How do you know that their behaviour is not rational "like our behaviour is rational"? Is there some other kind of rational that it could be? — Ludwig V

Animals have behaviors, many of which humans share (eating, sleeping, hunting, etc.). One of the behaviors humans exhibit is reasoning, or being rational. This involves language and communication with other reasoners.

I see no need to explain the behavior of animals as involving the human behavior we call reasoning.

There is no reason to think the sun is communicating with Mercury when the sun heats it up. The sun never says “look at me, see how hot I am.” We could use that metaphor, but we would be silly to assume that Mercury could be conscious of the sun or its communication, or that the sun is conscious of itself as bright and hot or that the sun now conscious of this would try to communicate it.

I think because animals have consciousness and because reason pervades human consciousness so deeply, we just assume (personify) that all higher consciousness involves an inner life of reasoning and communicable conceptualizing. I disagree.

Animals make sounds and other other animals react to those sounds. Humans see this as communication. But the animal that made the sound may have been forced to make that sound by some conditions, just like the other animal that responded to that sound was forced to respond. Nothing need be in between them called a “communication” - we reasoning humans make that relationship and call it a separate thing called “communication.” These are just on-off switches.

Because of the debate between free will and determinism, we might say that humans are not actually rational either, incapable of communicating a single communication clearly. Equating human behavior with animal behavior along the lines that none of us are using reason or making communications seems an easier argument than saying human and animal behaviors are equal in that they both involve levels of reasoning and communication.

Dog barks to warn the pack? Or a dog sees something and just bursts into a bark? Pack hears one of its members making barking sounds and thinks “what is wrong?” Or pack just hears barking sounds and moves directly towards whatever range of responses have survived the evolutionary process?

Dogs may be better off because they don’t reason. No such thing a paralysis by analysis for any other than a rational being.

It’s very romantic to personify things. Like the warm embrace of the dawn after the night’s unrelenting assault of darkness and cold. But not necessary to explain it. There is no dawn or night who is communicating anything.

Lastly, this doesn’t mean reason didn’t arise in the universe from physical causes. That’s a different question too. Again, who cares whether dogs or humans live better, or worse, or higher or lower - I’m not attributing reason to a higher, immortal soul or something - but saying humans and dogs both reason and communicate makes no sense to me. (Although the vast, vast majority of people today talk like this and believe this.)

Humans bother to seek and communicate reasons and ideas through language with other humans. Dogs don’t bother with all of that. Neither does the sun. Every sound isn’t a word. Every response of a conscious animal isn’t born out of a self-reflective process of reasoning.

I don’t know this for sure.

But seems to me, if any thing in the universe used reason, it could make that ability clear to me by communication. Nothing else bothers to communicate a reasonable idea besides other humans.

where Evidence and Facts are absent — I like sushi

Oh. So the issue is purely psychological. All evidence for god is hallucinatory or fraud.

You are saying humans have psychological drive (for some unknown reason) to reach the highest high and brag about it to other humans.

My sense of philosophers is the opposite - I ask of them all, why do others take this one seriously? What was this philosopher’s take and why did it gather enough traction to find its way to all of us?

That is always interesting to me.

And conversely, I never understood how someone could say “I am a Hedeggerian, or I’m a Platonist or I’m a Kantian.” None of them said enough that I would place myself under such a narrow bucket. Never understood that.

But to answer your question from the other side, the philosophers who said the most and are the most interesting (to me) are Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Nietzsche (and existentialism). But you need so many others to really see what they are talking about, and those others said so many things not addressed by these.

The most over-rated, for me, are Wittgenstein and Heidegger. And the most under-appreciated are Heraclitus, Parmenides, and Hegel.

And in the west, eastern thought (Vedanta, Taoism, Buddhism) is under-appreciated. Perfectly interesting metaphysics, epistemology, ontological and empirical observation, and great ethics and even some good politics all over eastern thought.

If one really engages in the questions and the conversation, you become interested in a lot. Schopenhauer is as important as Sextus Empiricus or John Locke if you really are digging.

All of Post-modernism - Derrida, Foucault, Rorty, Lyotard - way over-rated. But interesting. (If find it most interesting that, given the conclusions and dogma of the post-modernists, that they continue speaking at all.)

having a competitive streak in the realm of abstraction that led to ideas of God and other comparative ideological schemes beyond the Western concept of God? — I like sushi

Is this question being asked on the assumption that there is no actual god, and that “god” like a “garden gnome” was purely fabricated for some small individual purpose or simple pleasure?

When you abstract, you make a universal. When you make a universal, you now see something else besides the particular. You see particulars and abstractions or universals.

So I wouldn’t say you need competitiveness or exaggeration to come up with the idea of god. God shows up when you abstract the abstraction and universalize making universals. God is the universal mind like a mind makes the universal everything else.

