My main position regarding life in general and antinatalism as a response to the conditions of life, are outlined here, more-or-less:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/5981/schopenhauers-deprivationalism

1. Assume an eternalist view of time, in which the future is just as real as the past. The fact that the person you're doing things for is not around yet seems of no more relevance than whether they are around here. So doing something for someone in the future is no different from doing something for someone in a different city - or even just next door. So if we assume an eternalist view, doing something for someone who does not exist yet is not incoherent. — Theologian

So keep in mind this idea of using as a means is regarding suffering and foisting challenges. By the act of procreating a new person, you are disregarding these for X other reasons. There was no person who existed prior to need anything- no challenges to overcome, no suffering, no desires that are not fulfilled, no absurdity of finding various daily purposes and goals. The parent is creating the very conditions of challenges, need, adversity in the first place, and usually for some X reason. Thus the X reason is put above exposing the child to these conditions. Thus, having a child who experiences X, Y, Z and who produces ABC, would be to put these values above the child's exposure to the structural and contingent harms of existence. However, there is no reason the person needs to experience XYZ or produce ABC in the first place. The child is being used in a way to fulfill some X reason destiny that they are supposed to live out.

2. Ask: "What is implicit in the idea that you should always treat humans as an end in themselves, never only as a means?" Doesn't this imply that humans have intrinsic value? And if humans have intrinsic value isn't creating more humans intrinsically good? — Theologian

There are two ways to answer this. First, would be what I said above, you are creating the very need for value in the first place, which is already using someone as a value-creator. "Someone must exist for value to exist, ergo I will procreate someone who will manifest value" is ironically Kant's formulation used against its own very idea of value. But secondly, this ethic is not completely reliant on Kant's second formulation. There is an element of negative utilitarian as well. That is to say, it is most important to not bring more suffering into the world, if one can prevent it. Thus, used with deontological principles, in the case of procreation, when there is no person who already exists, it is more obligatory to prevent suffering for a future person than to create happy people. Since there is no person who yet exists, there is no person who actually gets deprived of any goods of life. Further, there is no duty to bring people into the world to experience the goods of life. No one needs to experience XYZ or produce ABC things in the first place. To create suffering and overcoming challenges for someone else, who would otherwise not exist to experience this, would be wrong. This is especially so since there is no actual person "deprived" or "missing out". The slave-owner thinks that living is good for the slave, who happily identifies with their situation. However, it is wrong to foist challenges and suffering onto someone, for the sake of XYZ reasons.

3. Consider your own starting argument: that having children is wrong for the reasons you outline. But... is not your argument dependent on the idea that you can do something to someone who does not yet exist? So how can you now turn around and say that you can't do something for them? — Theologian

I'm not saying that though. I'm saying that you are creating people so that you can have an ends to begin with. In the light of suffering and challenges experienced by an individual (the whole point of this thread.. not so much how it comports with Kant), means that someone is created for the sake of which XYZ experiences can take place. These experiences are put above the child's experiencing of harm and challenges that must continually be overcome. They are creating people that must endure challenges and suffering in life for whatever X reason the parent had in mind that the child must live for.

You are comparing the state of slavery (forced challenges/suffering) with being born and living life. Living life is not forced challenges/suffering except to the very very weak. In order to compare the two you must skew life into some sort of unethical oppression. Its not, except from the weakest, most pathetic viewpoint. I understand you might just be pontificating rather than feeling this deeply so that isnt directed at you personally but to consider life in that way you must take a very weak view of the ups and downs of life. — DingoJones

Besides the fact that you are waving off the fact that there many subtle and not so subtle harmful, negative states, I am indeed saying that the de facto forced overcoming of challenges to live and maintain in the world, and the exposure to various kinds of suffering (disorders, disease, bad luck, unfairness, etc. etc.) being created for another person is indeed not so different a scenario than the slave-owner foisting challenges. Having the freedom of choice of how to survive doesn't negate having to survive. Whether someone is subjectively happy with whatever their situation is at the time, doesn't negate the foisting of challenges and suffering on another.

said he felt that a universe with life was fundamentally richer than one without.

I'm not saying I am wholly won over by this argument. But I am not entirely unmoved by it either. I'm a bit wild and woolly here I know, but perhaps you could all it an appeal to virtue ethics, but in this case the "virtue" and the "flourishing" belong to an entire planet, or even the universe, rather than just one — Theologian

The universe does not get anything or not get anything by what humans do or feel.If so, the universe itself would be using people for a game of net good or whatnot.

