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.

To suppose that a universe devoid of consciousness can be molded so as to make consciousness arise, is to inject consciousness from outside the universe. — leo

This assumes consciousness is something fundamentally different that the stuff the rest of the universe is made of.

Consider this, a universe devoid of stars and planets gave rise to stars and planets, even though stars and planets weren't injected from outside of the universe. This doesn't seem like it's a problem in this case... why would consciousness be any different?

This is going to be about my interpretation of the Tao, and not necessarily what is or was meant with it traditionally…. and I’m coming at this from a predominately western physicalist/naturalist perspective, so be warned!

The Tao de Jing is meant to be a book about how to live life as a human being. Therefore I want to look what the concepts do for us humans, what they seeks to convey in terms of living our lives… their utility in short.

The book starts with the famous phrases about the Tao, translated as the way, that cannot be named. Far more than telling us something about the Tao, I think this seeks to tell us something about that human thing we do, namely about naming things.

We use language to conceptualize certain aspects of the world we experience all around us. The thing to note here about concepts is that they are necessarily partial, a-temporal and idealized. They are partial because they delignate some part about the world, as opposed to the whole. They are a-temporal because concepts don’t change with time, or at least don’t have to if we don’t want them to. And they are idealized or abstracted because we turn the particulars we experience into universals which we can use and re-use for thinking and communicating about the world.

The concept of Tao is there to offset it to the ‘mere’ ideas we have about the world, to put them into their proper perspective and valuation. You can think about the Tao, I think, as the whole physical universe past, present and future, which in cosmological terms flows from a orderly low entropy state to an ultimately disorderly high entropy state. With ideas we can at best hope to capture some tiny parts of that, and only in an idealized and a-temporal way. So, this is about recognizing the primacy of the physical universe over ideas we have about it.

In short, we should realize that the Tao is the source, and ideas only a clumsy tool we use to try to capture some of that. If you recognize this general principle of valuation, and see a general lack of recognition in other people, then you can sort of work out the ramifications this has for all sorts of things we try to do with ideas, like personal ambitions and plans, morality, law, religion and generally the societies we built.

One thing I want to try to tackle is the whole inward looking, ‘intuitive’ part of the Tao that is supposedly in us. At first glance this maybe seems hard to reconcile with the principle of primacy of the physical over the ideal. To me it makes sense if you think about it in terms of a re-evaluation of conscious thinking versus intuitions and instincts. From an evolutionary perspective, we evolved millions of years before conscious thinking finally became a thing. Somewhat blinded by an inflated sense of our monkey selves we came to see it, especially in the west, as the crowing jewel of evolution (or God’s creation) and our biggest asset. Although it certainly has it’s uses, especially for organizing into bigger groups, there’s a lot of work being done under the hood by our brain modeling the world unconsciously and generating instincts, emotions and intuitions. So again, this seems like a correction to the over-valuation of conscious thinking.

To tie this back to the Tao, in evolutionary terms the selecting principle for all of these unconscious processes was the environment. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that they are tuned to the world and give us something that is useful, if our goal is to to live in harmony with this world. We literally sprung out of and are still part of the world… of the Tao. So doubting is fine and all, it makes for good philosophers afterall… but also trust yourself a little.

Edit: I messed up in tying to edit my previous post, can be deleted.

For my part, I believe the only rights we have are those recognized by the law, that is to say, legal rights. Certainly those are the only rights which are enforceable. Legal rights, though sometimes conceived of as possessory, in fact result from restrictions imposed particularly on governmental power. We have no right of free speech, for example, in the law. We have the First Amendment, though, which prohibits the government from restricting free speech. Legal rights therefore often exist purely because the law prohibits certain conduct by others. I can speak freely in the sense that the government is unable to prevent me from doing so. — Ciceronianus the White

If - and maybe that's a big if - you view morality as social contractarian, then rights as you describe here could make sense in morality too.... i.e. as a society we all agree to refrain from certain harmful behaviors. So in a social contract sense, morality would be akin to prohibiting certain conduct by others, and yourself.

In other words, we have the right to be wrong, bad, immoral as long as we don't infringe directly on the rights of others. This is an ethics which sanctions, if it doesn't actually encourage, the disregard of the suffering of others. — Ciceronianus the White

Not all behavior need be a matter of ethics it seems to me, or law for that matter. It's not because you are not ethically obliged to alleviate the suffering of others, that you can't choice to do so.

For law at least it makes sense, if only for practical reasons, not to legislate every little detail of how we should act.... even if you think behavior could be better in some ways. It seems to me that morality are also rules regulating behavior, and so they need some appropriate level of abstraction and generality, which makes it difficult to have them do to much... because the world is messy and changing.