In other words, by simply being a human and simply forming abstractions, forming an abstraction of a universal mind seems inevitable.

Thunder and lightening are the hand of Thor or Zeus - from thunder and lightening we abstract the idea of power over and above human control and survival, the abstract of idea of life and death itself (a universal like “biology”)and then seeing that some people do survive such powerful, uncontrolled experiences, we abstract the idea of a person behind such power so we can give an account of why some survive the thunderstorm and others do not. Hence Thor.

One can universalize the abstract idea of love and build a god.
Or the universal idea of intelligence and build a creator.
Or the universal idea of balance and build a whole religion or set of practices.

"Existence of God" (false predication) =/= "God exists" (re: matter of fact). — 180 Proof

We are actually agreeing here. The OP asks if anyone can “prove a god”.

”proof" pertains only to logic and mathematics, not to matters of fact, — 180 Proof

That’s my point. I took the OP to be asking for someone to argue (provide words) whose conclusion is “therefore God exists.” (More words).

"God" is an empty name that "exists" only in the heads — 180 Proof

Right. That’s your experience. You talk about essential features such as “name” and “empty” in reference to a “God” and the assert it exists in heads. That’s a common experience (or lack thereof).

My point is that if God is sitting anywhere, in a head occupying an empty placeholder space or on a throne in heaven, the existence of this God itself cannot be proven. We are only able to use proofs to prove WHAT a God is (such as an empty name), but you can’t prove the existence of this thing, be it a God or an emptiness in a head.

Proof is for drawing connections/relations between things that we otherwise assume or assert exist. Proof doesn’t come to a conclusion showing that one of these assumptions must exist absent its relation to anything.

I can prove if 2 is added with 2 you get 4. I can’t prove 2 exists. Or addition. Or 4.

Can anyone prove a god, I enjoy debates and wish to see the arguments posed in favour of the existence of a god. — CallMeDirac

Can anyone prove the existence of their self? (I mean Descartes thought he did, but he only proved his self to his self. He didn’t prove Descartes existed to any of us.)

Can anyone prove the existence of the philosophy forum?

I don’t think existence is subject to proof. All of the philosophers who assert existence as a conclusion at the end of an argument are wrong, or they are really talking about what the essence of some existing thing is, rather than the existence of that thing.

Proofs are about what a thing is and what it is not, not whether a thing is or whether it is not.

The only proof for God’s existence (or the existence of any particular object) would come from one individual’s experience and would only serve as “proof” to that particular individual about the existence of some particular thing.

We don’t prove existence. We assert “if X exists…” and then make proofs concerning attributes about X. But X might not exist and can never be made into a proof.

"I" is the entire process. We are misled into thinking that decision is separate from action is just a result of the fact that we can interrupt the process of action part way through - aborting a process, not completing one process and starting the next. If you think of decision as an action distinct from execution, you end up with an infinite regress. — Ludwig V

Good stuff.

Reflection (mind that is minding, or “I” that is “I-ing”), is the interruption. Reflection has its own motion, but it is an interruption of the motion of that which it is reflecting on. So the movement of reflection creates a stillness in the thing someone is reflecting on.

This creates confusion about what is moving and what is staying the same.

My sense is that animals don’t waste any of this time - they don’t interrupt the motion by creating a still reflection (of a moving thing) that they can reflect upon.

Do animals have rational thinking? Do animals have communication skills? Is intuitive thinking rational or maybe something better? — Athena

I see “rational thinking” and “communication skills” as parts of one thing - rational thinking is communicable thinking, communicable to other thinking (reasoning) things. Reason and language or math cohabitate the same moment.

Animals don’t need any of it. We personify animals when we call their behavior rational like our behavior is rational.

Our hand falls in the fire and our arm pulls it out. No rational thinking or communication necessary. Just a functioning body. That could be how animals do everything they do - they don’t reason and choose. They act. They function. Stimulus and response based on the shape of the stimulus and the shape of the responder.

Humans insert “reason” and deliberate some responses. We draw these deliberations out by communicating our reasons with other humans.

Our reasoning and communicating abilities sprouted from being an animal, so there is some value in comparing what humans do in reasonable deliberation with what animals do when they appear to have choices and when they appear to deliberate their behaviors, but once we see “rational thinking” and “communication” in any animal, we see a person. So if animals used rational thinking and communication, they would be people.

We only KNOW there is any other rational being in the universe when another rational being declares its reasons in a communication; otherwise how would we know? As soon as an animal is able to use reason, that animal is able to communicate with other reasoning minds. So as soon as an ape finds actual reason working in their conscious experience, we might be able to communicate with it and actually confirm it is using reason as it communicates reasonably.

Animals only appear to use reason and to communicate their minds because WE reasoning communicating creatures see ourselves in them, NOT because we see them.

