I don't have any major addictions but sometimes I notice that I feel the need to get something I don't even really want. If you've been on a losing streak in a videogame you'd know what I mean. — khaled

I know what you mean, but I not sure if that's a qualitative difference, or just two conflicting desires with differing intensities... i.e. a shortterm desire to really want to win, and a more general desire to just stop playing the game and do something else constructive.

It's also a common trait of mediocre athletes to be OVERconfident, not lacking confidence. — khaled

I think they are two sides of the same coin. When you are overconfident, a little thing can tilt you to loose all your confidence precisely because it was inflated and it's hard to maintain the illusion in the face of evidence to the contrary.

But yes I think I sort of get what you're trying to get at with linking it to attachment. The downward spiral then is presumably the result of an attachment to an overinflated idea of yourself.

Rules are generally thought to be swapped based on circumstance, but what if a rule has the circumstances in which it applies built into it, along with a stipulation that the actor doesn't matter? Would the application of these rules require a meta-rule selecting from a set of such rules? — ToothyMaw

If you're asking necessarily in principle, I'd say no. Why would you think so?

But off course in practice it's actually very hard, if not practically impossible, to make a set of sufficiently specific rules that are distinct and non-contradictory.

You might say this new, integrated rule may need to be swapped out for even more specific rules according to circumstance. I don’t think that this is necessarily the case. I would argue that if we have a set of sufficiently specific rules, and they are distinct and non-contradictory, we can just view them all as applying at once; no one claims that we must select rules from legal texts via a meta-rule to apply them - except insofar as it relates to whether or not a rule has been broken. — ToothyMaw

And so I think, as a matter of practicality at least, it makes perfect sense to have meta-rules. In the legal system of my country for instance we have the following meta-rules to avoid these problems :
- laws passed by higher authorities trump those passed by lower authorities.
- for laws passed at the same level of authority the specific law trumps the more general.

I thought about it; legal texts are often times open to interpretation. A better reference would a set of very specific legislated laws. — ToothyMaw

Yes usually they are not to specific and open to interpretation on purpose, because it's not really feasible to be so specific as to regulate all the minutia of all possible circumstances. That's where judges come in.

Also I find there is a world of difference between getting the thing I'm attached to vs the thing I want. When I get something I want I'm happy, when I get something I am attached to I don't feel anything. And sometimes I'm attached to things I don't even want (bad habits). — khaled

If you are talking about addictions I would agree, but do you think that is what is meant with attachments here? Maybe, I'd need to think about it some more.

If desiring to win and failing to do so is disappointing, then those who desire to win the most should be devastated the most. We can agree that top athletes probably do desire to win the most. However they are not devastated the most (ideally, they are not affected by a bad performance at all). Suggesting that maybe there is something extra that is the actual cause of disappointment, something other than desire to win. — khaled

Yes but my first guess wouldn't be that that something extra is attachments. It's sort of a psychological downward spiral that compounds the mistakes that other non-top players get stuck in. How do you see the relation to attachments here? I'd say this is more a question of a lack of confidence.

I don't think those two things are the same at all. Attachment is different from desire. — khaled

Meh, I don't think they are things at all... just two symbols pointing at different degrees of what is essential one psychological process. It seems a matter of degree rather than discrete things. If I don't get what I want, I'm disappointed. If I don't get what I'm attached to, I'm very disappointed…

This would mean that you would be put down by a bad performance. But athletes are pushed to to not care even about that. Take volleyball for example, it often happens that a player single handedly loses a game or a set for his team because of the nature of the game making it very clear who messed up (fast paced, highly structured and a single mistake by a player puts down the whole team). But top players shrug off mistakes, worse players are put down by bad performances leading to even worse performances. Does that mean that top players have a weaker desire to win? I think they want it just as badly, but they're not attached. — khaled

No I don't think this is correct, almost every top player cares very much about their performance ... Maybe they can shrug it off more easily, I could buy that. Also note that giving a bad pass for instance, isn't necessarily 'a mistake' from the perspective of the process of trying to play as good as you can. It's the intention and training that counts, not necessarily a particular execution.

However, I would argue that it is supremely difficult, for better or worse, to live without attachments and desires. I am not sure that, as living human beings, we are able to achieve it. If we simply stayed in bed most of the time rather than pursue grander desires, it would still involve an attachment to the comfort of being in bed. — Jack Cummins

No I think that is quite right, because what separates living for non-living things, is that living things have purposes. Purpose meaning here to desire or want certain things to happen, which is another way of saying that living things have (emotion) attachments to certain things or outcomes. So in a very literal sense, the only way to entirely overcome attachments is to become a non-living thing... to die.

So I think the interesting question here is not whether we can overcome all attachments, but rather what should we be attached to and what not, and to what degree etc?

In the world of poker, or other sports too for that matter, you will often hear something like, results-oriented thinking should be avoided at all cost, or you shouldn't care about any particular outcome of a game because that makes you preform worse. The reasoning behind this is that, as it is in part a game of chance, you only have limited control over the results... and so you will be disappointed a lot if you care about the results, and that hampers your ability to make good decisions.

Of course this poses a bit of a conundrum in that what motivates you to play in the first place is probably winning games. And if you do away with that motivation, why bother at all right? The way around this particular motivation-conundrum is being invested in the process instead of the results. You focus on playing every game as good as you can, and try to care only insofar you played well or not.

I think Buddhism and a lot of other wisdom or virtue-traditions point in this same general direction of trying to shift your attachment from concrete results or things to caring about certain processes, i.e. right speech, right action... the eightfold path. And yes I think psychologically this kind of mindset would give you a more even, persistent and resilient motivation throughout your life, because you have more agency and control over it and also because these are goals that don't expire.

Regarding (2), this is most likely the result of enslavement. Once you have an agricultural society, it becomes rational (?) for those with power to capture, enslave and coerce those weaker than them to do the work at the 'bottom' of the division of labour (which did not exist much before, except along gender lines). This is because there is simply a lot more work to be done (simple hunter-gatherer societies could get by on around 15 hours a week), and now there is surplus to be collected.