Maybe the idea that morality is predominately about alleviating the suffering of others is a relatively new development in ethics? I'm not sure.

Edit: I'm not sure what my point exactly was... It wasn't very clear in any case.

Maybe it was this. Assuming not everything we do is and needs to be directed by ethics or morality, i.e. we just do stuff for whatever reason, love, friendship, greed, lust, ambition etc.. If you find yourself in this kind of world and want to better human behaviour, maybe it makes sense that ethics ends up being rules which restrict only certain types of harmfull behaviour.

Edit 2: And to answer more on topic, we get rights out of the social contract, which are the flip-side of the obligation we have from it.

I agreed with you. It also think some kind of perspective-taking is baked into the concept of emergence. That's not to say there not something there regardless of our perception of it which we capture with the concept. Just that it doesn't make sense to try to look at it completely divorced from any perspective... because the concept is invented so that we - who necessarily view things from a certain perspective - could make sense of the world.

Why try following the stoic way though? Epictetus was a slave, and let's just say it shines through in his philosophy.

If you have no choice, which is the case for some suffering, then sure, try the stoic way. But in this case, you have two people, the behaviour of one of which is treated as an unchangeable law of nature and the other one is expected to adapt to it like water. Does that seem like a fair and balanced relation to you?

If his or her behaviour is out of line, and you suffer from it, call him or her out on it. If he or she doesn't want or can change his or her behaviour, talk to the others and see if you can get him or her out of the house.

Do not just adapt to unreasonable behaviour from others, you're setting a precedent for the rest of your life.

It implies - me think - a capacity for small emerging events to build up to something bigger, hence emergence needs to be somewhat cumulative and self-sustaining over long periods of time. — Olivier5

Ok, I wouldn't limit emergence to that just yet... but fair enough.

Yeah, probably better to start a new thread. I've only skimmed to first few pages to see if I would commit to reading it.

When we talk about emergence, aren't we talking about something more general than only emergent forms?

From the earlier posted Chalmers definition :

"If we were pressed to give a definition of emergence, we could say that a property is emergent if it is a novel property of a system or an entity that arises when that system or entity has reached a certain level of complexity and that, even though it exists only insofar as the system or entity exists, it is distinct from the properties of the parts of the system from which it emerges."

From wiki :

"In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence occurs when an entity is observed to have properties its parts do not have on their own, properties or behaviors which emerge only when the parts interact in a wider whole."

I feel like something need not necessarily be self-sustaining to be called emergent. Or put another way self-sustaining emergent forms seem only a subset of emergence in general, an important subset no doubt, as life would fall under that, but not all emergence.

I don't disagree. But rather than reasons or arguments, I think the appeal is predominatly an aesthetic of extreme tribalism, which speaks not necessarily to our rational faculties, but to instincts we have from living in pre-agrarian societies where the group was literally everything.

Things go bad - as in Germany and Italy before the rise of fascism - and peoples instincts tells them that they need to tighten up the social order so that the group can function more as a unit to increase chances of survival.

So what I think would be the most effective way of combatting the idea, is to make things better.

First thing I wonder is: do physical sciences not deal with absence? Why is a vacuum not a case of an influential absence? — frank

Vacuum is never really nothing right? There's always the vacuum-energy and fluctuations, and so there is something "physical" going on which is why I suspect (I'm only a few page far) it wouldn't qualify as absence like he wants to use it.

Yeah I've started reading the intro of the book too. Like Schopenhauer1, I not entirely sure I'll buy into it, but it looks interesting. And I remember seeing the author on some discussion panel a while back, and he looked like he knew what he was talking about, at least... so i'm willing to give it a try.

I'd be willing to join. And I can get an e-version of book too.

Problem is i'm not so sure there is something like strong emergence. From what i've gathered, part of the problem here is i'm no scientist, at least a good part of them doesn't believe in strong emergence. It's seems part of the controversy, so I don't know if we should just assume it.

I believe in some circles, the term "view from nowhere" and "view from everywhere" is discussed. Now discuss haha. — schopenhauer1

Haha, I scrambled my brain trying to think about this.

No. Our limits of cognition are irrelevant to the world of emergence.
Levels are there whether we exist or not. There were no atoms before we discovered them? Before Kant there was no universe outside the Milky Way? — magritte

Alright, what is a level disconnected from our cognition and use? What do you exactly mean with the word 'to exist' entirely separated from any kind of viewer?