They are better than that. Innocent of all moral deliberation and choice. Conscious thought would be more like a plague or disease to an animal. They already have no illusions (because they have no sense of illusion), so what is there for them to reason about? What communication is needed when they are all by nature already on the same exact page?

We have a narcissistic sense of animals when we pull reason and communication out of their behavior. We also have an imprecise sense of reason and communication when we find it in between two animals (unless those two animals are people.

Bee senses pollen.
Bee’s that sense pollen release pheromones.
Other bee senses pheromones.
Bee’s that sense these pheromones find the pollen.

No need to insert a human/person-like reason behind the pheromones that were released, or call the receipt of pheromones the receipt of a communication, or call the move to find the pollen a decision.

We humans take time to name all of these things and reconnect them with logical reasoning, and communicate these logical reasonings and names to other reasoning creatures.

Animals skip all the reflection; in fact, they don’t skip it, it never arises (and may not have anything in which it could arise in the first place).

No, we are the only ones plagued with reason and communication.

I my be off-topic here, but I can’t seem to sustain any discussion that touches on the essence or existence of the “I” and “willing” without addressing them generally regardless of any more narrow or more focused aspect of the discussion. So I hope this tangent is somehow instructive.

I see willing and the thing willed (two separate things, one being an act the other being an object) as one thing, or one act. I see paradox as the only explanation. Where I see one thing, there are two things.

When we will, we create the will that wasn’t there before we willed. So when we refer to “my will” as if it was something there beforehand out of which some particular object was chosen, we are not speaking properly. We don’t have to wonder where our will came from; we don’t have to wonder why I want the thing that I want, as if maybe I am only determined and incapable of free-will. The “my” and the thing in “my will” are generated at one and the same moment.

When we are not willing (possibly just observing or watching tv), there is no will and no thing willed; they don’t exist though we are observing or laughing or falling asleep. I don’t have to choose to see something as funny and impulsively laugh at it. But my will can be created in that same instant and resist the laughter. We create the grounds for freedom by willing. It’s one motion.

So the brain and the objects of consciousness are one, in the act of “braining” or “thinking” or “willing.”

No dualistic gap that begs any questions in between a brain and a freely chosen object by a subject needs to be bridged.

We are in each instant determined and purely driven by the physics of things, AND, as humans, at times, we also reflect on this determinism in those same driven instants, and NOW, taking a new position in the reflection (of our own creation), still in that same instant, we can begin to demarcate “I” and “my will”, making the objects of those reflected descriptions (reflections of of those same driven and determined things that came before the reflection). It’s all what being human is, what humans do.

We reflect and either rejoin the deterministic flow or remain in reflection - and that builds the space where any freedom might begin to emerge.

I have no idea how this is, but I also don’t see brain science as the essential part of the discussion. We can summarize the drivers of the deterministic world as the “humors” or “biles” or “chemistry” or cutting edge modern brain/neuro-science. But all of the testing that explains the drivers and the deterministic (brain) functions walks you further and further away from where the will is born, which is only in the reflection of those other things, only during a particular act of “willing” does the object of study persist. A non-deterministic space of possibility where “I” and “will” are first capable of birth.

Something must be particular for there to be a possibility of “my free will” at all. This would quickly seem to be a particular brain. But there needs to also be something else - namely, a reflection of the brain on the brain (which is really a body, which is really a body in an environment, etc…). The free will is born in a reflection of the determined necessities of the brain.

But dualism needs to be resisted to retain the existence of free-will. Constantly resisted as determinism takes hold the moment one is no longer willing to resist.

We have to free ourselves from ourselves in order to first become ourselves and not only be determined. We remain determined in each moment we might be free. And recognize that in the same instant we are free, it is a freedom that can only be used to re-participate with the deterministic necessities.

All of this, just to be a human.

The brain with its self-consciousness - and these are two subjects - at the same time are one subject of the subject is “my free will” - a wholistic view is necessary, with the physicalist aspects being less interesting; these are each the whole, and each a part of the same whole.

We are a contradiction. Saying “I” contradicts myself, which is a “brain saying ‘I’”. We are paradox. We fall from this precarious position when we slip into dualistic explanations, or slip into nihilism (no “I” and “no free will”).

When I say “I am an illusion” I am not admitting that “I am an illusion to myself.”

When I say “I can’t be free”, I am freely consenting to saying so. (Unless we can show there is no such thing as a reflection).

We are better off admitting “I don’t know what ‘I’ is, though I know that ‘I’ is”, and “I don’t know why I will what I will, but I will it when I am willing it, nonetheless.”

But without addressing the above somewhat, I don’t know how to address the ability to shape our own character.

That principle exists because humans exist. Once humans no longer exist, no need for preferences. I am not sure why this is so hard. — schopenhauer1

But what is wrong with inflicting suffering? Why is it wrong to torture babies to death and make more babies to torture them?

