I thought it was an interesting post. I'm trying to understand the difference between the moral and ethical here. It looks like a mix of a couple things:
1) Moral = personal ideas
2) Ethical = social ideas

OR

1) Moral = deontological thinking (it is always wrong when X)
2) Ethical = utilitarian thinking (whatever X thing brings about the greater good)

That seems to be how you are using them in the context of the OP, but I am not quite sure. Can you explain that distinction more clearly?

Also, I am a bit confused on the trolley problem and how this ties in.

You said:

E) One person dying is one less suffering and their friends and family suffering. Five people dying is five less suffering and their friends and families suffering. It does not matter if one or five die if others will mourn their loss and continue the cycle of suffering. — I like sushi

I don't think that's quite the an antinatalism take. You also might be confusing antinatalism with general philosophical pessimism which are tied, but not the same. There are philosophical pessimists, for example, who would disagree with antinatalism for the same reasons you describe in E, which is that what's the use in trying to diminish birth if eventually other species will be born and possibly also develop self-awareness and more suffering.. like it's built into the universe.

But besides that point, I think bot M and E are simply non-antinatalist territory to begin with. AN is about how to prevent birth. By the time of the Trolley Dilemma, it's too late as it's no longer about preventing birth. They are already born, obviously.

However, it is generally true that a philosophical pessimist/AN might bemoan the fact that someone was put in the position of having to make this decision to begin with. So I think you have it right there. The standard idea is that suffering itself is built into the human condition. However, the logic of E is not really AN. AN doesn't entail promortalism (better to be dead). Certainly, it does not entail making the decision for more deaths.

Ultimately, it goes down to how the individual reasons and feels. The Trolley Dilemma often comes with the idea that the one person is someone you know dearly, so that adds to the equation. To not consider that in calculating would seem sociopathic. But discounting the higher numbers seems irrational in a utilitarian way.

So what's to be done, man?!?:roll: :roll: :yawn:

What might be the preferred response to this situation? Does your pessimism allow for action? Or is the disconnect permanent?

Do we return to a pre-industrial, cottage-industry, butcher-your-own-cows existence? Do we strive to put humanity into our tech? Do we look to a "return to nature"? (Most of us would need GPS to even find nature.)

It seems no good if the individual attempts to address the disconnect but society goes on embracing modernity. — Real Gone Cat

I simply present the problem. If you want, we can try to carry out a dialectic about where this goes, but I don't think it would lead anywhere.

But here's a start. Follow the chain of technology. Where does it lead back to in terms of resources, manufacturing, mining, engineering, such? Who, where, when, why, how?

Besides consumer and laborer, how close do you get to the understanding and actual resources that create the technology? Who has more agency and less agency? Hint, it isn't just the ones with the most money. Holding the money and spending it, isn't quite it. You have to have access to the finance but also the technology itself.. to some understanding and to groups of those who have understanding. To the mining, the manufacturing, the resources, the formulas, the engineering principles, etc.

You have to mine minutia.. It's minutia all the way down... to the sub-atomic level. It's so very tedious.. Don't let the romantics full you. In that, @apokrisis is right, but in so replacing the tedium of the scientific formulas, he replaces it with the principle of triadic meta-formulas.



It's just so beautiful in its tedium and grandeur :cry: :cry: :roll: :roll: :yawn: :yawn:

Done that. I go back and forth. Sometimes ignore.. Sometimes call it out. 15 years on a forum (this and the previous version).. you gotta switch it up.

Format goes something like:
Dick comment.. Maybe some content... sarcastic comment... maybe some more content...asshole comment. I believe that was devised by Aristotle.

