Why this disconnect between the philosophy and practices of torture? Does torture reveal an essential flaw in philosophizing, its hypocrisy, or is philosophical thinking simply incapable of altering the human propensity for accepting violation by pain no matter what its reasoning consists in? — Enrique

Interesting question.

The disconnect is not as stark as you suggest. For one thing, philosophical discourse is not limited to the narrow field of professional academic philosophers. Philosophical arguments for and against torture are often made outside philosophy departments by lawyers, politicians, pundits, and ordinary folks. For another, arguments in favor of torture in limited circumstances do sometimes appear in the literature of academic philosophy.

If there's a disproportionate representation of anti-torture arguments among academic philosophers, I'd wonder if this might be explained sociologically, by a sort of selection mechanism of the institution: Perhaps the sort of people who would be disposed to argue in favor of torture are less likely to become professors of ethics and morality in today's academy.

The SEP entry on torture, by Seumas Miller, supplies examples of the way arguments in favor of torture in limited circumstances appear in the literature of contemporary academic philosophy.

In Section 3, Miller reviews arguments in the literature that consider "one-off, non-institutionalised acts of torture performed by state actors in emergency situations", and reaches the conclusion that "there are likely to exist, in the real world, one-off emergency situations in which arguably torture is, all things considered, the morally best action to perform."

In Section 4, Miller reviews arguments in the literature that consider the "legalization or institutionalization of torture" in limited circumstances. Miller argues persuasively against legalization and institutionalization, but cites several authors who have taken an opposite stance.

Some pro-torture arguments outside the academy are provided by lawyers and politicians narrowly concerned with blowing loopholes into the law, for instance, in the notorious "Torture Memos" of 2002-2003.

Such efforts to promote institutionalized torture on narrow legal grounds are typically supported by moral and practical arguments provided by intellectuals and bullshit artists employed by right-wing think tanks and published in right-wing propaganda platforms like the National Review. Consider the profound inhumanity tucked into the flippant opening sentence of Deroy Murdock's defense of waterboarding, and belied by his shamefully squirming objection to characterizations of that practice as "repugnant". Murdock's despicable slimy gestures make arguments like those offered in 2005 by Andrew C. McCarthy seem thoughtful and moderate in comparison.

At a glance, Miller's arguments against institutionalized torture in Section 4 of his SEP article arguably undermine the considerations raised by McCarthy. But I doubt they would convert anyone who's already committed to promoting the practice of torture in our institutions.

I don't think the way to argue about phenomenology's idealism is to disprove it. Nor is it reasonable to do so in favor of materialism. — Caldwell

On my use of the term, phenomenology -- the study of phenomena, the discourse on appearances -- avoids entanglement with such "metaphysical" doctrines.

You might want to read an essay by Patrick Heelan - Perceived Worlds Are Interpreted Worlds .

An excerpt:

Perceiving is a skill; it is not a species of deductive or inductive inference but an interpretative skill. CS Peirce gave it a special name, "abduction". It does not belong to the categories of induction or deduction, nor is it just another term for hypothetico-deductive method. Its goal is not explanation but vision -- or more generally, perception - and it heralds a perceptual revolution. Perception in this sense is historical, cultural, and hermeneutical. Failing to recognize this is a source of many of those recalcitrant problems in the philosophy of science that seem to have no solution within the predominant traditions. — Caldwell

I agree that our interests and judgments as perceivers are determined in part by conceptual capacities acquired and transformed through the medium of culture, including practices that result in a sort of "perceptual training", practices that guide us to acquire a repertoire of observational concepts, customs of "reasoning" and investigation, customs of fantasy and fiction, and so on. Thankfully, such culturally and conceptually mediated variation in the exercise of our perceptual powers seems radically constrained by physiological and other physical factors of perception.

Accordingly, I'd prefer to reformulate Heelan's characterization of perception more moderately, without the emphatic bias: Like all human activity, perception is historical and cultural as well as physical and biological. Like all human experience, it involves interpretation from a point of view, but is nonetheless rooted in and constrained by physical and biological processes. So it seems, in keeping with the balance of appearances.

I'm never sure what to make of talk of Peirce's notion of "abduction". So far it strikes me as a puffy and superfluous neologism. I tend to become wary wherever it's given much weight. Of course I'd be grateful if someone were to improve my appreciation for good uses of that term.

How does Heelan's hermeneutical phenomenology, and his bold emphasis on the historicity of perceptual skills, help us remedy "recalcitrant problems in the philosophy of science"? Which "recalcitrant problems" does he have in mind?

He defines hermeneutical phenomenology as: "all human understanding - and perception is included in this - is existentially and methodologically interpretative." — Caldwell

Long ago it occurred to me that the path forward for "continental philosophy" should fuse the horizons of Gadamer's Truth and Method with Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception. I suspect anyone who's read those two books may have been similarly inspired. Maybe Heelan's barking up the same tree.

You might disagree with him on some points, but he does provide 3 analytical questions to satisfy the problem of perception:
- the semantics of a perceptual world
- the epistemic validity
- ontology of a perceptual world — Caldwell

What questions are these?

From this, he explains that the individual perceivers, with or without the aid of an instrument, are a "community of skilled interpreters", and provides an explanation of a "paradigmatically scientific inquiry leading into, among other things, neurophysiological networks, instruments, and readable technologies." — Caldwell

How is this a refinement or improvement of more customary ways of describing the interrelations of perception, science, and technology? Does it help us solve those "recalcitrant problems" mentioned above?

And from it, I'm hoping that we can agree that materialism stays and can be reconciled with phenomenology. — Caldwell

As I indicated at the outset, it seems to me that phenomenology is indifferent with respect to "metaphysical" doctrines like materialism and idealism. So far as I reckon, disciplined phenomenology would remain compatible with materialism, compatible with idealism, compatible with the rejection of both of those doctrines, and compatible with skeptical suspension of judgment in such matters.

Are we agreed on this point? Or do you have something else in mind when you say that "materialism... can be reconciled with phenomenology"?

You are correct. We construct the resemblance and then we say that sounded like a horse or that looks solid like a wall. — Manuel

What does the term "construct" mean in this context? I might prefer to say we notice and observe similarities in the look and feel of the wall's straight surface, in the sounds of two horses, and so on.

The objects incite in us an innate capacity to react to them the way do, because we are the creatures we are. — Manuel

I'd prefer to say: The objects affect us the way they do in virtue of our disposition to be affected by such objects thus. It seems an empirical question, which of our perceptual dispositions are innate and which are acquired -- or perhaps it's better to ask, in what respect is a perceptual disposition innate and in what respect is it acquired.

We never see triangles in the world, we construct them out of imperfect figures. — Manuel

It would seem strange to say we don't "see triangles" or "see triangular things", just because none of the triangular things we see conform exactly in their shape to the ideal triangles precisely described in the mathematical science of geometry. I suspect that humans learned to recognize, construct, and speak about triangular things before they arrived at that mathematical idealization; and it seems the precise geometrical concepts were designed to help us measure, describe, and construct the real things, not to replace them. I'm inclined to say it's the original, rough and practical, concept of triangle, not the mathematically precise concept of triangle, that's ordinarily applied in perceptual judgment. I see no reason to declare that the shape of a real thing must be perfectly similar to an ideal shape in order to count as triangular -- for instance, a triangular plot of land, a triangular altar, a triangular plow.

Perhaps a similar prejudice about the role of conceptual idealizations is implicated when a disillusioned idealist concludes there's no such thing as love or justice in the world -- on the grounds that no putative instance of love or justice conforms to their ideal conception.

We don't see entire environments, but parts of it, we fill out the rest. We listen to sounds in a pattern which we call music, but which nonetheless are "just" sounds. And so on. — Manuel

Surely our conceptualized grasp of an environment on the basis of perception, and our grasp of any "object" or "region" within that environment on the basis of perception, is always partial at best, and often mistaken.

I'm no more inclined to say that music is "mere sound" than to say that speech is "mere sound", writing is "mere ink", or animals are "mere molecules".

Let me quote Leibniz:

"What is innate is what might be called the implicit knowledge of them, as the veins of the marble outline a shape which is in the marble before they are uncovered by the sculptor" — Manuel

What exactly does Leibniz characterize in that suggestive passage as "innate"? On the surface, his claim is that we have innate "implicit knowledge" even of "the deepest and most difficult sciences"; but that we do not have innate "actual knowledge" of such things. He treats "arithmetic and geometry" as exemplary cases of sciences of which we have "innate implicit knowledge".

I've learned to employ a rather firm distinction between formal and empirical sciences. I wonder if Leibniz offers any examples of "innate implicit knowledge" in the empirical sciences.

I'll agree that some quantitative concepts and judgments seem somehow "innate and implicit" in the general form of the experience of minds like ours; and that the formal science of arithmetic depends on some such concepts and judgments. Likewise I'll agree that some spatial and temporal concepts and judgments seem somehow "innate and implicit" in the general form of the experience of minds like ours; and that the formal science of geometry depends on some such concepts and judgments.

I see no reason to suppose that "empirical concepts" like "horse" and "star" are likewise "innate and implicit". To the contrary, it seems clear that we acquire such concepts only through acquaintance with instances of the corresponding objects in experience; and empirical sciences like biology and astronomy depend on the investigation of those particulars.

Of course our acquaintance with and investigation of such "empirical objects" depends on our capacity to perceive them. And it seems we must acknowledge what we might call "parameters" or "sensory qualities" in each mode of exteroception that are "innate and implicit" in the general form of the experience of minds like ours. I mean, for instance, brightness and color, loudness and pitch, sweet and salty, pressure and heat. In each case, however, it's clear that the "sensory qualities" that appear to us in perception correspond to and vary along with specific features of objective states of affairs outside our heads; and these correspondences, and those objective states of affairs, are objects for empirical investigation.

And a few from Cudworth:

" The essence of nothing is reached unto by the senses looking outward, but by the mind's looking inward upon itself. That which wholly looks abroad outward upon its object is not one with that which it percieves, but it is at a distance from it, and therefore cannot know or comprehend it. But knowledge and intellection doth not merely look out upon a thing at a distance, but make an inward reflection upon the thing it knows... the intellect doth read inward characters written within itself."

"For knowledge is not a knock or thrust from without, but it consisteth in the awakening and exiting of the inward active powers of the mind." — Manuel

How should we interpret these passages from Cudworth?

I'm wary of such uses of the term "essence". I'm not sure what Cudworth might mean in saying that the "essence" of any thing is "reached unto… by the mind's looking inward upon itself". I'm not sure what he means by "intellection".

He seems to suggest that a "mind" must be "one with that which it perceives" in order to "know or comprehend it". That mysterious criterion is fleshed out by the accompanying claim that a mind cannot "know or comprehend" anything "at a distance". This sounds way off the rails to me. Perhaps the passage puts egregiously unwarranted spin on the term "comprehension". I'm tempted to conclude that these extraordinary formulas are signs of Cudworth's ignorance of the integrity of the physical connections, revealed by empirical investigation since Cudworth's time, which link perceivers to distant objects in exteroception.

On the other hand, Cudworth is quite right to emphasize that our knowledge of the world on the basis of exteroception does not consist merely in "looking outward". And he's right to suggest that exteroceptive knowledge is not produced in us merely by dint of each "knock or thrust from without". Careful introspection makes us more reliable and astute perceivers. Empirical investigation of the objective factors of perception, in coordination with our introspective reports, informs us about ourselves, about our perceptual processes, and about the world as it appears to us on the basis of perception. And our culturally mediated conceptual capacities play an extremely important role in determining the character of the perceptual judgments we're disposed to make on the basis of perception.

It seems to me that I say all this on purely phenomenological grounds, without extraneous "metaphysical" commitments or implications.

