That's just it.

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We want to say something that can't be said. Aconceptual or subconceptual thereness of the bloody glowing redness of the rose. Or simply the scream and nausea of there being a here here in the worst placed. It's as if a chandelier of concepts was dipped in vat of nectar.

It's the feeling of hot water in the bath tub after hours of being sweaty outside. Not inferences and differential response but the ineffable Feeling.
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Imagine the above was written by a bot asked to explain what it was missing out on. Maybe I'm a Darwinian bot that only thinks I know what I'm talking about. — plaque flag

I don't think it's that slippery a concept. People make it so because it doesn't fit in their schema of how things are..
You see molecules, neurons, laws of the universe, thermodynamics, information. But none of it get at it. They are great for explaining p-zombies though.

What ends up happening is the dualists/panpsychists put into the equation "property" (of the universe like mass or strong force). The sensation of blue is that way because this phenomena carries with it thus property. But that has many of its own problems.

You have brute properties and computational p-zombies. Oh my.

Apparently I misunderstood you then; my apologies. — Janus

But you never answered it. Let me lay it out again...

A world where suffering and hardship is supposed to be part of the cosmic game but is beyond the understanding of its participants, is not beautiful, perfect, or good. At best it’s as indifferent and amoral as a Cthulhu. Possibly unable to make much more than a suffering world. At worst, he wants this scenario. Is an entity that uses people thus good because it is godly to want to see people suffer? Even worse is the notion that the world could be worse and we should be thankful our world wasn’t made in an even more suffering version. Everything about it is suspect.

In an inversion of our norm, if humans are the cruelest animal because we know what we do, and do it anyway, how much more so is something infinitely more knowing? Again, if there is one, signs point to a cosmically indifferent Cthulhu perhaps. — schopenhauer1

You were sort of engaging here?

Yaldabaoth, the flawed creator of a flawed creation? — Janus

Wanting is the centre of thought, wanting to be elsewhere and elsewhen, doing and being and having what is not. — unenlightened

Ok sure.

How about none of that? — unenlightened

Well one major takeaway here is if you were content in the here and now you don't need to do activities that engross you. Engrossing means you are not content now, but you need to "catch the rhythm" to go with your music analogy.

Things that eventually bring about flow states, are in stark contrast to the contentedness of not having wants in the first place.

@plaque flag @180 Proof@Wayfarer

Hey, I lost the thread of this thread I think.. So we are discussing various things. I see the word tautology and another one contradiction, etc.

So I think we all know what it is to sense something. It is wrapped up with our very awareness. There are people- @apokrisis comes to mind, that I think believe that sensation is a matter of learning (distinguishing one thing from another) and here I think is where
comes into play. We know blue because it's not blue, etc. But I think this just skips over the actual part we are interested in. It is saying we know the sensation of blue because we know we can distinguish it from not blue. Let's say a baby's rods and cones aren't developed enough to "see blue", that doesn't get us any closer to understanding how it is that when the rods and cones are developed enough "see blue" happens. By abstracting it to simply "it makes a distinction" we are simply adding in a process as the phenomenon and calling it good. Adding more computation does not necessarily equal the fact of sensation itself.

Sure !
But the use of 'but' doesn't make sense here, because you are merely expanding my point. — plaque flag

And thus simply reproducing and homeostasis can't be the dividing line of what matters as that is misapplying. Rather, feeling or awareness, etc. And here, I can agree that we have fuzzy words. Sensation, "what-it's-like-ness". This would be misapplied perhaps to non-animals, even living things, as much as our heart goes out to the little buggers (because it matters to us). It may even be misapplied to uni-cellular and very primitive animals. At that point, what is simply events eventing (behaviors all the way down), and what is "feels-likeness"?

I don't know what it means to say so. Yes, I can talk the usual fuzzy talk. That's why I say look to deeds. We incinerate the dead, anesthetize the living for root canals. — plaque flag

But we don't incinerate the living (or we shouldn't) and anesthetize the dead :smile:.

No. I don't disagree. I just don't think we know very well what we mean. — plaque flag

You'd have to explain how we don't know very well what we mean. Examples or something of the sort.

This is an empirical question. Some humans nurture plants and beetles. Few if any nurture rocks. — plaque flag

Humans do, because the feel something towards those plants. The plants don't feel something though. Or are you saying they do besides the events of reproduction and homeostasis, which isn't feeling.