First off, congratulations for seeing what very few people do. Your committment to pessimism is worthy of a standing ovation. Did you notice, how some folks make such a big deal out of tool use - we consider it one of humanity's greatest achievements. For your information there are 6 simple machines viz. the ramp, the wheel, the pulley, the lever, the screw, and the wedge. Anyway, the asset has now become a liability, oui mon ami? We're now totally dependent on machines/tools even for the smallest of tasks i.e. they've become critical to our survival. This doesn't bode well for us and for this reason I second your Gloomy Gus attitude. — Agent Smith

I think we have relied on tools from the very beginning. In fact, that, along with social and linguistic forces, were factors in the development of our cognition/brains/neocortex/etc. It is not just that we rely on these tools, but it is what these tools create.. estrangement.

One side--- Estrangement of the minutia of the tools themselves
Other side--- Estrangement from the minutia of the tools themselves.

There is no win here. 011001010110 to you sir. Now I have to go back to mongering more minutia so we can all live and see the world turn.

I mean look at some of the other topics here that you are no doubt posting on.. Propositional Calculus. Enough said.

I’ve been in this forum for a long time. I understand how many of the posters work. Asshole and dickish comments are the norm if you disagree. Can't just argue the arguments here. Nope.

I feel like Hannah Arendt would probably interest you. She's more optimistic than you when it comes to work, but her Human Condition has a ton of illuminating passages on how our ability to create things has almost gotten bigger than us. She says we no longer have the ability to even talk about these things; we've lost the "speech" so to speak about what is we rely on, and any form of understanding is gatekept by the scientists or the people making it. It's unsustainable. — Albero

I'll look into that. But 100% agree about the gatekeeping. I am even more terrified of the malaise of minutia that comes out of the science.. These people can accept and deal with enormous amounts of minutia. The tedium of the practical and necessary. But yet "Life is good".

The paradox is that we are alienated from that which sustains us, but if we are not alienated we simply become mired in the minutia of 100110101, materials, equations, and the like..

One major con is giving a romantic vision to science and technology. The Edisons/Teslas, Einsteins/Heidenbergs, etc. Monger the minutia is more the gist of science of the daily.. Your computer screen, your processor, your electronics, your plastics.. :yawn:

You become a 01001100101 to make 0010100110.. So alienation or minutia mongerer? It all doesn't lead anywhere good.

But at the same time, there is an "innovative" / inventive element that is there for a very small amount of time. The "breakthroughs" of a few that get pulled apart and mongered to become more minutia.

@Agent Smith
I hope you weren't gleaning ANY of these themes of the Noble Savage in my OP. None of this was what I was getting at. I think this leads to a more fundamental truth about a self-aware human, yet cut off from fundamental understanding of his condition, but I am keeping it specifically at the level of how technology (and social arrangements surrounding them) keep us fundamentally alienated. And this is the pessimism I speak of. Being estranged from the tools which sustain us. Yet the irksome part is some people do hold these keys.. but they can only own a part of them.. But these people (scientists/engineers/technicians) arranged with their financial backers/entrepreneurs/owners have immense power over what we are estranged from.

We are estranged, but a small minority are less estranged.

I think _db had some of the pessimism here:

The modern world is mysterious, but in a mundane and/or perplexing way. Our goals are frequently not defined by us, and the tools we use are always disconnected from our own understanding entirely or nearly so. We use only a subset of our body's capabilities to live - which makes the body atrophy, unless one engages in a clownish routine of maintenance to give the illusion that one's body is being used for what it was meant to be used for. We survive not through our own autonomous efforts but because we satisfy some needed role in an artificial system.

Is it any wonder that people are so miserable? — _db

However, I would only disagree slightly with the wording of "artificial system" as I think any system, hunter-gatherer or this "artificial" economy will have us alienated. There is no going back (or forwards) here. It is fundamentally part of it. I am just looking at it for what it is, and not simply the descriptive "specialization/supply/demand/economic evolution".

Mirrors are there for reflection, I'd suggest a good look at it. — Seeker

Wasn't directed to you.. Mainly people like the person above your post.

Ah good to know I could go to TPF to get the assholes’ guide to philosophy.

Ad hom repeat.

