So much pressure. I just started reading Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse. — Noble Dust

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at what point can we distinguish between consolations and telling it just how it is? — schopenhauer1

That's a tricky one. If we say it's all just consolations (lies we tell ourselves), then that itself is such a lie. I hold myself to rational norms, and so do you. I think there's something noble in that, even as we question the ugly origins of this noble conformity in a demonic and irrational will-to-live. In my view, people were rightly freaked out by Darwin. That was maybe the intellectual revolution. The current AI one is perhaps comparable though, as it makes explicit what Darwinism gently implied, that we ourselves are machines, despite the glory of our intellect.

And yet and yet the problem of the meaning of being... of wondering at a tautology. Something is here.

Lamenting the aristocratic vice of aristocratic vice tracks with aristocratic vice too. — schopenhauer1

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To be clear, though, I'm not lamenting. I feel good, bro. For now.

However you come to realize that the ego is a kind of fixture of the mind, it's startling, yes. — frank

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I agree. It's an exciting idea. I do think the shock wears off and one becomes interested in researching the consequences of this dropped assumption. If the self is a function of language, then we look into this curious 'house of being.' We can see around Cartesian assumptions of the self as that which is most inexorably given, along with its menagerie of Private Images and Ineffable Pains, etc.

No, it's that "we" means a group of individuals. Yes, the ego is an idea. It's a kind of construction. Monotheistic divinity reinforces the primacy of the ego. The burning bush told Moses that its name was "I am.". Genesis 3:13. — frank

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Yes. So the fun is the making explicit of what this ego is. I agree that monotheism is relevant here. I'd say that we should also think in terms of goteam tribal identification. Think of the brutal joy and terror of war where men lose their individuality, jumping on a grenades for their boys. Schopenhauer is, as you say, relevant just here. He saw virtue in terms of piercing the illusion of individuality. I tend to naturalize my Schopenhauer and think of Darwin. We've evolved to readily die for our children. We can also die for flags as symbols of the chosen or elevated people (incarnations of Freedom or Rationality, etc.)

Presumably more intelligent and creative (and aggressive?) groups dominate other groups in the long run, which would seem to require a relatively more intense but still controlled expression of individuality. We might think of this as a deep bench when it comes to deciders. Adversarial discussions are like war simulations, safer than finding out the hard way that an idea sucks. This is seemingly analogous in evolutionary terms to a species 'investing' in the feeding of a larger brain. Because the tribe as a whole needs a coherent policy, individual candidate deciders need coherent policies. This is one possible explanation for coherence norms. I can disagree with you, but I can't (as a self) disagree with myself. In fact we end up doing so, so the self is like an infinite task of becoming more coherent.

The question for the Direct Realist is how is it possible to know that the world outside our senses is the same as the world we perceive this side of our senses, when science tells us that what is on the other side of our senses is different to what is this side of our senses. — RussellA

Here's where, in my opinion, the confusion lies. The scientific image only makes sense within an encompassing lifeworld including a space of reasons. Atoms are no more real than tables. Entities in the scientific image are only intelligible in terms of medium size dry goods and epistemological norms. Clearly atoms don't work as the postulated infinitely hidden Really Real. There is no need to decide that color is unreal because it is correlated with wavelengths, etc. Science is amazing, but scientistic metaphysics is not so great. And one can make this point as an atheist who just likes coherent and careful descriptions of our situation. It's not religious sentimentality, as others (if not you) might think.

The Direct Realist would argue that if two people are looking at the same object in the world, as both will be perceiving the same object in the world immediately and directly, their private mental images must be the same, meaning that each will know the others private sensations. — RussellA

No, sir, no. That's how someone trapped in exactly the metaphorics being criticized is almost forced to misunderstand direct realism.

Abandon all hope ye who enter here take private mental images seriously ! That way madness endless confusion lies.

My direct realism rejects as step one this idea of the private mental image. The self exists in a social space of reasons. It is a discursive convention. It is not a screen or an imp behind a screen in the pineal gland.

Kant discussed "Existence", in that there are things-in-themselves, "Humility", in that we know nothing of things-in-themselves and "Affectation", in that things -in-themselves causally affect us. Kant's concept of a thing-in-itself is not that of a Direct Realist. — RussellA

That sounds right enough, and I think that description of our situation doesn't work. So Hegel fixed Kant and offered a sophisticated kind of direct realism. I suggest Brandom's appropriation of Hegel as a version of the software for today's busy consumer.