One passage:

"Anatomy tells us that the wisdom of nature has assigned the mucus membrane, and the olfactory nerves that are run to the hairy parts of this membrane, to the sense of smell; so that a body can’t be smelled when it doesn’t emit any effluvia, or it does but they don’t enter the nose, or they do enter but the mucus membrane or olfactory nerves have become unfit to do their work. Despite all this ·knowledge that we have·, it is obvious that neither the organ of smell, nor the medium, nor any motions we can conceive to be caused in the mucus membrane or in the nerve or animal spirits, have the faintest resemblance to the sensation of smelling." — Manuel

Great citation. In its careful appropriation of available empirical research, the passage reminds me of Gassendi's discussion of the perception of the taste of salt.

Reid indicates several important factors of a general analysis of exteroception in a single modality. I'll paraphrase quite awkwardly in calling them out:

--proper object (the perceived "body")
--intermediate object (the emitted "effluvia")
--sense receptor (nose, membranes, hairs)
--physiological (e.g. cognitive) processing of received signal (nerves, "animal spirits")
--subjective character (of "the sensation")

(Another key factor: the complex context or "medium", e.g. air, through which the intermediary is transmitted. In special cases we may say the distinction between proper and intermediate object collapses, e.g. when we're interested in an odor instead of its origin.)

What does Reid mean by the phrase "the sensation of smelling"? I presume he thereby indicates what I would prefer to call "the subjective character" of that sensation. As Reid's description suggests, the whole process of sensation seems to include much more than its subjective character. I'd give a similarly "holistic" treatment to similar uses of terms like sensation, perception, experience, appearance, and phenomenon. The whole perceptual process -- which in paradigm cases of exteroception may be extended to a distant object -- is the "thing" I ordinarily have in mind when I use such terms. The "subjective character" is only one feature of such things.

Perhaps we've already agreed for present purposes that, when they are distinct objects, the thing I've called the "intermediate object" is rightly said to "resemble" in some respects the thing I've called the "proper object" of perception, not only in cases of olfaction, but also in other exteroceptive modalities. I'll move on to consider the problem of resemblance with respect to the subjective character of perception.

It's hard for me to understand what it could mean to claim that "there's absolutely no resemblance" between the subjective character of an exteroceptive experience, and the objective features of that experience. That there is some such resemblance seems perhaps most evident when considering changes, variations, and other differences that appear in the course of experience.

There is "something it's like" for the smell of grass to get stronger as I move closer to the grass, or as more grass is brought near me; and "something it's like" for the odor I'm smelling to change as grass is mixed with rain, or as oat grass is mixed with wheatgrass or with manure. Likewise, there's "something it's like" for the look of an apple to change as ambient light gets bright or dim; and "something it's like" to behold variations in color along the surface of an apple, or to note changes in the look of the apple as I rotate it in my hand.

What could it mean to claim that such changes and variations are not manifest in the "subjective character" of perception? What could it mean to claim that the "subjective character" of these differences does not regularly track similar differences in the "intermediate" or "proper" objects of the very same experience? And if those differences are similar -- for instance, if they are proportionate -- how could it be said that there is no resemblance? To the contrary, it seems the coherence, significance, and reliability of perceptual experience depends on robust likeness in the subjective character and objective features of perception along such lines.

If something like my objection stands, we should unpack Reid's negative claim to more accurately express the insight he's tucked into it. I suppose we should say Reid's claim disguises a more accurate claim about what have been called the "sensory qualities" that appear to us in perceptual experiences, and through which, it seems, objective features of the same experiences appear to us. However, it's no easy matter to articulate the claim in question, as it's notoriously difficult to say anything informative about such "sensory qualities" without thereby implicating objective features of the experience in which these sensory qualities appear.

When I speak about the "redness" that appears to me in an instance of visual perception, I implicate the light that strikes my eyes. When I speak about the "grassiness" that appears to me in an instance of olfactory perception, I implicate the gas that fills my nose. And I implicate much more than that in each case, as may be discerned by following the tracks laid by appearances.

Nonetheless, it strikes me as unreasonable to deny that the subjective character of exteroceptive experience involves what may be clumsily called sensory qualities, like the sensory qualities of redness and grassiness; and unreasonable to deny that these qualities in some important respects do not "resemble" objective features of the experiences in which they appear.

Then again, I suppose any two things in the world may be called similar in some respects and different in other respects. What should we make of the claim that there are some respects in which the "sensory qualities" of an experience do not "resemble" the objective features of the same experience? What's at stake in this claim for us, or for philosophers in the bygone days of Reid?

It seems to me that we learn far more about phenomena, including those "sensory qualities", by investigating all the ways in which they appear to be "connected", than we do by merely noting their "resemblances".

Apologies for the length of the reply, but I felt I had to respond in kind.

Great post by the way. — Manuel

Thanks, that's kind of you to say. And thanks for this delightful exchange.

No reason to apologize. I thought your reply was admirably concise, especially given the length of my first reply to your provocative prompt.

In a hopeless effort to emulate your admirable concision, I'll reserve discussion of nociception and of Reid's remarks on color for another occasion. Even so, I thought it might aid digestion to break today's reply into three posts.

In this section, I address some preliminary matters. In the second, your citation of Reid's passage on olfaction. In the third, your remarks and citations about "innate" ideas or "innate" knowledge.

If that's too much prose for one turn, I'll find some way to narrow focus going forward, should we have the good fortune to continue.

https://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/reid1764.pdf — Manuel

Thanks for the reference. At a glance it strikes me as an exemplary work of modern philosophy. I look forward to reading more of it.

So far Reid's discourse doesn't seem to entail the sort of visual bias we've discussed above.

When you look at a horse, I don't ask myself, how else could this creature look like? When the horse starts racing, it would not be evident to me that his hooves would sound the way they do. In this respect, you can recreate the sound of hooves with your tongue.

But, point taken in so far as I'm privileging vision. It seems to bother me somehow. — Manuel

What is it that bothers you along these lines?

To me it seems clear that each perceptual modality puts us in touch with objective states of affairs in its own way, without thereby providing us with complete information or a basis for infallible judgment about those states of affairs. In each case, it's up to us to learn from the experience, and to extend and coordinate our investigations, while aiming to avoid and to correct conceptual confusions that may contaminate the judgments we make on the basis of perception.

It may go a long way in adjusting for the visual bias to develop the habit of trying analogous conceptual treatment across perceptual modalities: The sound of a horse running or whinnying does not suggest the look of a horse any more or less than the look of a horse suggests those sounds -- until we learn what to expect from such looks and from such sounds.

Likewise, the look of a horse's hoof does not suggest the look of a horse's head until we learn what to expect. Perhaps, in some cases, the sound of a horse's gallop does not suggest the velocity of a horse's gallop until we learn what to expect.

Such expectations are informed on the basis of experience.

When does a fact establish itself as knowledge? — Shawn

There's some ambivalence in philosophical use of the word "fact". I prefer to use the term primarily to mean something like an objective state of affairs, whether or not anyone has grasped that state of affairs. In keeping with such usage, "judgments of fact" may be distinguished from judgments of taste or value, for instance; though generally a judgment of taste or value may be repackaged as a judgment of fact about (minimally) the one who makes that judgment of taste or value. General statements ("Water boils at 100 degrees Celsius at sea level"; "Horses are warm-blooded") require a more sophisticated treatment, but ultimately must be understood as "covering" or otherwise related to a wide range of particular claims corresponding to particular states of affairs.

Our judgments of fact may be true or false. A false judgment of fact purports to assert or entail a fact, but is at least partially incorrect in what it proposes with respect to a (putative) objective state of affairs. A true judgment of fact correctly characterizes a corresponding state of affairs.

I wouldn't say that facts "establish themselves" as knowledge. Rather, things like us acquire knowledge of matters of fact; act on the basis of our knowledge of matters of fact; more or less aptly express and evaluate knowledge claims regarding matters of fact; and so on.

Simple cases of "noninferential knowledge acquisition" can be quite straightforward. Ordinarily I know there's an apple on the table when (or "because") I see an apple on the table. In ordinary circumstances, the experience of seeing an apple functions as a reliable justification for claims like "That is an apple" and for (implicit or explicit) knowledge claims like "I know that there is an apple on the table".

More precisely, if knowledge is Justified-True-Belief, then how do facts fit into such a conceptual scheme for or of knowledge? — Shawn

Justified true belief is a most useful model for analyzing and articulating knowledge claims and for analyzing and describing the corresponding "states" of knowing.

In simple cases like that indicated above, "facts" fit into the model as the objective states of affairs that are grasped by the one who "knows them" -- i.e., the one who has a justified true belief about them.

Much professional criticism of justified true belief as a model for knowledge is directed at more complicated cases that lead us to refine our conception of adequate justification in knowledge claims; and these considerations may also suggest refinements in our views about careful articulation of reliable knowledge claims. I mean, for example, discussion of the notorious range of cases known as Gettier problems.

So far as I know, such criticism is relevant to a general account of our "grasp" of the facts in any given case, but gives no special reason to revise our general conception of "facts". In other words, these problems don't lead us to revise our account of what facts "are"; but only to revise our account of what it means to say that someone knows a fact.

Could be. You raise some interesting points. I would have thought the atheist properly makes just one claim about God and as for the rest of their views, they could believe in astrology or the Loch Ness Monster (like some atheists I have known). — Tom Storm

I don't believe the atheist has the privilege of committing to only one substantive claim -- not a reasonable and honest atheist who's acquainted with the wide variety of theological views in the world. Words like "deity" and "divinity" are used in various ways by various speakers. Ultimately the atheist needs to tell us which conception they're rejecting, which alleged thing "there's no such thing as" on their account.

Some speakers employ a conception of deity in keeping with which the word "God" refers to the whole of existence -- for instance, along the lines of Spinoza's identification of God and Nature. I doubt whether many atheists nowadays mean for their arguments to imply that the world does not exist; but that's what it would amount to say that the thing called God by such philosophers does not exist.

Flying Spaghetti Monster atheism doesn't hold water in such cases. Accordingly, it seems the atheist needs at least two sorts of account to handle two different sorts of theism; and I expect there are more distinctions to be drawn, and many specific claims to be considered, as such conversations proceed.

As I noted above, leading advocates of atheism like Russell and Dawkins acknowledge this problem in the margins of their discourse on rare occasions, then proceed to neglect it as if somehow it's not relevant to the conversation they're having about a philosophical position they call "atheism". I suppose Russell doesn't really call his position atheism; he only markets it that way for "the ordinary man in the street". Dawkins seems to implicate a similar concession.

I see figures like Dawkins as essentially fundamentalist busters. I don't think he is doing philosophy, he is simply taking on the literalists. Given how many literalists there are and how influential they can be in politics, law and social policy, the work is not without merit. — Tom Storm

I'd say it's a much broader target, and includes "moderate" opinions held, often vaguely and uncritically, by many people who count themselves members and believers of traditional religions but who do not consider themselves fundamentalists. The same sort of criticism works just as well against many varieties of new age spiritual belief and magical thinking, for instance.

I am an atheist - I am probably not disciplined enough to call my self a skeptic. I am a methodological naturalist - only in so far as the case for the non-natural hasn't been made coherently. — Tom Storm

I've considered myself a methodological naturalist for decades, though I entered that path on what I thought of as phenomenological grounds. For many years I was puzzled and confused about those grounds. During that period I was powerfully attracted to materialism and atheism, though I never quite made it all the way. My sense of perplexity, at least, has diminished since my thoughts took a skeptical turn nearly a decade ago.

By now it seems that a robust skepticism like that indicated in the Outlines of Sextus Empiricus supports or indeed amounts to a methodological naturalism on phenomenological grounds. Such skeptics learn to train the unruly powers of discourse and belief to "follow appearances quietly", without disturbance from unwarranted claims.

We're now beginning to pay the price of centuries of suffering and exploitation of generations of oppressed and marginalized people by capitalism and liberalism. — baker

Rampant industrialization and oppression plagued anticapitalist economies as well as capitalist economies during the 20th century. Exploitation, injustice, and mass destruction have plagued human civilization from the beginning. The roots of the problem go deeper than easy generalizations about capitalist ideology and capitalist modes of organization, though of course the negative effects of inadequate regulation and unjust policy are increasingly obvious worldwide in our times, just as capitalism in various forms has finally covered the globe.

