Sorry, I don't follow. The designations of inner and outer do not seem correct. — Jackson

Then this is foolish. The fact that you "see" a color is the question. Why is there "seeing of color", and not just neurons firing and wavelengths of light being filtered etc.? The processes have a "feels like" or "inner aspect". You can say THAT "seeing red" IS the process but then the question is why is THAT process one that has a "sees red" aspect and not other physical processes?

I see red. I don't feel myself seeing red. — Jackson

"I" see red. That's all you need in my book to confirm an inner aspect (other than me actually getting inside your head).

My point is that "inner aspect" is vague or incoherent. — Jackson

It's the most immediate thing.. Unless you ARE a zombie.. you DO have "what it feels like" aspects (tastes, colors, thoughts, emotions, motives, goals, imagination etc.).

That is what I am disagreeing with. I don't know what it's like to be the person standing in front of me at the bank, either. — Jackson

Ok, but that isn't his main point.. THAT there is an inner aspect is the problem at hand, not "How is this inner aspect different than mine". The difference of inner aspect doesn't discount that there is an inner aspect.

Yes, from the "inside" it is the stuff it is, and from the "outside" it has relations to other stuffs. — litewave

But of course, this doesn't explain much either. It just posits that the "inner aspect" is spread around to everything. It is a position.. an Idealist or Panpsychist one.. but as far as we know, only nervous systems would seem to be correlated with an "inner aspect". Doesn't mean it's true but it does seem odd to say that this dirt or that plant has inner aspects to it. But anything is possible I guess when discussing metaphysics.

Nagel asks, What is it like to be a bat?

What is it like to be me? I am the things I do and think about. What's the mystery?
Nagel thinks bats are so different from humans that we cannot understand bats. But do we know what is like to be a human; to be what one is? No, not any better than what it is like to be a bat. — Jackson

I don't think that was his main point that we can't know what it's like to be a bat. Rather it is the idea that there IS a "what it's like to be a bat", EVEN if we don't know exactly what that means. We can sort of speculate (sonar-based, etc.) just like dogs are more smell-based, etc. We can speculate they don't have conceptual thinking etc. but there IS an inner aspect. What is THAT inner aspect? That is the thing to be explained in consciousness.

P-zombies would be like relations without stuffs, which seems inconceivable to me. Relations alone would be relations between what? Between nothings? Granted, there are relations between relations but if they are not ultimately grounded in stuffs (non-relations), they seem undefined, meaningless. — litewave

It's all saying the same thing.. which is basically..
X (object process) from the "inside"/metaphysical is experiential and outside is "objectified"/viewed/measured/epistemological thing.

I think the 'what is it like' concept is either incoherent or meaningless. From Nagel's paper, the concept he tried to explain does not really make sense. — Jackson

Why do you think that is the case?

@litewave, @javra @Hillary @Joshs @Paine
And when linked to the idea of p-zombies, it may not be a necessity to have "what it's like" aspects to processes.. It is conceivable that animal processes (like nervous systems) can do the exact same things we can measure now, but WITHOUT the attendant "what it's like" inner aspect to it. Of course that is debatable. If it IS a necessity, then we must understand WHY they are intrinsically linked. THAT is the question at hand.

Right, so any worker happy with their work is unalienated?

But then you’d understand it. — Joshs

So can you explain?

but only if we go beyond classical darwinism and conceive of organic processes not in terms of causal concatenations and re-arrangements of elements under external pressure but in terms of a more radical notion of reciprocal differences of forces. — Joshs

You must explain these neologisms but without using other neologisms.

Can there be a completely 'objective' model that explains the experience of consciousness? The experience is presented as a phenomena, one of the things that needs to be explained.
From that perspective, evolution is not an explanation. — Paine

The thing of the inner sensations of "what it's like" is the thing to be explained. Evolution giving rise to "what it's like" doesn't explain why there is a "giving rise to what it's like", only the advantages to an organism for having it.

I've actually never grasped the problem others have tried to convey since I cannot identify anything unexplainable by natural means. So explain the problem to me, since I apparently don't see one. — noAxioms

This is exactly the thing I am asking for you all to help with! :razz:

Will do. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Good, cause you would then have to answer what an unalienated worker looks like. I don't think you had a good answer anyways. Cause there is none.

Take responsibility. Grow up. Or continue to live as a child. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Or what? Kill yourself.. is the implication. Real fuckn moral.. Any better philosophy or just platitudes akin to something you get in a parenting magazine? Wah wah.. spank spank.. fuck off. Pretty soon you'll be wearing that orangutan suit like ole Banno..

What do you think an "unalienated worker" even looks like? You think office workers under the leadership of the "proletariat" and factory workers, and construction workers, and cleaners, and service workers, and all the rest will suddenly be more interesting, less angst, less of the slog of the work day?