1. I'm not sure you're on entirely solid deontological grounds asserting that having children is using people as a means rather than treating them as ends in themselves. Are you completely certain if your goal is to have children, you can't say that you have treated the person as an end in themselves?

Don't forget: even Kant allows us to use others to achieve our ends. We're just not allowed to treat them in a way where we're only using them as an means to an end. — Theologian

In a sense, there is no person for there to be an end for yet, so it is always for the parent, prior to birth. Going a bit beyond Kant, I just call this a circular contradiction. Creating a new person would create the challenges that need to be overcome in the first place. Why create challenges to overcome in the first place for another person? Well, if it so another person can enjoy life, then why create a person to overcome challenges to enjoy life in the first place? Not being born means no actual person suffers. There is no "they" that is deprived of any good either.

Similarly, the slave-owner might say that the slave will be happy, and there is nothing wrong with foisting challenges and suffering for another person if they are subjectively "ok" with it.

Oh, you are THAT guy, that keeps trying to backdoor this topic. Even worse that I thought.
Master/slave relationship compared to parent/offspring relationship is superficially analogous at best. — DingoJones

No, it is not the relationship I am comparing, Dingo. Rather, it is the circumstances of being foisted challenges and suffering for someone else's ends...The actual relationship is much different, and would be a strawman made from emphasizing the wrong aspect of the analogy.

but is enough logic for me feel comfortable that this baby will also PROBABLY prefer existence to non-existence (I do understand your point, that once they exist, what else would they prefer?) — ZhouBoTong

Right, this is why I used the example of the slave being subjectively happy with his situation. This does not negate the slave-owner putting him into a position of constraints, challenges, and forced work- generally making the slave a slave in order for them to be a means to his ends.

So I guess this parallels what I said about not trusting the slave who writes about how good slavery is...because he has no idea what freedom is like. — ZhouBoTong

Correct.

What if we can do some Gattaca/Brave New World stuff. If we completely understand neuroscience and genetics, we could BE SURE that everyone is happy; and if we also had enough resources (a la Star Trek) we could entirely remove suffering. I get these examples are possibly more outlandish than the ones you gave, but would that situation change your view at all? — ZhouBoTong

I don't think it is a possibility for humans to be happy, as suffering is structural to life. There would still be want and need. However, the situation describe may be better for contingent suffering (i.e. suffering that is based on circumstances). If people were still people though, other people and circumstances would somehow find a way to cause negative experiences and create new contingent pain.

A sort of rule comes out of this formulation. Any X thing that is put as a reason to have the child is still using the child in light of the fact that no child needed to be born in the first place to experience X thing. So someone who says, "I want a child to experience accomplishment, love, laughter, amusement, and friendship", is still putting these values before the child itself. Thus, the child having to overcome adversities and dealing with suffering, is being ignored for other X reasons. But the truth is, the child did not have to be born to even NEED love laughter, amusement, and friendship. But certainly the child will experience challenges and suffering. Why create something for the X reason (when the consequence is suffering for that child), when it did not need to occur in the first place? That would be putting the X reason over the suffering and challenges the child will face. The child is being used to experience these things that are supposedly good for the child, that didn't even need to be born in the first place to experience these X things.

Hold your horses there, DingoJones. I was going to up the stakes in a bit, and going somewhere with it, but I wanted to establish something first with something everyone agrees with. I was going to go with what intuitively seems wrong, and apply it to what most would not think is intuitive, but still wrong in the same way..

So the point is yes, you are correct, I would say most people would think the slave-owner is wrong. Here's where it gets controversial- I think having children is also wrong for the very same reasons. Like the slave, the child will be forced to work to survive and deal with challenges of life (these challenges are both structural and contingent.. I can get into that later if you want). In fact, most parents think they are justified in having kids because, like the slaves in the OP, they may learn to identify with the challenges in some way, and say "they like it". I think this does not matter. Also, there will be an objection that the slave is forced into constraints and other people not, so it's different. Fair enough, but let's not be myopic here- life itself entails that work and labor has to be done by someone in order for survival to take place. Also, life has many adversities both seen and unforeseen, that will fall upon the new person born. The child is also being exposed to all suffering, where this did not need to happen, as a means to some X reason the parent had for the child to be born. The child is now provided challenges and exposed to suffering where there did not need to be a child who experienced challenges and suffering, AND would not even be around prior to their birth (obviously) to be "deprived" of any of the "goods of life". Exposing people to challenges to overcome and suffering, in order so that they might experience some unknown amount of "goods of/from life" is still using the child for an X reason.