In the last couple decades it's become harder even for relatively privileged people in relatively privileged regions to deny, to rationalize, or to ignore the acceleration of ecological instability and socioeconomic injustice. But it seems clear that the people of Earth have been paying the price of irrational and inhumane policy for a long time.

So you think it makes perfect sense to expect the disenfranchized to play along as if all was well?? — baker

Given the state of things, I don't think it makes sense for anyone to play along as if all is well. All is not well. Far from it.

That doesn't make it reasonable to lash out at random, much less in lethally misguided rage and confusion on the basis of blatant misinformation. It's clear enough that the outrage and mistrust prevalent through the anti-vaccination community is driven in part by foreign and domestic oligarchs whose agents skillfully rattle the echo-chambers to corrupt hearts and minds and divide the people. It's ironic that in their manufactured rage at "the government", the anti-vaxxers play into the hands of the rich assholes who dominate governments like they dominate all resources of Earth. The same tragic irony runs deep through the Koch-funded libertarianism that in recent decades has become so popular in the US. Of course this is just a variation and intensification of the tactics of elite right-wing politics dating back at least to the Southern Strategy: They use hateful bullshit to enrage and confuse people into acting against their own interests.

By contrast, the bullshit spewed and swallowed by "the liberals" during the same period has been complacently optimistic, not hatefully pessimistic.

Disenfranchized people and those on the verge of disenfranchizement are less likely to cooperate with the government's agenda and with society at large. — baker

Who isn't one of these people nowadays? I doubt you could use that criterion to distinguish COVID-vaccine receivers from COVID-vaccine refusers, though it may have some statistical weight.

It's still not clear to me what point you're making. Do you mean merely to suggest that people who feel threatened are more likely to lash out in irrational and inhumane ways? It's understandable, but not advisable, that people act thus.

Or do you actually mean to recommend that everyone who has woken up to smell the bullshit in right-wing and liberal rhetoric and ideology should "stop cooperating with the government" and with "society" and with "the liberals"? That just sounds like more groupthink nonsense to me, another drop in the ocean of confusion that's helping the oligarchs run away with the ball.

There's plenty of nonsense like that plastered all over social media, accompanied by spooky music and cheap tricks. I prefer to engage people who may still be moved by reasonable conversation.

Some of those people are COVID-vaccine refusers who haven't figured out who's rattling their cages.

Let's not complicate matters by digging into the etymological roots of words but thanks anyway for the links. Now, kindly tell me the difference between empathy and sympathy in terms of their conventional meaning, as they appear in normal discourse. — TheMadFool

Etymology remains an instructive guide to good usage for good speakers. Clear thinking is promoted by clear speech. I'm aware that etymological considerations are unfashionable. So are clarity, good sense, and reasonable discourse.

Etymology aside, the difference between the two terms in their common use is suggested by the custom of reserving a special position in the language for "empathy" -- as if empathy were something other than sympathy, or perhaps a special sort of sympathy. Occasionally this custom is reinforced when people explicitly emphasize that they have empathy, not plain old sympathy, in mind. I'm not sure what their distinction is supposed to mean. Often it seems that people suppose or suggest there is some special power of "feeling another person's feeling". Many college freshman begin to use the word "empathy" as if they've learned about a new sort of experience or attitude, not merely acquired a synonym for "sympathy"; and in some cases the habit persists for the rest of their lives without a second thought.

As I've already noted, it seems to me that in most or all cases, "sympathy" does a fine job of referring to experiences in which a person recognizes another's feeling and feels a similar -- but not identical -- feeling in response to or as part of that recognition. Given the appropriateness of the term "sympathy" for such cases, and the confusions I detect in historical and current use of the term "empathy", I prefer to avoid the neologism in my own discourse, as both superfluous and misleading.

As far as I know, there really is no way of actually experiencing another person's feelings. We can only imagine what someone must be going through but of course this is shaped by personal experience and other relevant data. Reason, it seems, plays a major role in empathy and sympathy. — TheMadFool

In fact I believe there are "sympathetic feelings", as suggested by reports of "sympathy pains" and mirror neurons, for instance. Moreover, there is a trivial sense in which we do perceive other people's feelings -- in about the same ways we perceive the brightness of the sun or the backfiring of an engine.

Of course I agree that reason and imagination, including reflection on the history of our own personal experience, play a crucial role in our understanding of others.

But where does this lead our conversation about bug killing? Weren't we talking about the golden rule? Do you agree with what I've said so far about the irrelevance of expectations about reciprocity in applications of the golden rule, and specifically in deliberations about the treatment of nonhuman animals, including bugs?

Me too until I did that is. — TheMadFool

Would you care to account for this observation of yours, in light of what I've said so far about reciprocity and the golden rule?

I've yet to notice anything in what you've said that might support your claim.

I have to admit that if I were certain no one would ever find out or punish me for it, I could easily see myself fulfilling the role of the dominant oppressor, if I were in that situation. Although I'd be nowhere near as psychotic as that character (who was truly a raving power-mad lunatic, if you've seen that TZ episode) I would still very much sink my teeth into the opportunity to play god. As a giant, I could think of all sorts of unpleasant tasks to make the tiny people carry out for no other reason than to menace and subjugate them. At the very least, I'd crush their military. I wonder: is this inclination "evil" or just personal fallibility? — IanBlain

I suppose this is a special variation on the theme illustrated by discussion of the legend of the Ring of Gyges in Book Two of Plato's Republic.

Are you likewise disposed to commit all sorts of crimes in this world, to steal from other humans, to torture nonhuman animals, and so on -- whenever you believe you can escape detection and punishment?

As ↪TheMadFool
stated, however, the golden rule is much more relevant when there's a chance of payback.. but perhaps also if intelligence and perception remains to scale even if size doesn't. — IanBlain

As I've indicated previously, I don't believe that reciprocity makes the golden rule more relevant as a moral principle in general. The golden rule doesn't require us to consider reciprocity as a condition of application. In at least some traditional contexts, agents are encouraged to apply it even when they believe reciprocity will not be forthcoming.

Morality aside, considerations of reciprocity do make the golden rule more relevant as a prudential principle. Even selfish monsters with no moral compass might realize they have some practical incentives to apply the golden rule in some circumstances -- but not in all circumstances, as you and Plato rightly note.

A consideration like this is only relevant if a person sees themselves as a worthy member of society, and if society sees one as a worthy member. — baker

I'm not sure what you mean. If a person is willing and able to discuss "reasons" for choices and actions, and to accommodate moral considerations in such conversations, then distinctions between rational and irrational choices, and between moral and immoral choices, seem quite relevant.

You can't convince outsiders and outcasts with such arguments, especially not if you yourself have cast them out. — baker

I haven't cast anyone out. If someone is strongly disposed to flee from people who disagree with them in conversation, I might not try very hard to stop them. Depends on the circumstances.

What would such a timid creature be doing in a place like this? Lurking, perhaps. Boo!

The vocal pro-vaccers don't seem to understand that they cannot simultaneously push for a liberal agenda as well as a socialist agenda, as the two are mutually exclusive. — baker

I'm not sure what this means either. I agree, however, that the urgency of present circumstances makes a strong case in favor of democratic socialism as an alternative to complacent liberal incrementalism. As if the suffering and exploitation of generations of oppressed and marginalized people for centuries to come were not sufficient to jog the liberals from their self-satisfied delusion.

Time's up.

Simulated consciousness would be the (a) genuine article assuming a functionalist account of consciousness (not identity). It's a controversial stance (as is every other), but not obviously wrong. — SophistiCat

According to the sort of account you indicate, it may be possible to produce an artificial consciousness, e.g. in the form of a computer program. But that artificial consciousness would be a genuine consciousness produced by artificial means, not a mere simulation of consciousness.

Such accounts would need to provide some criterion by which we could distinguish artificially produced instances of genuine consciousness from mere simulations; or would need to show that anything that counts as a simulation of consciousness is necessarily an instance of genuine consciousness.

Along those lines, I might ask for a criterion to distinguish information-processing systems in general from conscious information-processing systems.

And again -- those accounts are highly controversial.

What used to be received, accepted, consumed, digested, considered, reflected upon, even discussed and perhaps finally judged by an individual taking responsibility for his own thinking, seems now to have become as if an electronic jolt administered to a large group, the measure of it being its seismic effect more than any appeal to reason. — tim wood

Do you really think most people were so responsible in their opinions fifty or a hundred years ago, or at any time in this planet's history? I don't think most people in any society of significant scale have ever had the opportunity to be as informed, and reflective, and responsible as you suggest.

Let's not romanticize the past. There's never been a shortage of ignorant, misguided, unreasonable, selfish, and hateful souls in this world.

The limitations on communication even a mere fifty years ago were such as to create a kind of space. Space for stupidity, ignorance, intolerance, evil to fall into and thereby fall out of notice. Obviously not always: history giving examples of that space being closed up and toxic ideas for a while thriving — tim wood

I'd be more cautious with this metaphor. Good ideas as much as bad ones fell through the cracks into that space. A glance at the historical record should persuade you that toxic ideas and despicable deeds -- including unjust government policies enthusiastically cheered by hordes of duped voters -- have been incessant.

Perhaps the most relevant difference is that it was easier for the powerful to influence the hearts and minds of the masses, to divide and rule, with flimsy ideological propaganda back in those days. Given the increasing accessibility of genuine information in recent decades, it's become harder to deceive and divide people the old-fashioned way. So the oligarchs have turned to making the people absolutely deranged. The same technology that has made information so accessible has also made consumers of information more susceptible to derangement.

Generations raised on that newfangled poison are coming up behind us. You're right to suggest it's becoming harder for everybody to find "space" from the new media environment and the culture it drives.

Famously in the US at least free speech does not permit calling out, "Fire!" in a crowded theater if there is no fire. And there are other restrictions, though it's not a simple subject. The point being that "free speech" does not mean free speech, and most people understand that. — tim wood

Free speech is free speech. Like all of our rights, our right to free speech must be limited so as to protect all the rights of all the members of our community. If everyone's rights are not limited in this way, there are no rights -- only privileges for a few.

My view is that modern communication has lent a fire-power to speech that itself requires greater control. And if not prior restraint - and how could that be done? - then a system of definitions and penalties that would have an effectively chilling and prohibitive effect on proscribed speech.

One way, to define "lie" such that it can be identified, and on being demonstrated to have been told, the teller(s) immediately subject to fierce penalties. In a sense, then, communication has turned the world into a giant crowded theater. False cries of fire become themselves too dangerous and thus rightly punished. Or are there better ways? — tim wood

I'm afraid I agree that recent technology makes it more urgent to regulate and penalize some forms of harmful speech.

I might aim to regulate and punish large-scale acts of misinformation, in some cases even when the misinformer didn't know they were spreading misinformation.

If a food seller fails to take precautions specified by law to ensure the safety of the food they sell, there may be warnings and penalties, regardless of whether the food is in fact unsafe. If a food seller hasn't taken the requisite precautions, and as a consequence consumers are harmed, there may be penalties even if the seller didn't know that the food was contaminated. At least in many jurisdictions, the regulations vary according to scale, and the smallest sellers are the least regulated. Someone who sells a few dozen homemade cookies at a local market isn't typically required to follow the same strict standards that apply to larger retailers, wholesalers, and distributors, because their potential to cause harm is far smaller and more easily contained; and it's thus safe enough to err on the side of personal liberty in such cases.

I suppose we could seek to regulate the distribution of putative statements of fact somewhat analogously. Say, by targeting platforms, publishers, and self-publishers with more than one-hundred thousand or one million readers, listeners, viewers, subscribers, followers, or users, to make those publishers responsible for fact-checking and accountable for misinformation.