You need an ethics to argue torturing babies is wrong. It’s not obvious. Otherwise, like an orca teaching its young, torturing babies to death is just another motion in space, like any other, neither good nor bad.

WE say it is bad to inflict suffering without consent. WE create this rule, this ethic. Now that it’s created, WE can choose to act on it. And the ANist can determine that to not-procreate is to act on this new rule we created. And what is the good of this act?? What is the good of the rule? In the end, what is the reason there were humans once but are no longer any humans? The reason would be because of the ethics we created. Not any other reason.

So the ethics itself, the principle itself, for the ANist, is the higher goal than some condition or state in the ethical human being.

We create a problem (inflicting suffering without consent) to create a solution (not procreating) for sake of….
…upholding the principle, NOT for sake of any person. All things people are, to the ANist, something that SHOULD NOT persist, should not have come to be.

So AN upholds ethics to defeat ethics. It is literally for the sake of nothing.

In that case, it is legitimate to ask Why be ethical at all?

Instead of killing off the human race, we could all choose to kill off ethics. We could fight our instinct towards compassion (fight the pangs that arise when suffering is inflicted on another) instead of fighting our instinct to procreate?

Why must our response to compassion be the creation of ethics? If the answer involves humans (an individual, a community, possible future humans…) than antinatalist ethics make no sense as its goal is “no more humans is a good.”

the possibility of all future ethical agents" is not an actual human, but a reified concept — schopenhauer1

And the concept of "no consent" and the concept of "inflicted suffering on another" and the concepts of "good" and "ethics" are reified concepts. Not actual humans. No difference.

Rather, the ethics is incumbent on humans that already exist to follow in regards to future ethical agents. — schopenhauer1

You can't discard my reference to "the possibility of future ethical agents" as a mere reified concept, and then say ethics is incumbent on current people "in regards to future ethical agents."

This is the problem with the logic. You need certain things be in place as premises and principals, in order to demonstrate a world where none of these premises or principals need exist.

prefer to keep "Humanity and civilization going" — schopenhauer1

You need human civilization to exist for any human preference to exist at all. The ANist is using a preference to base a conclusion that preferences should not exist. If preferences should not exist, why prefer not to inflict harm? Unless you uphold the principal over the person.

Rather, the ethic is, "Do not cause unnecessary harm". — schopenhauer1

There is more to ethics than principles. Ethical principles are calls to action, prescriptions for behavior impacting other ethical agents - they are guides for physical, actual behavior in a society. AN ethical behavior based on principals (do not cause harm; procreation causes harm without consent) is for the sake and goal of eliminating all ethical action by eliminating all ethical actors. On principle, the ANist doesn't want any creatures that would have or construct principals to exist at all. On principle, principles should not drive action. That makes no sense.

So I ask, why would we use ethical principles (don't inflict harm) to make the world better if that better world doesn't need or have any ethical principals in it (because no ethical agents)? Why would I think it is good to follow any ethical principal that had the goal of building a society that had no need or place for ethics?

Rather, the ethics is incumbent on humans that already exist to follow in regards to future ethical agents. — schopenhauer1

What drives the notion "ethics is incumbent"? Why would you say that? We choose our ethics just as we choose our actions according to our ethics. If choosing and choosing ethically are so good they are "incumbent", why would we destroy the presence of these goods by building a world that had no ethical agents in it? Choosing must therefore be bad.

If humans exist, ethics towards other agents exist. If humans don't exist, this ethic is no longer needed. No humans = no ethics. If there are humans, then the ethic (of not procreating) remains. — schopenhauer1

If humans exist, ethics is possible, but need not exist - we are the only creatures who construct ethics, but before we construct it, ethics does not exist. AN is constructing ethics to construct a world without humans, as if the ethics of "not inflicting harm" was more important than the human that constructed this ethic. And all with the outcome of world where no creature could reconstruct this ethic and recognize how good all of those humans who did not procreate were back when they were living, ethical agents.

We don't exist SO THAT ethics can persist, but rather ethics exists because humans exist. — schopenhauer1

I agree - we don’t exist for ethics.

But AN is the ethical system that places the ethics above the humans.

For the ANist, the ethical principal is a higher good than the agent, because the ANist is willing to destroy the possibility of all future ethical agents for sake of upholding its ethical principal.

But if ethics tells me ethics should not exist, why would I think I should be ethical?

I exist, then ethics exists. If the ethics exists because of me, but this ethics tells me I should not exist, then the ethics should not exist either. So what is “wrong” about inflicting suffering without consent again? I was wrong to exist then so is my ethics wrong to exist. So why do a fabricate this whole ethical dilemma? Why not let the Forrest fire burn, the earthquake crumble, the storm drown, and the human procreate? Why not, if our ethics is nothing and for nothing?

The AN position upholds ethics above the ethical agent, in order to eliminate the agent and so eliminate the ethics.

That is what makes no sense to me.