This suggests a further question, however. Why is it rational for those at the top to coerce those at the bottom? I think it is because this aforementioned surplus is something people now wish to acquire in greater and greater amounts. So it seems like the possibility of acquiring surplus triggered something like human greed... as though greed were a latent psychological inclination among humans that was waiting for the right conditions. I would suggest that such greed is closely related to risk aversion and anxiety. The background conditions of scarcity which compound such anxiety are then also the background conditions of greed - the perception of scarcity, whether or not it remains real, might then lie behind persisting greed and the coercion it inspires. — Welkin Rogue

I don't disagree with this, but I also think a lot of it was the consequence of the structural changes in agriculture societies. Agriculture relies on building up larger stocks of food after harvesting seasons to get through the non productive months. This makes it more interesting and viable for groups to live of stealing those stocks, which in turn makes defence more of a necessity for these communities. And when you need to keep a more permanent defence around, you get specialists who gain an edge on others when it comes to violence and coercion. Why was it rational to coerce others? Because they could without much trouble... whereas previously they couldn't because there was less need for division of labour and specialists.

So were agriculturalists generally more anxious and greedy? Or was it technology and consequent structural changes that enabled anxiety and greed in agricultural societies? Maybe a bit of both? It's hard to tell, but my guess would be that it's often more a case of changing circumstances enabling changes in behaviour, than the other way around.

Overall I couldn't agree more. I get the feeling you either read my consensus morality post or just happen to have an interest in almost exactly the same stuff as me. But I don't really care I guess; a good discussion is a good discussion. — ToothyMaw

I didn't read it, I puzzled this view together over the years from a lot different sources I guess. I do have a persistent interest in this, I guess that is fueled by a certain discomfort about the current state of post-theistic confusion about morality in western societies.

And yes, it is surprising that someone actually somewhat agrees with it :-). Usually I get a lot of flak from people with more objective views on morality. It was a good discussion, thanks for that.

Are you saying that since culture provides a system of values that abide by reasoning of some sort, cultural values are not arbitrary? — ToothyMaw

Yes, in part, culture is an ongoing dialogue where language and reason (but also rhetoric) is used to come to certain values... but ultimately there will have to be some non-rational instincts or desires feeding into that. There no way around that I don't think.

↪ChatteringMonkey
I think I can agree to this. There are certainly some objective parts to the process of developing morals, I won't deny that.
— ChatteringMonkey

It's more a principle of non-arbitrariness; the definition of objective you are using is the more common usage of the word, not the way it is used in most of the philosophy I've read, which is "independent of the mind". — ToothyMaw

No I can see how I wasn't exactly clear there.

So I think moral arguments come in the form of

"If 'we' value X, 'then' Y moral/rule follows"

Value X is not subjective, nor objective... but intersubjective. You might say that is arbitrary, but I think it's the only thing we have, absent God. And since the differences in what people value isn't that big either, I don't think this is as big of a problem as people make it out to be (relativism!).

What is objective is the 'then' in the moral argument. This is basically a causal relation, certain moral rules will be better at attaining certain values than others, and this could in principle be measured.

What is also objective about morality is 'enforcing' the rule, once you have established the rule. It's objectively true that one has followed or broken a rule.

Edit: And yes I use it as independent of mind too.

↪ChatteringMonkey
You might say: "but all ethics are arbitrary". This is not true: while they might not be objective, ethics like consequentialism dictate that the actor should not matter; what is correct for me is correct for you in the same situation, personal predispositions and values mean nothing. Btw I just posted without tagging you, don't know if one can edit in tags. — ToothyMaw

I think I can agree to this. There are certainly some objective parts to the process of developing morals, I won't deny that.

I think that moral "rules" refer more to specific sets of regulations determining what is moral, while value is more about usefulness and worth. I think rules are more useful for assessing the morality of actions, while, as you say, values determine many of our moral beliefs. But this makes our moral beliefs entirely arbitrary; if they are derived purely from what each of us values then what is wrong or right depends entirely upon the actor; what is wrong for one person might be right for another person in the same situation. Literally anything could be considered moral, including something like pre-meditated killing. — ToothyMaw

Yeah that is why I described myself in the first place as social contractarian. Values are not arbitrary as mere personal opinions, but we get educated in a certain culture and that socio-cultural context is vital for the devellopment of those values and morals. They are intersubjective if you want.

Yes, infanticide, for example, is pretty fucked up, but just because something is awful instinctively that doesn't mean one should back down from it; that is part of why I like Peter Singer - he follows his own arguments to their conclusions, regardless of how awful they are. Sorry if mentioning infanticide ruffles your feathers; I am just using a well known example of an ethical conclusion most people find positively awful. — ToothyMaw

Well I'm not a big fan of Singer because he seems to want to do away with the emotional or instinctive component of morality. For instance I think one of the points he makes is that we shouldn't have a local bias, favouring the people we know over people across the globe we don't know. And I think that is a mistake, because this is in part what motivates me and other people to be moral in the first place. You might counter this by saying that motivation shouldn't play a role in determining what is moral, but I think we are ultimately human and not emotionless machines... so if you want a morality that works, that people are actually willing to follow, you'll have to take that into account.

It might seem as if I am misunderstanding the social contract, but I'm merely working with this:

a way we tend to evaluate morals
— ChatteringMonkey

Morals are usually measured against rules, so I am saying you need to have rules, which you seem to imply, but these rules have to be normative in ethical terms, not just standards for behavior dictated by a contract if you want to use them to measure the ethics of an action. Or you could go the direction of making a consequentialist argument for the social contract. — ToothyMaw

I think they are measured against values, a plurality of values. We have no absolute grounding in the descriptive for those values, and people do disagree about them, but from those values you can derive, or at least evaluate, morals, i.e. if you value x, then moral y follows...

And I think in a functioning society people have discussions about all kinds of aspects of this process, from what to value, to how those values relate to eachother hierarchically, to figuring out what kind of consequences follow from what kinds of actions etc...

A good example of this process in action is the COVID-crisis I think. You have virologists saying what the consequence are going to be for the spread of the virus if you let people go about their business and how many people could possibly die because of it. You have economists saying what kind of consequences this could have for the economy and what the long term effects could be. And then you have psychologist warning about the psychological and mental health aspects of lock-down and social isolation etc etc... And then all of these different values get debated and weighed against eachother to determine what kind of rules you ultimately want people to follow to deal with the virus.

