Or, as I suggested to Metaphysician Undercover, if you continue to say such things you may well be institutionalized. — J

I don't think you're getting the point J. Most likely, you could keep on saying this, and never get "institutionalized". And, people very often get institutionalized for other things. Therefore there is no necessary relationship between saying things like that, and the punishment you propose. There really is no "stern consequences" for common misuse of language.

"intentional" in some sense, I suppose. I would prefer "purposive". It's a process of developing a functional mechanism and the process is set up by DNA (roughly) and includes control mechanisms. But it's very different from purposive activities at a conscious, everyday level. Our growth processes are not controlled by the conscious being that is being created. That would be impossible. — Ludwig V

I look at this perspective as very problematic. "Purpose" is usually defined by "intention", and "intention" is defined by "a goal", or "aim". This implies that "intention" is the broader term because some goals or aims may actually be without real purpose, but acting purposefully always implies a goal. It appears like you want to make "purposive" the broader term, and have two types of purposiveness, one of which does not involve intention. But this makes that second type of purposiveness unintelligible.

You propose a type of purposiveness which is not set toward any goal or aim. It's just a "functional mechanism", a "control mechanism", which does what it does, without any further goal, or aim.

But this is completely contrary to what evolutionary theory demonstrates to us. Evolutionary theory shows us that these mechanisms do have a goal or aim. Some have survival of the organism as their aim, and some have reproduction as their aim. Therefore it is contrary to evolutionary theory to remove intention from these mechanisms. They clearly act with a goal, or aim, and therefore are intentional.

Furthermore, your proposal is contrary to the spirit of evolutionary theory, which strives to show how the various parts and activities of the different living beings are all connected at a fundamental level. But you propose a division of separation between "purposiveness" at the conscious level, and "purposiveness" at the level of the DNA. And this drives a wedge of unintelligibility between these two, within an individual living being. So within myself, for example, I have purposiveness within my DNA, and also a completely separate and unrelated purposiveness within my conscious activities. How is that reasonable in any sense, to drive such a wedge and produce a dualism of purposiveness within an individual being? This is why I say that this proposed division of purposiveness would leave one type as unintelligible. Unless one is understood as an extension, or subtype of the other, then the one is left as aimless and unintelligible.

I don't see how that's possible. We don't learn philosophy on its own. We have to learn ordinary language first. — Ludwig V

I don't see why this is difficult for you. You do understand that there is a separation between the act of teaching and the act of learning, do you not? When people learn to talk, they learn by copying, they do not learn by definition. However, those who teach do so on principle. So the teaching may be based in philosophy, while the learning is not. The children do not necessarily "learn philosophy" even if philosophy is the reason for the specifics of what is being taught. That is why philosophy is prior, it guides the teaching, while the learning is based in the activities of the free will. What is learned is "ordinary language", what is taught is principled speaking (philosophy). Therefore ordinary language is based in a foundation of philosophy as the guiding principles, what you call rules, even though the learner may refuse the rules.

If there is a medium that separates us, it also, at the same time, unites us. It's just a change in perspective. London and Edinburgh are separated by a bit more than 300 miles. At the same time, they are joined by those miles. — Ludwig V

I explained to you the principles of separation. You are claiming that the principles of separation also serve as unification. That is what I insisted, is unjustified. Obviously, "300 miles" refers to a spatial separation between two distinct and separate places. Please explain how you conceive of "300 miles" as a union between these two.

But it is useful to think of language as a set of rules - grammar. — Ludwig V

This may be useful for some purposes. But in philosophy when we want to understand the true nature of something, what is conventional for other purposes might mislead the philosopher. That is what I think is happening here. This idea, which is useful for some other purposes, is misleading you in your philosophy.

In the case of the signs, I was imagining dying in a crash because of not following the speed rules. — J

The probability of that is extremely low. The vast majority of people speeding would have no consequences. And even if not speeding, one could still die in a crash. So that is really not relevant.

. In the case of language, someone who didn't follow the rules of their language would likely be ostracized or oppressed -- at least it they did it a lot. — J

But people do it all the time, and some, instead of being ostracized, become trendsetters and influencers.

Anyway, the severity of the consequences isn't the point. Rather, it's that there is no automatic enforcement of these rules. — J

No, the point is that there is not any rules which we must follow, and no real punishment if we do not follow the rules which are there.

Compare, for instance, using a passport. There are rules and you have to follow them or else you can't use a passport. No one is ever in a position of being told, "Fine, don't present a valid passport, you'll be sorry." They're simply prohibited from playing the passport game. — J

Right, in the case of language, you can still use it freely without following rules. By the passport analogy, you can still play the game, even without the passport.

Or, if it's merely a matter of "Either follow them or face the consequences," then this applies equally well to ordinary language, which exacts stern consequences for the non-followers. — J

I don't see that there are any "stern consequences" in the case of ordinary language. It's just like in my example of the speed signs, where there is no stern consequences for driving fast. People use language any way they please, and unless they go beyond the boundaries of hate speech, or something like that, there are no stern consequences at all for stepping outside the norm. In fact, many even get rewarded as trendsetters or "influencers".