Certainly there are things like providing basic safety nets, but that's just plain old liberalism. So what about it?

I never said it did. I'm just studying it. You have an agenda I'm not interested in. Cheers. :smile: — ZzzoneiroCosm

Exactly what you can't do against the agenda I speak of. Can't say, "not interested". Imagine if you had to debate me at least every workday for at least 8 hours a day.. But ok.. you have a choice not to... but then the meta-choice to not choose any choice doesn't exist. This is a violation. I dare say, being exploited, as someone (universalized to everyone) must be useful as a pre-condition.

The theoretical basis of alienation is that the worker invariably loses the ability to determine life and destiny when deprived of the right to think (conceive) of themselves as the director of their own actions; to determine the character of said actions; to define relationships with other people; and to own those items of value from goods and services, produced by their own labour. Although the worker is an autonomous, self-realized human being, as an economic entity this worker is directed to goals and diverted to activities that are dictated by the bourgeoisie—who own the means of production—in order to extract from the worker the maximum amount of surplus value in the course of business competition among industrialists. — Marx's theory of alienation wiki

Just replace bougeoisie with the conditions of life itself. You can throw a snarky fit all you want, but Marx or any other economic theory doesn't "solve" anything, because the problem is production itself. I can make a point that is a meta-analysis and not buy into the dialectic. That is an option here.

Your view is painfully and tediously narrow. I work in long-term care, where I "produce" end-of-life care for needful elders. While it's at times backbreaking work, I don't feel alienated from the product or from myself or from my work. — ZzzoneiroCosm

I said:

alienated in the sense that he must comply with the game of life where production is necessary or else die. — schopenhauer1

You are not immune from this forced situation.

Imagine telling the proletariat.

Unhappiness isn't universal. Maslow has documented that fact: peak and plateau experiences are latent in all of us. — ZzzoneiroCosm

So they are either exploited or not. If they are not, then your post is irrelevant. If they are, then in a sense, we all are by the conditions of life. That is to say, if universalized to all people, would we be able to get on without being forced to produce to survive? If the answer is no, something is a violation. That violation is the very forced nature of having to produce in the first place.

I'm sorry it's a broken record, but so is a lot of other ethical phenomena. It's all a part of the same, I'm afraid. "Workers unite!" (against what?).. "Forced existors unite!" (against what?). Same message, but instead of the economic sphere it is the actual problem at hand which is the level above.. the existential sphere, on which the economic sits atop.

If I don't give answers relating to the tired old dialectic you are looking for.. then sorry to disappoint your expectations of Marxism (what it really means) versus Capitalism and false notions of Marxism. That has never been done before..

Until you sort out the problem of forced production en total you have solved nothing but rearranging an already bad system (that is life itself requiring us to produce at all). Unless the aspect of "comply with this production system or die" is out of the equation, the problem is insoluble. Marx had the right notion that man is in chains, but his solution is a false one.. As long as man needs to produce, he will always be alienated in the sense that he must comply with the game of life where production is necessary or else die. He is exploited from the mere fact of his birth and being forced into the merry-go-round of the production-game to begin with.

The game quality is a form of suffering. That Job can confirm for himself that he is not at fault is outside of the game is important. That doesn't answer your question about justification but is an attempt to talk about the problem. — Paine

Yes, we do need to talk about it. Perhaps it at least builds empathy in the fact that we all need to run around and produce because, excepting death, there is no other choice and this leaves us with a lot of percentage of forced production in our lives. Just another thing to add to the heap of pessimism. Sugar coat it with, "But you can try to do something you want.." all you want, but that fact remains, whether you're eking out a living in dirt or in a first world country, so the whole category of production makes life itself disqualified from being moral to force into existence.

A lot of human conditions are set and no alternatives exist for those who want a different condition. — L'éléphant

And here is the problem.. No Marxism or Capitalism or Anarchism or any ISM (except antinatalism) gets rid of this initial injustice which all others cannot fix.

But while you pinpoint an extreme -- no one should be compelled to produce -- the lack of further discussion as to what could happen in the future is missing. — L'éléphant

Is there something about being in a position that one must do X for their survival that is callous or problematic? Is simply "do good at your job" at the lower level of what is going on not getting at the problem in the first place, "you need to produce because..." and of course because you and everyone else will die if this was followed to the logical end. So thus, we work to not die. It is not wrong to not want to die, but it is wrong to be in a position to not want to die and there makes all the difference. So simply restating the outcome like @Banno does (to just get on with it) is simply failing to analyze the problem. So hence I said that just because something is intractable doesn't mean it's not worth examining.

The idea of living in a world where nothing is required from me sounds like being a zombie. — Paine

It's not a hard and fast law, no. That's the point. We have to make it so by motivating ourselves or integrating X, Y, Z ideas about work and accomplishment into our psyche. Then there is the issue if we even should be in the business of integrating this into our psyche..