Of course such a strategy comes with obstacles and risks. But it's come to seem that the risks associated with neglecting to regulate misinformation might outweigh the risks of cautious regulation.

Anti-vaccination sentiment (as it relates to COVID19) is tied to suspicions about the origins of the disease and the profitability of vaccines, as well as fears about it's safety. — frank

Would you please explain to me how concerns about the origins of a disease and about the profitability of the corresponding vaccines should function as justifications in a deliberation about whether to receive one of those vaccines?

Suppose someone is selling gas masks proven safe and effective in protecting against mysterious and deadly clouds of gas recently found creeping around the planet; and the government is purchasing the masks and distributing them for free. What sane person would refuse to use those masks on the grounds that the manufacturers of the mask profit from the sales and that this suggests a potential conflict of interest for the manufacturers; and on the grounds that someone may have intentionally produced and released the mysterious deadly gas?

What on Earth could possibly lead a human being to refuse to wear the mask on such grounds?

So far as I can see, the most important difference between that hypothetical deliberation and the real deliberation about whether to receive COVID vaccines, is that most people who refuse the COVID vaccine would thereby increase the risk for everyone in the world, while most people who refuse the gas mask would mainly increase the risk only for themselves and for whatever unfortunate dependents they may have.

To be clear: I'm not suggesting it's foolish to question and to investigate the origin of COVID-19 and the profits some have made in its wake, including through vaccine production and distribution. I'm suggesting that the answers to those questions shouldn't have any bearing on a reasonable person's deliberation about whether to take the vaccine.

Wherever it came from, and whoever might profit from it, the virus is already here. If it's relatively contagious; if it has relatively high rates of highly negative outcomes for the infected; if many people at high risk for those negative outcomes would prefer not to suffer them; if a high rate of transmission is likely to accelerate the evolution of more contagious, more destructive, and less manageable strains of the virus; if there are egregious long-term socioeconomic consequences of letting the virus run rampant for longer periods of time… What else do you need to know, besides that the vaccines are safe and effective?

Is there any reasonable doubt that some of the vaccines produced so far have met strict standards of safety and efficacy?

Moreover, how many of the people still holding out from (mostly imaginary) concerns about safety take the same cautious stance in weighing all the other choices they make? Are they strict and well-informed about diet and exercise? Do they abuse alcohol? Do they smoke cigarettes? Do they know what pesticides have been sprayed on their marijuana, or how much fentanyl is in their cocaine? Do they consume any products manufactured by pharmaceutical companies? Do they consume unregulated dietary supplements? Have they checked the safety of their homes and cars and home goods -- their car seats and dashboards, carpets and floors, cabinets and finishes, couches and headboards, dishware and cookware, sanitary and cleaning products, electronic and digital devices? Have they tested the water they drink? Do they get tested for allergies before they try new foods? Do they go swimming? Do they use condoms? Do they drive cars? Do they cross streets? Do they own guns?

I suspect it's a rather small fraction of the community of COVID vaccine-refusers who take such a thoroughly cautious approach to mitigating risk in all their consumer and lifestyle choices. The rest of them, with few exceptions, have been riled up and confused by the echo chambers into making a choice that's inconsistent with their own principles, and thus irrational as well as inhumane.

I presume the fraction of risk-mitigation extremists is probably too small to make a difference to our collective success at COVID mitigation. Still it may be worth pointing out that in some cases their choice would be irrational and inhumane. It's irrational if they don't adjust their life circumstances, for instance by strict social distancing, to make the risk of their experiencing negative outcomes from COVID smaller than the risk of their experiencing negative outcomes from vaccine. And it's arguably inhumane as well as irrational, if the total risk they would take on by receiving the vaccine is significantly less than the total risk they would add to the rest of the world by their refusal.

I have been watching videos and reading a little bit about the hard problem of consciousness and also about qualia. It seems like philosophers are discussing how the physical can create our experiences, or our consciousness. This is what I assume is called the "explanatory gap". — Flaw

Let's try to get clear about which explananda sit on either side of the alleged "gap". Unfortunately there's a lack of uniformity in the relevant terminology, and persistent disagreement about the underlying philosophical issues.

Chalmers puts it like this (in his influential 1995 paper, "Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness"):

The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. As Nagel (1974) has put it, there is something it is like to be a conscious organism. This subjective aspect is experience. When we see, for example, we experience visual sensations: the felt quality of redness, the experience of dark and light, the quality of depth in a visual field. Other experiences go along with perception in different modalities: the sound of a clarinet, the smell of mothballs. Then there are bodily sensations, from pains to orgasms; mental images that are conjured up internally; the felt quality of emotion, and the experience of a stream of conscious thought. What unites all of these states is that there is something it is like to be in them. All of them are states of experience. [...]

What makes the hard problem hard and almost unique is that it goes beyond problems about the performance of functions. To see this, note that even when we have explained the performance of all the cognitive and behavioral functions in the vicinity of experience - perceptual discrimination, categorization, internal access, verbal report - there may still remain a further unanswered question: Why is the performance of these functions accompanied by experience? A simple explanation of the functions leaves this question open. [...]

This further question is the key question in the problem of consciousness. Why doesn't all this information-processing go on "in the dark", free of any inner feel? Why is it that when electromagnetic waveforms impinge on a retina and are discriminated and categorized by a visual system, this discrimination and categorization is experienced as a sensation of vivid red? We know that conscious experience does arise when these functions are performed, but the very fact that it arises is the central mystery. There is an explanatory gap (a term due to Levine 1983) between the functions and experience, and we need an explanatory bridge to cross it. A mere account of the functions stays on one side of the gap, so the materials for the bridge must be found elsewhere. — David Chalmers

(Here are links to the cited papers by Nagel and Levine.)

As someone with a computer science background with a little experience with AI & machine learning, I was wondering whether or not consciousness can be simulated and what that would "mean"? — Flaw

By definition a simulation is not the genuine article. For example, a computer simulation of an ecosystem or star system is not a genuine ecosystem or star system, even if it's a very accurate and useful model.

It seems there's no reason to suppose that packing more and more information-processing functions into a program would ever yield the sort of "subjective character" of experience that's said to generate the hard problem of consciousness.

John Searle has provided influential arguments along these lines dating back to 1980. He offers a brief and amended presentation of his views in a handy little 1997 book, The Mystery of Consciousness.

Computers play the same role in studying the brain that they play in any other discipline. They are immensely useful devices for simulating brain processes. But the simulation of mental states is no more a mental state than the simulation of an explosion is itself an explosion. — John Searle

By the way I was asking the question about befuddlement not insisting it was the case. — Tom Storm

Of course it's amusing to say that any canonical text in philosophy runs the risk of increasing the perplexity of many readers, but I suppose it may be hardly an exaggeration. In which case that ironic claim should have serious implications for our conception of philosophy and human understanding, as well as for our conception of the social role and obligations of prominent authors and interpreters of philosophical texts.

That's an interesting thing to say. Your not interested in mind/body because you feel it is unanswerable? [...] I'm only interested in the question because it seems to inform the current discussions about physicalism versus idealism. — Tom Storm

Right, something like that. What sort of empirical evidence or discursive gymnastics could ever put a definitive end to such controversies? In the meantime, what's gained by constructing "metaphysical theories" one way or another along such lines?

Even if the reductive physicalist could predict every observable phenomenon in the record, down to the next words out of my mouth, would this amount to conclusive disproof of philosophical idealism or theism, or make them any less likely? Would it amount to conclusive proof of philosophical materialism or atheism, or make them any more likely? So far as I reckon, it would only show that someone had gotten hold of an extremely useful scientific model of the universe as it has been observed to date.

It seems that no matter how far empirical science may advance, it could never blot out the range of conceivable alternatives that things like us project beyond the balance of appearances.

As a wholehearted skeptic, I sympathize with materialists and atheists who argue it's unreasonable to bear down on any of those merely conceivable alternatives as if they were warranted claims. But I depart from them where they neglect to note or to give due weight to the proposition that metaphysical materialism and atheism are located among those fantastic projections. Why seek to weigh anchor in imaginary waters? Why strain to answer questions that cannot be answered on reasonable grounds?

I suppose the prevalence of that dogmatic metaphysical tendency is one symptom of the immoderate scientism of the 20th-century naturalists, still alive and kicking in our time. We might trace the tendency further, to the Gothic quest for certainty, with roots in medieval dogmatism and formalism. Perhaps it's no accident that the immoderate scientism of our time emerged within an Anglophone tradition that had inherited a mangled view of skepticism, which seems better understood by Gassendi at the start of the "modern" era than by Moore at the end. The negative force of the arguments of the materialist and atheist may be just as well applied from a skeptical point of view, with less intellectual hubris, less unwarranted bias, and less overbearing bullshit.

Consider the rhetorical strategy of duplicity adopted by some leading advocates for atheism, for instance. Russell says he prefers to call himself agnostic when he's addressing "a purely philosophical audience", and to call himself an atheist when he's addressing "the ordinary man in the street". I recall Dawkins (I think in an early passage of The God Delusion) drawing a distinction between two sorts of theism, and claiming he objects to only one of those two sorts -- yet he spends the rest of his life calling himself an atheist and promoting a view he calls atheism. It might be more fitting to call him a theologian who contributes to a theological distinction between reasonable and unreasonable theology.

I don't mean to suggest there's no legitimate role for such pig-headed rhetoric. In the short run, it may function as a counterweight to egregious excesses on the other side of a popular debate. But there's also room, and arguably urgent need today, for more complete devotion to the practice of truth, sincerity, and integrity in reasonable discourse. So far as I can tell, it's the skeptic, not the materialist or atheist, who more accurately marks the boundaries of that space. Though public intellectuals like Russell and Dawkins may well intend for their doubletalk to nudge us in the long run toward that very place.

You're referring to empathy aren't you? — TheMadFool

Perhaps.

Empathy is still a relatively new word with a rather tortuous history. Apparently the word entered English around 1908 as a translation for a German term coined in 1858 to describe an alleged process by which a perceiver "projects" their personality into a work of art or other perceptual object. That's just about opposite to how the word's most commonly used today. Evidently the translation borrowed from Greek, but abused the original meaning of the Greek term.

I've begun to avoid the term in my own discourse in light of this confusion. In most contexts sympathy works as well or better. By and large, psychological studies that purport to be studies of empathy could be as fittingly or more fittingly described as studies of sympathy. Someone should notify the psychologists.

Ordinarily, when we "feel another's pain", aren't we just recognizing their pain while feeling something similar to their pain? I feel something while I wince at the blow landed in a boxing match I'm watching, but what I feel is not the same as what I feel when I actually get punched in the face. Even if the feelings were as similar as the taste of the same apple in two mouths, is there some reason to suppose that I'm feeling their pain, instead of just feeling a pain that is very much like theirs?

It seems to me that sympathy works just fine to describe such fellow feeling. I'm not sure what any neologism might add to our language in this regard, besides confusion.

Notice however, that when you put yourself in the other person's shoes, you're simulating tit for tat? How would I feel if the other person treated me the same way I'm treating him (the golden rule) is just another way of saying what if the other person could pay me back in the same coin? — TheMadFool

I don't notice that.

When I imagine myself in another person's context, I am not necessarily imagining them reciprocating. I will not steal from them, though they may steal from me. I will seek to apply the golden rule in my actions with them, though they may decline to apply the golden rule in their actions with me. Depends on the fellow and on the context.

When I imagine myself in another nonhuman animal's context in order to apply the golden rule, I do not imagine them reciprocating, because I presume they cannot reciprocate in the relevant way.

Of course some nonhuman animals have sympathetic feelings and perform actions motivated by sympathetic feelings. I'm strongly inclined to doubt that bugs have the relevant sort of sympathetic feelings for creepy things like us.

To be clear, when I say in this connection "I imagine myself in another's context" I mean to include both their "internal" and "external" context. I don't imagine myself as me in their outward circumstances. I imagine what it would be like to be them in their outward circumstances.