The strange magic of evolutionary theory is that it creates a sense of purpose, of intent, that does not depend on any conscious activity. Whether, and how far, that coincides with un- or sub-conscious activity, I couldn't say. — Ludwig V

What evolutionary theory provides in relation to intent, in my opinion, is a better understanding of how intent underlies all living beings, and how conscious intention is just one specific manifestation of that more general purpose (intention) which underlies all life.

But I don't think that it makes philosophical sense to say that an unconscious purpose is just like a conscious purpose, but unconscious. It needs a bit more explaining than that. — Ludwig V

Sure, a bit more explaining would be useful, but it's really not difficult to understand through the use of a few examples. It is very common for the more specific to be a type of the more general. So for example, the human being is a type of animal. Likewise, walking is a type of activity. In the same way, we can understand that consciously willed acts demonstrate a specific type of intentionality. In reference to the examples now, walking is a consciously willed act which is a specific type of intentional activity, whereas growing is a type of intentional activity which is far more general. And, the human being is a type of animal which we know has a far more developed capacity for consciously willed acts, in a very specific way, in comparison to the more general intentionality of other animals.

I don't think it is necessarily wrong to develop variant uses of ordinary concepts for philosophical purposes. But it would be a mistake to think that philosophy can just sail off on its own, losing contact with the ordinary world and ordinary language. Ordinary language, because it is the first language we learn, is the inescapable bedrock of everything else. — Ludwig V

This is exactly what I disagree with, seeing things in the opposite way as this. I believe that philosophy forms the bedrock usage, and ordinary language sails off, losing contact with the philosophical roots. This can be understood historically. Ancient philosophy established the conventional meaning of many common words in modern society. Those with ruling power, the Church for example, historically enforced rules of language usage and this created a class distinction between the illiterate and the literate. The Church took its rules of language use very seriously, as is evidenced by The Inquisition. Eventually though, the human will for freedom of speech and expression overcame this, allowing language to fly off in all sorts of different directions. However, it's not difficult to see how strict enforcement of basic grammar is the only way to provide a foundation for higher education.

Why can't our individual worlds all share in the public world? — Ludwig V

This is a good question, commonly asked because "the public world" is often taken for granted. Because of that presumption, what is taken for granted, the answer is most often not well understood.

The answer itself, is that we do not have acceptable ontological principles required to support the reality of a united, shared, "public world". We must start with the individual mind as the most immediate, and this often leads to some form of idealism. However, we do have very good reason to accept the minds of others, as well as the medium between us, which separates my mind from your mind.

The problem though, is with the assumption of unity, required to create "the public world". Yours and my minds are separate, allowing us each to have private thoughts, so there is necessarily a medium which separates us. But these are terms of separation, not terms of unity. So until we can show that the medium which appears to separates you and I, in actuality unites you and I, we do not have the ontological principles required to support the reality of a united, shared, "public world".

This is the ancient problem of the One and the Many. Our inclination is to take "the One" for granted, as the united whole, the universe. But empirical evidence demonstrates to us that "the Many" is what is real.

That doesn't mean there are no rules. It just means that the rules can be misused and misinterpreted. Some of these misinterpretations become new, or extended, uses. Others are ignored or suppressed because they are not accepted (taken up) by the ultimate arbiters of correct and incorrect - the community of users. — Ludwig V

The nature of "ordinary language" is that the users are free to decide which rules to follow, or whether even to follow any rules. This freedom leaves any rules as ineffective, effectively not "rules". Imagine if the speed limit signs on the highways were just there to inform people what speed someone, somewhere, thought people might like to drive at, but had no power of enforcement, allowing that people would drive whatever speed they wanted anyway. We couldn't call these signs "the rules", because "the rules" implies principles which people are obliged to follow.

But we need to link back to ordinary language (or experience) or world, or philosophy becomes a pointless exercise. — Ludwig V

This is very ambiguous. These words "language", "experience", and "world" have very different meaning. And, the scope of all three together is very wide. However, the three together do not cover everything, so that implies that we could still do meaningful philosophy without referring to any one of the three. The philosophy might refer to "mind", or "concepts", "objects", and many other similar things, making it very meaningful without reference to the things you mentioned.

I think ambiguity and misconceptions arise when ordinary language is misused in philosophy, myself. — Ciceronianus

I don't see how ordinary language could be misused, because the nature of "ordinary language" is that there are no regulations to distinguish between use and misuse. That's why deception is common with ordinary use. Philosophers strive to exclude such misuse, and that's what separates philosophical use of language from ordinary use of language.

For the record, I don't assume there's a world "external" to me. I'm part of the world, like everything else. I'm not sure what you mean by an "internal world." It wouldn't be surprising if you assume there's one though. It seems you think worlds abound. You have a rococo conception of reality, or realities. — Ciceronianus

This doesn't change anything. It's just more evidence that your world is not the same as my world. Therefore it's more proof that "the world" is actually a false conception. No matter how much the belief that there is just one world, is a shared belief, it's contrary to reality, as demonstrated by what you wrote here.