There is nothing good about being ethical in a world that should not have ethics in it because it should not have humans in it.

Ethical agency doens't seem to me to make sense without a community. In other words, if, say, 'I act in order to bring the good to myself and to others', then I cannot 'ignore' the presently existent human beings and the human community in general. — boundless

I agree with that. Ethics is born, or created, in between, or out of, two or more people.

To me, the outcome doesn't matter. That is to say, we don't have a duty towards the outcome of "preserving humanity". Humanity isn't a subject for ethical concern. — schopenhauer1

In my view, saying “ethics” is to call up a community, such as “humanity.” So it doesn’t make sense (to me) to talk about AN without talking about both humanity and the individual; otherwise we aren’t doing ethics (or even psychology).

Humanity can be limited to all of those humans alive now, but this humanity is where any ethic is inflicted upon the universe. This ethics only emerges among humans (at least emerges as a topic of discussion only humans currently call “ethics”).

We, here on this thread, are building an ethical discussion. This is where ethics lives. Both within each individual as you read, and among us now exchanging these words of ethical wisdom.

Ethics itself, like this thread, is particular to humans, and out of this, the ANist shows that consent and suffering are paramount considerations, and out of these that we (humanity as each individual) must not procreate.

I still find AN difficult to fully grasp in its use of ethical reasoning to promote a world bereft of ethical reasoning, a world bereft of human procreation (humans being the creatures who use “ethical reasoning” as a thing).

I agree we are broken. I agree suffering is unavoidable and ubiquitous. And I agree compasssion is essential to ethics, a good, a virtue to be cultivated. And I agree it is “good” not to inflict suffering without consent. But I don’t see anything reasonable about eliminating the infliction of suffering by eliminating the ethics and compassion (along with the human species) that show us suffering is something to be compassionate about in the first place. It makes ethics itself potentially unethical, or non-sensical. It is either suicidal or nihilistic, not simply “good” anymore as “good” is no longer good.

When we end human procreation, we end the existence of compassion in the same universe that led us to be “ethical” and not procreate in the first place.

It’s like this: we all get together write a rule down and all sign it with full consent and the rule is “all of those who make rules must not procreate.” There need be no “good” in the rule or “reason” why the rule is written, because all “good” and “reason” will cease to provide account of anything at all where all those who make rules do not procreate.

because the world is perfectly ethical) — AmadeusD

Don’t you mean because the world is perfectly non-ethical?

the ultimate ethical goal of never needing ethics — AmadeusD

Therefore, antinatalism leads to the ultimate ethical goal of never needing ethics. — AmadeusD

Which is another way AN harms itself as a reasonable ethical system.

If the goal of ethics is to eliminate ethics, we could just ignore any pangs of morality now instead. Like ignoring pangs of procreation when trying to be an ethical AN.

If It’s all pang manipulation, why base the manipulations on any ethics, let alone an ethics that seeks to undo its application anywhere?

Sure, pain and suffering suck and sex feels good and so does a cheeseburger when you are hungry, but using scales of ethics and motality to help decide one’s way forward for sake of eliminating ethics is a bit like using math to show how numbers can’t exist (or in this case shouldn’t exist).

Suppose you somehow became convinced that Christianity is false. — Art48

I’m Catholic. Go to church every Sunday because the Church tells me to. Believe the history in the New Testament (because of the ethics in the whole Bible). Etc., etc. Am inspired almost every Mass to do something better.

But in my down time (most of the time) I use reason and my own wits to get through the day. I have little use for God in philosophical discussion for instance, or when crossing a busy street.

At one time I was convinced that the whole Catholic thing was another story, like so many others.

I became an atheist.

If Jesus didn’t really rise from the dead and didn’t promise eternal life, why would I (or anyone) bother to make some new delusion? Or look for some less interested form of “God” than a man who would die on a cross for me, to show me He is God and pave a way to eternity? With all of that out the window, what do we need any gods for anyway?

But then the question is, what if Reason itself was false, would you throw away all of your thinking and your languages and definitions and meanings (except for those meanings that were useful to cross the street safely, or as safely as possible I should say)?

If I realized that everything I realized was false, including this sentence, I wouldn’t do philosophy anymore either.

It's hard to know how ideas are constructed. — Jack Cummins

This is a major question of mine.

I am fascinated by the irony that right now, I am using ideas (such as "mind-dependent," "objective," "idealism", "dualism"...) to seek out what an idea is.

What materials am I manipulating right now as I ask this question? I have no idea, yet I have the idea that I have no idea.

Possible explanations have ranged from eternal platonic forms, to illusory emergent functions of language. No explanations are the least bit satisfactory.