Addressed in OP that this (specialization) would be brought up and is tangential to the pessimistic point.

Now there will be posters who will wax on about how we are a system and this is tangential to the point. There will also be posters who will try to explain about cultural and economic progression, especially about specialization. And whilst obviously true in a descriptive sense, is tangential to the point. — schopenhauer1

Except that we can know the how's and why's, can't we? — Bitter Crank

Is it possible for the individual to “know” or more importantly replicate all the technology and processes that sustains him/her? Electricity, heating, plumbing, electronics, refrigeration, construction, transportation oh my.

The boring minutia that we monger to produce it all. So tedious.

I've played with these themes before, but we as individuals in this society have already lost. We play out the game other people have designed from a technological, economic, and political point of view.

Being born into a framework where you have self-awareness AND you (the self-aware creature) cannot possibly know the hows and whys that sustain your being, is already an insurmountable setback.

The only reason Judy married John was because she never met Jack? — Agent Smith

Would she know the value of Jack?

From having our back against a wall to being able to do what we need to want! — Agent Smith

Not so optimistic. Besides, a non-sequitor.

Meanwhile ... what do we do? Avoid talking about the elephant in the room (dukkha)? — Agent Smith

People just don’t connect it with birth itself.

Is there a more fundamental point of origin, a radix, of our problems. — Agent Smith

The fundamental problem is baseline striving (necessary) suffering) and contingent negative experiences. The solution is quietude. Don’t replicate it. The error is replicating it.

But as to politics yes, people have a vision. The child is the means to that vision being carried out.

Parents get to fill their lives with meaning. Relatives get to extend their family. The tribe/society gets more workers and replication of culture.

More widgets, more widgets. We need more widgets. Continuation of life is a political position as is its rejection. Vote nay. Conservatives see injustices with liberal policy. Liberals see injustices in conservative policy.

Can people find other ways to give their life meaning besides creating more wants and needs instantiated in yet another person?

It’s simply a political move. Someone envisions another person continuing on the current order and experiencing the current order. They voted yes to it. They voted for that other person.

Are antintalists oversensitive? — Agent Smith

Wrong question.. Rather, when is it ok to ever assume someone else needs to experience X bad experiences because you have a notion for them of what one should be able to tolerate and deal with?

Also, being that this world always has conflicts, it is morally disqualifying as it is built into the actual framework. There’s no way around it.

Even so, we could bemoan such circumstances - it's stressful to say the least. Any system that puts people in such dilemmas needs to be put under the microscope because the problem won't go away by itself. schopenhauer1 might have a thing or two to say about this from an antinatalist point of view: being forced to play the game of life full of dilemmas/trilemmas/n-lemmas like the one the OP is in is immoral and I'm being as positive as possible when I say that. — Agent Smith

Bingo. Life itself can be said to be immoral from the start.

I mean, I have no problem with your theory of constraints.. As far as I know that's not too controversial.. Maybe a bit beyond the physics to a sort of meta-physics (in the literal sense of the meta theory of the field of physics). But the topic of having reasons that I am discussing is what it means to be a species that has reasons.. The fact that we can do things a different way.. That there is no right way for anything. Any time you put a goal in mind, you are simply putting your "spin" on it. I called that a hypothetical imperative. Yes, if you WANT that, one way to get that is THIS. But no one has to want that by necessity nor do it in that way that is prescribed.

Any time you try to define a "way" you are now just giving your "reason". That is fine, but the ruse comes in when you mistake the reason for a definitive REASON as if it is a necessity. Rather, it's what you think makes sense, but that's just what you think. It aligns with your reasons and reasonsings. At best, it's a hypothetical imperative for providing ways to attain ends, which people may want or not want.

My point is that existence is a hierarchy of constraints. And that constraints indeed define the freedoms at each stage.

You are thus not free to choose your freedoms. They emerge from the system of constraints. — apokrisis

So how was I not agreeing here in different wording?