No actually I'd say I'm most consequentialist if anything, I think ideally morals should serve a purpose, or better purposes.

The problem with consequentialism is that it is really only feasible in theory, because we value a plurality of different things and it's often not possible to fully calculate the consequences of certain actions in practice because the world is complex.

Which brings me to virtue ethics as providing generally more practical ideas about how to live your life and get good results.

Then there are certain extreme things I don't want to even think about, because they are just to awful instinctively, which bring in a deontological aspect. A more deontological approach can also be useful for children who don't yet have the ability to think about consequences... as a stepping stone to more mature ethics.

And yes finally, I do have to acknowledge that I live together with other people and, absent God and objective morality, don't necessarily have the same values and ideas about morality as others. And because at least some coordination has value in itself, I can see the reason behind ceding some of my freedom for personal moral convictions to societal developed rules... which I suppose is again a kind of deontology.

Politics does precede and transcend the law, because it decides what the laws are going to be. Typically a political body like parliament votes and determines the laws, and the legal system can only interpret and apply them. Although, as I write this down, I'm wondering if this is equally the case in common law and continental law. At least continental legal systems seem to accept the primacy of the political over the legal.

The point I wanted to get to, is that given this primacy of the political, in some sense political action puts the laws themselves into question... i.e. political action is precisely aimed at changing how a society and its institutions are organised. So there does seem to be an inherent tension here in principle, in that you are trying to judge political action by the very system and standards they are seeking to change.

And viewed in the context of history, I think you could also make the case that reforming political systems would, in a lot of cases, not have been possible without breaking the law. I think Thrasymachus was to some extend right with his claim that justice is the advantage of the stronger, if only as a descriptive claim that is true at least some of the time. If you live in an authoritarian society where the ruling class determines the laws and dominates the institutions, there may be no other way than breaking the law to achieve political change.

No, you just aren't subscribing to any normative ethics. The is-ought problem is different from claiming that something is wrong or right with no standards; it is about the coherency of moving from descriptive to normative claims. You are not moving from descriptive to normative claims - you are making purely descriptive claims about people's beliefs and their intentions, desires, or plans to act on those beliefs. — ToothyMaw

Well I guess you're right to to some extend that I don't subscribe to any particular normative ethics, they can all have their uses in different instances.... so if i'd be pressed to give an answer to that question, it's say it's a mix of the big three, with deontology coming last. I think none of them gives the full story of how we evaluate morals. That's part of why I want to introduce the social contract, not only as a description of peoples beliefs, but also as a way we tend to evaluate morals... in a dialogue with other people and measured against values that are developed in a culture. I don't think there is one ultimate ground.

But yes, the is-ought problem seems intractable to me too. Divine command theory works, but it still sucks, and there is, of course, no reason to believe god exists — ToothyMaw

And if you don't believe in God, god is merely a way to give more weight to what is essentially a human creation or convention. Which is the other reason why I turn to the social contract, because without some kind of social convention, it risks ending in mere personal opinion because - however good the argument is - it has to at least assume some kind of prior value that cannot be shown to be objective.

Yes I'm saying the standards come from culture, not from normative ethics.
— ChatteringMonkey

But nothing makes those moral actions right or wrong; even if they fall in line with your descriptive ethics; those just describe what is believed to be wrong or right by people, they don't actually provide standards. You could say "this action is believed to be right by so and so, and they are going to act in accordance with that belief", but this doesn't make it right.

Ultimately, real world moral actions get the meaning and force from implicit or explicit agreements in a certain society... a social contract if you want.
— ChatteringMonkey

I don't see how an agreement to give up freedoms for the greater good, or to cooperate, provide standards for right or wrong; some actions are in line with the contract, but that doesn't make them moral unless you already subscribe to an ethic that either explicitly or largely values cooperation and social order. — ToothyMaw

But there is nothing that makes moral actions right or wrong if you don't already subscribe to some value, even outside of social contract theory... you can't get an ought from an is regardless, unless you believe in God. This is typically the argument that is used against it, but I just don't see how this doesn't apply equally to all non-theist conceptions of morality.

Actually it appears chimps have culture too if this is any good: https://www.unl.edu/rhames/courses/212/chimpculture/chimpculture.html

A call from a chimpanzee warning of danger I would argue has plenty of meaning. If all that separates culture from being the same as evolution is the ability to speak then this demonstrates otherwise; some chimps have evolved culture without language. — ToothyMaw

Yeah ok, maybe language isn't strictly necessary for culture, depends on what you would want to call culture. It's a matter of degree, not an absolute cut-off probably... we can do more with culture than a chimp because we have language. You need some way to convey information at least, and abstract language can do that better than howling or screeching.

I think you are discounting an entire ethic: normative ethics. Normative ethics prescribe moral actions that, according to some theories, transcend circumstance and are, if they are any good, non-arbitrary. What you describe is applied ethics, deciding how to put moral knowledge into practice. Applied ethics often times has to rely on normative theories, which you appear to disregard. What would real world moral actions mean if there were no standards for right or wrong? — ToothyMaw

Yes I'm saying the standards come from culture, not from normative ethics. I'm a social contractarian. That's not to say normative ethics can't have some influence on the debate, they can and do, but they are not more than either, a part of the debate or one argument of many. Ultimately, real world moral actions get the meaning and force from implicit or explicit agreements in a certain society... a social contract if you want.

I agree: a child raised in a caste system would be different, in some ways, from a child raised in a highly socially mobile environment. But isn't all this a confusion of terms? Isn't human nature just what we possess naturally? Unless you want to claim that culture is the result of, or interacts with, evolutionary traits, in which case you are submitting at least partially to the evolutionary, and potentially objectivist, view. And even if culture were partially responsible, with the evolutionary view of culture I think it could be understood as a natural process like any other, and, thus, human nature can be understood fully from a nomological perspective. — ToothyMaw

Okay I'm not sure I totally understand where you're coming from...