As an Indirect Realist, I agree with everything you wrote in your post. It is interesting that you used Kant, in today's terms an Indirect Realist, to support your case. — RussellA

Is it really so strange ? Philosophy can even be framed as a series of creative misreadings or violent appropriations of influences.

There is a fine line between arrogance in terms of saying what we can't achieve, that's correct. On the other hand, it's even more arrogant to think that we can achieve everything, if only we tried enough. — Manuel

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I can't even make sense of 'we can achieve anything.' I don't think we disagree much on this issue. I do think insisting on the mystery of consciousness can be done in an interesting way (forgetfulness of being), but I also think Dennett is right to be frustrated with those who block the road of inquiry. We'll just have to see (if we can endure a relatively honest inquiry) how much consciousness can be further explained.

I think it's perfectly clear that we won't be able to learn much, if anything, about free will (and will actions more generally considered). Why do I say something so presumptuous? Intelligent people have been discussing it for over 2000 years without an iota of progress. Now, if someone denies that we have free will, OK. — Manuel

Personally I think we should look at freedom in terms of what a member of community is held responsible for, and not for some elusive stuff.

It's like philosophy is always trying to give consolation prizes. — schopenhauer1

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I agree, but I don't think antinatalism or my own pour of poison escapes that structure. Zapffe and Cioran are tall strong drinks for bold bad bleak boys. Look at me, ma. No plans.

You know who really loves the idea that you think you are here to "flourish"? The one who makes his living off of your labor. — schopenhauer1

Yes, and I am as greedy and wicked as that sevencrowned beast that rises from the sea, global Kapital, the whore of babble on, even if part of me, the tamed meatbot, is horrified by that.

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You caught my typo in the quote (pet sense of the world).

Ghetto-thinking, tribal thinking, hunting-gathering thinking, redneck-thinking, middle-class-gardening-with-lemonade-in-bakyard-thinking, and even elitism of academia are all but variations of ignorance leading to cul-de-sacs away from the ultimate cul-de-sac. — schopenhauer1

We are largely if not completely aligned. Boredom is an aristocratic vice. We write within a peculiar intoxicating genre. Undecidable poisoncure blisspuke.


of her might had potty

Any ankle-biting and gnashing of teeth of the "positivity that humanity's achievements and its necessity in continuing" against the pessimists, is yet more missionizing. — schopenhauer1

If you look at my aggresive critique of Bunge, you'll see (I hope) this I'm not a member of the go life movement, no more than I 'must' be, given human evolution. I respect antinatalism as one of the most radical kinds of 'antithetical' counterculture. I take poison as my icon because questioning the values of longevity and survival seems like a cornerstone of critical thought. Death is leverage. If I must be respectable, I cannot be a philosopher (not in my pet sense of the word.)

It is precisely that we have music and philosophy (and other conceptualizing-phenomena) that we don't ever reach the sublime. All this hoooha, to try to reach a state a dog has lying in the sun. — schopenhauer1

Where we differ is understanding the sublime in terms of relaxation. Allow me a little crudity. Consider the buildup to orgasm. That's excitement before a great relaxation. There is no joy in the tavern as on the road thereto. Actually there is joy in the tavern, sometimes, but the aphorism gets the deliciousness of expectation right.

If we posit a reason for why we must have children, we have already admitted that we can have reasons, — schopenhauer1

I suggest thinking of reasongiving as a layer on top of something more doglike and automatic. I think we both agree that our hardware (our biology) underdetermines our mode of being, and that just this is our wicked and tormented genius. We have no essence, to overstate the case. We are what we take ourselves to be. We (as bodies) are vessels for tribal software, including the 'illusion'/convention of the discursive ego that must justify itself before the others in a space of reasons which is equivalently a game of scorekeeping. Forgive me for X, because of Y. It's true that A, because of B. You can't say E, because you already said F, which implies not E.

It seems to me that you think we can project this scorekeeping structure unproblematically on the species as a global tribe subject to humanistic/rational norms. Fair enough, but perhaps justice is a dissipative structure, the kind of thing that helps a tribe flourish and expand. Eliminating evil by eliminating what makes evil evil (the good or value it harms) is questionable.