I think some such adjustment for context and interpersonal differences must attend application of the golden rule. Lest the applier become a self-absorbed and overbearing boor: Since I eat meat, everyone gets meat. Since I love rough play, everyone gets rough play. Since I love to have my beliefs and usages incessantly challenged at dinner parties, everyone gets their beliefs and usages challenged at dinner parties….

Surely that's not consistent with the original intention of the moral principle in question.

A great part of the utility of the golden rule is that it prompts us to engage in imaginative acts in which we exercise our powers of compassion, sympathy, and interpersonal understanding while considering a range of prospective actions. Even when we suppose the other is unwilling or unable to reciprocate.

The pandemic has shown how when uncertainty leads to mass “saving for a rainy day” ... many governments were left with no option but to invoke economic stimulus packages, giving people disposable income for no other reason than to spend it and have it influx back into the areas of need and maintain industry/ keep retail afloat. — Benj96

Is that what the pandemic has shown? It seems to me the motive for stimulus was not that people were saving too much, but that the pandemic disrupted employment for many people. It thus threatened their lives and well-being, and threatened to kick off a global economic crisis by putting a massive damper on demand.

Some people who received stimulus (what proportion of them?) remained employed and continued to earn income at or above prepandemic levels. Many of them enjoyed a boost in disposable income from the stimulus due to the way it was distributed.

The government and economics at large relies on the exchange of money. — Benj96

That's how things happen to be. But it's nothing like a law of nature.

Transaction is what is tangible and taxable. — Benj96

What does this mean? There are all sorts of tangible asset. "Cash, cash equivalents, marketable securities", and "real estate properties, manufacturing plants, manufacturing equipment, vehicles, office furniture, computers, and office supplies", for example.

I suppose any damn thing is taxable if you can generate the political will to tax it. Property tax, wealth tax, and estate tax jump to mind. I believe corvees and military conscription are also considered forms of taxation.

It seems strange that non essential “spending” would ever have to be “funded”. — Benj96

And yet so many rich assholes do everything they can to avoid paying their fair share of taxes, so they can save the wealth they steal from the commons and spend the rest on nonessentials. And our society is structured to nurture that monstrous greed.

Again, check your argument. It was disrupted income, not too much savings, that led to the stimulus. A good question is, why was the stimulus distributed so broadly, even to households that didn't need it, and even to people whose earnings hadn't been disrupted? I expect the urgency of the ongoing disruption of income made it prudent to cast a wider net, and thus avoid the logistical and political obstacles to designing a more fine-tuned stimulus.

So it got me thinking. What would happen in an extreme and mass psychological/ behavioural shift where people only spend on the absolutely bare minimum to survive - only essentials like food and water and shelter when previously they bought mostly luxury goods, non essentials and technologies.

Or even more extreme a scenario... if the money spent directly made people more and more self sustaining - ie farming and growing a good portion of their own food in whatever household or local allotment they have, rigging up with their own renewable energy sources etc and living as off the grid as is possible in urbanised areas.

How would the economy change. If all money was spent solely on maintenance of fundamental human rights/ survival how would the government generate the same revenue that it does at the height of affluent capitalism? — Benj96

Great question. I'm not sure anyone really knows the answer. Perhaps it would help to continue roughing out the relevant range of scenarios. To that end, I might ask, why assume the government would need to "generate the same revenue" in such circumstances?

While we're cooking up pipe dreams, what about nationalizing large shares of core assets and industries to maintain a minimum standard of living suited to a technologically advanced democratic society?

What about joining together in that effort with all the people of Earth to responsibly manage our global resources as one integrated community, instead of remaining a community of dipshits dragged by warlords from one conflict to the next, wasting precious resources on "defense spending" and other forms of inessential and destructive "economic growth"?

Exactly. I think the Golden Rule - do unto others as you would like others to do unto you - or it's negative formulation - do not do unto others what you wouldn't want others to do unto you - is key/germane to the morality of bug squishing. — TheMadFool

I agree it seems relevant in the present context.

The reason why we don't apply the Golden rule to bug stomping is because they seem incapable of using the tit-for-tat strategy that has a major role vis-à-vis the golden rule but the winds of change do blow and with odd results — TheMadFool

I wouldn't say application of the golden rule requires the agent to believe that others are capable of reciprocating. It may be sufficient for the agent to be capable of imagining themself in the other's place, even if the other can't perform the same feat.

For instance, it may be enough for the agent to consider questions like, how would I want to be treated if I were a bug; or, what would it be like for me to be treated thus if I were a bug? To extend the reasoning I offered above: If you happen to suppose bugs aren't sentient, then you might conclude it wouldn't "be like" anything for you to be treated any way whatsoever if you were a bug; or if you suppose bugs are only "marginally sentient", there may be room for you to infer or expect that if you were a bug you wouldn't be capable of having a significant objection to having the life swiftly crushed out of you.

It seems to me this is only a special case of the way we must contextualize the golden rule each time we apply it, by imagining ourselves in another's circumstances. I suppose the claim that the golden rule might be applied in different ways to different sorts of animal amounts to a claim that our moral community might be structured along such lines, with different moral status corresponding to different sorts of organism. Of course one must be cautious in drawing out such lines. I take it this sort of view would be compatible with at least some forms of sentientism.

Ever since Thomas Nagel wrote his influential essay What is it Like to Be a Bat (1974), many philosophers and associated hangers on have been preoccupied with understanding phenomenal consciousness as physicalism’s potential coup de grâce. — Tom Storm

I'm grateful that Nagel took his stand to defend the fact of subjectivity in those dark times. But I don't think mere acknowledgement of the subjective character of experience should be threatening to anyone with reasonable expectations about the "completeness" of philosophical "explanation". Perhaps many reductive physicalists have unreasonable expectations about theoretical completeness. So does Nagel, as evidenced by his commitment to an egregiously inflated conception of the principle of sufficient reason in his more recent Mind and Cosmos.

Why assume that meat like us can achieve an "explanation of everything" integrated in the manner of the formal sciences? As a humble skeptic, it seems to me that philosophy is deranged by such far-flung assumptions.

I presume there are physicalists with moderate expectations about the reach of human explanation.
Can any philosophical doctrine "completely explain" the subjective character of experience? If not, then when does it count against a doctrine that it fails to do so?

I’d be interested to hear what members thoughts are about what an understanding of phenomenology can bring to the hoary mind/body question. And can the hard problem of consciousness be restated coherently by the phenomenological approach?

Looking over some writings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, (much of whose project seems to have been a protracted swing dance with Descartes) it appears he believes that the issue of dualism can be dissolved by a recasting the cogito as, ‘I experience through my body therefore I am.”

But does this accomplish much more than change the language without altering the problem? — Tom Storm

I suppose some phenomenologists get carried away with their brackets. Cartesians make theoretical mountains from molehills of conceivability. Too many modern philosophers treat phenomena, appearances, experiences, sense-data, or "ideas" like streams of disembodied pictures floating through a void or through our heads. Merleau-Ponty's philosophy of perception seems a valuable correction to such biases in the philosophical tradition, in emphasizing the originally integrated character of phenomena. We do not find ourselves in experience as immaterial minds enjoying a picture show. We find ourselves as "embodied subjects" living in a world among others.

I haven't read his work in decades, but I was powerfully influenced by my encounter with his magnum opus back in school. I suspect it was in part on the wind of that influence that I began to think of empirical science as a sort of phenomenology; and eventually to think of the discourse of a good skeptic like Sextus as pointing the way to something like a phenomenological naturalism.

Personally, I don't find much philosophical interest in the mind/body problem or in the hard problem of consciousness. If you do think there's a lot of value in such discourses, I expect it's unlikely that any sort of phenomenology is going to provide arguments that "solve" those problems for you. But I do think there's a tendency for work like Merleau-Ponty's to attract some readers who are fascinated by the "possibilities" suggested by such traditional problems, and occasionally to draw them toward more moderate philosophical views. McDowell's Mind and World is another such flycatcher, discharged from squarely within the contemporary Anglophone tradition.

I suppose you're right to suggest that such work may also serve as a "pathway to some additional befuddlement". Are there any canonical works in philosophy that aren't attended by that risk?

Lately I dabbled into more loaded concepts in philosophy in area of epistemology and metaphysics and it had some very loaded concepts that are difficult to grasp for me (at least without loaded knowledge about terminology used thus requiring a lot of crystallized intelligence), whether is there a much point into learning more about it — DenverMan

What do you mean by "loaded concept"? What do you mean by "crystallized intelligence"?

I believe you're right to notice that much academic and canonical philosophy is a bunch of overly burdened and overly technical mumbo jumbo of little use to any human being who doesn't intend to get paid for specializing in some such brand of hyperintellctualized discourse. I'm at least as doubtful about the value of much of the professional discourse that's sometimes called philosophy outside the ivory towers -- I mean, the discourse of shysters and magicians who profit by blowing people's minds with all sorts of misleading and unwarranted claims.

So I agree, there's lots of useless and even harmful talk that passes for philosophy in the world. But I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that there's no such thing as useful philosophical discourse.

You might decide to stop studying the works of professional philosophers. But in my view, no one can stop engaging in philosophical activity. Once you realize this, you can either take up the process responsibly, or neglect to do so. But it will continue in you whether you recognize it or not, and whether you take responsibility for it or not. That's one of the more powerful incentives to spend at least a little time and effort practicing the art of philosophical discourse, so far as I can tell.

Many years ago, when I was a schoolboy, I asked a professor for an extension on a Hegel paper I was having trouble starting. By way of reply he remarked:

Studying philosophy is about enhancing your questioning power. It's life that gives you answers. — Wise old professor

Among other things, I think he meant to suggest that I should just finish the damn paper and move on. But I've found it fitting to recall his proverb on many occasions.

Now, I'm not sure if there is even point of me getting into as I may not be smart enough handle more complex material and logic (hell, even logic seems to have various types of logic such as classical logic and just recently learned about other types of logic and concept of logical pluralism) and even if I were amount of material on philosophy is astronomical (after all there are collections of philosophical works and arguments going through millenia). Then even if I did all of it by some miracle it still seems like a pit with no bottom and all arguments ultimately would collapse if you keep asking questions such as why or how, no matter how smart you're and how much available knowledge regarding philosophy you acquired. Those mentioned aren't the only issues, even if I decided to pursue acquiring knowledge in that direction I would have to do so incrementally and doing learning terminology and methods applied in philosophy from the basics (not sure where I would even start). — DenverMan

Do you suppose there are many professors who have read every book and mastered every topic in philosophy? Even the most brilliant experts specialize and narrow down the scope of their research. Isn't it the same in science? Or in music? Or in carpentry? Or in every field of human practice nowadays?

I suppose the important thing is to find a niche that suits you -- that suits your preferences, your abilities, your obligations, and your goals.

Essentially I'm now faced with a choice whether pursue path of learning in that direction that may ultimately lead me nowhere (Which I think is likely) and perhaps even won't be of use to me (unlike science that essentially seems to accept empirical framework of acquiring knowledge and even then there is a lot to learn about philosophy behind it) or essentially proceed to leave in ignorance and of that little I know and avoiding going too deep into things. Not sure what to chose. — DenverMan

Why are you faced with this choice? Are you considering a career in philosophy, or just wondering if it's a waste of time, or what?

What is your interest in philosophy? What would you hope to accomplish or to gain by pursuing that interest?

I apologize for having shown ethusiasm for the ideas of someone else, enthusiasm is the true mark of the stupid, I realize that now. Whoever is not "for" some idea can't be proofen wrong, because he is not making a positive claim. — FalseIdentity

My dear human, what are you apologizing for? I'd be about the last person to blame an interlocutor for enthusiasm in philosophical conversation. I'm fairly enthusiastic in the act myself, whether I'm "for" or "against" a claim.