But regardless, I think you define and use "intend" and other words in ways I think are so beyond ordinary use I don't think further discussion would benefit either of us. — Ciceronianus

To properly study philosophy, it is of the utmost importance that we do not adhere to "ordinary use" for our definitions. Ordinary use is so full of ambiguity that attempts to apply logic would be fruitless.

Sure, but @AmadeusD just laughs at this very serious problem.

I suppose it would be more accurate to say that each of us causes a world to exist, though, as each of us has a mind, each mind therefore causing its own world. — Ciceronianus

Well, you could say that, but in general, we each produce a world which we assume is shared with others, and that produces an illusion of objectivity. So the world i produce, like the world you produce, is a shared world. Through this illusion we each call our own world, "the world" and think of it in this way. Then we sometimes argue about what is the fact, or the truth about certain things within "the world", each believing that my world is the world, even though we disagree, and it would be necessary to resolve the disagreement to support this assumption of 'the world".

I don't think anyone claims we physically cause the world to exist, building it as bees build a hive and birds build a nest, but perhaps I'm wrong,
as Wayfarer seems to think we (I don't distinguish between myself and my mind) construct the world, or each of us causes a world of our own. — Ciceronianus

"Physicality" is part of that world which you produce, and also part of the world which I produce. You and I both have a different idea as to what "physicality" is, so it's one of those things which we might argue about, and need to resolve if we want to support the assumption of "the world". That disagreement, and argumentation is common at TPF.

With respect to making homes, we each do what we can to make ourselves comfortable in our own individual little worlds. Often, we assist each other in this effort, but sometimes, I making myself comfortable interferes with you making yourself comfortable. This interaction produces, and reinforces the illusion that we share a world which is "the world". However, the fact that we must interact with language and communication, extensively, before we can even get a very minimal understanding of how the possibilities of this supposed "world" appear to the other person, indicates that "the world" really is an illusion.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but I've been under the impression that the characteristics or capacities of our minds under discussion are those that operate or obtain regardless of any intent on our part to use them. — Ciceronianus

Intent is actually built into all those capacities, as they are all directed for various purposes. Your ability to "will" is just one of these capacities, purposely directed by intent. So intent underlies the will, and willing is one type of intentional act. But intent, as purpose, extends far beyond willing. This is evident in all your intentional acts which do not require willing, habitual movements, etc..

Sometimes I look for something, or try to hear what someone is saying, and in those cases I may be said to intend to see or hear though I think it would sound odd, but I hear and see things without intending to do so merely by being alive. I can't help but do so. — Ciceronianus

You have, inherent within you, intent, just by being alive. This is not something you willed to have happen. It just comes along with being alive as part of the package. You could put an end to this with suicide, but otherwise you cannot will your intent to go away. As it is impossible to not act at all, the best you might do to release yourself from intent, would be to try to act in a completely random way. But even that would be intentional So when you say that you can see and hear things without intending to, this is a self-deceptive illusion you create for yourself, by restricting "intention" to a conscious act of willing, and not allowing that there is intention, purpose, behind all your subconscious acts as well.

I interact with the rest of the world and experience it merely by being a living human being, but I don't think it's correct to say that I intend to do that when I don't. Similarly, I don't think it's correct to say that I create something merely by being alive. — Ciceronianus

The subconscious, unconscious, is a vast part of your living existence, which your conscious mind does not access. Since your conscious mind does not access it, your conscious mind does not know how intent is active in this vast part of your existence. Intent enters into your conscious mind, and you experience it as such, just like you experience all your sensations, so why not assign to it just as much reality as you do to your sensations? You assume that there is "a world" external to you, which is responsible for causing your sensations, so why not assume an internal world which is responsible for causing your experience of intention?

It is very correct to say that you create something just from being alive. That is why you need food and oxygen. Even at the most basic physical level, the cells are always dividing, creating new cells. So it's very clear, and correct, to say that being alive is to create, as the latter is the necessary condition of the former.

I think you're overfond of using words implying that intent is present (e.g. "create" "enact") without any reason to do so. — Ciceronianus

If "intent" is defined by purpose, then all living things act with intent, because they clearly act with purpose. So I don't see why you have a problem with "create", which simply means to cause the existence of. Do bees create their hives? Do birds create their nests? Do human beings create their world? Why not?

What's the point of this post? I thought AI posts are banned from TPF.

Yeah, I think Trump really likes gifts, it makes him feel special. Qatar gifted him a 747.

Looks like the "Grand Jury" in the Comey case was actually a grand two people.

I think that's what the lounge is for, a place to put to use our omniscience. That practice can be called omnipotence.

What does TDS stand for, Testosterone Deficiency Syndrome?

But, just maybe he learned something from the Romans, keep the people happy and distracted with the circus. — Sir2u

The Romans? When can we have them over to the White House?

Yep, but not everyone fears him, in these parts he his seen as a bit of a clown. — Sir2u

That's the thing. You can only push so far.

Well... *sigh*. That is.. not reasonable. — AmadeusD

There are many ways to show how the argument is not reasonable, I provided one. The argument requires a very narrow perspective to work. It works for Banno because he adopts that narrow perspective and refuses to talk to anyone who will not take it. It's like saying the argument requires these assumptions, and if you do not accept these assumptions, I will not discuss it with you. What's the point?