Like I said, semantic problem. You can check out my 'the being of meaning' thread for more, if you are curious.

I can talk the usual sloppy talk in ordinary life, but I think Hegel and Heideggar are right. There's a blurry average intelligibility that mostly doesn't notice its lack of grip. One emits the usual platitudes, appeals to the obvious, without hearing that one's thinking is being done for one, by one [ das Man ].

Philosophy makes darkness visible, drags ignorance into the light, wakes up the marching zombie. — plaque flag

Not sure why this is a bigger deal. We usually say that some things can sense and be aware of things and some things can't. You disagree? On a sort of panpsychist ground? Or if not, how?

We say it does because it matters that our babies get milk and are kept warm. We also love puppies and squirrels. — plaque flag

Yes animals with a first person perspective, but of anything else? Photosynthesis?

I don't think we know this, but most of us feel/think it in some sense. We nurture our young. Our doings are deeper than our rationalizations. — plaque flag

This is obfuscating. What do you mean we don't "know" this?

Life climbs a ladder. It 'shits' more disorder than it creates. We are flowers of the death of the sun. — plaque flag

No I get that this may be a definition of life, but I mean, what makes it have more primacy than any other event?

Even here we are mostly on the same page. The hard problem is interesting, but I think there's a semantic problem which gets taken for granted : people don't know what they mean by 'consciousness' in a metaphysical context. — plaque flag

It's a hard problem in that we know that there are things that don't sense the sky as "blue" or sense at all and we know there are things that sense. Barring p-zombies and behaviorism, we think that needs something that explains it.

Slightly more complex enduring patterns. Why give primacy to photosynthesis over the strong force? What did electromagnatism and gravity and basic elements and molecules ever do that make them less than photosynthesis?

What you are saying is almost tautological, which doesn't mean it's not worth saying. We could also just talk of the possibility of feeling hurt. Feeling is first. But feeling is 'under' or 'other than' concepts. So it's difficult to say it. Maybe this is why Schopenhauer claimed we knew the heart of reality directly. — plaque flag

Yes true. He does put primacy on the internal aspect. The subject for object, object for subject etc.

We can take an external view and look at patterns that stubbornly resist being erased. The pattern doesn't 'want' to die. It'll sacrifice instantiations. Schopenhauer's insect is ready to die, having laid its eggs. — plaque flag

A replicating thing that has patterns has a thereness (as in a point of view?). What makes it different than other events in the universe if it is just patterns without an internalness to it?

As I see it, there is a body which is trained into being something like a subject. The world is 'there' for this creature. — plaque flag

Magical “thereness” generated like the engine that could something out of nothing. Illusions that are not explained etc.

And this "matters ... to a subject" doesn't matter. — 180 Proof

It matters to the subject.

Obviously I think it does. Consciousness =/= adaptive intelligence, especially in the context in which I've used these terms. — 180 Proof

Doesn’t explain how or why that answers the hard problem or explains it away etc.

Both objects and subjects (i.e. phenomenally self-referring/reflexive objects) are emergent "effects of the universe" ... neither of which "matter" on the cosmic scale. — 180 Proof

Correct (doesn't matter on a cosmic scale). That is why I said, to the universe a rock breaking and head rolling doesn't matter (obviously).

"Consciousness" seems the phenomenal illusion of being 'more than an object', even somehow separate / alienated from the rest of universe of objects – more bug than feature; I think, instead of "consciousness", adaptive intelligence (by which knowledge of the universe is created) is the property, or functionality, that distinguishes mere objects from mattering objects. — 180 Proof

Does changing the word to adaptive intelligence change much? The hard problem lies in the slippery word "created". That is the hard problem that needs explaining itself. Are we getting diamonds from coal here? Enough computation = subject? What is the dividing line other than what we know on either side of that line (plant / primitive animal perhaps).

A planet exploding matters not to the planet. A black hole sucking in matter matters not to the matter. Space warping matters not to space. A subject however, is where "matter" and "value" come into play. The universe is full of explosions and destruction of objects. It only matters once there are subjects. No problems occur until subjects. Nothing matters in the universe other than some relation to a subject.