So, though at first unintuitive, the same standard should be applied in the situation of procreation as well. Simply because the constraints are widened to challenges of life in general instead of a particular set of challenges set by the slave-owner doesn't negate the fact that suffering and challenges are being DE FACTO foisted on a person with their birth.

And on the other side, recognizing duties and expressing them as maxims can be something of an art. I have certainly had - I assume most people have had - the experience of being sure I was correct/right, yet being persuaded otherwise by a wiser person. — tim wood

It's hard to tell who is wise, other than it makes sense to you perhaps. But if you say because they were right about consequences, that would negate Kant's deontology anyways.

Again, the point is we do not know what maxim is correct, hierarchically. So let's say that the clerk is rude because his wife died a couple weeks earlier and that puts him in a bad mood. So then in that case the maxim might be, "A clerk should not be rude, unless a tragedy befalls him close to the time of rudeness to a customer, as then no one would be allowed time to process their grief appropriately". This then trumps the maxim, "Clerks should never be rude to customers as this is violating civility and denying their humanity". Which rule wins out?

Even Kant was pretty bad at applying his own philosophy. He would answer that it would never be good to lie, even if a killer came to your door asking where your friend was, and you knew they were trying to kill him. Clearly, he is violating some maxim about protecting life. "If everyone acted in a way where if someone's life were in danger they could not violate another maxim, even if that person died as a result" were universalized, the very concept of preserving life itself would be violated. If everyone gave in to aggressors like that, life itself would be short, nasty, and brutish. I am sure violating the principle of life would come before principle of property or trustworthiness.

Good summary there. My problem with the CI is not about certain, easy-to-see contradictions. Rather, it is when it gets to more everyday interactions and situations. That's why I used the example above about being friendly to everyone who goes into a store. So, let's say I go into a store, and the cashier person working ignores me when I ask a question and just couldn't give me the time of day or something. It's really no big deal, though I'd rather have more helpful interaction as a customer. So should that be a universal maxim? "If all store employees were rude to their customers then the concept itself of customer service would no longer be a real thing". This kind of granularity seems to be more controversial. You might say that customer service isn't what is violated, but civility in general. Another person would say that those aren't even contradictions like the lying-property one is, and that they wouldn't count as something violated. There is just no epistemological way to tell what kind of action should be universalized nor what the actual contradiction is that might be violated.

Lol when someone calls Witty an empricist what is one to do but throw one's hands up and laugh; "The limit of the empirical -- is concept formation" (RFM). And all of Witty is an exploration of how concepts take hold; an exploration of the limits of empiricism. It'd be like if one were to call Plato a materialist. How much more idiotically off-base can one get? — StreetlightX

Here is something for you, and I'm going to keep this very broad for a reason- what is Schopenhauer's conception of Will to you and to Witty (or how you conceive Witty to have thought of it based on his philosophy)?

What do the issues of existential "radical freedom", suffering (specific cases and the general idea of human suffering), and Camus' idea of Sisyphus' mean to Witty and yourself? Are they just nonsensical? Are they valid in its context-dependency? Are they something which should not be spoken? Simply poetry? Saying something about the world? What would saying anything about the world mean to Witty and yourself? You can answer with Tractatus, PI, both, none, your own thing, I don't care. I'd like to see constructive statements rather than scoffery. But scoffery about being called out on scoffery does not negate the scoffery for you (sad face). Heaping piles of scoffery just add to it unfortunately.

These do seem like good criticisms of one questionable interpretation of Wittgenstein. For me the use of Wittgenstein is going through the issues again and eliminating some of them as pointless. A person is more wary of their tendency to say nothing important as if it were profound, drunk on the jingle of their words. After his basic linguistic insights are digested, his more metaphysical/mystical ideas in the TLP become more fascinating. You mention brute fact. Well perhaps we do eventually bump up against brute fact (and is this not an old issue in philosophy?) — g0d

Yes, I never stated nor believe Wittgenstein's whole project should be discounted. I think clarifying concepts is important in philosophy, and Witty understand that as one of the most important contributions. When we are talking about concepts of the "absolute", "free will", "dasein", "perfect duty", etc. etc. These are all jargony terms and have to be clarified in their contexts. I don't believe every jargony term is senseless. It has their uses.