I'm also not saying nothing exists before we discovered it, i'm saying our descriptions and the languages we use (which includes words like exist) are (partly) influenced by us and our needs.

At what epistemic level do tornados exist? — schopenhauer1

Everything we know about emergence happens within the epistemic framework of a "viewer". Without the viewer, what is it from something to move from one level to another? — schopenhauer1

I'm not sure what is meant by something moving from one level to another. but I think I agree that emergence implies a viewer, because it seems like it's a consequence of limits of our cognition.

If we were omniscient, with unlimited cognitive powers, there doesn't seem to be a reason why we would use higher level emergent descriptions. Everything in a fluid could in theory be described in terms of particles moving (and probably more complete), we just prefer using fluid dynamics because it is to complex 'for us' to describe it in terms of moving particles.

People may not like where this is going, but I think words like "real", "reality", "to exist" all necessarily have some link to what kind of beings we are, to how we view the world and try to understand it. You get into trouble quickly if you think we are capturing something like a thing-in-itself with our descriptions.

So, let's just say tornados exist [period].... because they are relevant to us.

Stoicism is more going the therapeutic/acceptance route, which can probably work to some extend I suppose.

I'd suggest you first look for a possible source of that anger, and see if you can do something about that.

Anger is often a result of lack of control, powerlessness over certain circumstances in your life... Maybe if you can do something about that, and direct some of that anger to the source of the problem, it will become less of a problem.

Not all anger is bad, it can be motivating if you manage to direct it in a constructive direction.

So to answer your question, you're an anarchist and don't believe in legitimacy right? Well I don't think they ever really deserve it either... they stay in power because of fear mostly and secondly because of some people having vested interests in the powerstructure .

I was just trying to answer your post and it had me think of the last speech of Nicolae Ceausescu where people finally started booing him, eventhough he had lost majority support by a lot probably years before.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWIbCtz_Xwk

So yes why do we let them? Public opinion is a funny thing, it can already be enough that people merely think other people believe in the powers that be, eventhough nobody really does.

That's an answer to why we are required, not why we should be. — Pfhorrest

I don't think you should in a moral sense... but there likely will be consequences, so that does seem like an answer to the question of compulsory participation, i.e. because they can make you do it.

There are all kinds of specific reasons for specific structures -- again, in the real world. It's up to us to ask if we accept them or not. — Xtrix

My point is you or I do not know what the real reasons are. Doesn't it seems strange to you to judge something you only have partial knowledge about at best?

The only one talking about a "zero-option" is you. — Xtrix

No you did, in asking for a justification for something to exist. Things exist first, without justification, like governments and rulers, oppressing people... and then we try to make things better. I think you can only make a good evaluation of organisations if you take into account where they come from, what progress has already been made, what can reasonably be expected given that history etc etc...

That was my point, that you seemed to advocate some kind of flat a-historical evaluation via the principles set out in the OP. If that's not what you are advocating, than my point is moot and I apologize for the trouble.

When you tell someone else that they must do (or think) something, it absolutely does call for justification. Xtrix isn’t saying that people need justification for voluntarily participating in the social structures we have, but that the compulsive participation in them needs justification.

E.g. why shouldn’t I just be allowed to keep living where I live unless I pay someone to “let” me? Why should they get to decide that? Not why I should have the permission to pay them to let me, but why I should be obligated to do so. — Pfhorrest

Because they have the power and you have not, is the short of it.

Why should they let you live there if they could just take your property?

History has been one long struggle to secure more rights for people.

If we are to make abstraction of all of history and pretend like there is a world in which power relations between people don't exist, then I don't think we will get anywhere.

There is no zero-option, I don't know why this is so hard to understand.

Let's look to the political and economic structure of our society. Let's look to the structures of our workplaces, where we, in the real world, work for a salary or a wage. Then let's ask if these structures should remain in place or not. If we find that they have no real justification for existing, then we should discuss alternatives. — Xtrix

See I'd like to have this conversation, but I think you are asking the wrong question... and I just can't get past that because i think it skews the dialogue. I think you are making the philosophers mistake (also not meant as an insult btw) that everything can and needs to be justified. I don't think it works like that because any given culture is an ongoing dialogue where things get decided for various reasons over large periods of time, by a lot of different people. Maybe it's a political compromise that an organisation is the way it is, maybe there are practical reasons that aren't readily visible to someone viewing it from the outside, maybe there are reasons long forgotten... or maybe there is indeed no apparent reason at all. In any case, no one persons can possibly know the full reason for how the way things are... and so it's not really a fair question.

I don't think you can really judge these things outside of their particular socio-political context, nor will thinking about or discussing alternatives yield good results without extensively trying them out and seeing what works in practice.