Not everyone is against Maduro, but those that are will want a lot from trump to stop the drug trade. — Sir2u

I don't think Trump gives a flying fuck about stopping the drug trade. He just uses it as leverage. You know, he'll keep up the attack, rationalizing it as being an attack on the drug trade, even threatening to take Maduro out if necessary, until he gets what he really wants from Maduro, in negotiations. That's the way he works, through bullying.

A quandary.

Probably he's after oil. He seems to be extraordinarily obsessed with keeping the price of fuel in the US low. I think he believes this will guarantee him the title of best president ever. The fuel in Venezuela could be the cheapest in the world.

Basically I've noticed nothing done in that sector and when Trump is already hinting the willingness to have talks with Maduro, that willingness totally undermines the support for the opposition. — ssu

It's possible that Trump is trying to pressure Maduro into negotiations, like he does with the tariffs. The bully tactic he's known for. I think he actually likes Maduro, and wants to force him into alliance, or more likely allegiance.

Personally, I would have thought that trump, being such a good business man, would know about the rules of supply and demand, The only reason drug lords exist is because there are drug users.
Would it not be better to go after the users within their own borders than to be picking fights with foreign countries? — Sir2u

Trump uses drug trafficking as a reason to declare "national emergency". This declaration gives the government the power to avoid congress. He used fentanyl smuggling from Canada (estimated less than .01% of American fentanyl comes from Canada) as his excuse to declare a national emergency, allowing him the power required to impose tariffs on Canada.

You shoulda just left it at thanks, and gone your merry way. — Mww

As I said, I didn't see anything to thank you for. And to be insincere in a discussion about truth is self-defeating.

You asked, I answered. You could have just said thanks.

I’ll end with this: an invitation to the dreaded Cartesian theater in your critique of my perspective. It is self-defeating, systemic nonsense, to conflate the thing with a necessary condition for it. — Mww

I didn't see anything to thank you for. But since you seem to be inviting me to critique your perspective, I will.

The substance of your reply, I see as based on incorrect assumptions which make your perspective impossible to understand.
That is the following:

It is impossible not to know whether the relation of conceptions or of judgements accord with each other, for in either there is contradiction with experience if they do not. It is not given by that knowledge the cause of such discord, only that there resides no truth in it. — Mww

It's fundamentally wrong, to say that it's impossible not to know whether a relation is a relation of accordance. More often than not, we do not know that. That is because whether or not it is a relation of accordance requires a judgement of that nature.

And, the proposed problem of "contradiction with experience" does not support that basic premise, because this phrase makes no sense. What could "contradiction with experience" even mean? What is experienced must be put into words, before anything can contradict this. So that would not be contradiction with experience, but contradiction with the description of what was experienced.

Then you mention the cause of discord, but causation is irrelevant here.

Further, you conclude with a statement about "possible cognitions". But we were talking about actual judgements or actual cognitions, and neither one of us provided any principles to establish a relation between actual and possible judgements/cognitions. You simply assumed another meaningless, nonsense principle, "the sum of all possible cognitions is incomplete".

It's nonsense because "possible cognitions", as individual items which could be counted, summed, doesn't make any sense in itself. To count them requires that they be cognized. Therefore the sum would be a sum of actual cognitions. A sum of possible cognitions is nonsensical, due to that impossibility.

The necessary condition of empirical truth as such, in general, is the accordance with a cognition with its object, cognition itself being the relation of conceptions to each other in a logical proposition, re: a judgement, or, the relation of judgements to each other, re: a syllogism. It is impossible not to know whether the relation of conceptions or of judgements accord with each other, for in either there is contradiction with experience if they do not. It is not given by that knowledge the cause of such discord, only that there resides no truth in it. — Mww

But isn't it the case that whether or not there is "accordance" is itself a judgement? You say that truth is "accordance" but isn't accordance a judgement? That "the cat is on the mat" is in accordance with reality, is a judgement. If you don't think that accordance is a judgement, then maybe you could explain how it could be anything other than a judgement?

It is not that all true things are known, insofar as the sum of all possible cognitions is incomplete, some of which may be true respecting their objects, but that the criterion of any truth is known, for which the sum of possible cognitions is irrelevant. — Mww

If there is such a thing as "the criterion of any truth", doesn't this imply that truth is a judgement as to whether the specific criterion is fulfilled?

OK, care to make that re-statement for me? Just so I can understand your perspective on this.

Anti-realism says: every truth must be knowable.
But you also say: there are truths we don’t and maybe can’t know.
Fitch shows you can’t have both.
If there are unknown truths, then not every truth is knowable, which just is the denial of anti-realism. — Banno

"True" is a judgement. Judgements are only made by intelligent minds in the process called "knowing". Therefore all truths are known.

On a quick look-up, SEP explains the paradox thus:-
The ally of the view that all truths are knowable (by somebody at some time) is forced absurdly to admit that every truth is known (by somebody at some time).
I'm not impressed. It seems to follow that at any given time, there can be unknown truths. That these truths may be known at some other time is not particularly interesting. — Ludwig V

Fitch's paradox only demonstrates the obvious, that every truth must be known. Since "truth" refers to a relation between propositions and reality, and only intelligent minds can produce this relation through the application of meaning, and the process of knowing, it is very obvious that all truths must be known.