Let me edit what I said above.. If let's say, there WAS a contradiction..something like "If everyone were mean, civility itself would not exist".. would that be a general maxim? Everyone MUST be friendly to me when I walk into the establishment? You may disagree with how granular I'm getting.. see what I'm getting at?

If the principle that guides your action is embedded in some more abstract principle, you can go up an check if the principles that guide your actions are consistent with themselves and the CI. — Echarmion

Fair enough, but I guess there is a reason he calls it "practical reason".. But is it practical? If he gives you a standard, but the standard is incompatible in its many uses, what does it matter then as a useful thing? I would like to universalize the fact that everyone should smile when I walk into their establishment and be as friendly as possible. If we universalized that, there is no contradiction here, should this be a general maxim?

Rules or rulers? Ha.

That's the problem, anything can be universalized and in a way justified or not justified. "If every student who lied should be hit with rulers" is there a contradiction if universalized? Another problem is what kind of maxims are appropriate to universalize. Surely, we would all disagree. There are a number of problems here.

The second formulation seems general enough to actually apply meaningfully. To not use other people as merely an ends is an interesting point, and is a large basis for my antinatalism.

For example, foisting challenges on another individual is always wrong, even if that individual eventually identifies with the challenges. Foisting challenges on an individual, along with exposing them to a world that has non-trivial (and unavoidable structural) suffering, due to some other X reason (i.e. parent's reasoning for having the child), is always wrong. A person who did not exist already, did not need to experience the X (parent's) reason in the first place. The child would be exposed to suffering and sets of challenges. This would be using the child for a means to some end (some X reason), and discounting the challenges and suffering of the actual child that did not need to be foisted upon them in the first place.

This is of course a variation of the CI second formulation.

No problem! :grin:

I've had similar criticisms of the CI. What counts as a maxim to be universalized? I think that his first formulation was trying to be too rigorous for its own good.

From this thread 2 years ago: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/40563

Traditionally, the CI has been applied to larger ethical themes like murder and stealing. How about more granular, everyday situations? Can deontology be applied to more nuanced scenarios?

At what point does the CI not apply? Can it work with any contradiction that arises, no matter how trivial or is this not meant to be applied to more daily situations of living? If not, why? That is the realm of most human activity. It's how we treat each other in everyday life, the small decisions, the hustle and bustle of living. — schopenhauer1

Incidentally, this week's comic fits right into your thread here :lol: http://existentialcomics.com/comic/293

Where did you get that I called Witty an empiricist? Don't see it in my last post, though I mentioned the word empiricism. Making straw there Street and boxing shadows- an exercise in arrogance more than anything. I said several things about Witty but not that. I said:

However, within the very belief here "philosophy doesn't say something that is in the realm of empiricism/scientific explanation" the question still remains as to the "why" of the regularities. Saying, "Wittgenstein just isn't interested" is shoving off any philosophical debate into "it's just brute fact" which in that case, makes sense why people often put Witty under "non-philosophy" or "anti-philosophy". — schopenhauer1

So if you have a disagreement there, without misconstruing it, go ahead. I also said:

Any speculation is shrugged off. Thus, all that's left is to describe various contexts of language use. Great, all debates off. Let's just shut the forum down, all philosophical inquiry should be under creative writing/religion sections, and we can focus on something else now. That is the implication here. That there are "brute facts" begs the question- point lost for Witty then, as this cannot be explained, and he is not willing to even "go there" other than to say it is a limit, and all limits should not be crossed (pace famous quote about nothing can explain what cannot be said". Also a limit is human nature itself which "empiricism" as a blunt approach is not going to elucidate. Again, more room for philosophy. It seems more of trapping the fly and gluing it shut, then letting it free. — schopenhauer1

IN RESPONSE TO:

The point is that Wittgenstein is not interested in explaining the "source" of regularities in nature. It's taken as a brute fact that they exist. Not only he's not interested in such "explanations", he seems to think that it's not philosophy's business in general. If the source of natural regularities is an empirical question, it's science's business; if it's not an empirical question, most probably it falls within the domain of a mystery which many try to explain by another mystery or: "a nothing could serve just as well as a something about which nothing could be said". — 2019

I take schopenhauer1's point to be that the limits of Wittgenstein's philosophical inquiry should not mark the limits of philosophy. That there are questions and issues that Wittgenstein puts beyond the limits of philosophy that are legitimate philosophical problems.