If I forced you into a game and you learn to play it better cause you have to deal, the force is still there, the issue at hand is not how well you jump to meet my criteria but whether having a set of criteria was a violation of sorts to issue to someone. The byproduct of me foisting criteria being positive or negative for an individual shouldn't factor into that violation.

It's tricky because people think they have best intentions but what of the morality of arrogance to give people a game that is played in real time, lest death to begin with?

Labor feels punitive if not freely chosen as what is pursued. The response of an individual obviously cannot remove the quality of suffering but there can be a conversation. — Paine

But one cannot freely choose not to work.. or at least, one cannot expand this maxim universally without collapsing life itself.. So it is life itself that is the problem perhaps. Being born at all is the problem. It is not any particular way but all ways.

The product provides the fetish or ideal objective for the consumer to want and that is the end - the sublimated objective - not the actual satisfaction of that desire. Desire projects the wanting person into an imagined future state of happiness that is dashed by the actual arrival of the product that leads inevitably to either disappointment or disinterest. Desire is the essence of all distraction. — ASmallTalentForWar

Houses/homes, clothes, water, electricity.. and all the things that come out of it.. all the things used to maintain what you then have.. it's a snowball effect. It's too simplistic to say we should stop consuming.. It is all a part-and-parcel of a "way of life". Rather, any mode of living will have this problem. In order to live, you need the systems and networks that sustain it.. And that includes humans themselves as producers working for each other\'s demands. The problem is intractable once someone is born into the world.

But why should we get things done for others. For a possessing class? Who have their alibi to tyranny by feeding us with artificial corporate food, housing us in sick building, providing us with occasional entertainment, a chance in the lottery to go to the island, a health insurance corporation to provide us with torture as the cure for our artificially induced sickness and misery, while constantly being bombarded with fake smiles and ideality. — Hillary

Ok, kind of on board...

So, free yourself and make life happen yourself! — Hillary

That's the problem. There is no freeing from the production-system other than romanticized notions of Robinson Crusoe hacking it in wilderness or non-starter communes that themselves need you to produce and still need the greater economy outside it in order to function. Nothing is usually made completely from "scratch" anymore.

You're committing another self-imposition: You take for granted that you're certain that there is no way out. (And that the materialistic outlook is the one and only right one).

Arguably, this is the core of your problem (and not the comply or die, or the futility of pursuing sensual pleasures). — baker

If you're talking about some sort of asceticism, that is at the extremes that are pretty inaccessible for most people. It's a romanticized version of how humans can live.

This isn't to say that such a personal perspective overrules others. But the reverse is also not true. There is a relationship to the cosmos established when one can actually do stuff that is not there when one cannot. — Paine

How is it we have a relationship with the cosmos?

You have gone to your usual position of mangling several distinct issues together. — Banno

And yet you have not justified it, just asserted it. If you had any charitable reading or care then perhaps you would see the distinct issues:

As I said in previous post:
But this (production in socioeconomic sphere or die) is exactly the negative condition and moral problem I'm talking about.. No production suicide.. So we must be producers... Bringing in existentialist ideas of bad faith, we must sublimate this fact as if it is just the way things must be, but our "soul" (metaphorically used here) rebels against it.

So, my question is, do we want to continue to live? If so, do we want to change the socio-economic power structure so that we're not compelled to work in order to produce? I'll tell you that if all workers stopped producing, that would hurt everybody. — L'éléphant

But this is exactly the negative condition and moral problem I'm talking about.. No production suicide.. So we must be producers... Bringing in existentialist ideas of bad faith, we must sublimate this fact as if it is just the way things must be, but our "soul" (metaphorically used here) rebels against it.

Yawn. Accepting the things yo cannot change is not unreasonable. — Banno

So what I mean by rebelling here is more about a stance or a framework to see things. Humans always have to self-impose complying, even if tacitly. Not recognizing this is equivalent to a kind of bad faith.

But also, the element of having to pull one's weight is cruel to put onto someone in the first place as if it is just the course of things. There would surely be a point where if everyone opted out (free riding problem, let's say), that things would go to shit, if you will. So surely, not everyone can free ride (there really is no free riding if considering everyone in the the whole group, cause someone else will pay for it).

So this pyramid scheme of production where there is really a "no opt out" option, is not good. We can still recognize this, prevent it and perhaps be less aggressive of expectations knowing that there is no pausing the game, or removing oneself to a Platonic realm of non-production. There has to be something that comes from this self-imposition..

In the industrialized/Western socioeconomic game, a boss-man still exists to manage and coordinate. The owner is going to invest and boss the bossman. The worker is going follow the expectations of the bossman managers and owner(s)/investors. Someone's gotta make the donuts and the spreadsheets, and move the minutia around to "make things work".. But recognizing the fact of self-imposition of motivating ourselves using whatever reasoning possible makes us not just animals that just "do unwanted things".. but knowing it is something we may otherwise not do. This adds that extra layer.