If we take goverment as an example to illustrate the point, the question there is I think not whether or not there is justification to exist or not, or whether or not it should be overthrown because it is oppressive or lacks legitimacy... I think it will exist no matter what, with or without legitimization, and will always be oppressive to some extend. The question for me is rather, and this is more of a republican notion, how can we minimize the oppression? There is no non-existing zero-option which it can be compared to.

So yeah, I don't know how to argue this point any better, it just seems obvious to me that this is not the way to be approaching these issues.

You've read all my posts on that topic, and still don't understand anything I've said. No worries. — Hippyhead

Why do you think I don't understand? I think I do, but maybe I don't... trying to be humble here ;-).

I think there could be many reasonable solutions for the particular problems we face, but it takes questioning and working together to discover and implement them. The concept of "legitimacy" you're hung up on is a simple one: asking if this power structure is a legitimate one says is it justified, is it earned, are the decisions being made and actions being undertaken rational ones? etc. If you can justify to someone why you make a decision or take an action, then do so. Orders should be questioned. If you can't, you shouldn't be in power, take that action, etc. Who's the judge and jury? The people are -- namely the people who have to abide by the judgments and decisions of another. The ones who take the orders from above should question not only the orders, but why it is we're listening to this person (or these people) in the first place. Call it whatever you like, but to say you don't think it "does anything" is pretty strange. You do it all the time. Or should, anyway, — Xtrix

Ok, let me specify that I don't think it does anything philosophically. I don't think you get there by referring back to the concept of justification either. It's not as if there is agreement on what counts as proper justification. 'The people' is an abstraction, there's no such thing. Individual people object to it because they don't like being subject to power or don't like a particular decision for whatever reason. And they can be successful if they can convince enough other people. It's a form of politics in the end. And yes, if I do it, I do it for those same reasons.... if i'm being honest with myself.

The ones who take the orders from above should question not only the orders, but why it is we're listening to this person (or these people) in the first place. — Xtrix

I just want to add that this is a very modern and recent notion, and not something that really plays out like you might think in practice, even today. Very rarely do orders get questioned. In fact I would say in most organisations it is tacitly understood that this is precisely something you do not do.... even if they may pay lip-service to the idea outwardly. And I think the reason for this is a very straightforward one. An organisation where everybody is some kind of philosopher that questions everything all the time (and so also has to be informed enough to be able to judge) just doesn't work as well.

When will science end? When will the scientists hold a news conference to announce they've finished their work? Thousands of years? Never?

Even in the realm of what we can know, very long way to go yet I suspect.

And then there's all the stuff beyond what we are capable of knowing. — Hippyhead

Hey Hippy, contrary to what you'd probably rather hear, this was not meant to discourage trying to know. Just that we probably should have some humility when it comes to our ability to know things for certain... and so that we should always remain engaged with the world around us, precisely because we can't know everything once and for all.

And I may add to that, if that could please you, that it probably also wouldn't be a bad thing to have some humility when it comes to our ability to control the effects of our inventions.

A solution for what? Where do I say I think that? If I had a magic, general solution, I assure you I would have given it by now. — Xtrix

In conclusion, if one accepts the principles mentioned above and uses them as guides for interpreting our current situation, one cannot help but wonder if we're long overdue for the overthrowing of plutocracy and the system which sustains it: capitalism. The more we clearly see the problem, the better we can see the solution, formulate appropriate goals towards a solution, and generate corresponding local, individual and collective actions to this end. — Xtrix

I was under the impression that you were advocating overthrowing plutocracy because of it's lack of legitimacy.... and so the solution was some sort of legitimate power.

If you were to say I want to overthrow plutocracy because I don't like it, or because it's bad for me and a lot of people, I'd be fine with that. I just don't think the concept of legitimacy does anything really.

Says who? This is just a lack of imagination, really. It's been beaten out of people's heads for years, but there are plenty of ways to organize people. Take corporations. There's no reason why it has to be a top-down, un-democratic structure. But people don't even consider questioning that because an alternative is unimaginable. But alternatives do indeed exist. Take a look at the Spanish Revolution. — Xtrix

I don't think this is a matter of lack of imagination. There are plenty of alternatives in imagination. I think this is an empirical question. And i've read about it, and have actually seen it happen time and again, no matter what intentions one may have initially, it more or less ends up in the same place.

In that case, go to sleep. — Xtrix

No, you misunderstand. In that case, take power yourself... which is the opposite of going to sleep. The thing I take issue with is that you think there is a solution, not the fact that you question legitimacy.