It is not that he calls Wittgenstein an empiricist but that, contrary to Wittgenstein, the empirical should not be regarded as beyond the bounds of philosophy. — Fooloso4

Yes! This is essentially what I intended to convey there. But you probably weren't looking for strawmen to begin with, so you can at least see it.

The point is that Wittgenstein is not interested in explaining the "source" of regularities in nature. It's taken as a brute fact that they exist. Not only he's not interested in such "explanations", he seems to think that it's not philosophy's business in general. If the source of natural regularities is an empirical question, it's science's business; if it's not an empirical question, most probably it falls within the domain of a mystery which many try to explain by another mystery or: "a nothing could serve just as well as a something about which nothing could be said". — 2019

Right, hence me opening this thread about Wittgenstein and his relation with ontological speculation and science itself. This is a good answer. However, within the very belief here "philosophy doesn't say something that is in the realm of empiricism/scientific explanation" the question still remains as to the "why" of the regularities. Saying, "Wittgenstein just isn't interested" is shoving off any philosophical debate into "it's just brute fact" which in that case, makes sense why people often put Witty under "non-philosophy" or "anti-philosophy".

Any speculation is shrugged off. Thus, all that's left is to describe various contexts of language use. Great, all debates off. Let's just shut the forum down, all philosophical inquiry should be under creative writing/religion sections, and we can focus on something else now. That is the implication here. That there are "brute facts" begs the question- point lost for Witty then, as this cannot be explained, and he is not willing to even "go there" other than to say it is a limit, and all limits should not be crossed (pace famous quote about nothing can explain what cannot be said". Also a limit is human nature itself which "empiricism" as a blunt approach is not going to elucidate. Again, more room for philosophy. It seems more of trapping the fly and gluing it shut, then letting it free.

The last part of this quote seems like an allusion to another distinction: "We must distinguish between a necessity in the system and a necessity of the whole system". — 2019

Right, I was connecting the two- that was the speculative leap.

There are necessities within our mathematical system, but the system itself is not necessary. I don't see him as a conventionalist either regarding math or logic (or, I should say, especially regarding logic): "it has often been put in the form of an assertion that the truths of logic are determined by a consensus of opinions. Is this what I am saying? No". Given the world we live in, that's the math we can have. There's not a whole lot to say about "why this world" though. I take him to hold that (in its metaphysical depth (or shallowness rather)) this is a nonsensical question which produces nonsensical explanations. — 2019

Not nonsensical- not empirically verifiable. Rather logical connections can be made, but they are never verified. At the end of the day, Witty is being a skeptic who honors the methods of empiricism for what is useful to humans. Ironically, his quote about not speaking of where one cannot, is inspired by Schopenhauer who did all sorts of metaphysical speculations.

I don't see how "what serves a purpose" tells us "what is". What if all the patterns which human beings come up with are imaginary, fabrications, and the universe is just a program which rewards people for coming up with imaginative patterns? Coming up with an imaginative pattern serves the purpose, it produces the reward, the universe behaves according to the pattern created, so the person is rewarded by this. But this really doesn't tell us anything about "what is", and that is the system which hands out the rewards for the creation of imaginative patterns. The "universe" as we know it may have been created by evolving living creatures imagining patterns, and getting rewarded for this, by the system. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes this gets to the heart of speculation in general about the ontology of the world. I actually agree more than I disagree here. This thread was trying to add some sort of Pythagorean realism- the math actually "tells us" something beyond our epistemological understanding. Patterns recognizing patterns because pattern-recognition is itself a pattern that "works" for survival seemed interesting avenue to explore. Again, a high symmetry and formalism. Evolution is much messier than this, but it may fit into that scheme. Traits use what has came before, what is expedient. It follows a trajectory of its own constraints. But it can generally be used that, if something is not right about what fits for survival, than it is not going to last long, and that itself is a mechanism that can lead to pattern-recognition in a species with general learning capabilities.