When discussing ideas, I don't see how to avoid an immaterial type substance (forget dualism for a minute - I just needed another word for material so I didn't have to say "an immaterial type of material" but that is what I meant). An idea, whatever it is, wherever it sits in the universe, cannot, by definition, have a body (at least not a material one). If I teach you what my idea of a triangle is, and you take away the idea of a triangle and teach it to some other mind, the idea may never have resided apart from a mind (unlike a platonic form), but it can't be said that my triangle is any different than yours. Two ideas if they are two ideas of a triangle, are really one and the same idea - they must be identical (or you would not have the idea). This is physically impossible.

But at the same time, when discussing anything, I don't see how to avoid a material type substance. What does "exist" mean anymore if we say an idea exists without a body?

Lodging all of this discussion into brain functions, language functions, epiphenomena, compatibilist discussions does me absolutely no good, because they eliminate the immateriality aspects - it just never accounts for the objectivity of the fact that everywhere, every time, regardless of anything, if there is a triangle, there are three sides, identical always. A materialist explanation never accounts for the idea itself and we are left where we start - what just happened when I used an idea to make something happen? We have to leave the idea intact to finish any satisfactory explanation, because the explanation itself is an idea. Otherwise, we have this idea that ideas don't exist, and the irony smacks us in the metaphorical (not material) face.

Surreal is a good word for the title.

"Nothing to see here. Move along..."

It materializes out of thin air...
— Fire Ologist

Do you really think so? I don't. — Metaphysician Undercover

Saying it materializes out of thin air is shorthand for - who the hell knows yet.

Where precisely is the thin line between the identity we call a hurricane and the identity we call high pressure sunny - tough to tell, ever-shifting, ever coming to be and fading - but it materializes nonetheless.

If you study the weather, — unenlightened

Dude, I didn’t read your post yet when I wrote the below. Sounds like a similar page out of a similar book.

The only uniquely human aspect of this is talking about it. — Vera Mont

I agree. There is a problem of identity wherever we “identify” some unified thing. The identity of a “person” (so far) seems no different than the identity of a quantum field or the continent of Europe.

A unity (like a person, or Europe) is like a hurricane. It materializes out of thin air, is always in motion and changing its shape, at its eye it looks like a calm sunny day, at its fringes it looks like a light rain, but when it’s on top of you, a distinct clear unit called Hurricane Sandy cannot be denied.

We give hurricanes personal identity just like we identify ourselves. Names to help point at moving changing growing dying objects.

And I don’t see a problem with change and motion in the mix. When we say “I am” why can’t we complete the thought with “I am becoming?” A person (like any unity) does not have to either be fixed and permanent, or not exist at all. We can still make distinctions about things that are moving and changing - we affix permanence to them to point them out in space and time, for a little while, while they are here.

Essence may be undone in the becoming (just as essences come to be for a time in the becoming), but there are still essential features that distinguish a hurricane from a person, from me to you, from a quantum field…

But I wouldn’t want to deny the abyss either. Personal identity is. But personal identity is a fleeting thing.

Only God can save us from the becoming.

”Is a Utopian society possible?”

The angle of my question is … whether it’s philosophically possible.

What would Joy feel like without pain, what would riches mean without poverty or what would health mean without sickness. What would life mean without death? — kindred

By philosophically possible I take you to mean theoretically or rationally possible.

I don’t think it is theoretically possible to even imagine this life without pain or deprivation or suffering. These things are part of existence. So any possible Utopia would have to incorporate responses to these as they arise (as opposed to eliminating them). Like instead of never feeling hunger, you would be able to find good food available when hungry; instead of no pain, you would be able to get good medical attention when hurt, etc.

So we would need technological advances and political advances, but most of all, true humble service and charity and compassion towards others to build and live in a Utopia.

But sure, it’s philosophically possible. If all 8 billion of us wanted to, we could decide to stop lying, stop stealing, stop assaulting, stop killing, stop hating and judging, stop oppressing - we have that in our bag of theoretically possible tricks. But none of us care that much, or love that much, or trust others that much, and all of us judge others too harshly, and make ourselves feel better or safer by putting others down or oppressing or killing them.

So a Utopia is probably ONLY theoretically (philosophically) possible.

The mind is always constructing …. which triggers … the body...

Why does this misfiring of mind take place — ENOAH

The mind itself IS the misfiring. All else obeys the firing. But the misfire, the mind, does not, and this creates anxiety in a world that is firing.

a physical account is produced by making our words fit the world, while an intentional account supposes that we can change the world to fit our [words]. — Banno

I revised your quote because I think you are right there anyway. Take out the “supposes” too, because it is no different than “desires or intentions or fears, etc.”

An account of something physical (like the physical world) is produced by making our words fit the world; while an intentional account is produced by making the world fit my words (my ‘own’ words, my intentions, desires, myself, etc.).

Words to fit the world of other things besides me and besides my words, but now, accounted for as words - that’s a physical account.

Or, words can instead fit something (any else than solely/simply physical), like the world of thinking, where words are made to fit anything at all, where one intends something like “not this word but that one”, shaping a new world, bent not towards the physical world but to somewhere more specific, in the mind, or for another minds, now made of words in the accounting.