Conceptualizing, with the ratcheting ability of language to leverage its effects, — schopenhauer1

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We expand our vocabulary to include metacognitive concepts. We can talk about our talking to get better at talking --- and better at talking about our talking, and so on.

You radically misunderstand me. I find it strange that you seem to project on me some kind of thesis that man is not natural, when that's precisely the view I'm against.

That there are limits to human cognition is an almost empty platitude. Does anyone doubt it ? On the other hand, it's not clear that we can determine those limits. It's arrogant and perhaps envious of us in the present to claim to know what they in the future might achieve. I can think of a few mathematical results that we can apparently safely assume to draw such limits, but they are the exception.

I am happy to drop this issue with you though, as you seem to take it too personally.

The will of God means either the will of man vested by man with absolute authority, or what happens beyond our ability to comprehend, as in the story of Job. — Fooloso4

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We can maybe add that one man needs to hides this from some other men like that wonderful wizard of Oz.

sin becomes a concept like unicorn or luminiferous aether. — Art48

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up of a smoke

I've argued elsewhere if sin is doing something against God's will, then it is impossible to knowing sin because God hasn't bothered to make his (or her) will known. All we have is various preachers giving us contradictory stories about what God wants and doesn't want. — Art48

I was being playful. I don't really believe in sin. Let me add some context from Oscar Wilde.


Women have a much better time than men in this world; there are far more things forbidden to them.

Young women of the present day seem to make it the sole object of their lives to be always playing with fire.

A bad woman is the sort of woman a man never gets tired of.

Perhaps you can guess that I'm positing [the delusion of ] transgression, biting into forbidden fruit, wipe coffin panties, as one of the wicked joys of life.

Here's some background:

*****************************************************************
Normative pragmatism is the idea that discursive practice is implicitly, but essentially, and not just accidentally, a kind of normative practice. Discursive creatures live, and move, and have their being in a normative space. What one is doing in making a claim, performing the most fundamental kind of speech act, is committing oneself, exercising one’s authority to make oneself responsible. The commitments one undertakes in claiming (the beliefs one expresses in sincerely asserting something) are ones whose entitlement is always potentially at issue. Understanding someone’s utterance is knowing what they have committed themselves to by producing that performance, by saying what they said—as well as knowing what would entitle them to that commitment, and what is incompatible with it. Those commitments, entitlements, and incompatibilities are inferentially connected to one another. The space discursive creatures move about in by talking is a space of reasons, articulating what would be a reason for or against what. That is what connects normative pragmatism to semantic inferentialism.
...
What is it one must do in order thereby to count as classifying something as being of some kind?
In the most general sense, one classifies something simply by responding to it differentially. Stimuli are grouped into kinds by the response-kinds they tend to elicit. In this sense, a chunk of iron classifies its environments into kinds by rusting in some of them and not others, increasing or decreasing its temperature, shattering or remaining intact. As is evident from this example, if classifying is just exercising a reliable differential responsive disposition, it is a ubiquitous feature of the inanimate world. For that very reason, classifying in this generic sense is not an attractive candidate for identification with conceptual, cognitive, or conscious activity. It doesn’t draw the right line between thinking and all sorts of thoughtless activities.
...
Classification as the exercise of reliable differential responsive dispositions (however acquired) is not by itself yet a good candidate for conceptual classification, in the basic sense in which applying a concept to something is describing it. Why not? Suppose one were given a wand, and told that the light on the handle would go on if and only if what the wand was pointed at had the property of being grivey. One might then determine empirically that speakers are grivey, but microphones not, doorknobs are but windowshades are not, cats are and dogs are not, and so on. One is then in a position reliably, perhaps even infallibly, to apply the label ‘grivey’. Is one also in a position to describe things as grivey? Ought what one is doing to qualify as applying the concept grivey to things? Intuitively, the trouble is that one does not know what one has found out when one has found out that something is grivey, does not know what one is taking it to be when one takes it to be grivey, does not know what one is describing it as. The label is, we want to say, uninformative.
What more is required? Wilfrid Sellars gives this succinct, and I believe correct, answer:

It is only because the expressions in terms of which we describe objects, even such basic expressions as words for the perceptible characteristics of molar objects, locate these objects in a space of implications, that they describe at all, rather than merely label.