I think we agree that giving-a-damn is central to human being-there. We are temporal because we want stuff, fear stuff, seek stuff. 'Want' and 'fear' are like projections of an interior. So we can say we seek and avoid. We learn from getting hurt, getting food. We 'remember' (find shorter, safer paths, etc.) — plaque flag

There is a subject this is happening to.. a perspective in the first place.

I'd say a problem within a teleological projection. — plaque flag

Do teleological projections have problems, or do agents have problems? Are they agents if there is no perspective there? A machine can be coded thus as you indicated to replicate...

It's in the logic of wanting that we should want not to want, as the ostensible goal of wanting, satisfaction, extinguishes want. But yeah, seems like consciousness just is fundamentally want or the subject is, along Lacanian (and Zizekian-- hey hey Mikie ) lines, a lack or hole in reality representing desire because filling it in fills our own graves. — Baden

Schopenhauer has always had the best writing on this phenomena:

In a world where all is unstable, and nought can endure, but is swept onwards at once in the hurrying whirlpool of change; where a man, if he is to keep erect at all, must always be advancing and moving, like an acrobat on a rope—in such a world, happiness is inconceivable. How can it dwell where, as Plato says, continual Becoming and never Being is the sole form of existence? In the first place, a man never is happy, but spends his whole life in striving after something which he thinks will make him so; he seldom attains his goal, and when he does, it is only to be disappointed; he is mostly shipwrecked in the end, and comes into harbor with masts and rigging gone. And then, it is all one whether he has been happy or miserable; for his life was never anything more than a present moment always vanishing; and now it is over. — Schopenhauer- The Vanity of Existence

Ascetic movements and religious practice seem to reify quietude of the "will" which I take to be essentially, lowering wants to a minimum. Pascal also said something about how all problems come from not being able to sit still in a room.

I see the opposite phenomena in flow states. It is total engagement in something interesting. There is not doing anything but being AT PEACE WITH IT. And there is doing something so engaging you are ENGROSSED IN IT. But they seem to be sort of polar ends of the self-help / guru mill of philosophy, therapy, and the like. You better find something that engrosses you! You better be more mindful and at peace with just being!

How about none of it?

Aesthetics is a matter of taste. If someone finds Christianity and the idea of God beautiful, I have no argument with them believing. You seem to find life mostly ugly, I don't; I find it mostly beautiful, so we are coming at this from different ends of the stick. Finding life ugly can actually be a motivation for religious faith. The lesson here is that not everyone does, or should, see things just the way you or I do. It's not really a matter of argument at all in my view. — Janus

This wasn’t my argument though either.

Most Some of us tend to treat plants without much care, but my wife is sad when a plant dies though, and she sometimes feels guilt for not watering or sunning it properly. — plaque flag

Granted, but doesn't answer the question :).

I hope and trust that adult humans would find it difficult to damage an extremely realistic babydoll. I suspect that, even if they rationally knew it wasn't alive, there would be resistance.

In reverse, a computer that passed the Turing test (etc) would be easier to 'kill' because it lacked a lovable relatable mammalian body. — plaque flag

As I stated here:

A p-zombie's head getting ripped off, would only matter in as far as there is an experience of a head getting ripped off. If there is none, it is like a rock being broken, nothing more or less. Rather,it is cultural and habit to care for something that looks like it feels something. It is not actually happening though in the sense of an internal feeling to that p-zombie though. — schopenhauer1

I suggest that the training is much deeper than that. If pushed, then (if we are philosophers) we rationalize this training. — plaque flag

Don't know what this means exactly.

Before life perhaps. Problems are in the way, a way. Life is directed toward food and reproduction. [ Don't plants hurt ? I don't know. We don't hesitate to cut and burn them. ] — plaque flag

If plants aren't conscious, do they have "problems"? Does reproduction and fitness not occurring present a problem or another event like a rock breaking? Either way, if the plant doesn't have the first person perspective, what's the "problem" exactly? Something indeed will happen to the plant without food and reproduction. What about reproduction, eating, and death but without a first person perspective makes something valuable or invaluable. I mean, we evaluate it from the perspective of someone who experiences. Does the plant experience no water, or is it simply not having enough water?

Yaldabaoth, the flawed creator of a flawed creation? — Janus

Correct. So I guess. I don't care if you use strictly "Euthyphro" or not. I am just interested in debating the argument I have been laying out and you keep pointing to Euthyphro being out of context. That's fine, but let's debate what I am debating then, whatever you want to call it and stop debating semantics at this point.