Of course we are limited.. by gravitation, by the laws of the physical universe.. But that would be a gross straw man to equivocate that with the types of human reasons I am discussing here. — schopenhauer1

Anyways, now we are just talking past each other. You are trying to describe the emergence of degrees of freedom, and I am talking about what it means to have these freedoms as a species. The implications of being a species with reasons rather than mainly instincts (I will include in that conditioning, etc.).
.

Humans get bored --> Lonely.. That can be a general observation. Most of the time we prefer to be around others. Sex feels good. We like to feel we have strong connections to others. Everything else is up for grabs as far as I can tell. Monogamy seems to work best in terms of equality though. Getting lost as one of many seems a bit asymmetrical. Unless both parties are equally getting benefits, one party is losing (out) by circumstances.

It's probably the most stable form of relationship as well.

Do you believe that being an airatarian is conceivable dietary choice? — apokrisis

Traditional practicing Jainists reason to die of starvation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sallekhana

So yeah people can even "reason" to starve themselves to death. It's rare, but that's not the point. The point is there is no fixed instincts anymore. There are definitely drives, but through the mediation of our language-cultural-personality contexted brains, it doesn't just present as.. see food/eat food as you well know.

A rational society doesn't require that kind of deliberation beyond the point that it has some collective utility. — apokrisis

And that brings me to the larger point that you seem to be giving a prescription for a description. We SHOULD do X is a prescription. But there is no one way that LIFE (for humans) has to proceed. We CAN decide to not have children, to suicide, to do any number of things. There is much contingency in human decisions. Of course we are limited.. by gravitation, by the laws of the physical universe.. But that would be a gross straw man to equivocate that with the types of human reasons I am discussing here. To do so would be either highly ignorant or purposefully misleading. Either way, it would be incorrect.

development of something like the language faculty (which animals lack, though they don't lack communication) and the emergence of self-consciousness. — Manuel

Yes, I said as much that it has to do with language in my OP.

For example, are you as free to be an airatarian as a vegetarian or carnivore? You can have all the “reasons” you like. The question is do you have actual choices? — apokrisis

Of course, and you are making straw men of what I am saying. And actually, there are people who are extreme ascetics, etc. And I actually agree with you that the choices are limited. So I am not sure what you are getting at. Again, what I was answering was:

Life is about striking the pragmatic balance. — apokrisis

That is not descriptive. Forces may have created us.. Forces may destroy us.. But whatever it is, what we do individually or as a group is based on various reasons.. Post-facto or otherwise. It is not instinct, it is not, any dictate of the universe. It is all hypothetical imperatives- the part of what I said which you chose to ignore. Apokrisis thinks that we should X, so we should X. If you want this, then do that. And what if we don't want this or to do that? Mind you, it doesn't matter if your conclusion is, "Then extinction", as that is a reason along with the rest of them.. not an unbending rule or dictate one must follow.

And then, civilisation as the ultimately rational social structure is meant to maximise your personal choice. You can head to the supermarket gluten-free or Asian aisle. — apokrisis

Tangential to my point. Not really what I am getting at. Rather, why we do anything. Our motivation. Our goals. Our decisions. It isn't simply dictated by instinctual drives. It isn't even that we have some learning mechanisms. We have symbolic brains that make meaning of the world by parsing them out into conceptual frameworks, by iterative interactions of individual and the group. Besides some conditioning, and some instinctual impulses, a lot of it is based on various reasons from X causal links that we probably cannot fully trace.

We aren't doing things because apokrisis thinks there needs to be balance. If balance works in some universalistic way, that is a category error to apply it to our reasons. Rather, humans have a lot of things that look silly to you or me.. Even justifying the continuation of a system to allow choices to be silly is a normative claim. It's just apokrisis' ideas on X, nothing more. Hypothetical imperatives all the way down.