So I ask you, what might a society look like with a rebellious stance towards production? Answer wisely, and not flippantly as you seem to usually do. I'll just ignore any predictable flippant answer.

I would still like to understand what difference you see between ‘life’ and ‘the game’ if any? I assume you must see a difference or your reasoning falls flat. — I like sushi

Life is the broader category. Human life represents a socioeconomic game. Not a particular kind but a game nonetheless (hunting-gathering, industrialized, etc.).

It is clearly a ruse to use the term ‘comply’ here if he then says in the next breath that there is no choice. We cannot comply if there is no choice. We either live or die whilst trying to live. There is no ‘choice’ in this matter. — I like sushi

So the problem is thus:
"You can paddle the boat to help yourself and society (to survive), or you can jump off the boat". That is the comply.. You can comply with the following the game (of rowing the boat) or you can kill yourself. Is putting someone in that position itself wrong? Of course I say yes.

To follow that. The OP is more or less framed at living in civilised society. We can choose to leave one way of life and live another. There are undoubtedly a variety of hurdles that basically boil down to ‘fear’. That is a problem we have to cope with in some manner or another. It is how we falter and learn to imagine a new way and open up new doors. — I like sushi

No, any way (civilized or not) would be a game we need to survive. Is putting someone in that situation wrong? Yes. Having choices on which game to play, doesn't negate having to play a game in the first place. Why "limited choices" somehow unjust but "forced to comply with playing some game (lest death) is not seen as unjust, I don't understand.

I prefer my T-Shirt - "Sisyphus was a patsy!" — Tom Storm

Either way works.

because no one is imposing this activity on me — NOS4A2

So my point in the OP is that each day, we impose it on ourselves, and that too is negative as we cannot just "be" existing, we have the self-reflection capacity to know we don't have to do anything and yet our fear of death and destruction of the body is a strong compulsion to overcome, if we choose death. So we do things we might otherwise not do.. That is not proof that thus life must be worthwhile, just on how hard it is to overcome our own fears of nonexistence or pain. There are a lot of de factos of life to live in a socioeconomic environment with surviving, getting comfortable, and entertainment. These de factos are in a sense a "force" if you don't want to overcome the fear of death. ALL of this imposition of following the de factos of socioeconomic realities or death, is wrong.

Okay, it's wrong. It (i.e. natura naturans —> conatus) will continue to be wrong, at least, until the next global extinction event. So given it's both "wrong and intractable", you can either adapt, maladapt, or die – choose bravely, schop1 (just stop fucking whining!) :brow: — 180 Proof

Nah, I'll continue thanks.

What? That doesn't follow. — Banno

Accepting the reality is not rebelling against it the fundamental problem. Forced to comply or die is a problem to deal with not ignore because its "too late".

I prefer to imagine Sisyphus happy... — Tom Storm

But did the punishment fit the crime? Was the punishment just?

The most insidious kind of thing is to make the person believe that it is their fault for not falling in line enough. Sisyphus was duped.

I think you’re right. The technological growth of human history and “progress” could be the evolving effects of our attempts to mitigate this burden. — NOS4A2

Hey, we actually agree on this. What is it about this self-imposition? Can you elaborate your thoughts on the fact that we don't just "do", but we have to continually buy into doing?

Why not accept the reality and then attempt to make things better? — Banno

Do you think because something is intractable that makes it impervious to moral judgement? If so, why?

Logic says: either kill yourself or try to make yourself less unhappy. Have you followed this logic where it leads or where you want it to go ("instead of killing myself, I should incessantly complain")? — ZzzoneiroCosm

Um, isn't this exactly what I am speaking against? Comply...or die.. Is that wrong to put someone into that bind? It is intractable, but is it wrong.

On the way, you might manage to make things a bit more comfortable for yourself and others. That'd be more worthwhile than what you do here, which is just incessant complaining. — Banno

So you are camp Comply or Die is a-ok, what a surprise. And more worthwhile is surely about something in the Complying department. The loving options Wonka has set out to give us ways to "pull our weight" :roll:.

This is just what I was talking about when I said "highfalutin." You're trying to turn our simple, straightforward, fundamental biological nature into an existential crisis. It's not fair! It's not fair! It's not fair! (stomps feet) — T Clark

What I stated was a fact:

This is interesting to note because it puts us squarely in the existential situation of doing something we might not want to do otherwise, but for survival purposes. It is not simply "doing" the job, but self-imposing ways to motivate ourselves to do the job and understanding things like consequences if we don't do the job.

We don't just "do" we must buy into doing. That is an existential thing. That is not just biology (if you mean by this purely instinctual mechanisms of survival).