone over long period of time while breaking down their minds in ways I have decribing and then build it up, that yes, everyone would be vulnerable to that. But I don't know. I have been arguing that anyone will give up secrets to end their suffering, regardless of the consequences - if the torturers have the time and know the tortures that do not risk killing the victim. Or that the person can be convinced they believe the opposite of what they do. To me that is different from being released to perform acts. I think it is possible we can all be Manchurian CAndidated. But I don't know.

How do you think psychiatrists determine what is, and what is not a hallucination? — Sam26

Via cultural biases - which may or may not be correct - their own estimations of the person they are dealing with and their own experiences.

I thought the idea was a tripartite set of watchers watching the watchers, each with the ability to intervene. Not that the President was the single unifying command, except, perhaps in war - which is one way the tripartite structure has fallen, since Presidents can de fact declare wars without Congress and have been using Executive Orders much more than Presidents used to. All by passing Congress. And since the Supreme court touches none of this, but could conceivably, they too have lost notches.

Couple all that with the incredibly power money has over government and we have a mess long before Trump came a long with his circus.

I think mind/consciousness + unconscious = brain. I also think free will is the capacity of the conscious brain (mind) to act against all instincts, desires (physical/biological/deterministic desires). — Eugen

I wouldn't want to act against all desires. More or less by definition.

But if free will does exist, then there's a fight between the unconscious brain who says "please make it stop!" and the mind who says "this thing is bigger than life, pain, mental state and everything else, so I will not give up!". — Eugen

But in the end it isn't bigger than that. I want to take care of me. That's a big priority. I don't want to sacrifice myself.for ideals. I would see it a bit like an animal that freezes and stops feeling when the lion is eating its guts out. Or, a pause that reduce the long term damage by giving in now. This need not be a mental conscious choice but an organismic one. Just as I would not fight physically in some situations with a swat team bearing down on me. Survive, live to (hopefully) later return to myself another day. I think the organism should make this turn. I am not even sure it is a giving up.

I'm not sure what the difference is between those two wording with money. I have a belief, either way, in relation to the existence of God. I have no belief eithe way about the existence of God. Let's take a more mundane example of 'agnositicism'

I believe there is a feline, somewhere in the jungles or forests of the world, that has not yet been catalogued by scientists.

I do not believe there is a feline, somewhere in the jungles or forests of the world, that has not yet been catalogued by scientists.

IOW what would get called a 'new species' that might be discovered.

Neither of those fits for me. I lack BOTH beliefs. There might be. I would tend to guess we would have found one by now, but I am not sure.

I believe neither one of those statements.

I don't have any belief there is such a feline. I don't have any belief there is no such feline.
I have no belief there is such a feline. I have no believe there isn't such a feline.

I don't see what those two wording clarify or inform us or box someone in to differently from each other.

What I'm saying is that indeed, in most cases people give up long before the mind is shattered. But in some cases, incredible people just won't give up until it's simply physically impossible to oppose. But when that happens, it is NOT the mind that takes the decision, but the reptilian brain. — Eugen

I don't see the mind and the brain as different, just self on a spectrum. This is because I don't think 'physical' means anything other than 'real'. It used to mean something but no longer. They're both self and neither one is solid.

- no, to my mind those who resist for a good cause are pure heroes, nothing macho. — Eugen

The fantasy is not that one can resist or does, it's that you can choose regardless.

that's NOT free will. — Eugen

I'm not taking a stand on free will or determinism and in fact I consider myself agnostic on the issue. I do think we can do to minds something that parallels using force on bodies.

Put the blame on him for breaking? Never! — Eugen

Great.

That "connection" that you are talking about was used by the physically unfit to get help from others and survive. — BraydenS

It was used by all members of society. We're social mammals and our success is based on social skills and our large brains, it seems, evolved in part to deal with just how complicated social interactions are. Of course, domination (or aggression, defense, killing for food, killing members of other groups) all were parts of our lives) but it is certainly not just the unfit that benefitted or had these connections. A big reason why we are the apex predator on the planet are our connections with each and that we support each other, both men and women.

I am not sure you actually disagree. I went back through the discussion and still couldn't decide. It may have been a one off sentence that I am miscontexting, but heck, I thought I'd react.

:smile:

I do think philosophy can help, I think active relationship type experiences are even more important. Cross cultural experience, learning other languages, altered states of consciousness, travel, cross class experiences, cross species experiences, really intense and respectful long term encounters with the opposite sex where one really tries to be open to what the other person is experiencing and saying, interactions with people with odd and unique minds, therapy, phenomenlogy of language (which might never come up in philosophy, though it's a part of it, contemplation, time in nature not as a tourist but immersive, long study of interpersonal dynamics including feedback from those people and experts, anthropology....you also need to get to a place where you can tolerate a lot of cognitive dissonence and further to be able to accept the most ego-dystonic stuff imaginable in yourself. Without that one's introspection will have such a powerful confirmation bias that one simply cannot see what one is assuming and why one is assuming it. One will buy one's own pr. I think we vastly overestimate the power of thinking about things with words. We can notice in interactions with others how seldom people change their minds because someone else made a compelling argument around deep beliefs. Life experience, especially radically new life experience, however often leads to change. And active interaction with feedback (or perhaps a better word would be 'response' from that 'other'), rather than simply passively experiencing something, can be even more valuable.