I’ve said some things you might disagree with. Basically that because we have reasons, and because perhaps of ours Enlightenment customs, there is nothing of necessity we can impute. It would only be apokrisis’ solution s to his preferred hypothetical imperatives. Read previous post for more details.

I simply state how we have our individual reasons, whatever the factors are that allows that (and recognizing it is indeed an iteration of individual with society).
— schopenhauer1

Existence is irreducibly complex in its hierarchical organisation. You can’t just wish the fact away if you want to make metaphysical level claims about the human condition in the real world. — apokrisis

Not sure how you came to that conclusion based on what I said. In that quote I just said how there is an iteration of individual and society which implies "hierarchical organization" and multitudes of interactions of biological, social, individual, and the like.

Then we become the only animals with unreasons. And not particularly equipped to persist as part of reality. — apokrisis

Ok, another way of formulating the existentialists' point. We have "gone off the existential deep end" so to say in that we need reasons. You can't put the genie back in by saying simply, "But we are part of a system". Yeah, I am not disputing that. Whilst that is true, anything else you impute as "maladapted" or otherwise (too much Romanticism) is mere opinion/normative values of thou apokrisis, and not of any descriptive value. Basically, it's just YOUR idea of solving various hypothetical imperatives.. IFF then.. Basically saying, "IFF (you have apokrisis' vision/values) then PERHAPS the best way to get there is this...

I'd be interested to know in what way he perverts the word of Jesus. — Moses

Yeshua, the apocalyptic reformer becomes Jesus, Son of God whose death and resurrection "saves" you under Paul. That's it in a nutshell.

My speculation is Yeshua the man was a moderate sensation as a miracle-worker (mainly healer) in the Galilee, a student of John the Baptist, and probably had some ties with Pharisees (mainly of a Hillel-influenced variety). He may have even learned about Prophets and Law through Pharisees (probably the only ones in the Galilee with that kind of knowledge and literacy of Hebrew proper and not just Aramaic), who knows. He had disagreement with (other?) Pharisees, but picked up the apocalypticism of groups like the Essenes and pre-Zealots (Zealots as a party did not arise until much closer to the start of the Jewish-Roman War of 66 CE).

Paul did not know Yeshua. Rather, he knew of him and claimed to have a revelation on the road to Damascus where the already dead Jesus spoke to him and told him the "real" version of what his death and resurrection meant. To Paul, his life wasn't even that important. Rather, it was that his death was a replacement for the Torah, thus introducing mystery-cult ideas into the movement and putting it further away from its original roots in Jesus/John the Baptist's/James? (the brother of Jesus) interpretation of Mosaic law.

Life is about striking the pragmatic balance. — apokrisis

But humans are a form of life and are not Life (whatever abstraction you are using here). That is to say, there is no necessity in what we value.. There are strong tendencies perhaps, but not necessities. Even the idea of a "maladopted life" makes no sense in the human realm... If what you mean is that it leads to extinction, then that is STILL a value statement.. One that we are ascenting to, not one we are necessarily bound to. So at the end of the day you are making a hypothetical statement into a categorical one. You are turning contingent social customs and personal decisions of life and lives into LIFE (apokrisis' notion of right/wrong). Nature might balance itself out or what not, but we have no reason to be bound to balancing forces or not bound to balancing forces as individuals or societies.

Now, this doesn't mean I am recommending immediate destruction or anything else. I am only pointing out the holes of your manufactuered naturalistic fallacy (LIFE and its necessary BALANCE as applied to humans who have reasons.. even if those reasons arise from interactions of society and individual due to how linguistic brains process information in a social framework.. so you need not go on about how our minds are shaped by social interactions.. I'm well aware of that thank you.. the difference is that the the origins of the linguistically capable mind is not the same as the CONTENT for which the individual mind thinks.. You can bring on a more basic idea of determinism at some deeper level, but that is not what you seem to be saying as you are implying we are bound by necessity rather than choose through contingency about our reasons, aims, goals, etc.).