But first off, just to be clear, I think everything is a natural process, or maybe better a physical process.
Culture is a very specific one though, which only certain biological lifeforms make use of, lifeforms that are capable of creating and using language and meaning. Culture is transmitted by and is only possible for language-users. And evolution is a specific kind of natural process in its own right, namely one which applies to biological organisms which use DNA. So even though they are both natural processes in the widest sense, there is a difference.

What i'm saying is that the (evolved) ability to develop culture has had, in turn, an effect on our evolution. If culture can take over the role certain genetically hardwired behaviours play in terms of fitness, then those hardwired behaviours wouldn't be selected for anymore, because they became obsolete. This is something evolutionary biologist see time and again, certain new evolved traits making older traits become obsolete and atrophy (or not selected for anymore) as a result.

But this is all a bit besides the point I think. The point is that we happened to evolve the ability to develop culture and that replaced some of what one might call nature (as opposed to nurture or culture here), We are more malleable or plastic creatures than most because we have this ability. And I think it's is a feature (not a bug) of culture, and the reason for it's evolutionary success, that it can be changed more easily to changing circumstances.

What that tells me - if nature tells us anything - is that we should use this ability, and talk to each other to develop moralities that fit our circumstances (locally and in our time), instead of trying to define once and for all what morality should be (universally, a-temporally and objectively). That is what culture is after all, an ongoing dialogue between people about a changing set of agreements on meanings and mores... it's open-ended. Trying to extract the essences out of that is a bit of a flawed idea I think because you abstract away from the historical context that in part defines it.

I'm not sure you make this same mistake, but this is something philosophy often got wrong historically.

This OP is related to another thread I started a while back about normative ethics. What grounds the ethics I created in rationalness is its predication upon behaviors (fitted to specific situations) outlined by reasoning with axioms extracted from human nature. Can axioms that can be reasoned with be extracted from an evolutionary view of human nature? Or does it have to be essentialist? I personally think we are largely inept primates bungling our ways through life with the ultimate goal of passing on our genes. But can such a view be reasoned with? Or does human nature have to be discoverable and distinct from chimps (for example)? — ToothyMaw

I think an evolutionary view of human nature will show that certain things like morality were offloaded from genes to culture precisely because we developed the ability for language, reason etc. Or put in another way, a specified morality isn't hardcoded in our genes, but the ability to develop one is. And from a evolutionary perspective this makes sense because culture is more adaptable than genes, which would make an organism more 'fit' in a host of different and changing environments.

You see this is why I think these kind of approaches of looking to human nature for ethics, or any objectivist/essentialist approach for that matter, is exactly the wrong approach, because it one of those things nature 'delegated' to culture. If anything, nature tells us to talk and debate about it and create and agree upon our own morals, as an ongoing process... and not to definitively code them in genes or stone, because the world changes.

That is what is called 'methodological naturalism' which is perfectly fine. It doesn't make any claims about the world in general - but then, it probably also has no need to post to philosophy forums. — Wayfarer

I'm of the opinion that making claims about the world in general isn't very philosophical, but then I usually tend to side with what one might call anti-philosophers, so maybe that makes sense.

But physicalism is not that - physicalism is the 'thesis that everything is, or supervenes on, the physical'. It is the presumption of many people - maybe the majority! - in that having taken God out of the picture, then what you have left is a universe 'governed by' the laws of physics. If it can't be accounted for in those terms, then it isn't real, or it doesn't exist. It is the philosophy of modern scientific secular culture. — Wayfarer

As I alluded to earlier, I think physicalism is an extreme version of the common sense notion that ideas and dreams aren't real, as opposed to the world we experience via our senses. Rather than deep thoughts about the nature of reality, i'd say most people just start from this basic intuition. And that's not so much a philosophy, as it is something that is hard-wired in us to some extend. Even those who believe in God assume this much when they go about their day.

What I'm pointing out, is that, if not God, at least mind has now been re-introduced to the picture by physics itself. — Wayfarer

I do wonder how you would come to that conclusion? Granting that physics reveals basic stuff to be information-theoretical or mathematical values, that still doesn't necessitate something like mind or God. Minds, or rather thoughts, to me are something brains produce, I don't even know how to make sense of mind being part of the basic stuff of the universe. So yeah it's hard to respond to such claims if it isn't even clear what it is supposed to mean.

So my view is that modern, or should we say post-modern, science, really undermines physicalism altogether. Of course a lot of people are going to disagree with that, but note this: those physicist 'public intellectuals' like David Deutsche and Sean Carroll who are most vocally wed to physicalism, are also advocates for 'many-worlds' and multiverse interpretations of physics. And I say, that's because physicalism can't accomodate the paradoxes of quantum physics without introducing such ideas. — Wayfarer

Classical physics, Newtonian and Einsteinian physics, can't accomodate it, I don't know if that has much to do with the philosophical position of physicalism... maybe to some extend, sure.

And I think Sean Carroll would say that he's not so much introducing an idea to accomodate the paradox, rather that it's the interpretation that is the most simple and straightforward because it doesn't have to introduce new ideas to explain the disappearance or collapse of part of the wave-function. There is no paradox in many-worlds.

I want to stress that i'm not necessarily endorsing a metaphysical version of physicalism that makes definite claims about the basic substance of the universe, and I don't think science is doing that either for the most part. I think a more common version of physicalism just brackets that question altogether, and is only committed to the notion that we need to test our ideas to empirical data about the world.

Actually, Wheeler says not. He said that 'it' - a physical object - comes from 'bit' - binary choices, yes/no questions:

I, like other searchers, attempt formulation after formulation of the central issues and here present a wider overview, taking for working hypothesis the most effective one that has survived this winnowing: It from Bit. Otherwise put, every it — every particle, every field of force, even the spacetime continuum itself — derives its function, its meaning, its very existence entirely — even if in some contexts indirectly — from the apparatus-elicited answers to yes or no questions, binary choices, bits.

It from Bit symbolizes the idea that every item of the physical world has at bottom — at a very deep bottom, in most instances — an immaterial source and explanation; that what we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes-no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and this is a participatory universe.
— J A Wheeler, Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links

Wheeler's 'delayed choice' thought experiment also poses huge challenges for realism. See this article for an account.