I love the short phrases that say a lot.

:up:

Do you think people who think more in images than in words are more prone to anxiety, worse attention, but on the other hand, more open to visions and revolutionary ideas? What helps you? For me, it's writing a journal. Tell me what is your voice — MorningStar

Anxiety is a sort of state where you are physically in one world (about to walk on stage to deliver a speech to 500 people), but psychologically/mentally detached - somewhere else, into your fears, maybe unable to walk on stage.

Thinking itself is like a non-emotional, but similar relationship with the world - you suspend or postpone the flow of thing to come; you treat the world that you are in as an object of thought. So thinking itself is like a ground for a more emotional relationship such as anxiety.

I don’t know if thinking more visually leads somehow to more anxiety (I do think visually and certainly get anxious). I think someone who thinks often ( which can be anyone of any intelligence) is more prone to anxiety.

If we don't have conscious control of how our intuitions shape our choices, do we have free will? — wonderer1

We don’t know where intuition really comes from just like we don’t know where desires come from - so the question of do we have free will remains unanswered, but I don’t think intuition makes it more difficult to answer - it was always difficult/impossible.

if asked about determinism, most people would say they have not heard of it, and would need it explained? — Patterner

I think most people see consciousness as something they know, and determinism as something they have a sense of, but don’t really know (as most people aren’t philosophers) but they get the idea of fate and lack of real control, and illusion sometimes defeating what was thought to be a free choice.

Logic operates on the side of the theory. Physics operates on the side of the model. — Tarskian

That would be one way physics on the one side, could explain logic on the other. But then explanations themselves are theories, so how could physics itself describe anything - logic does the talking.

Logic might more easily describe physics.

Or is the question more:
Does physics entail logic?
Are the pieces of logic physical things - brain functions?

I didn't think this OP was sprawling. I'll have to take another look. — isomorph

It could use a summary but I think I see you saying we in the west have much to learn - in method and in practical wisdom - from the east. And I agree with that.

You may be saying the west has been too narrowly focused to take a better view of the big picture. In which case I would disagree - I see logic, epistemology, metaphysics and early science embedded in Eastern thought, just as I see a mystical One, the essential place of paradox, the Negation (the empty, the nothingness), and the issues with “self” and language, all throughout Western philosophy, as well.

The East is better at pulling pearls of ethical, political, practical wisdom out of it. The West has been better at dissecting it and treating life/experience as a subject of scientific study.

But we are all looking at and for something that would unify all of us, any of us, it we found it. I don’t think East or West are better. Both hold wisdom and both hold mistakes. But I also think each could benefit from each other to build something more illuminating than either alone.

Consider these two sentences:
1. “This sentence has five words.” Or
2. “The sentence ’this sentence has five words’ has five words in it.”

Sentence number 2 is about something. Number one isn’t. The reader has to make 1 be about itself. In the sentence “This sentence has five words” you don’t know which sentence the speaker is taking about without being the speaker and pointing back to the sentence. Number 2 tells you what it is referencing, tells you what it is about.

Number 1 is a puzzle game, with missing pieces you have to bring with you to play; Number 2 is about counting words.

“This sentence is false” isn’t about anything that can be true or false. “Grammar is false” similarly isn’t about anything that can be true or false.

“Punctuation is true.”

What?

a statement declares a fact; it does not in addition instantiate that fact to a given truth value. — Devans99

Right. A statement is about something, and, as a statement is separate from that something.

But “this statement is false” is about itself.

So it has no content to refer to other than the fact that it is a statement.

a statement is associated with but distinct from a truth value. — Devans99

Right. And there is nothing distinct from this statement to adjudge its truth value, to adjudge its content.

I agree it is not a statement, meaning it is not about anything. Not in the normal use of statements. It’s a fun logical puzzle, where the exercise of playing with it can yield some content about logic and language and truth. But if you don’t bring that content with you, it says nothing about anything, like saying “this statement is Fred”.

Make existence great again. MEGA

I’m working on it..

I was saying choices don't have meaning, and aren't "actual" choices. — Patterner

:up:

The "me" is the physical events. — Patterner

Yes. I think I understood that.

Another certain group of physical events takes place, and we call the overall activity thinking. — Patterner

Yes, and in another certain group of physical events we call the overall activity “me choosing.”

So if all of the physical events are deterministic, what do we make of that choice?

If we say that choice can still be made out of me thinking, but me thinking is in turn made out of deterministic physical events, what do we make of that “me”?

I think the difficulty here is determinism makes it hard to explain what we experience (objects like “me” and activities like “deliberation”); non-determinism makes it hard to explain how our experience is even possible (who/what the hell am I to influence the causal chain).