Now you have gone off into one-sided Romanticism. The self as the sole arbiter. — apokrisis

No it's just that on a philosophy forum, I am not going to elucidate the whole development of DNA molecules, atoms, sub-atomic particles, neural networks, child development, social customs in one breath. I simply state how we have our individual reasons, whatever the factors are that allows that (and recognizing it is indeed an iteration of individual with society).

Then on top of that, there is this new level of semiosis that has opened up with the Enlightenment's theory of the civilised human condition. — apokrisis

The problem is this is in the realm of (theoretical) description and not the normative. That is a category error. It's also not saying anything other than life life's.. Well yeah. Okay. But this human life doesn't "just" life.. It can choose any number of things and give reasons for it. So no, I can't let you get away with turning a human life into LIFE as if it is that determined. It's all hypothetical imperative regarding culture and individual decisions. That is a matter of value, and choosing one. Mind you, there is no "right" one. Balance here might be used as a weasily word to imply both descriptive and normative, but it cannot be both. You are either giving your opinion or describing some cycle. One does not become the other though.

Civilisation requires a more sophisticated theory of itself for its progress not to turn into a self-delusion. — apokrisis

Again, here is a normative claim written as if descriptive. Still based on one's opinions on a hypothetical imperative. We can no longer just say (like academics in the 19th century).. THIS is what we should be aiming for. IFF we want this, then PERHAPS we should do that to get this. But WHY we should want this.. WHAT we are trying to aim for are totally out of the realm of the descriptive. You can invoke balance and thermodynamics until you are blue in the face, but that will get you no more closer to a reason for doing any thing. And hence here we are with reasons.

Don't forget the Romantic reaction which is a deeper source of the problems now. Existentialism sits on that side of the divide.

Enlightenment civilisation can turn us into good and pragmatic citizens. But romanticism makes us dream of becoming our own gods. Or at least supermen. Or failing all else, at least social media influencers. :up: — apokrisis

False dichotomy and contradicts yourself.

If the burden of reasons falls on the individual as an "allegiance to Enlightenment" then it cannot be external customs any more that provides reasons, but our own. That is in the existentialist wheelhouse. That is to say, meaning, motivation, authenticity of one's own goals and roles, and the like.

Surely making widgets may be the height of humanity's work. But widget making in itself isn't inherently meaningful.

If what is meaningful is survival, then we have many avenues of protest.. Camus' Sisyphus is laughing absurdist, Schopenhauer's is the life-denying ascetic who starves himself into Enlightenment.

But if your only answer is more varieties of widgets, because life begets life begets life, then that is as banal and nihilistic as all the Romantics.

Let's see, you have communist/socialist ideas of "working together" like a propaganda poster from the Soviet-era. You have Ayn Randian ideas of the "Mighty Entrepreneur".

Only truly ivory tower academics elucidating their tripe in their ivory towers truly thinks there is meaning in a field of academia (usually a science or social science)..

Usually it is blowhard arsehole who touts on about working for technological innovation.

Usually it is political propaganda to get more people to keep the game going.

Don’t get what you’re asking.

?

Do you see a distinction between a cause and a reason?

What pisses me off about threads such as this is that, from a philosophical vantage, if Jesus is a great moral teacher, then we ought be able to cite his great moral teachings. Hence my comment about charity.

But instead the thread bleats on about scriptural interpretation and Jewish history and so on... — Banno

This is incredibly ignorant as it gives into the apologists tendency to de-contextualize the historical figure and simply accept the caricature that is portrayed. Essentially it downplays any new scholarship from Enlightenment onwards. You can complain that it’s not philosophical and more historical though but as long as people keep taking the caricature seriously as a philosophical figure than it is perfectly in the right of modern scholars to deconstruct the very caricature touted to be moralizing. Jesus of course isn’t a philosopher but a figure in religious history and so that doesn’t make it straightforward philosophy proper.