Do you mean to suggest I made no positive claims in my enthusiastic criticism of Hoffman? In that case you might take another glance at my remarks. It seems to me I made several positive claims, and even left myself wide open to cross-examination. Perhaps you missed those passionate affirmations. In that case, it seems you may have interpreted my first reply about as carelessly as you interpreted Hoffman's presentation.

To answer your question: There are videos of Hoffmann which are more mathematical and present more detail on youtube, but I am only a human. — FalseIdentity

Do you mean thereby to acknowledge that Hoffman was not talking about logic in the video you recommended? And do you mean to suggest that your interpretation of Hoffman's views on logic are derived from some other videos of Hoffman's, in which he does address the topic in something like the way you initially presented it?

After a day of negativism from almost everyone I met (Yes, outside of this discussion people hate enthusiasm too, this even extend to unexpexted areas like d&d) I opt for not thinking anymore. — FalseIdentity

In light of my preceding remarks, I hope you'll consider the prospect that enthusiasm isn't the issue here.

What do you mean by "not thinking"? It seems to me that if you open your mouth to make assertions or ask questions, there's thinking involved in the process. If you form intentions or expectations, or if you act on the basis of intentions and expectations, there's thinking. If you have even a vague understanding of what other people say and do, or of anything going on around you, there's thinking. As you suggest yourself -- logic and perception cannot be entirely divided from each other.

Perhaps you can take a vow of silence. But as any monk worth their salt would agree, it's quite difficult to make progress in quieting our natural powers of thought, imagination, and affect.

Whoever does not think can't make any thinking errors and hence can't be attacked. — FalseIdentity

People are attacked for all sorts of reasons. Bad reasons for the most part, I presume.

I hope you don't think that I've been "attacking you" by challenging your statements, or that I've been "attacking" you or Hoffman by criticizing Hoffman's rhetoric. That's far from how I understand this activity we're engaged in here. I engage in philosophical conversation with something like the attitude characterized by Socrates in Plato's Gorgias:

Now I am afraid to refute you, lest you imagine I am contentiously neglecting the point and its elucidation, and merely attacking you.

I therefore, if you are a person of the same sort as myself, should be glad to continue questioning you: if not, I can let it drop. Of what sort am I? One of those who would be glad to be refuted if I say anything untrue, and glad to refute anyone else who might speak untruly; but just as glad, mind you, to be refuted as to refute, since I regard the former as the greater benefit, in proportion as it is a greater benefit for oneself to be delivered from the greatest evil than to deliver some one else. For I consider that a man cannot suffer any evil so great as a false opinion on the subjects of our actual argument. — Socrates, in Plato's *Gorgias*

Have you ever read this great work of Plato's? I consider it one of the most important philosophical texts I've ever encountered. I mean, it's actually useful, which is a rare thing in the canon. It cuts to the heart of the difference between philosophy and bullshit. And I've found it nearly as much fun to read as slaying orcs.

Now searching up the more scientific youtube videos of Hoffmann would require me to think but a dead mind can't do that, sorry. — FalseIdentity

I'm likewise disinclined to search for more Hoffman videos.

I wish you a good evening nevertheless. You are a very well educated person, I am sure that if you find "ethusiasm" for the subject of the limits of logic and perception (I thinks it's a typical error of reductionism to want to seperate both) you will make progress on your own. Unless of course your enthusiasm was killed by the constant toxity of social media too. Who knows? I am offline. — FalseIdentity

Blessings be upon you, FalseIdentity. May you find peace, love, and freedom in this life.

You seem a bright and passionate homo sapien with an interest in truth. It would be a shame if you allowed the shitstorm of our social media culture to derail you from your pursuit of wisdom by filling your heart with toxic emotion, or your head with all sorts of nonsense.

A good reply. The simulation ceases to be a simulation, dropping out of consideration.

Notice that this is a piece of conceptual analysis? Clarifying the question and drawing out the consequence. — Banno

Thanks. I agree, it seems like one of those cases in which simple analysis of the definition of terms unravels a psuedoproblem. Though in some such cases there may be ways of reformulating the initial problem to avoid this plight.

Consensus! How extraordinary. — Banno

All too extraordinary.

Maybe this is true of humanity as a whole or of a society but when it comes to us as individuals we often don’t develop any understanding of our actions. — Average

I've yet to catch wind of the difference you suggest.

"When it comes to us as individuals", sometimes we understand a situation correctly; sometimes we're mistaken; sometimes we have no idea what's going on. Sometimes our predictions are correct; other times they are incorrect; other times we may not be in position to make any prediction at all.

As I remarked previously, it just doesn't seem to matter whether we're considering some action we're about to undertake, or some other sort of phenomenon we're merely observing. Sometimes we get it right, sometimes we get it wrong. In either case, what we do know about a course of events is largely informed by similar instances in the past, including instances we experienced first hand, and instances we've learned of through the testimony of others.

This is especially true if an action results in fatalities, particularly when we are the ones who become the casualties. Some trials and some errors can’t really be analyzed through the lens you seem to be proposing. Suicide is an example. — Average

In what regard are these cases different? And what prevents them from being analyzed the way I've suggested?

We know on the basis of experience that when an action results in fatalities, living organisms become corpses; and we know what happens to corpses. On the basis of experience, we have fairly robust and reliable expectations about a wide range of actions any person may take to kill a living organism, and we have just as good a grasp of other series of events that are not any person's action that may result in the death of living organisms -- like heart attacks and cancer, for instance.

I've yet to see what problem you're trying to articulate.

Arigato! — TheMadFool

De nada.

There's this curious phenomenon which is brought up by several philosophers, though I like Thomas Reid's formulation of the problem. What's the problem? — Manuel

Do you happen to know where Reid offers his formulation?

The issue is that of resemblances. Reid points out that if you are walking down a street and hear the sound of a horse pulling a wagon and then you turn around and look at it, the sound produced does not resemble the objects producing it. — Manuel

I'm inclined to take issue with Reid's assessment as you relate it here, in part because the account of perception seems biased by disproportionate respect for visual perception.

The "look" of an object is not identical to that object. Why should we speak as if the look of an object resembles the object any more than the sound of an object resembles the object?

We must be careful in identifying the "perceptual object" in each case. Surely the thing I hear is not best characterized primarily in terms of color and extension. It's not a static visual picture of a horse and wagon; nor is it merely a horse and wagon. It's a whole physical system with many moving parts that we may characterize only roughly and generically as, say: a shod horse pulling at a given velocity through a given period of time a wooden wagon of given dimensions and weight carrying a given load on granite cobblestones surrounded by air….

The visual system is not capable of perceiving all the gross and subtle motions of that object which transmit vibration through the surrounding air, nor capable of perceiving those transmitted vibrations as they move through air. In this regard the auditory system is much finer, and grasps the object in its own way when the ear receives the vibrations produced by the motion of that whole state of affairs.

It may seem clear enough what it means to call one sound similar or dissimilar to another sound; and to call one look similar or dissimilar to another look. It seems prima facie less clear what it might mean to call a sound and a look similar or dissimilar to each other; or to call a sound (or a look) similar or dissimilar to the object that sounds (or looks) thus. In each case we must specify a principle of comparison: similar or dissimilar in what respect?

It seems fair enough to say that a sound and a look may resemble each other in virtue of their correspondence to the same perceptual object and in virtue of their correspondence to the same sort of perceptual object.

Ordinarily, a horse looks and sounds horse-like. In this regard, the look and the sound of the horse are alike. Moreover, the look and the sound of a horse may be called "horse-like" in that they appear to us when we happen to be in the appropriate physical and perceptual relation to horses: This sound is like other sounds I have heard in a similar connection to horses. This look is like other looks I have seen in a similar connection to horses.

It's easy enough to specify respects in which the sound of an auditory object resembles the object itself. For instance, the force and temporal intervals at which hooves strike cobblestones are reflected in the auditory presentation, though the same features of the object may seem a blur to vision. I presume the science of acoustics can specify in fine grain many more features according to which the objective character of the sound resembles the various parts-in-motion of the physical system that produces the sound.

This is perhaps even clearer in cases of olfaction and tactition.

We can further imagine many other instances: the smell of wet grass does not resemble grass. — Manuel

What could be more "grass-like" than the gas we call the grass's odor -- which presumably contains molecules just like some of the molecules of which the grass itself consists, only lately transmitted from that grass to the air around it?

the sensation of a surface of a wall does not resemble the wall which produces the sensation — Manuel

The wall feels smooth and hard and yay high; the wall is smooth and hard and yay high. Here too, empirical science may unpack the correlations of such objective features of tactile perception with physical characteristics of the object perceived, with a finer grain than is available to us in our ordinary perceptual reports.

To say a resemblance is not immediately apparent is not to suggest that there is no such resemblance. To say a resemblance is roughly grasped is not to suggest it is not grasped.

We can do this for almost all of our senses, with the apparent exception of sight. It makes no sense to say (for example) that the red sensation I get from this apple does not resemble red. — Manuel

I'm not sure what exception you have in mind. To pursue the analogy you've set up, the relevant perceptual object here is not the color red, but the apple itself. To rehearse the formula I introduced above, I see no reason to suppose the redness of the apple we see is any more "like" the apple itself, than the sweetness of the apple we taste is "like" the apple itself.

Likewise, the pain in my finger looks not at all like the tip of a sword which caused it. — Manuel

Surely the "look" of the finger and the "look" of the sword are not the most relevant principles of comparison here.

That aside, I suggest that feelings of pain are more like feelings of hunger than they are like exteroceptive modes of perception, and arguably deserve distinct treatment in the present inquiry. I might briefly expand on this point if you like.

I think such thought experiments show what the rationalists have argued for, namely, that objects induce in us the capacity to be affected in a certain manner. If we are deaf, no problem of resemblance can arise for hearing: such persons just lack the innate capacity to hear. — Manuel

What rationalist argument do you have in mind?

It seems to me the capacities you point to here are not induced in us by the things we perceive, but are natural to animals like us.

Whenever we decide to do something we believe that what we are about to do actually does make sense. How do we determine if we are right or wrong? How can we be certain that our actions are actually beneficial and not counterproductive? In other words is there a way to know in advance that we are making a mistake? Can we predict the results of our decisions in order to avoid unintended catastrophic consequences? — Average

How do we know when our perceptions make sense? How do we learn to have reliable expectations about any course of events?

It seems pretty clear that we learn to understand our own actions, and to anticipate their results, in the same way we learn to understand and anticipate other sorts of phenomena. Through a lot of trial and error, on the basis of experience.

See, e.g., Hume on the reason of animals.

I was wondering what are the thoughts of the community about this, let me know:) — Lea

Absolutely. We can and do live in doubt. Doubt is not denial. Doubt is the negative form of wonder. Doubt is compatible with belief.

Would you say there's some reason to suppose otherwise?

Read Pyrrho. He allegedly walked into the path of an oncoming wagon because he wasn't sure of the report of his senses and yet... — TheMadFool

There's no extant text from Pyrrho. Read the Outlines of Pyrrhonism (aka the Outlines of Skepticism in a recent translation) by Sextus Empiricus.

A new discovery in the science of evolution has shown that a logic developed through evolution will never seek to understand the truth, it just learns to maipulate it's environment without a deeper understanding of what it is manipulating: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYp5XuGYqqY&t=997s [...] (I strongly reccomend watching the video in the link to understand this better) — FalseIdentity

I recommend you take another glance at the Donald Hoffman TedTalk you linked to, or perhaps read the transcript. Hoffman isn't talking about logic -- where did you get that from? He's talking about perception. And despite his misleading rhetoric, he doesn't say we have no grasp on truth. In fact he leans the other way when prompted to clarify, at 20:24 in the video, in response to a remark from Chris Anderson.