My point has just been it is only an either/ or question in the context of the Greek gods, not in the context of Abrahamic theology. Anyway I am not a believer in God, so the question doesn't matter much to me. — Janus

I actually agree in a sense that some things cannot be divorced from their cultural context. For example, Pauline Christianity subverts more-or-less a ethno-religion (Judaic/Israelite Practice/belief) and makes it universalized it into a more Platonic Greco-Roman (a kind of New Age religion) context. Perhaps this is the same in the opposite direction. That is to say it is taking the Israelite deity and imputing Greco-Roman sensibilities to it.

Right, but the thrust of the Euthyphro dilemma is the undecidability between whether something is good because the gods love it or whether the gods love it because it is good. The problem comes with the possibility of disagreement between the gods as to what is good, just as it is with humans.

God, however is a single entity, so there is no possibility of disagreement, and thus no inconsistency or contradiction in saying that something is good because God loves it and God loves it because it is good.

Whether there is a God, or whether what God loves is good are separate questions, and nothing to do with the Euthyphro. — Janus

Um, I'm not sure your quibble here, as I see no difference really to what I am saying. The basis of Euthyphro is whether something is good because the gods command it or whether it's the gods command it because it is good.

This goes into what I am saying implying that if a god likes suffering to occur and wants to see this (for whatever reason, whether utilitarian or he just likes seeing it play out a certain way), that implies that god likes (in some aspect, known or unknown as to why to us) suffering. To our mere mortal morality, this calls into question the idea of a "loving" being that likes to see suffering (even if for some grand cause outside the individuals who must endure this suffering from their perspective). At that point, the entity is at odds with our common notions of "good and evil" and then that has even more implications, etc. If suffering is at the caprice of a deity's whim, but commands us to not cause suffering, does god get to subvert his own morality to us, by not setting an example? But even more interesting, is creating a world of suffering and seeing it play out moral in the first place? And if it is, how would you justify morality simply because it is the will of a deity? What makes that moral in itself? If divine morality is immoral or amoral in comparison to human morality, that seems oddly not characteristic of a "loving" and kind-hearted god. And in that case, indeed look at the Gnostics.

If I'm not really going to change things, then what am I gaining by persisting in talking about it ? — plaque flag

These are just posts on a philosophy forum. Existential therapy. That’s all. Communal recognition. “Do you see this too?!” I’m not merely information but

Our fundamental tactic of self-protection, self-control, and self-definition is not spinning webs or building dams, but telling stories, and more particularly connecting and controlling the story we tell others - and ourselves - about who we are. — plaque flag

That being the case, here we are dissecting the meta-narrative. Impersonal analysis of the tragedy. Hamlet is a tragedy. It may be a story, but to deny this fact is to deny basic facts of what is the case. Suffering is real. People are not just fictive driftwood when they suffer. There is a Subject behind it. The “story” is covering this up and dressing it up. Now we are in fantasy and not what is the case.

A world where suffering and hardship is supposed to be part of the cosmic game but is beyond the understanding of its participants, is not beautiful, perfect, or good. At best it’s as indifferent and amoral as a Cthulhu. Possibly unable to make much more than a suffering world. At worst, he wants this scenario. Is an entity that uses people thus good because it is godly to want to see people suffer? Even worse is the notion that the world could be worse and we should be thankful our world wasn’t made in an even more suffering version. Everything about it is suspect.

In an inversion of our norm, if humans are the cruelest animal because we know what we do, and do it anyway, how much more so is something infinitely more knowing? Again, if there is one, signs point to a cosmically indifferent Cthulhu perhaps. — schopenhauer1

@Janus

From the theistic perspective, that you, a mere mortal, may think the creation is not good is just your (false) opinion and is irrelevant to what is not a logical dilemma or contradiction for the theist. Far greater minds that ours (Leibniz) have thought this is the best of all possible worlds, which is not to say he is right, but just to point out that there is no obvious fact of the matter. — Janus

You didn’t pay attention to my argument on my original argument on this. If the same entity wanted Bad things to happen to creatures as part of his divine game, it begs the question as to what morality this entity holds. I also said you can say it’s beyond our mere human notions of good and evil but the implication of this is still strange. A Cthulhu god or demiurge who actively wants or indifferent different to suffering. You don’t need contradiction for that to be odd. It subverts our ideas of goodness making the term irrelevant or worse. Using people to suffer for some plan in any universe seems wrong.