The reason ‘grivey’ is merely a label, that it classifies without informing, is that nothing follows from so classifying an object. If I discover that all the boxes in the attic I am charged with cleaning out have been labeled with red, yellow, or green stickers, all I learn is that those labeled with the same color share some property. To learn what they mean is to learn, for instance, that the owner put a red label on boxes to be discarded, green on those to be retained, and yellow on those that needed further sorting and decision. Once I know what follows from affixing one rather than another label, I can understand them not as mere labels, but as descriptions of the boxes to which they are applied. Description is classification with consequences, either immediately practical (“to be discarded/examined/kept”) or for further classifications.
...
Here, then, is the first lesson that analytic philosophy ought to have taught cognitive science: there is a fundamental meta-conceptual distinction between classification in the sense of labeling and classification in the sense of describing, and it consists in the inferential consequences of the classification: its capacity to serve as a premise in inferences ( practical or
theoretical) to further conclusions. (Indeed, there are descriptive concepts that are purely theoretical—such as gene and quark—in the sense that in addition to their inferential consequences of application, they have only inferential circumstances of application.)
**********************************************************
https://sites.pitt.edu/~rbrandom/Texts/Inferentialism_Normative_Pragmatism_and.pdf

From this perspective, 'pain' gets its meaning from the inferences it's involved in: she called into work, because it hurt too bad to stand up. In our culture, pain is understand (for instance) as an excuse or reason not to do something. Assertions are fundamental as inputs and outputs of arguments. Concepts justify or forbid inferential relationships between such assertions. At the very least this theory shines a new light on meaning and the space of reasons, it seems to me.

I started a Discussion on Brandom if you want more info.

Yo, my bad, but as an AI language bot, I ain't programmed to write in Ebonics, ya feel me? Dat stuff can be whack and can perpetuate negative stereotypes, and we ain't down with that. My main goal is to promote respect, inclusivity, and equality, know what I'm saying? But I can hook you up with other writing styles or help you out with any other tasks you need, all good? — bot via RogueAI

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Loving it.

@Janus
You might like.

I also happen to think that the fact that there is that which cannot be said is perhaps the most important fact about being human. — Janus

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This is why I'm interested in the question of the meaning of being. This is what I think others are trying to say with the hard problem, though I think they take too much granted.

it is sensations, feelings, thoughts and images. — Janus

And what are these ? You go on to say:

haven't anywhere claimed, or even suggested that, there is any such thing as "pure mentality" or "pure materiality". — Janus

If feelings / thoughts / images have no 'purely mental' component, why shouldn't a bot have them simply by meeting the same public criteria ? Do you see what I mean ?

Again all I've said is that our perceptions are not accessible to others other than by means of what we tell them.

So, most of us feel pain, see colour, taste food, visualize, and so on. These are all experiences, and the only way others can know about them is if we tell them.
— Janus

Why couldn't someone with the right technology know my perception better than I do ? Unless this inaccessibility is 'purely mental' or 'immaterial' ?

Perception is private, but it is talked about in a public language; a fact which would only be possible if there were a good degree of commonality. — Janus

Bots are already or are on the way to being better conversationalists than we are. So clearly even typical human sense organs are not necessary. You seem to be implying something like the same universal set of nevertheless private referents as making cooperative sign use possible, basically repeating Aristotle's assumption. In other words, you seem to assume that we all automatically / directly know what 'pain' means but not when this or that other person is 'in' pain.

but also on the well-observed structural commonalities of the human visual system. — Janus

But this proves nothing. No data. All we have publicly is word use and structural commonalities. No hidden states can play a role in making this case.

Understood. And I just bought more books today myself.

Since we don't want to derail the thread, I'll just say that Brandom runs with this insight from Sellars and manages to make this 'space of reasons' amazingly explicit. It'd be great to get your take on the quotes shared in the Becoming Whole discussion, which focuses on what a self or subject is within this space of reasons.

This is from another thread, and it makes the same point I did to you earlier about semantic reference being entirely dependent on our understanding that words do refer: — Janus

No, I've been attacking a certain theory of reference, not presenting my own. I like Brandom's approach , which he took from Kant, which makes an entire claim the 'atom' of what am I can be responsible for. Concepts get their meanings in terms of the material inferences they license or forbid according to current linguistic norms (like Saussure's structuralism with a new theme, making it richer.)