So you think it's possible -- (Laughter) -- This is cool, but what you're saying I think is it's possible that evolution can still get you to reason. — Chris Anderson

Yes. Now that's a very, very good point. The evolutionary game simulations that I showed were specifically about perception, and they do show that our perceptions have been shaped not to show us reality as it is, but that does not mean the same thing about our logic or mathematics. We haven't done these simulations, but my bet is that we'll find that there are some selection pressures for our logic and our mathematics to be at least in the direction of truth. I mean, if you're like me, math and logic is not easy. We don't get it all right, but at least the selection pressures are not uniformly away from true math and logic. So I think that we'll find that we have to look at each cognitive faculty one at a time and see what evolution does to it. What's true about perception may not be true about math and logic. — Donald Hoffman (my emphasis)

It's not a startling discovery of 21st-century science that perceptual judgment is not in general immediately veridical. The fallibility of perceptual judgment is one of the oldest tropes in the history of philosophy. Progress in empirical knowledge depends on rigorous collection and analysis of observational judgments -- in the "direction of truth" that Hoffman acknowledges, when pressed, in the passage I've just quoted.

It's not clear to me what conception of "reality" he thinks he's overturning -- whose belief "that spacetime and objects are the nature of reality as it is". It sounds to me like he's recognized the conceptual shortcomings of some philosophically naive materialism -- perhaps one that he once took for granted himself -- and now he's wide-eyed at all the "possibilities". If that's so, then I'd consider his fuzzy exuberance in this public-facing talk, along with Nagel's Mind and Cosmos, as another symptom of the intellectual confusion attendant upon academic philosophy's recoiling from a century of immoderate scientism.

I'm sure there's some interesting scientific models hidden beneath his vaguely suggestive discourse. But on the surface that discourse is indistinguishable from the snake-oil pitch of a pseudoscientific charlatan. Unless you can point me to a more responsibly formulated presentation of his considered view, I wouldn't give it a second thought.

Sorry it took so long to respond. — Sam26

I'm not one for deadlines. And I like space between turns. No worries.

I think we generally agree, with some clarifications, or maybe some disagreement. — Sam26

I agree. It's on the basis of that impression that I've sought to begin by getting a clearer view of where our respective outlooks on the concept of testimony may align or diverge. It's not clear to me to yet what either of us has to say on the subject. I have my own dispositions in the matter, but haven't spent much time sorting them out.

It's mind-boggling to consider the way the work of many minds coalesces in a single person's worldview through the medium of culture.

Yes, I do agree that generally "...the implausibility of a claim tends to undermine the credibility" of that claim. — Sam26

The point I was considering is that the implausibility of a claim tends to undermine the credibility of the witness who makes that claim. If the expert can't provide enough support to make the claim seem plausible, but persists in asserting the claim, this tends to count against the expert's credibility. The witness must be able to provide some reasonable account of the justification or basis for the claim, and that account must stand up to scrutiny. If it stands up to scrutiny, it's plausible. If it doesn't stand up to scrutiny, then on what grounds would the expert affirm it?

However, I don't think that because something seems implausible, that it follows that it is. — Sam26

Do you mean something like this:

The fact that a claim seems plausible to me or to anyone does not entail the claim is true. Likewise, the fact that a claim seems implausible to me or to anyone does not entail the claim is false.

Plausibility is always plausibility relative to some epistemic context. Our evaluation of the plausibility of a claim is in principle open to revision.

Many discoveries have been overturned in science because people considered what most find implausible. So, there has to be the right kind of balance, we tend to get to invested in certain worldviews, which can impede new discoveries. — Sam26

What's the right sort of balance?

There's always the problem of allocation of resources. There's always the problem of prioritization. It would be as disastrous for our global society as a whole, as it would be for any single person, to continually commit a significant share of resources to every conceivable investigation.

When I lose my eyeglasses or my house keys, I don't book a flight to every city on Earth to track them down. I look in a few places nearby, beginning with the most likely. Sometimes they don't turn up and I broaden the search. Occasionally I've found my keys still in the lock on the door. Once I found my eyeglasses in the refrigerator.

I do agree that more is needed than just a claim, i.e., we need some objective way to verify claims that seem implausible. — Sam26

Something's got to make the claim seem reasonable enough to warrant the time and other resources we spend considering it. There's something like a halting principle that disposes us to constrain our investigations to a range of reasonable alternatives -- in every case a quite narrow range compared to the infinite range of conceivable alternatives.

I'm not sure you read my argument which was given further down on the first page, but I go into detail about what is needed to support my inductive argument, i.e., what drives good testimonial evidence. — Sam26

I have read it. It seems our views on the evaluation of testimony may diverge as your argument proceeds. I hope to address that argument in subsequent comments.

I happen to be interested in the more general conversation about testimony. I also think it was insightful of you to have opened a conversation about near-death experiences with independent consideration of the topic of testimony. I agree it's a useful approach, and hope our subsequent conversation may benefit from these preliminary considerations.

I find that I agree with most of what you say. — Jack Cummins

I'm pleased to hear it. I try to avoid making unreasonable claims.

The area where it gets more complicated is with issues such as belief in God and life after death. — Jack Cummins

I suppose I expect the same general principles of judgment to apply in these matters as in others. What is more complicated in these cases, by your account?

It may seem strange to bring those areas in, but I was brought up with such beliefs and, having read a lot of philosophy and related fields, I have spent a lot of time dwelling on such matters, often going round in circles. — Jack Cummins

I don't think it's strange at all. Traditional religion was part of my upbringing. I recognize the value of spiritual experience, spiritual practice, spiritual community. I think there's room for a sort of agnostic theology that doesn't run afoul of healthy skepticism.

For many, hope and wishful thinking may come into play in holding onto such ideas. Also, when people think about their own future, uncertainty as to what may happen, hope may play an important role too. — Jack Cummins

One may provide inspiration, consolation, and guidance without promoting habits of unreasonable judgment and disregard for the value of truth. Moreover, it's one thing to take up philosophical conversations about these matters with someone who is eager to do so; and another to force such conversations on a person who would rather not engage in them, who gives no special reason to press the issue.

My view is that hard determinism does not make ethics irrelevant, because right and wrong are also about justification, more specifically, justification of an action, that is, ethics is also about whether an action is justified or not, and free will is irrelevant to justification, therefore we can continue asking moral questions. — Hello Human

I'm not sure I follow your historical prelude. But you present an interesting path of objection to the claim that hard determinism "makes ethics irrelevant". I'm inclined to say it's a fair objection. But I'm not sure that someone who sincerely claims that "hard determinism makes ethics irrelevant" would agree with us.

I expect the people who claim that hard determinism undermines morality would likewise claim that hard determinism undermines moral justification. If it's just an illusion that we're free, I can hear them saying, then it's just an illusion that our actions can be morally justified or morally unjustified.

I'd prefer to give less ground to the hard determinist than you have here, and pull this thing out by its roots. From my point of view, incompatibilist determinism is as arbitrary and unwarranted as incompatibilist libertarianism. Has anyone definitively established that the cosmos is (or isn't) completely deterministic? No matter how determined it is -- even down to the last jot of human action -- clearly there is a sort of freedom that agents like us really do possess. On what grounds would the hard determinist insist that we refrain from using the word freedom to characterize this aspect of human life? Only on the grounds that some people have overburdened and inflated the term with fanciful metaphysical hopes and wishes. Ditch the metaphysics, keep the ordinary concept of freedom -- with indifference to the degree of determinism in the cosmos and in human action.

Along these lines, I suggest that "soft-determinism" and "compatibilism" are unhappy names for the sort of approach to this topic I've indicated, as they leave too much room for the impression that this time-honored debate is anything more than a boondoggle and a pseudoproblem.

What if our experience in life were a simulation and not reality directly, but reality is 100% identical to the simulation. When we interact with the simulation it has the same effects on reality, and when reality gives feedback it is through the simulation. Is the simulation as real as reality even as an in-between with reality, or must it be fake? — TiredThinker

If our experience is "not reality", then by definition it isn't "100% identical" to reality. Since the simulation is a simulation, then by definition it is "fake".

On those two counts, at least, your question seems absurd. You might try reformulating the problem, and specifying what you mean by "our experience", and what sort of "simulation", for starters.

What do you think is the reason why most people, even very educated people, seem to have difficulty engaging with ideas that challenge their views? — thesmartman23

What do you mean "have difficulty"? And what sort of "views" do you have in mind?

I have been thinking about this since Amity
queried my use of the expression of 'I believe' in my writing on this site. I have been thinking about how I was encouraged to use the expression, 'I believe' on some academic courses as an ownership of ideas? I am wondering about the nature of 'belief', and what that means in terms of personal construction of meaning and the wider scope of meaning? — Jack Cummins

Before it runs headlong into the weeds, the SEP entry on belief notes that "[m]ost contemporary philosophers characterize belief as a 'propositional attitude'". Other terms characterized as propositional attitudes include hope, wonder, doubt, and denial, for example.

Take a proposition, like "I won the lottery yesterday". Consider the range of attitudes toward that proposition expressed by ordinary sentences like:

I believe that I won the lottery.
I hope that I won the lottery.
I wonder whether I won the lottery.
I doubt whether I won the lottery.
I deny that I won the lottery (i.e., I believe that I did not win the lottery).

Does "belief' make any sense at all beyond the scope of personal meanings, and how can the idea of belief be seen in the wider scope of philosophy, especially in relation to objective and subjective aspects of thinking? — Jack Cummins

I believe that it's October, that it's daytime, that the bright yellow thing in the sky is a star, that Biden is the current US president, that humans are mammals, that we are speaking English, and so on. It seems clear there's a "subjective" aspect to these beliefs: I am the one who "has" them. It seems clear there's an "objective" aspect to these beliefs: They are beliefs about objective matters of fact, about states of affairs in the world that, to all appearances, are what they are independent of my humble grasp of them.

In such happy cases, it is those objective matters of fact that make our personal beliefs about them true beliefs.

Do you find something troubling about this way of speaking? Or is there some other use of the word "belief" you have in mind? Or what problem should we be considering here?

It's common for people to use the language of "belief" to put some distance between beliefs and truth claims. For instance, on some occasions we use phrases like "I believe..." to indicate our uncertainty or open-mindedness, or to signal our acknowledgment, tolerance, or respect for conflicting beliefs. On some occasions we use phrases like "They believe..." to explain someone's actions ("The thief believes the jewels are buried nearby"), or to distinguish someone's belief from other people's belief, from reasonable belief, or from the facts ("He actually believes he won the lottery"; "He actually believes in the flying spaghetti monster").

It seems to me that all such emphatic speech acts rely on the more basic role of the term "belief", which is so aptly characterized as a propositional attitude.

Did at any point I make such a claim? — Sam26

Did I at any point suggest that you had made such a claim? I'm surprised to find you so quick to interpret such a straight answer as if it implied a disagreement.

I was simply picking up the theme you raised, not disagreeing with you. I was offering a clarification of a point you made after you invited "us to clarify several points". In offering my own humble clarification, I did not intend to imply that it was news to you.

You didn't pay close attention to what I said over the course of this thread. — Sam26

It's my custom to enter a thread by replying directly to the original post. Would you like to discuss this practice here, or perhaps in some other place? I'd prefer instead to restrict our discussion to the substantive themes you've raised, without getting bogged down in frivolous discourses on manners and protocols.

You are correct, that "someone saying this or that" is not in itself always sufficient to justify a belief. However, it depends on context, if you're in a class being taught by an expert in biology, that can be a justification for believing what the person is saying. Much of what we believe comes in the form of testimony from trusted people. When you read a book by an expert in a particular field of study, this is a form of testimonial evidence. You certainly aren't involved in the experiments of scientists, so you take their word for it. Obviously not all testimony is worth considering. It's a matter of knowing the difference between kinds of testimonial evidence. — Sam26

I agree that demonstrated expertise is one of the factors that typically supports the credibility of a witness. I agree that many common-sense beliefs about the world are supported by testimony. I agree, and stated in my initial response, that a lot depends on a judge's ability "to sort reliable testimony from unreliable testimony."

Who would deny such statements?