The Speculative Realist crew, is much more, well, speculative. All of these philosophies probably fail to answer questions like the Hard Question of Consciousness. What it's going to come up with is what idealism is going to come with- a sort of panpscyhsism or hidden dualism, though more sophisticated, because of the "process" variety. Somehow by smearing consciousness over time and with "behavior" this jumps the abyss to the other side. It just gets sublimated into still other inaccessible ideas.

I'm interested in how our inferencing power, when formalized to the degree we have gotten it, has given us the minutia mongering that we have today.

This is probably aimed at the popular form of scientism as represented by the usual cadres like Dawkins et al. He makes a point for those who simply dont even acknowledge the hard question or understand it.

The knot of experiential phenomena seems intractable. Either people have to bite the bullet of pansychism or they have to explain a dualism, hidden or otherwise. Anyone who uses illusion in their theory already has problems in explaining a materialistic monism.

.
This probably works better in a diagram of sorts:

Constraints interacting in a system (more complicated than this though as we agree) >>>
Instincts (in other animals) which are patterns of behavior at in part or wholly brought about through some sort of evolutionary mechanism (natural/sexual selection/exaptation, etc.)

OR

inferencing/pattern-recognition (less innate patterns of behavior more recognition of patterns to survive)>>>>

Refined pattern-recognition through accumulated cultural knowledge (though contingently learned) has "hit upon" more accurate pattern-recognition of the natural world that gave rose to the pattern-recognition.


Essentially the meta-theory here is that BECAUSE of the patterns of the world, it necessitates that creatures had to be good at recognizing patterns to survive (if not instinctual following of modules of behavior). Science works because we have that initial inferencing, but we don't need specifically, modern science to survive. The patterns of the world have revealed "what is" through turning our inferencing abilities on the world itself, with a mechanism that was created from inferencing in general.

I know this is highly contrary to Wittgenstein, but that is my point. Math works not because it "has to work" in the internal logic, when it is applied to empirical evidence and technology. It works, because there is something about how it is describing the very patterns that we initially used to recognize more practical or immediate situations in our development.

How do we cross this gap (which is similar to an is/ought gap), to say something about the patterns themselves, when our premise says something about what serves a purpose? We need another premise which relates what is, to what serves a purpose. — Metaphysician Undercover

Right, that is a theory I posited is that, "what serves a purpose" is telling us "what is", and the confirmation is through accidental (contingent more accurately) language-game of math-derived science.Our inferencing capacities, needed to recognize patterns to serve the purpose of survival. What did not need to take place was that we needed to have math/science/modern technology as it played out. However, this inferencing/pattern-recognition/social learning/linguistic mechanism for survival provides the underlying ability to understand patterns of the world itself through methods of falsification, observation, and experimentation and math-derived empirical methods. The evolutionary mechanisms, produced inferencing mechanisms, that could recursively turn around and see "what is" by way of refining inferencing mechanisms in the scientific/math-derived methodology which is confirmed through the explanatory and technological power that it produces versus other methodologies of our inferencing abilities.

Constraints do not necessarily cause patterns. The constraints must be designed, or systematic to cause patterns. So you are overlooking the real cause of the patterns, which would be the design of the system of constraints, and you are assigning the cause of the patterns to the constraints themselves. So we are not just debating how a specific term, "rule", may be used, we are discussing how it is that a pattern may come to exist. Constraints may be completely random, there is no necessity in the concept of "constraint" which would require that constraints are ordered. So if it comes to be, that constraints are arranged in such a way as to create a pattern, we need to account for the reason why this has occurred. It doesn't suffice to say that the constraints are following a rule. — Metaphysician Undercover

You are just going down the rabbit-hole of language games further. So how descriptive do you want me to be? I agree with your explanation here that it is not just constraints but interaction in the system. Terms can be used to construe more than the word it represents. In fact, even if I gave a much more detailed description, I wouldn't even exhaust that phenomena anyways. Actually, that was a very Wittgenstein point I just made :wink: .

It seems like I need to emphasize the fact that a constraint is not a law, or a rule. A constraint is a particular physical thing an obstacle or an object of restriction. In order that constraints might produce a pattern they must be arranged in such a way so as to do that. Recognizing that there are patterns, and that the patterns come about through constraints, and even describing the existence of those constraints in terms of laws or rules, does not address the reason why the constraints exist in such a way that allows them to be described by rules. The fact that the arrangement of constraints required to produce a pattern may be described by rules, does not mean that the arrangement of constraints required to produce that pattern is caused by rules. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is just term-mongering. I already explained how I was using the term in a different way than you are defining it. I've already addressed this and said you can call it n-rule if you wanted. I don't really care.