Besides, where did 'the physical' originate? Complex matter, such as carbon and the other heavy elements, were the product of stellar explosions. But the formation of stars are in turn dependent on the existence of the fundamental constraints which governed the formation of the Universe, and it's impossible to say what the source of those constraints are, or if they're simply 'brute fact'. — Wayfarer

Yeah ok maybe at the very bottom. But I think what reality ultimately is at bottom is a separate question from how reality at our scale operates.

So for instance it might very well be that we life in a simulated universe, but within that simulated universe what we call the physical still seems to comes first... and information doesn't seem to directly effect it.

Even if ultimately something like ideas, information or mind is at bottom of all the physical stuff in in the universe, it certainly doesn't seem to be 'our' mind or ideas that are that basis... we still need a physical biological organism to sustain our mind, and we still can't create or directly effect physical stuff with our thoughts.

If information is ultimately the source, then it certainly took a very long detour, by first creating all the physical stuff, that is able to give rise to biological life only in some corner case... which then finally is able to generate and process information again.

I think there really is a basic difference between objects and subjects. It’s an ontological distinction, and that not everything has or is a mind. I think your perspective arises from internalising the abstract view of physics - as treating everything as a point within a mathematical matrix. But what that doesn’t allow for, is the reality of suffering, which can’t be represented abstractly or converted into mathematical co-ordinates. Ballpoint pens and lumps of granite don’t have minds, animals and humans do, and the latter are also capable of reason.

The point I take from Wheeler’s observation is that it’s an acknowledgement of the role of the observer. Science has been forced to make that acknowledgement, for reasons I’m sure you know. But you can’t ‘get behind’ that - the role of the observer is acknowledged but there’s nothing in the mathematics that models it. That’s why it’s a turning point in science - it’s because hitherto, it was believed science was seeing the world ‘as it truly is’ as if in the absence of any observer. That is what has been called into question. — Wayfarer

Yeah, brains are objects, minds and ideas are not.

I think the basic difference is between information/ideas and physical stuff. The physical is that what exists in time and space, whereas information does not. You can convey the same information via a number of different physical media. The exact configuration in space or time doesn't really matter, as long as it contains certain signs that can be interpreted by some (physical) being that can grasp the meaning that is conveyed by those signs... otherwise it's just a bunch of random symbols that doesn't effect anything physical.

So the link between the physical and information is some entity that is capable of generating, communicating and interpreting agreed upon meanings of signs. Until relatively recently that was biological life exclusively (as far as we knew), but computers also do this now, albeit auto-matically via code that we programmed into it.

The point I want to get to, it that the notion of physicalism is still important for how we make sense of the world. The physical came first, and life grew out of that. In fact life developed this ability precisely to be able to affect the physical for its goals... to extend its physical life and reproduce physical life. So ideas and information can affect the physical only in this very specific way. The mistake that is being made, I think at least, is turning this specific way in which life uses information into some kind of metaphysical or ontological distinction.

As to the wheeler comment. There's an obvious way in which it's true that science, as something we beings with certain goals and cognitive abilities do, will reflect some of that. But I don't think scientist are wholly unaware of that, it's more that they don't particularly care about the possible metaphysical reality outside of human perspective. If it works and can predicts things we experience then it's fine. In fact, if you look at the history of quantum mechanics, the consensus for a long time was exactly that... we shouldn't look at what the shrödinger-equation really means, as long at it predicts things accurately.

And as another aside, much more has been made of the observer-problem in quantum mechanics than it probably warrants, because it doesn't really apply to the scale we typically operate in. Again, it seems to be a mistake to generalize a very specific problem into something of metaphysical proportions.

I cannot assert this with 100% certainty, but I have a high level of confidence that - at best - metaphysics is a form of poetry in which people attempt to express vague feelings of, umm, well - and here I get stuck - I'm not quite sure what it is they're trying to express. I get that you are dissatisfied with the notion that everything (whatever "everything" means) is explicable in terms of a physical reality (AKA physicalism). But once you get beyond the physical, language falls apart - there are no clear definitions and you end up with a word salad - and no two people can agree on anything. — EricH

This is Nietzsche 101 basically. It's not language that fails, it's that you have nothing 'out there', nothing concrete to test your ideas to. And if that's the case, the source of those ideas can only be human (all to human) psychology. He showed that metaphysics is in fact a subset of psychology... not everybody has gotten the memo though.

What do we lose if we use a term without the metphysical baggage of physical in the name. Call it verificationism. Or justificationism. The category of what can be considered physical has been shifting in not only members by the qualities of members. If something is considered real by science then it is called physical even if it is not like anything else that was considered physical before. We could just eliminate what is at best now a metaphor and a misleading one. And then work with the same epistemology. I don't think the word has helped, but the methodologies have been very productive. — Coben

I'd be fine with that. The whole idea of reducing all of reality to a single substance has been somewhat of a misguided quest in philosophy no doubt. In fact, I totally agree with what you wrote in response to another post:

We are really taking a stand against Rationalism or some other epistemology. Or the idea of knowing purely transcendent stuff. — Coben

The last thing I would want to do is make blanket metaphysical statements about the whole of reality. It's more about a method indeed, about the value of testing your ideas against the world.

The point is reality is much more extraordinary and amazing and awe-inspiring than materialists would have us believe, that's the point. — leo

That's also a matter of perspective, isn't it? If you consider that the sciences are built on materialism, then they have given us a lot of stuff that is awe-inspiring i'd say, from the big bang to the quantum-wave-function... and the whole process of how we came to be, and the astronomical odds against it, is arguably more 'fantastic' than any of the creations myths.

But I could maybe agree on this general point, what is lacking in the scientific story is purpose. It doesn't give us a clear direction that transcends the individual, it doesn't provide us with a set of mores to live by etc etc... Maybe a society needs some inspiring overarching stories that make it more than a collection of individuals. There's certainly that creative aspect to human life that science doesn't capture with it's reliance on description only. But that was never its role to begin with. It's very good at what it does, description, and not so much at the more creative stuff society needs. And I think that's fine, so long you don't expect something it's doesn't and isn't supposed to do.