So, what Fitch does, is take a clearly false premise, that there may be a truth which is unknown, and shows how one might produce an absurd conclusion from that false premise. That's common practise in philosophy, it's a way of demonstrating the falsity of the premise, to those who do not grasp the obvious.

The issue with the possibility of truths which we as human beings do not know, involves the assumption of a higher, divine intelligence, like God. If we understand that the human mind is deficient in its capacity to know, and we assume the possibility of an actually existing higher mind with a greater capacity to understand and know, then we accept the possibility of truths which are not known by any human mind, but are known by the higher mind.

he was clearly coaching a Dem congressman what to ask Michael Cohen during an anti-Trump investigation — NOS4A2

Evidence of the breakup in the bromance?

A conviction for smuggling drugs does not produce a death sentence in the USA.

c) Overthrow of the regime... somehow. — ssu

Since the leader of Venezuela has been designated a narco-terrorist, I think that goal is clear. But viewing poor drug runners as dispensable pawns, for the purpose of inciting conflict, is pathetic.

The set of true sentences is never complete, if that helps. — Banno

If the set is not complete, then you imply that there are more true sentences which are not in the set. So, do you mean by this, that "the set of true sentences" does not refer to all the true sentences?

I am very fond of maps and have been reading them since I was a child, road maps, contour maps, weather maps. It's not surprising that you think I'm lost though. I've come across this before on camping trips, when the person who can't read the map insists that I'm wanting to take them in the wrong direction.

Looks interesting. A bit expensive, but probably worth it for me to get some background information.

It speaks to the algorithm organising the complex lives of animals that are more than the one dimensional creatures you seem to think they are. — apokrisis

To me, the idea that there is such an algorithm is a faulty principle which negates the possibility of free will. This idea you propose, is an example of what is known as conflating the map with the territory. Such thinking leads to the idea that reality is a simulation.

The complex lives of social animals is modeled with the use of algorithms, systems theory, etc.. But that is the map. The terrain is actually radically different from the model, as we know from our experience of free will.

This is certainly your concept of how systems are organised. System science doesn’t agree. — apokrisis

Of course. When you conflate the model (system) with the thing modeled (real activity), you're bound to say that the science doesn't agree, when someone points to your erroneous assumption. All systems are artificial, either a model, or a created physical system. To map a natural thing as a system is a very useful tool. But to disregard the difference between these two, the map and the natural territory, is very misleading.

Thanks Jamal. I'm staring to understand the primacy of the object. It's difficult for me because traditionally (Aristotelian) the object itself is a composition of matter and form. Therefore one dualism is relinquished for another, by assuming the primacy of the object. Ontologically, there is still a need to determine primacy within the new dualism.

This, by way of the cosmological argument, is what leads the Christian theologians toward the immaterial Form, God, as primary. The problem which developed historically, is that matter separates us from God along with the true "Forms", as outlined by Kant (the intuitions of space and time being the manifestation of matter in this work). The human intellect is deficient because of its dependence on matter, making our understanding deficient, therefore the forms which we understand are distinct from the true independent Forms. That's why I conclude that matter rather than form is what is immediate to us. The theologians determined Form as primary, by logical priority, but matter is immediate.

I noticed that Adorno associated "substance" with the social whole, and this replaces "matter and form" with "content and form", in this type of substantial object, 'society'. But to me this does not resolve the problem. He seems to be proposing that each is mediated by the other, and I believe that this will render the proposed object 'society', as impossible to adequately understand, due to the issues I already described.

The trouble, from your point of view, will be that refuses to develop this into a positive ontology, instead using it as part of a critical move to reveal the shortcomings of all ontology ever attempted. — Jamal

This is why I described ontology as an attitudinal position, or even a moral discipline. We can take "the shortcomings of all ontology ever attempted" as inspiration to be a metaphysician, knowing that there is a real need for something better. Or, we can take "the shortcomings of all ontology ever attempted" as an indication that ontology is pointless and ought to be abandoned forever.

Anyway, I'm very interested to see how the book progresses.

The nature of a tool, and the nature of power in general, is that it could be used for good purposes, or it could be used for bad.

I have argued that this selfishness we worry about is the dominance-submission dynamic that balances the social hierarchies of social animals without language to mediate how they organise as collections of individuals. — apokrisis

But don't you think that this selfishness is just the basic instinct toward survival, of the individual being? You know, like we have some basic needs, nutrition for example, and this might incline us to fight over the same piece of food. Why would you want to attribute it to an aspect of a social hierarchy when it just appears to be a basic aspect of being an individual?

It is always a mistake to believe that some thing must be primary when it is always the dynamics of a relation which is what is basic. — apokrisis

What do you base this assumption in? I don't believe that the two sides go hand in hand at all. This attitude leads to infinite regress. We discussed this before as the relation between the whole and the part. One must be prior to the other or else they've both existed together forever, without beginning.