Or instead, cultural anthropology shows us that tribal order doesn’t expect the giving of individual reasons, just knowledge of collective custom.

Civilisation shifts the social conversation to a different space where you are suppose to construct your own systems of constraint. You get to have your personal freedoms if you swear allegiance to the abstractions of Enlightenment values. — apokrisis

Can you elaborate more on your theory here? Are you thinking of a specific study? Does anyone in a tribal society act simply because they wanted to, or is it always tribal custom? It can't be that caricatured. X wants to see the buffalo because he likes seeing them run in large groups. Y doesn't care, but he does want to go to the watering hole because he likes swimming and catching fish. Both however follow customs of the elders and ride horses to battle the neighboring tribe. If you asked X why he is near the buffalo, he might say that he likes to watch the buffalo and so he ga e his reason for watching the buffalo.

How does one come to self-identify as an individual except via social construction?

A failure to understand this fact is at the base of much modern angst. So no surprise you must fail to understand it and thus preserve your right to complain about “imposed burdens” rather than accepting that your persona is a co-creation of the company you choose to keep.

Reading gloomy old philosophy texts could have been where it all went wrong. — apokrisis

The company I choose to keep has been dictated by the "revelations" of that allegiance sworn to Enlightenment values..that is to say the modern day socioeconomic behemoth.

You can be a tribal society or you can be a part of civilization, but none of that is something you can choose. Neo-tribal doesn't count as it’s an awareness of civilization and moving away from it, not an organic order arisen purely from interaction between natural world, tribal customs, and members of tribe and neighbors.

So individuals with reasons is a human event that is magnified by cultural practices of Enlightenment values. We call this modernity. It has been diagnosed by the Existentialists and existentialists.

brains and bodies which isn't all that different than a controller built into an electronics system. We like to believe we have free will but it is a given that we are still chained to the system that evolution choose to give to us.

Whether it is possible to be able to use high capacity thinking without the problems that come with sentient is something I don't think anyone knows. — dclements

The difference being the difference between syntax and semantics.

You seem to think that I've claimed we do not have reasons. I haven't, but it's this sort of irrational jump that renders your posts unworthy of response. — Banno

I'm sorry, get over yourself. I don't even want to fathom the reasons causes for your smugness be they personality disorder, inflated sense of self-importance... I don't give a hoot.

If I misinterpreted you then go on and tell me how. All I've gotten is "Things and animals are attributed with reasons" and "Humans make post hoc reasons". Those things do not contradict my claim that we are an animal that has reasons.

You think you are too good to respond.. That is the reason you are positing. I can say, really you are an over confident excessively self-satisfied personality type.. Smug.. Or the cause is presenting oneself as that on this forum. That might be more of a cause than a reason though. Your reason presented to yourself looks different from a psychological vantage of the causes behind your reasons.

Yes, my preference for vanilla is a truth relative to me. — Sam26

A powerful philosophical statement.

I regret giving any attention at all to the nonsense of this thread. — Banno

According to yourself, you have no reason for this.

You are the only on referring to them as a fiction. Post hoc, yes. Fiction, no so much. — Banno

I think this makes sense only in a neuroscience kind of way.. The neurons fired before the decision was made.. or maybe a "free will" versus "determined" kind of way.. But that's a slightly different point. Rather, I am simply claiming that we have "reasons" not whether neurons fire prior to linguistic formation of the reason, or whether the reasons were determined.

The fact is, you would still say, "I went to the park because..." if someone asked and you weren't trying to evade it. Of course, yes, you could have been sleepwalking there, in a trance, drugged and unconsciously taken to the park.. But if you decided to go consciously and without some mitigating factors, you had reasons..

And you continue to ignore the point that reasons are attributed to animals, plants and rocks as much as to humans. Your OP has no standing. — Banno

They are attributed, but doesn't mean they have reasons. Rocks obviously don't have a reason for why they might roll. Rather they were effected to roll from a cause. That difference was stated in the OP.