Ok fine, if you really want, matter combines itself into consciousness. What is your point? It still doesn't make matter itself conscious, like a carbon atom itself isn't hard or soft.

or it has inherently the creative power to give itself consciousness and purpose. — leo

No "matter inherently has the power to give itself" is not accurate, or at least it's a very strange way of putting it. Matter is the building block, it's only a certain configuration of those building blocks that has purpose and consciousness. Matter and itself don't have the same meaning in that sentence.

Edit: You can combine carbon atoms with carbon atoms to form really hard or really soft substances. The property of hard and soft is not something the carbon atom by itself has, it only a property of certain configurations of it.

I gave that argument. If you start from the assumption that everything that exists is matter. And if you assume that matter is purposeless. Then immediately everything is purposeless. — leo

No, this doesn't follow. And the whole argument is based on this really. You seem to think that it is proven logically or something,

1) everything is matter
2) matter has no purpose
=> therefore nothing has purpose

But this kind of logic doesn't work because matter combines into all kinds of stuff that has properties that are not inherent in matter by itself. This is not a matter of logic, it's an empirical matter...

I don't agree with this. Asking why here simply means what makes matter behave the way it does. Just like we could ask what makes tree branches move the way they do, and we could answer "the wind", and we're not assuming the wind is a conscious entity capable of meaning.

But then we ask what makes the wind behave the way it does, and so on and so forth until we reach the question what makes matter behave the way it does? — leo

But even if it is merely a question pertaining to causation, then it isn't always a legitimate question either, because causation only makes sense in time and space to begin with. What happened before the big bang? Nothing, because there is no before... You can't just expect spacio-temporal reasoning to apply to something outside of it.

The why-question is valid, and it has only two possible answers.

If you pick the second answer, that matter does what it does for no reason at all, then you would have to explain how something that does what it does for no reason at all, that has no purpose, has the ability to morph into conscious beings capable of meaning, purpose and choice.

Basically either you assume the universe is fundamentally meaningful or meaningless. But if you assume it is meaningless then you have to explain how meaning can appear in a meaningless universe. If matter is everything and it is meaningless, then meaning would be an illusion. But then every sentence we type here would be meaningless. And then what are we doing? Why don't we just write like this goingozinfegoizgtizsngroiqoiden,oqin,donazefonaoeingfe if it is meaningless all the same? — leo

I pick the second because I see no signs of matter, outside of biological life which is only a small subset of matter, behaving consciously.

And I think we will come up with an explanation for how meaning can come from purposeless matter, so to me that is no argument that sways me. To be convinced, someone would have to show how purpose arising out of matter without purpose is impossible in principle.... and I haven't seen that argument yet.

And furthermore, you happily shift the burden of proof to the physicalist, but I don't think merely positing that matter is conscious, really explains all that much. For a theory to have some explanatory value, you also have to show how it helps to explain the phenomena we see all around us... not just the question why matter behaves the way it does.

Well here's the kicker, if the universe is purposeless we don't bring meaning into it, because we are purposeless too and any meaning we think we bring is an illusion, and you aren't special and you feeling special is an illusion, and it doesn't matter what we do it's all meaningless, what you do here and anywhere is meaningless.

You say the universe is purposeless but you don't live it that way. You live as if there is some purpose in it. If you bring meaning into it, you who belong to the universe, then meaning exists, and then the universe can't be purposeless, and then matter can't be purposeless. — leo

Yeah I don't agree with this, because I believe purpose can come out of an otherwise purposeless universe. We create meaning and purposes. I live as if things have purpose for me, which doesn't have to imply the belief that the whole universe is inherently purposeful...

But I think I've said about all I have to say on this now.

Why would it be legitimate to ask how matter behaves, but not why it behaves the way it does?

There is an answer to it. There is just a refusal to accept that answer.

Why do we do anything? Because we choose to. Choice is part of the universe. As much as what we see.

It is not possible to explain why matter behaves the way it does without a choice, either a consciousness making the choice to force matter to behave that way, or matter itself making that choice.

The alternative is the refusal to explain it. Which is a choice too. The answer exists, whether we accept it or not is a choice. — leo

Because a why-question pertains to purposes and meaning, and as far as we know only biological life develops purposes and meaning. So to ask why matter behaves the way it does, is already assuming a conscious entity capable of meaning that created matter with a purpose.

And BTW, it is in fact possible to conceive of explanations for matter behaving the way it does without resorting to the language of meaning and purpose. Universes could in theory be selected for by a non-purposeful process, akin to the process of natural selection, because some values of the properties of matter give rise to stable universes and others do not. But yes, this is all speculation, we just don't know.

How could material stuff that has no meaning or purpose, and that behaves the way it does without meaning or purpose, create something that has meaning and purpose?

How could something that is unconscious create something that is conscious?

It is mind-boggling to me that people are willing to accept the idea that something unconscious can create something conscious with the ability to make choices, but scoff at the idea that something conscious can create something unconscious which doesn't make choices.

Those who make the first choice have a God too, they call it Matter. Their God who has created them is unconscious, and does what he does for no reason at all. And they see themselves as the result of that, meaningless pieces of stuff in a meaningless world that goes wherever it goes for no reason at all. And to see themselves as that, that is a choice.

Which we could rightly see as an anthropocentric choice. They see themselves as meaningless, so they project that meaninglessness into everything. — leo

We're back at the beginning it seems. Like I said, there is no full explanation at the moment, but we do have bits and pieces of it. It's the standard story really, big bang, matter condensing into stars and planets, molecules on planets combining into larger proteins, into biological organisms capable of reproduction, into life as we know it via natural selection.... There are gaps in the explanation yes, but is that so surprising considering how complex and vast that whole process has been?

As to the question of meaninglessness, I think there are different ways you can react to that. Some people do seem to have trouble handling a purposeless universe, but maybe that's just because we were used to seeing the universe as inherently purposeful and have trouble adjusting. For me, I kinda like the idea that the universe is purposeless and that we are the only ones that seem to bring meaning into it... it makes me feel special ;-).