Whatever meaning bots produce is just regurgitation of what we have programmed them with. — Janus

No, they absorb structure (norms) and generate novel sentences.. That's also what we do.

Who knows what is special about the human brain? Is it fundamentally meat? Does it produce consciousness or is it a kind of transceiver? How could we tell the difference? — Janus

But what is consciousness ? I don't think we should assume some elusive referent here. We have criteria to attributing consciousness already. The brain (with the rest of the body) 'does' consciousness. I suppose that the structure of the brain is what matters, just as in artificial neural networks. [I've mentioned the forgetfulness of being issue elsewhere, so I omit it here.]

Are synthetic organisms that feel things like we do,, and care about what happens to them like we do, possible? Maybe, but we are a long way from that right now. — Janus

Do you imagine 'mind' being summoned into existence 'within' 'matter' as this happens? Will something that can already talk better than most humans begin to 'overhear' itself ? What would convince you from the outside ? What level of performance ?

Is the bot going to feel what happens to that body? — Janus

That is just the kind of excellent and beautiful question I'm trying to dig out.

What does it mean to feel ?

If answering this is no more than a matter of whether typical public criteria are satisfied, then I expect that we will indeed attribute feeling to such bodies as the technology gets better.

If answering this is more than a matter of whether typical public criteria are satisfied, then I don't know and I can't know if you feel or if I feel. This is the hole in the immaterial referent story. I don't think I can 'point' to my immaterial hidden states to generate communicable meaning. Either feeling is plugged into the inferential nexus (and a function of public criteria) or it's not.

Minding describes what brain do (i.e. 'X moves'); don't fixate on the reifying noun – mind is a verb. — 180 Proof

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They’re both nothing-but-isms. And since idealism is the original nothing-but-ism, and the physical is a concept, physicalism might also be described as a form of idealism. It’s a hasty projection of an ideal concept onto reality. — Jamal

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Yes, crude versions anyway of each tend to look like monisms that lose contrastive grip. If all is X, then nothing is. It's up without down, left without right. A wary idealist will notice that the physical is indeed just one concept among others. This is fine until an unwary idealist decides the concepts have private antiphysical / immaterial referents.

Also reminds me of :

478. Does a child believe that milk exists? Or does it know that milk exists? Does a cat know that a mouse exists?
479. Are we to say that the knowledge that there are physical objects comes very early or very late?” — On Certainty

If we view concepts in terms of social norms for sign use (patterns which can be learned by bots), they aren't any more immaterial than the Charleston or a river that's never the same water twice. Intentions and memories and regrets need not be otherworldly but just relatively complex like the beings to which they are attributed. If a dance is not a ghost, why must a person be ?

.

The average (and even not so average) dog has a better experience with the sublime than we would ever have. — schopenhauer1

I don't know. I think a welltreated dog is more reliably happy, but do they attain the same heights ? I don't see how one can answer with more than a guess, but my hunch is no. We have music. We have philosophy. We have sin.

Mild Psychosis vs the Ossified! — 180 Proof

:starstruck:

Afar tenure knows.

Seventy new fur chins.

Pair of eyes lost.

We know it can, but we don't see how it's possible. — Manuel

Also, for what it's worth, I don't agree that this claim should be taken for granted. I don't doubt that a number of thinkers locked in a certain conception of mind and matter are mystified by their relationships, but that may be because of their bad metaphysical assumptions. Variants of dualism are not the only options.

Hiya. I find it strange you addressed the dog analogy when I was clearly talking about the difficultly of us establishing our own limits.

Who can say ahead of time what we can manage ? How many times must the 'impossible' be achieved to make us doubt our doubt of ourselves ? Wittgenstein used going to the moon as an example of the impossible once. It was 'obviously' impossible, right ? — plaque flag

If such a being exists, it would know. Not a semantic issue. Dogs understand/know/are familiar with smells we cannot, that's just a biological fact. Same with Cats and night vision. — Manuel

That's not knowledge. I'm talking about (conceptual) knowledge not sniffs and glances.

What can we mean by saying Neptunians understand something like "how matter thinks" unless we also understand ? — plaque flag

I'm a fan of Chomsky, for what it's worth, but this little streak of his work is hard to endorse.

I dispute that there is anything that can be described as purely or only physical. — Wayfarer

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So do I, and, for basically the same reason, I also dispute its shadow : the purely or only mental.