However, expertise does not always entail credibility of the witness, even in matters about which the witness has demonstrated expertise. For instance, we might have good reason to believe that an expert witness has often been found to be a liar, or to contradict themself from time to time -- like a bullshitting politician. We might have good reason to believe that the expert witness has often been immoderate in his certification of his own opinions when in fact they conflict with the opinions of other experts who possess equivalent credentials -- like a delusional fanatic. And of course the general reliability of a witness is not always sufficient to support their credibility in a given claim, nor to support the plausibility of the claim.

If you happen to have read any further than the first sentence of my previous reply, you might recall I suggested that:

at some threshold the implausibility of the claim begins to undermine the credibility of the witness. As we approach that threshold, we become increasingly disposed to discount the claim, absent something in addition to support it. — Cabbage Farmer

I offered this as a clarification of a point you had made:

if testimonial evidence is of something out of the ordinary, say extraterrestrials or something mystical, then it would seem to follow that the evidence would require a higher standard than what is generally required of good testimonial evidence — Sam26

Here again, my suggestion was offered as a clarification, not as a disagreement, my friend.

Now I wonder, do you agree with that suggestion I made in my attempt to clarify your point about a "higher standard" of evidence in "extraordinary" cases?

I mean, do you agree that the implausibility of a claim may tend to undermine the credibility of the witness who makes the claim? Do you agree that "extraordinary cases" like those you indicated typically involve claims that are considered prima facie "implausible", regardless of the general credibility and expertise of the witness who makes the claim; and that for this reason, something in addition to that testimony is typically required to support the claim in question?

A functionalist says there are only functions of consciousness like reportability. There's no extra awareness. IOW, functionalists basically think we're all p-zombies or Turing AIs. — frank

I'm aware that sort of view has been fashionable among hard behaviorists, functionalists, computationalists, eliminative materialists, and their ilk. But I'm not sure all functionalists are committed to that sort of view.

Consider the definitive doctrine ascribed to the functionalist by the SEP, "that what makes something a mental state of a particular type does not depend on its internal constitution, but rather on the way it functions, or the role it plays, in the system of which it is a part." Couldn't one hold this "doctrine" while remaining agnostic about the "extra awareness" you indicate? I suppose one might adopt a functionalist account of "mental states", and even of "mind", without denying that some or all minds have that "extra" awareness, and perhaps without any interest in that proposition.

That qualification aside: I agree that if one believes "there's no extra awareness", as you put it, then the distinction between sentient beings and p-zombies collapses.

So far as I can make out, that would mean there's no sense in talking about p-zombies for them. For the rest of us, it will seem as though their conception of sentience is akin to our conception of the p-zombie. I'm not sure where that leaves their talk of AI. I mean, on what grounds would they require that an AI system pass the Turing test in order to count as "conscious"? I'd expect them to count a much wider range of AI systems as "conscious". I'd ask them to provide some account of their distinction between conscious and nonconscious systems, regardless of whether they are natural or artificial.

First, that testimonial evidence is a valid way of justifying one's conclusions, and moreover, one's beliefs. Most of what we know comes from the testimony of others. Thus, it's a way of attaining knowledge. — Sam26

"Someone said so" is not in general an adequate justification for an inference or belief.

Testimony can be a way of "attaining knowledge". It can also be a way of falling into error and confusion. The outcome depends on the testimony, and it depends on one's ability to sort reliable testimony from unreliable testimony.

Second, since the argument will be based on testimonial evidence, and given that testimonial evidence is notoriously weak, what criteria makes testimonial evidence strong? — Sam26

The credibility of the witness. The plausibility of the claim.

But how do we assess these two factors?

Third, if testimonial evidence is of something out of the ordinary, say extraterrestrials or something mystical, then it would seem to follow that the evidence would require a higher standard than what is generally required of good testimonial evidence. — Sam26

Something along those lines would seem fitting.

I suppose at some threshold the implausibility of the claim begins to undermine the credibility of the witness. As we approach that threshold, we become increasingly disposed to discount the claim, absent something in addition to support it.

Fourth, since the argument falls under the category of metaphysics, how do we understand what is meant by reality? — Sam26

It seems to me that when we use the word "reality" as a noun, with a capital R so to speak, we mean something like this: the whole world, all existence, whatever is in fact the case for all time and all place, or whatever "dimensions" or parameters we should name alongside or instead of time and place, regardless of whether it is known or unknown, knowable or unknowable.

I suppose we may also speak (affirmatively or negatively) of the "reality" of an assertion or an intention -- did the speaker really mean it, did he mean it wholeheartedly and sincerely, was he holding something back, was he lying. Likewise, we might speak of the "reality" of a perception, or even of appearances in general.

What other sorts of example of this (small r) use of the term might we list?

How should we say the "small r" uses are related to the "big R" use? Is there a more conventional pair of labels for these uses?

I prefer to analyze ordinary sayings like "The Tooth Fairy isn't real", "The Tooth Fairy doesn't exist", and "There's no such thing as The Tooth Fairy" as shorthand or placeholders for more sophisticated assessments. Something like "The Tooth Fairy is the name of a (mere) creature of fiction that serves as the locus for a set of cultural practices". In my preferred usage, creatures of fiction count among the "real things", the "things that exist", though they exist (merely) as creatures of fiction. So I interpret an ordinary-language dispute about whether The Tooth Fairy exists, as a dispute about whether The Tooth Fairy is a (mere) creature of fiction.

I'm a later Wittgensteinian when it comes to understanding words, that is, I don't believe there is a definition or theory that will cover every use of certain word (for example, words like real or reality). However, I don't believe Wittgenstein was correct in his assumption that the mystical can only be shown (prayer and meditation for example) and not talked about in terms of what's true or false. Wittgenstein believed this in his early and later philosophy, which is one of the reasons why he was against arguments for the existence of God. Although he was sympathetic to man's reach for the mystical, which is why he didn't agree with the logical positivists. — Sam26

I call myself a skeptic in the (Pyrrhonian) spirit of Sextus. I find a kindred view shifting in and out of focus when I read Wittgenstein's On Certainty. A few months ago I discovered this is an active niche in the academy.

See, e.g., Pritchard, "Wittgensteinian Pyrrhonism", or Eichorn, "The Elusive Third Way: The Pyrrhonian Illumination in Wittgenstein's On Certainty"

I'm no scholar. But I'd agree that Wittgenstein often seems to overreach in drawing his boundary between sense and nonsense, and that such straining is exemplary of a repressive tendency typical of 20th-century naturalism. At least in many cases where Wittgenstein calls nonsense, the Pyrrhonist would merely suspend judgment. A different sort of quietism, a more inclusive peace, a more wholesome common ground.

1. Dawkins focuses on the fact of Islam, or Christianity or any other religion being factually incorrect.But what if the goal of a religion is not to be factually correct, but to give people moral guidance, thumos and social cohesion? — stoicHoneyBadger

What if it is? I suggest that in the long run, the aim of "giving people moral guidance, thymos, and social cohesion" is well-served by promoting the value of truthfulness, and is impaired by promoting bullshit, lies, delusion, literal belief in fiction -- and generally speaking, a culture of unreasonableness.

2. Giving moral guidance in a form of only 10 commandments or 4 noble truth, etc. just printed on a page would not have much interest, so it need to be wrapped in an intriguing story of a hero living out those believes. — stoicHoneyBadger

There's plenty of ways to make moral instruction appealing without asking people to believe "supernatural" fictions are literally true. If a) moral instruction, inspiration, and social cohesion can be effectively promoted by other means, and b) promoting unreasonable expectations and literal belief in fiction has negative consequences (e.g. for morality, thymos, and social cohesion), it would seem advisable to find another way to get the job done.

3. The fact of the wrapper-story being factually correct or not has very little to do with whether the content is useful. After all, the 'secular humanism' Dawkins is promoting, is pretty much the same Christianity, just without the supernatural wrapper. — stoicHoneyBadger

I suppose secular humanism has something in common with a wide range of religious traditions, not just Christianity.

On the other hand, Christianity means different things to different people. Who gets to decide what counts as "content" and what counts as "wrapper"? This is one of the features of exegesis that people will disagree about. The wrapper, by its very design, is open to more or less fundamentalist interpretations of a great many sayings -- and under those interpretations, for the people who thus interpret, those features are part of the content of the religion.

Isn't there a downside to this openness to fundamentalist interpretation, that might offset the utility you have so narrowly emphasized? As I suggested above, if the "wrapper" promotes unreasonableness, we might expect it to have effects that in the long run are contrary to the goals you've selected, among other negative effects.

Is there an analogous problem for secular humanism -- or for any ideology that promotes morality, thymos, and community along with truth and reason?

4. Looking at Afghanistan, it looks like the Muslims are winning. We might laugh about their religion being archaic, but they aren't the ones hanging from the helicopters. ;) So their religion, while being incorrect to say the least, gave them thumos and cohesion to take over the country in a week, yet Christians and atheists, while being much more powerful, don't have the balls to do anything about it. — stoicHoneyBadger

This strikes me as symptomatic of a profoundly confused view of events in Afghanistan, of American foreign policy, and of the history of the past century or so, to say the least. I suspect it would take us too far off topic to clear this up here. I hope we can pursue the conversation without getting bogged down in such examples.

I see Transhumanism as being largely a coalescence of individual and environmental conditions that naturally lead a growing number (one day a majority) of people to view technological progress optimistically. These factors are present in every person's life in today's world, whether they're aware of those influences or not. How people respond to the omnipresence of technology is what defines their relationship to the future, now. — Bret Bernhoft

I'd say there's a great deal more involved in defining people's "relationship to the future". But of course the progress of technological culture is one of the most important drivers of change for our species and our planet.

Is optimism an essential feature of transhumanism?

Consider the following three definitional formulations from the whatistranshumanism landing page. I suggest that each of them is as consistent with pessimism as it is with optimism about prospective outcomes, and of course as consistent with the moderate mean between those extremes.

Transhumanism is a class of philosophies of life that seek the continuation and acceleration of the evolution of intelligent life beyond its currently human form and human limitations by means of science and technology, guided by life-promoting principles and values. — Max Moore

It's one thing to seek an outcome, another to expect (optimistically or otherwise) that the outcome will come to pass. One reason to allocate resources to "the continuation and acceleration of the evolution of intelligent life", and thus to the implementation of "life-promoting principles and values" is that we recognize the dangers inherent in our technological culture and in human nature as it stands. We can take this stand -- seek this outcome, promote these principles and values -- whether we are pessimistic, neutral, or optimistic about our prospects for success.

The intellectual and cultural movement that affirms the possibility and desirability of fundamentally improving the human condition through applied reason, especially by developing and making widely available technologies to eliminate aging and to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities. — Humanity+

Likewise, we may "affirm the possibility and desirability" of using reason and technology to make basic improvements to the human condition, regardless of whether we are pessimistic, neutral, or optimistic about the prospective outcome.

The study of the ramifications, promises, and potential dangers of technologies that will enable us to overcome fundamental human limitations, and the related study of the ethical matters involved in developing and using such technologies. — Humanity+

In this blurb the downside risk is especially prominent. It gives equal emphasis to "promises" and to "dangers". It mentions human limitations and "ethical matters", which present us with obstacles to progress.

Perhaps the phrase "will enable us" leans optimistically. I might swap it out for "would enable us". But even taking it as it stands: It's one thing to study technologies that will enable us to overcome our limitations, and another thing to actually use those technologies to overcome our limitations while adequately avoiding negative outcomes.

Stephen Hawking [...] and many others are all pointing at the same thing. — Bret Bernhoft

The prospect of self-destruction plays an important role in Hawking's "Life in the Universe". On my reading, he presents this prospect with a rather pessimistic tone. Tone aside, I concur with Hawking in emphasizing the downside risks of human (and transhuman) technological culture.

As I've suggested, in my view a sober grasp of the downside may function as a powerful motivation for the transhumanist agenda. It seems imprudent and even irresponsible to neglect that downside.