So I don’t think we need to hurry the arrival of the selfish and competitive aspect of LLM tech. That is leaking out in all directions, as the rocketing electricity prices in Virginia and other data centre states is showing. — apokrisis

The point though, is that the LLMs do not have the same needs which human beings have, (such as the need for nutrition mentioned above), and this is what drives the selfishness. Sure the LLM could be made to be selfish, but this selfishness would just be a reflection of the designer's wants, not itself, therefore not a true selfishness.

Thank you MU, this is very good and clear. You and Adorno certainly disagree here, but I'd like to emphasize some things about his position with a view to achieving general agreement of interpretation. His "mediation all the way down" as I called it is not nihilistic. It's not saying we can never reach the truth, but proposing a search for truth which is very different from first philosophy, of which Heideggerian fundamental ontology is a newer version, according to Adorno. In a nutshell, he is against ontology as such. Now, I can respect that you cannot accept his position here, but maybe we can agree that this is what he thinks. — Jamal

Well, I like to think that I am somewhat open minded, so I am open to the possibility that he will change my attitude toward ontology. Afterall, we are at the beginning of the book, and that's the reason for reading this stuff, to learn something new. He did manage to show me, in the introduction, how "substance" could be assigned to the societal whole, in a reasonable way. However, I fear that this move is related to the "mediation all the way down" position, and it appears to me that this results in a dead end ontology.

Not that it will change your mind, but I think the key might be to see that for Adorno, mediation is not an obstacle to truth, but rather its constitutive condition. This way of putting it is structurally similar to one of the ways I used to argue against indirect realism, phenomenalism, etc (BTW I haven't changed my mind about it, just left behind the debate): the sensorium is not a distorting medium between ourselves and the world, but is the condition for the world to appear to us at all, and is the means through which we are engaged with it. Just as indirect realists seem to regard only a suppositional perception without the senses as allowing us to get beyond ourselves to apprehend the Real, so ontologists in their own striving for immediacy regard only a non-sensory "intellectual intuition", a pure grasp of being, as sufficient for attaining the truth of what is. — Jamal

The problem is that mediation implies distinct aspects, and "mediation all the way down" implies that one cannot be prior to the other, nor can they be adequately separate to be understood individually. Essentially, we have a dualist philosophy within which we deny ourselves the possibility of separating one aspect from the other, in an absolute way, so this leaves the foundation of 'the world' which is the union of the two aspects, beyond our intellectual grasp. In assuming that the two are inseparable, i.e. one always mediates the other, we must conclude that we will never be able to understand one as prior to, or independent from the other.

In the introduction we saw how form and content must always mediate each other, and this resulted in the conclusion that the societal whole is substance. In this chapter we see that thinking, and what is thought, are mediated by each other, but this leads into the problem I explained. From this perspective i do not see how understanding and misunderstanding can ever be adequately distinguished from each other.

Words like problem and solution ring false in philosophy, because they
postulate the independence of what is thought from thinking exactly
there, where thinking and what is thought are mediated by one another.

This may be the direction which Kant's metaphysics leads us. In your example, you have "the world" and "the condition for the world to appear to us". The condition is "the sensorium". Since this is a necessary condition, then the world can only appear to us in this way, as phenomena, and we will never be able to separate out the noumenon to understand it directly, because it is just an unassailable postulate. Plato, on the other hand, posited the deficiencies of sensation, and insisted that the intellect can grasp the intelligible objects (noumena) directly. In this way intelligible objects are posited as immediate, and we have a way around the problem of mediation which Kant described.

Personally, I believe Plato was wrong on this issue. Aristotle showed how there is always "potential" as a medium between the forms in our mind and the independent forms. Therefore, I think that what appears to us as the unintelligible, i.e. matter, potential, is the medium between us and the independent forms. So matter, as the medium, is what is immediate to us. Notice, even in your example, what you call ""the condition for the world to appear to us", the sensorium, can be construed as immediate to us, as the medium between us and the world. This is the material aspect.

As I said though, I believe it becomes a moral issue, the way we "ought" to approach the unknown. So I think Plato actually had the right approach, with "the good", and the good approach is to assume that something is immediate. Where he went wrong perhaps was that he assumed the wrong thing to be immediate. And that is the problem of ontology which Adorno has exposed, it appears to be mediation all the way down. But I believe the way that the metaphysician ought to proceed is to attempt to isolate the immediate, even if only by trial and error. We cannot know for sure if it is mediation all the way down, until we try every other possibility.

Now, I can respect that you cannot accept his position here, but maybe we can agree that this is what he thinks. — Jamal

I will say, that it appears to be like this at this point in the book. But Adorno was very intelligent and quite crafty, so I'm not yet convinced that this will be his conclusion. Plato proceeded like this. He appeared to adopt Pythagorean idealism in his early work, to learn everything about it, and apply it to all aspects of the world, only to reject it in the end, as being inadequate. Since he has so much work which describes Pythagorean idealism, the untrained mind, or one who doesn't read thoroughly, would believe that he supported it. Hence we have the vulgar "Platonism".