Are personal changes roughly equivalent to volitional decisions? — ucarr

The mind, however it comes to be (such as consciousness with/in/of the brain) is simultaneous with decisions (judgments, choices) directing reason (logic, language, law). So yes, decisions/choices/judgments are bound up in it. (I have no real idea how, but I also don’t see chemistry or biology alone as ever accounting for what we are doing right now in this conversation).

You don't think personal cognition can evolve? — ucarr

I think the brain can evolve (over at least tens of thousands of years), and our minds can influence the physical world, so in the mix, personal cognition can evolve as our brains evolve; we may get faster at doing logic, higher percentages of higher intelligence in the population, able to multitask better, but thinking we are all subject to a king, and then discovering all men are created equal isn’t evolution in a non-metaphorical sense.

Zen Buddhists generally believe in determinism — flannel jesus

And they think the self is an illusion as well. And desire, which supports choice, is a frustration of the real.

Thank you for expressing to me your thoughts on the matter — flannel jesus

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe these thoughts and expressions have been determined since my youth and I am taking credit for them like a fire takes credit for boiling water. In any case, since you are giving me credit for “my” thoughts, you are welcome.

You think anarchy a companion to evolution? You think social welfare programs a perversion of nature? — ucarr

Not a perversion of nature. I think it is good that humans have removed themselves from nature. Charity, and saving the weak are good.

Chemistry spit out a creature that is not only chemical, but lives and evolves, being now biological. Biology spit out a creature that deliberates and uses language to promote rights and laws, being now human. So now, the changes to humanity are not merely evolutionary (biological), they are personal. The personal is of a different category than the biological (subject to evolutionary forces), just as the biological is of a different category than the chemical.

And there is no hierarchy here. Humans may in fact be “better” than a chemical, or an amoeba, but I’d rather just say humans are different, doing things unlike anything done in nature, like an amoeba does things unlike anything chemical.

We won’t evolve to be a better society. We have to invent it whole cloth and then constrain any biological instincts or physical forces that frustrate our invention.

The word evolution when applied to recorded human history is used as a metaphor. Human society is not an environment the same way the Galapagos was an environment for finches. It’s not survival and mutation that brought democracy to topple kings or voting rights to all citizens. We can, like poets, see what we do as like what the ants do and the bees and the other monkeys. But we can see a fire burning as a living animal, consuming, moving itself, etc. These are metaphors, not actual accounts of observed facts.

Nothing else in the universe makes metaphors. This is the human.
Nothing else in the universe makes laws either.

So in the end, if you take away God, we are left with faith in humanity to build any progress. No chemicals or evolutionary forces to guide us. Just us.

But we build all the strife between us as well. We build the problems we are trying to build solutions for.

So I just think it is realistic to be skeptical of human progress from humanly created problems. I don’t have faith in humanity.

But I love humanity, and I love evolutionary forces, and chemicals. Which is why I still believe in God. My hope is for grace for all of us, because we are lousy at being the top of the food chain.

The fall of humanity into an inherently sinful nature had been a pretty good myth for checking human deceitfulness. In the wake of its obliteration by rationalist, materialist science and logic, what do we have in its place? — ucarr

The way I see it, humanity evolved to remove itself from nature, so now the weak sometimes proliferate, and the strong are kept down, the mutation is ostracized, and evolutionary forces are frustrated. That’s humanity.

Not long ago (maybe 8,000 years ago plus) looking beyond nature for guidance, we turned to our God.

More recently, maybe 2,000 years ago plus culminating in the enlightenment, finding that God was illusion, we have replaced faith in God with faith in humanity.

But humanity got us into the trouble with evolution in the first place. So we are rudderless, either having faith in humanity anyway, or simply accepting we are a mess and likely going to stay that was for a long time to come.

And like I said, we currently prefer feeding the mess and creating extra strife in order to organize our governance. Which is why I offered simple acceptance of the mess as the way of our human world.

Faith hasn’t been obliterated by materialist science. Faith remains necessary to set any goals. God as goal has been refuted by science, but replaced with humanity’s self-assessment of “human progress” as goal.

I think — flannel jesus

I think that what “I think” is determined by me.

In a deterministic world, “me” is determined just as much as the thoughts thrust upon it, so “me” may as well drop out of the equation - “me” can’t direct or redirect any cause to any effect, because “me” is determined to choose exactly what was caused. So choice is non-existent, and “me” is metaphor for “it” which is now simply consciousness sensing as much of the determined flow as it can fathom, never able to learn more than it has been determined to learn, never able to step aside and direct even itself.

That doesn't make a lot of sense to me. If it makes sense to you though, keep on keeping on. — flannel jesus

But how does the phrase “make sense TO ME” make sense in a deterministic world? How do “you” make sense to you, if there is only a causal chain - where do “you” fit in there any differently than a heart beat? And the word “choice” becomes a metaphor for simply two relay racers passing the baton of cause and effect.