Here is the interesting thing : let’s say you could step outside of this universe into other universes in which matter behaves differently. Let’s say you came up with some greater law of nature that encompasses how matter behaves in different universes. That still wouldn’t answer the question why does matter behave the way it does? Laws of nature describe, they answer the how, not the why. — leo

Why isn't always a legitimate question. Just because you can ask the question, doesn't mean there is an answer to it. If say the universe is just material stuff and only created consciousness on earth as a result of biological life evolving there, then for the larger part of the universe the why-question is a meaningless question, because it pertains to meaning and purposes, which presupposes some kind biological life and consciousness that is capable of generating meaning.

The question even get more questionable if you veer outside of this universe, because outside of this universe also means outside of space and time... and I don't see how any of these question can even make sense outside of space and time.

It shifts the question one step further and then finally reaches an end. Why does a consciousness choose to do something rather than some other thing? It may have reasons, but the ultimate reason is : because it can. If it couldn’t it wouldn’t. It can, and it chooses to. A consciousness has the power to create and to choose. And consciousness is an inherent part of the universe.

Why are we so afraid of that answer? Why would we prefer an absence of answer, a fundamental meaninglessness, over that answer? Essentially choosing to refuse that answer is choosing meaninglessness over meaning. Yet the very act of choosing is meaningful. Meaning exists and it’s there, in us and all around us. — leo

The short answer is that history shows us to distrust teleological and anthropocentric explanations. Previous blanks that were filled in only with speculation because of a lack of empirical evidence have almost invariable been shown to be totally wrong once we did manage to test those theories with some data. You are free to speculate of course, but the chances that you will be anywhere close to the truth without something to test your theory to, seem to be astronomically low.

And yes, God usually serves as a stop to the infinite regress of causation. It seems to me that this only tells us something about a desire we have for meaning and a first cause, and nothing about the veracity of it.

The outside has an effect on the inside, and the inside has an effect on the outside. They are interrelated. The physical and consciousness are interrelated. There are things beyond your consciousness that have an effect on your consciousness, and you have an effect on things beyond your consciousness.

You do see that your choices have an effect on the world around you. It’s not just the world around you having an effect on you. — leo

They have a very specific relation, which is only being charted now in the sciences. I won't pretend to have a anywhere close to a full theory about this, but maybe I can say this. Information, meaning and consciousness seem to only be able to effect the physical insofar there is an organism capable of interpreting it, and only to the extend that that organism can effect the physical universe.

If you want. — leo

I'll get back to you on this, and on the rest of your post... I need to get some work done :-).

One problem is that our physical senses do not perceive what is conscious and what is not. We don’t perceive other human beings to be conscious, we assume them to be. We would need a sense that would show us what they feel and think.

If you’re conscious then you at least know that your own configuration of matter (yourself) is conscious, but another problem here is that you don’t know whether what you perceive is an accurate picture of reality. So you could say that your configuration of matter is conscious, but what that configuration is exactly you don’t know. You only have an image of that configuration, a potentially very limited and flawed image. There again you would need some extraordinary, transcendental sense in order to know whether that image is accurate and complete.

So we would need a perception that we don’t currently have in order to figure out what configurations of matter are conscious. The ability to see what others feel or think, and the ability to know whether we see an accurate image of matter. — leo

Yeah let's leave radical scepticism out of the discussion for now. I have no problem admitting that there is no way of proving 1) that an external world even exists, and if it does that the way I perceive it tells me something about it, or 2) that other people have consciousness. Those apply to every theory you would want to come up with... and so we have to assume it or it effectively ends any discussion about this from the get-go.

Now, if there is nothing that constrains or forces matter to move the way it does, why does it move that way? — leo

Matter is something right, something that has certain properties. The constrains come from matter interacting with other matter because of the particular properties it has. The laws of nature are aggregate regularities we discover from how matter interacts with matter. You could off course always ask, why it has the properties it has, or why do those properties interact in the particular way they do. And maybe you will find something yet more basic that can explain the higher level... but I think ultimately the only honest answer you can give to this line of questioning when taken to the extreme, is that we don't know. And we can't really know, because there are limits to what we can observe, and we also can't step outside of this universe to compare it to some other set of universes. So either you accept that things are the way they are, and start from there... or you start speculating about things we have no way of verifying either way.

Which story is the most incredible really? When you think about it. Some higher consciousness who makes matter move in a regular way? Matter being conscious and choosing on it own to move that way? Or unconscious matter moving in a regular way for no reason at all and becoming conscious for no reason at all? — leo

Like I said in the previous paragraph, I don't know why matter ultimately has the properties it has. But higher consciousness, or God is no explanation IMO, because it just shift the question one step further to that higher consciousness. And we have no way of verifying that either way.

And look, the reason why I think physicalism is more likely doesn't come from all the things we don't know or can't know, but from what we do know. I can't move my laptop with my thoughts, I can get rendered unconscious when I get hit in the head hard enough, I feel my consciousness changing when I drink to much, I do not see any signs of consciousness in rocks or things without brains etc etc... All of these things I do know, and it points to the physical having an effect on consciousness, more than the other way around. Even if we would assume consciousness is inherent in the universe, that still doesn't explain any of these particular experiences.

The laws of motion do not tell us how something is going to feel, they don’t deal with consciousness at all. But the large scales properties of matter are derivable from the laws of motion. For instance you can derive from the laws of motion that on large scales chunks of matter eventually aggregate into large spherical objects, and when the density is high enough the internal motions lead a bunch of photons to be released in all directions, and you have a star, that is a large spherical object that emits a bunch of photons.

The laws of motion can describe how photons that reach your skin are going to modify the motions of the molecules that compose your skin, how this is going to lead electrons to travel from your skin through your nerves towards your brain and how they are going to move in your brain, but they cannot tell you that your brain or your skin or your body is feeling anything. — leo

I'm not a scientist, so unfortunately I can only rely on authority for this one, but from what I gathered directly deriving larger scale emergent properties for more basic laws is, at this point anyway, only possible for a select few things. I could dig up references for this if you insist.