I don't see how he is dismissing at the end of the quoted passage, quite the opposite, care to explain? Also, I believe Adorno is dismissing both the "succinct" sense and the "general sense", the latter being far too broad for Adorno. — Pussycat

Read the passage below. Notice, it says "I should like to mention an objection". As "an objection" what is stated is stated as something contrary to what Adorno is presenting. Therefore this, what is stated, is an objection which Adorno is dismissing. At the end he says he will respond in more detail later.

At this point I should like to mention an objection that has been raised by an extremely knowledgeable source, namely by someone from your own circle, someone from amongst those present here today. Given that the concept of dialectics contains the element of negativity precisely because of the presence of contradiction, does
this not mean that every dialectics is a negative dialectics and that my introduction of the word ‘negative’ is a kind of tautology? We could just say that, simply by refusing to make do with the given reality, the subject, thought, negates whatever is given; and that as a motive force of thought subjectivity itself is the negative principle, as we see from a celebrated passage in Hegel’s Phenomenology where he remarks that the living substance as subject, in other words, as thought, is pure, simple negativity, and is ‘for this very reason, the bifurcation of the simple; it is the doubling which sets up opposition, and then again the negation of this indifferent diversity and of its antithesis.’ In other words, thought itself – and thought is tied to subjectivity – is negativity, and to that extent negativity, and especially dialectical thinking, is negative dialectics from the outset. I should like to respond to this in detail next time. For now I wish only to set out the problem as it has been put to me and to say that it calls for an answer.

I couldn't disagree more. — Pussycat

I understand that you and I have significant disagreement on how to interpret Adorno.

I appreciate the effort, but since you still adhere to the promise of a transcendently correct question, I don't think it works. This implies that concrete conditions merely contaminate an attempted purity, whereas Adorno's point is that they're constitutive, that it's mediation all the way down. — Jamal

I suppose, as I said, this is the point where I disagree with Adorno. That's not to say that I am judging either one of our perspectives to be true or false, in any absolute sense. I think that I simply believe that "ontology" has a different nature from what Adorno believes. Since, as I said, ontology is speculative, I cannot claim to be confident that I am right.

However, as I said a few days ago, I believe that the goal of ontology is to determine the immediate. True certainty can only be produced in this way. So to insist that there is mediation all the way down, I believe would be a self-defeating ontology. It's like saying that we might as well stop seeking certainty because we can never have it.

So my belief is a matter of how we 'ought' to approach this field, ontology, therefore it's a difference in moral attitude. I hold the same attitude toward those materialist/idealists who assume prime matter, as infinite potential, to be the first principle. It's self-defeating because it's an assumption which renders reality as fundamentally unintelligible. Therefore I have developed an attitude toward how we ought to proceed in ontology.

But wouldn't you agree that language is associated with social practices and language games? — frank

Yes, the language used amounts to how the question is formulated, and the formulation is a reflection of the culture. The point is that the real question which lies underneath, as "ontology" itself, which we might say is the desire to know the nature of being, transcends all cultures and social practices. As the content of the question, it is the same question in all cultures, despite being formulated in many different ways depending on social practices and language games.

I reiterate, this is my believe, not what I think Adorno is saying, but how I think i might differ from Adorno in belief.

The idea is rather that questions are socially and historically mediated, never completely separable from their formation. And they are also mediated subjectively in the intellectual experience of the philosopher, whose thinking is shaped by their situation. The concrete social and historical conditions produce certain questions, so we understand and attempt to answer the questions partly through understanding these conditions. — Jamal

I think I see the point, I just don't agree. I think the nature of ontological questions is such that they transcend all social and historical conditions. That's why I said the same questions are asked throughout history and by every different culture. What varies is the formulation of the question. So the questions appear to differ but they really ask the same thing, i.e. how do we approach the unknown. The unknown has a different appearance depending on the social historical mediation, therefore the question has a different formulation depending on these factors.

What did you think of my proposal of how to make my perspective consistent with Adorno's? If we recognize that since the formulation of the question is always going to be mediated by social and historical conditions, and we know that this is going to make the question asked, the wrong question, then we can conclude that the answer is always already within the question. The answer being that the question itself is mistaken, or the wrong question.

I put some effort into explaining that without going full mystical mumbo jumbo. You could at least mull it over for a second. — frank

I apologize for being short. But I already spent much time mulling over what Adorno said, and I didn't find that your brief effort really added anything significant.

I've added the bolded "do" to make it clear what Adorno is saying. He is saying that the idea has some truth to it.

First, I think we can all agree with Adorno that philosophical questions are generally/often not "abolished through their solution." That is, what appear as solutions are not really solutions at all, and the questions become reformulated or perhaps discarded as uninteresting, never solved with the gathering of data as in science. This is why "their rhythm in the history of philosophy would be more akin to duration and forgetting." The rhythm is not question -> data/proof -> solution. — Jamal

I completely agree to this point. I find there is a lot of truth to that perspective, that in philosophy the question is usually more important than the answer. But for me, the reason for this is that the questions asked are ones that never get completely answered. So we have from the time of ancient Greece, and probably even before that, (but we can't properly interpret what was asked before that) the very same questions being ask even up to today. These are questions about divinity, good, time, space, infinity. These questions get answered over and over again by every philosopher who approaches ontology, but the answers never satisfy us, so the questions persist, to be addressed over and over again, maintaining importance, while the proposed solutions are discarded.