That was a dilemma in the context of the Greek gods, because they might disagree with one another about what is good. It is a false dilemma in the monotheistic context, because the theists can always say that it is good because God loves it and God loves it because it is good.

Suffering and hardship are not merely supposed to be part of the cosmic game they are part of it, as are joy and ease. Whether the world is thought to be beautiful, perfect or good is a matter of perspective, disposition, opinion. — Janus

But I think it can apply to the monotheistic god. That is to say, what is a god who allows/approves/creates/wants suffering? If that is good to want that, then truly it is beyond human good and evil, and the implication of that is quite interesting. A person who creates a stumbling block to watch people suffer and overcome it (or not), is more than suspicious.

I do like the respect for people's suffering. But it can also cause people's suffering. I can hurt people by wrecking their final vocabulary (their spiritual substance, really) in the name of fixing them or waking them up. 'Don't you see that you should not have been born, sir ?'

I don't preach the gospel of ironic atheism, for instance, to people who might not be able to run that program in their lives. Whiskey for me is poison for them. — plaque flag

The problem being that one doesn't affect others (more than being a bit sad at a philosophy) while the other has a major affect (a whole other person and stuff). So I don't know. I don't know. Have you thought of the poison of the other side as well? I mean that side gets 98% of the airtime and all.. and you know with the billions of people that result from it, their side has had major consequences I'd say for forced converting to those ideas (and only one side forced converts). The other says a sad song that people clutch their pearls at... So, just saying.

Isn't antinatalism one more knife ? The ultimate rhetorical killjoy ? An attempt at 200 proof moonshine ? — plaque flag

So here is a little (not so much a) secret:
Antinatalism is a protest against evil and impositions.
It's about representation and signifiers, not necessarily the outcome.
It respects people's suffering. Everything else is gaslighting, justifying why other people need to do X, or just fixing broken things (including our own broken tranquility).

You can still resist and dislike significant change in a world where changes have been made. — Tom Storm

This is something they do yes. I’m refuting their justification for its rightness and have explained thus.

Then explain what you mean by “aesthetic faithful”? There is no Beaty on suffering or having to “learn your lesson” by suffering :roll:. I’m saying their beauty in X thing has a lot of ugly aspects that they are ignoring.

I learned many years ago that some people adore life and celebrate it, even those who have been exposed to torture, trauma and tragedy. — Tom Storm

This simply has to be true to refute the whole beautiful and good of the religious aesthetic. Suffering is a problem. What god wants this? Whatever answer you pick still means we have a god that wants this in his world. Not a beautiful aesthetic. Beauty in suffering is just playing with language to justify anything.

I wouldn't think that example works, but you might find a better one that does. Radical change from the past is accommodated and becomes the tradition of the future. — Tom Storm

And so this in itself is acknowledging the silliness of reifying what is traditional BECAUSE it’s simply the holdover from the last major change. It can be a preference but the very fact that that itself was based on a change belies it’s real nature as “what is conserved”. Stockings over pants then. Kilts over stockings, togas over kilts or whatnot and so on. Hunting gathering loin cloths are most conservative and traditional then.

So you deny suffering exists because you don’t suffer? Don’t we expect infants to get beyond those views fairly early? Like there are fundamentalists who view dinosaur bones as no evidence for evolution and flat earthers think the world is flat. A wrong viewpoint of something doesn’t mean much just because they have a different viewpoint. Some viewpoints of what is the case about the world are wrong. A person who can’t see blue doesn’t mean blue doesn’t exist. Suffering exists. Some people explain it as necessary, not relevant or whatnot. But most people don’t deny the phenomena of suffering as at least a thing that is part of living.

But conservatism isn't static, it accepts change but it doesn't like revolutionary change or government implemented social change like affirmative action, etc. — Tom Storm

I think my quote sufficiently refuted their purported aims as to indeed be cherry picking. Christianity was the naughty interloper interrupting thousands of years of paganism. Its preference not even for old, just their version of ideology.

In a way I agree with the pessimism of the conservative but I don’t reify that into some aim. Procreating itself is social engineering. If liberals want to see X outcome from people. All procreators want to see X outcome from their children. They are literally engineering people to maintain the system.