And if you say that a specific configuration of matter is conscious, you don’t explain what it is about that configuration that makes it conscious. If motion can produce consciousness, then it isn’t just motion, there is something more in there. It isn’t just unconscious matter in motion. Unconscious matter in motion is just unconscious matter in motion. There is something more. — leo

No, I already said I don't think anybody can really explain it at this point, but that to me is no proof of it being not possible. In fact I think it's not all that surprising given some of the sciences that possibly could make progress on this, like say neuroscience and information-theory, are only in their infancies right now. But so, I don't disagree that there is more to discovery and to explain, but I don't see how that more necessarily has to entail some new fundamental property of the universe.

With sufficiently accurate measurements and computing power you could. You could predict when and where there is going to be lightning (photons and electrons moving in a specific way) and so on. But even with infinite accuracy you couldn’t predict from equations of motion that some configuration of physical entities is going to be conscious. You can only predict how that configuration is going to move. That’s the key point you keep missing. Equations of motion, which are at the heart of physical theories, only describe how things move.

Knowing perfectly how things move would allow you to derive when there is going to be a storm, but not that some configuration of matter is going to become conscious. Do you not see that? You will derive how each part of that configuration is going to move, that’s it. — leo

But if we know how something moves, we know its configuration right? So if we figure out what configurations of matter produce consciousness, then you could 'in principle' derive when consciousness would arise because you can derive the configuration from those equations of motion. I don't see how this should necessarily be any different than any other property matter gets at larger scales, you also need to know what configurations give what properties, which isn't given in the laws of motion themselves.

Why is this different from saying, if we know the configuration of matter that give rise to a storm, than we can in principle derive when a storm will arise from the equations of motion? You just seem to assume they are different, but I see no reason or argument as to why.

If the truth is that consciousness was always there, how do you want me to explain how consciousness arose? It was always there.

Physicalism doesn’t explain how matter arose in the first place, but on top of that it cannot explain how consciousness arose. — leo

Yeah but saying consciousness was always there isn't even an attempt at explanation it seems to me. What is it then, and how does it interact with matter? If consciousness isn't something only brain-like organs produce, and everywhere in the universe, how is it conscious, or what does it even mean to say consciousness is in something without a brain. Slapping a label on something doesn't explain anything by itself.

For there to be any kind of emergence, the universe must be "mathematical" in the weaker sense of having an all-pervading structure. The varieties of emergence are different takes on that structure. It would be safe to say that up to this point Carroll is on board with Tegmark (who does take a stronger position), but so is practically everyone involved in this conversation. — SophistiCat

He's a strong proponent of Hume, as he has alluded to many times. If he believes in a mathematical universe, he comes at it like an empiricist rather than a rationalist... if that makes sense.

Physicalism is just a basic common sense notion taken to an extreme... maybe somewhat to it's detriment.

We invented words like real and to exist for the purpose of discerning between ideas/dreams and the world we experience. That's one of the first things moms teach their children, that dreams and ideas aren't real... they can't hurt you.

Circular or not, it still seems like a pretty useful principle to live your life by.

You can’t explain how consciousness can arise from matter. I can explain how it cannot.

A physical theory boils down to equations that relate how fundamental physical entities move. Logically you cannot derive from equations of motion that a configuration of physical entities will perceive anything. All you can derive is approximately where these entities will be. More accurate measurements or equations only will improve these approximations. If you start from a physical theory you will never be able to derive consciousness. You will always have to say “no one knows how that works but maybe in the future we will”. Well it can’t work. You have to invoke magic in order to have consciousness arising from matter. — leo

Where is the explanation or proof though? All I see is a statement that consciousness cannot arise from matter. There are many things we can't mathematically derive from basic theories of physics. To give but one example, we cannot derive from these equations when and how a storm will come. But nobody thinks that we are invoking magic when we say that the patterns of a storm are ultimately just matter behaving according to the basic laws of physics. It's just to complex to calculate precisely how that works from the ground up. And I mean, I don't know why this is even something that needs to be said, it seems pretty obvious that it's not really feasible to directly derive these things because of the sheer amount of particles involves, and the number of measurements and calculations we would have to do to calculate something like that.

The argument that consciousness can't arise from matter, because we can't exactly show mathematically and logically how it does from basic laws of physics, just doesn't bother me, because there are a million things we can't do that for.... because it's just very complex. The real question is why you would expect this kind of unrealistic proof for consciousness, where we don't expect that for other things?

Yes I assume, because ultimately I think this story makes more sense than invoking some mental/conscious properties inherent in the universe. You expect the physicalist to give an exact account of how consciousness arises from a physical universe, but then invariably fail to give the same kind of detailed and accurate account for your alternative theory. How does something that doesn't have eyes and a brain, even perceive things and is conscious of them? Or do all the particles in the universe have mini planck-scale organs for that perhaps, or what is it that you are exactly proposing? It's going to be God isn't it?

Yeah, I was going to make that exact same point, but though it was a bit of a tangent :-). But good catch just the same.

Law of physics are descriptive, not prescriptive like laws in a legal system.

Assume a universe initially devoid of consciousness, which behaves according to laws of motion. While being constrained by these laws, various parts of the universe can assemble into approximately spherical configurations (stars, planets) and into many other shapes. These shapes are within the realm of what is permitted by these laws. But what would make any of these configurations conscious? If there was no consciousness initially, and the laws themselves do not inject consciousness, where would consciousness come from? — leo

Consciousness comes from matter being configured in a certain way. And no, i'm not going to tell you how that exactly works, because nobody really can at this moment. But the fact that we don't know exactly how it works at this point, doesn't mean that no such explanation exists. And that is a pretty reasonable idea BTW, since discovering new and better explanations is pretty much a constant in human history... we learn new things.

In such a universe, its parts have the ability to move, but not the ability to perceive. And indeed consciousness, the ability to perceive, is fundamentally different from the ability to move. The ability to perceive must have been part of the universe from the beginning, for us to have this ability now. Rather than consciousness magically arising out of non-consciousness, there was a initial consciousness that arranged itself into various configurations, various conscious beings. — leo

No, only biological (or other yet undiscovered) life has the ability to perceive... you need a sense organ to be able to perceive, and most of the universe doesn't have such organ.