Now, the way that a good philosophical question "almost always includes in a certain manner its answer" is that a good philosophical question already shows us what we are looking for; it tells us the kind of answer that will satisfy us—but unlike science this is not external. The question embodies a particular experience, one rooted historically and socially. So the answer is not external to the question, as it is with empirical data in science, but immanent to the genesis of the question. This is the meaning of "It must model its question on that which it has experienced, so that it can catch up to it." — Jamal

I do see that he is proposing some form of empiricist perspective, philosophy "must model its question on that which it has experienced". But that premise does not produce the conclusion which he draws, "the authentic question almost always includes in a certain manner its answer". If it is true, as a fact, that we question our experience, this does not produce the conclusion that the answer to those questions is necessarily within that experience.

In fact, this attitude which Adorno seems to be proposing at this point, may be a big part of the reason why these questions never get answered. We look toward experience to answer the questions we have about experience, but this will never produce a solution because the reason why experience induces these questions is that these questions are the products of deficiencies of experience, where experience fails us in providing an explanation. This is what Plato indicates when he says that the senses deceive us, and we must use the power of the intellect to overrule the influence of the senses.

So to answer these questions which experience throws at us, due to its deficiencies, we turn to speculation. But speculation doesn't seem to provide the ultimate answers and the same questions, derived from the deficiencies of experience, remain through much speculations.

None of this is meant to imply that we can immediately read off the answer straight from the question. Nor does it mean that the answer can be deduced in the manner of mathematics or formal logic, as if all philosophical questions implied the whole philosophical system of the world in microcosmic tautology. — Jamal

I understand this, and that is why he says the question includes the answer "in a certain manner". This might be applicable to questions of empirical sciences, where there is a eureka moment of discovery. The question is formulated with precision such that it indicates exactly what the answer must be. But questions of ontology are vague and not like this. That is why the same question may have a multitude of different answers, each answer claiming to be the correct answer. The ontological questions really have nothing to indicate the criteria which the answer must fulfil.

This is significant, and it points to the incorrectness of what Wittgenstein says about the regions where words fail us, that we must be silent. In reality, philosophical questions must direct us into these areas which we have no words for, thus providing the initiative for the evolution of language and knowledge toward understanding. But this implies that the certitude of the question is its uncertainty. The only think the question takes for granted, as certain, is uncertainty. In other words, the question is simply an attempt to point at the uncertainty, as that which appears impossible to know, and asks how can we devise a way to know it. But the uncertainty inheres within the very question because even the direction which the question must point is uncertain. Therefore the question cannot even provide an indication as to what the answer will be.

But as a philosophical question—which we now see that it is—it expresses the conditions of its genesis, defining a horizon of meaning. It presupposes that there are two distinct things and that they are problematically related. This expresses a worldview which is already part of the kind of answer that might satisfy the question. The answer would be the answer it was owing to its dualism, and this was in the question already. — Jamal

I don't see this. The question presupposes dualism, because that is how the problem presents itself to us in experience, as the appearance of dualism, and dualism creates the problem of interaction. But the question might be resolved either by a dualist proposal, or a monist proposal. So the dualist presupposition is simply the empirical presentation of the problem. That presupposition ought not, and actually does not, impose any dualist conditions on the answer. The answer to the problem might be that the empirical presentation itself (the dualist representation), is itself incorrect (the senses deceive us), and the solution is monist.

I believe, that in the case of ontological questions, to think that the formulation of the question imposes such restrictions on the potential answer, is a mistaken idea. Ontological questions deal with the content itself, and the formulation of the question ought not distract us from that. This is why we can understand that the very same ontological questions pervade all cultures and languages, so long as we do not focus too closely on the formulation of the questions.

So Adorno isn't saying that asking a question magically gives you the answer, rather that in philosophy, the way a question is framed already expresses an insight into what it seeks. The question is not a neutral, disinterested request for information but the expression of an experience. Thinking it through, not importing information, is what brings answers to light. — Jamal

This is where I would disagree with Adorno then. I believe that to make this conclusion, Adorno is placing the ontological question into the same category as a question of empirical science, though he notes a difference between the two. "The way a question is framed", refers to an empirical description of the problem. If we say that the framing of the question places necessary restrictions on the possible answer, then we exclude the possibility that "the way a question is framed" is the problem (mistake) itself. Like the dualism example, the question may contain mistaken assumptions.

And I believe that in a world of changing knowledge, evolving cultures and languages, reframing of the question is very often the best approach in ontology. For example, Aristotle took the ancient question "why is there something rather than nothing", and showed how the question is much better posed as "why is there what there is rather than something else".

Anyway, I'll leave it at that. I seem to have developed a slight disagreement with Adorno at this level, but perhaps it will prove to be insignificant. My perspective is that the reason why the question is more important than the answer, is due to the need to determine the appropriate question. To be consistent with Adorno, maybe that's the answer which inheres within the question, that the question itself is wrong.