The ontological point was that the systemically-defined, constraint-patterns are intelligible to humans. Sure we can say that anything that makes sense to us, makes sense to us because it could not be otherwise. But it can be said, it makes sense to us, because a humans evolved in a way where pattern-recognition, a part of the human capacity to survive, turned its capacity on the broader phenomena of the world itself, they could not help but find these patterns, originally used for general inferencing abilities in other contexts.

I really do not see how a constraint is a rule. That makes no sense to me. I agree with what you say about constraints, time and place are constraints, and all the physical features of genetics, DNA, etc. are constraints. These may all be classed as the particulars of the circumstances. But how do you construe the particulars of the circumstances as rules? — Metaphysician Undercover

Again, because we are playing language-games. Constraints in nature, cause there to be patterns. If we want to call it n-rule instead of strictly "rule" because it is not a human-created, top-down creation, then that is fine. We are just debating the meaning of how a term can be used then.

What I am positing in this argument is that humans evolved by these very constraint-produced patterns, and not only that, have abilities such as inferencing powers, that were in some way directly or indirectly evolved (whether specifically selected, sexually-selected, by exaptation, or a combination of all three). This inferencing power, along with other cognitive capacities like social learning, which coincided with our language generation, has given us the ability to recognize the very constraints and resultant patterns that were involved in our very evolution.

We can analyze the system using logic, and produce some laws which describe the actions of the system, but these laws are descriptive. They do not actually structure the system, so it's inappropriate to say that the system "follows" these laws. The laws describe the system, the system is not following the laws. — Metaphysician Undercover

This makes no sense to me. The system is shaped by the constraints. This shaping by the constraints, is "following laws". This version of "following laws" does not need intentionality, simply actions that are constrained to create certain probable outcomes and patterns.

I can see how a system might produce patterns of action, and that we might understand these patterns through logic, but I do not see how you can say that there is any "informal logic" within the system, governing the actions of the system. To say that the system has "an informal logic of its own" which is creating the patterns of action, is to say that the system has a mind of its own, because only minds use logic to govern actions.

You might do as Fooloso4 appears inclined to do, and define "logic" in a way which is completely inconsistent with the way that Wittgenstein uses it, but in the context of this thread, what's the point in that? — Metaphysician Undercover

So what if I am using it in a way that Wittgenstein is not? This is a different language game. What I am doing is explaining/describing how our pattern-recognition powers, like inferencing powers, were created by pattern-generating phenomena from constraints, that allowed us to see those very patterns that created us. We perhaps could not help but be a creature that recognizes patterns. The other option of nature would be to strictly follow those patterns of behavior unreflectively, or non-recursively rather, which is more-or-less the instinctual abilities that other animals have rather than the inferencing/social learning/pattern-recognition pattern abilities that our species has. It just so happens that mathematically-derived empricism has applied, refined through verification/falsification, and accumulated methodologies of our pattern-recognition and inferencing onto the world itself instead of a particular subset of other use-contexts and has given us results we would not have initially expected. We can see these results in applying prior known maths/logic to new phenomena that explain observations and technological results.

The evolutionary processes are not following rules. — Metaphysician Undercover

Explained above again. These are exactly the types of error Witty would hate. You know what I meant, I would think based on the context. No, there is no pre-set "rule" evolution is following. However, constraints of nature, cause similar processes (one can say "rules") that allow for various similar patterns. Evolution may be contingent, but it is a constrained contingency, that does not have hard-and-fast results (necessity), but neither is it limitless possibility (chaos). It has a sort of logic in its mechanisms and results based on these conditions and constraints.

I don't think so. Evolution does not follow any rules. — Metaphysician Undercover

So here we are playing language games. As you know, the term "rules" has many uses in our constructed language games. By rules, I mean a kind of set of patterns based on constraints. That is how I am intending to use it. Evolution, like all other phenomena, has constraints on its system and its elements. You have the constraints of time and place, the constraints of how DNA, genetics, and cellular biology works, constraints on behavior, constraints on survival in general. All these constraints prove to produce similar patterns of morphology, behavior, and survival-mechanisms in animals repeatedly over and over. Many traits are conserved or produce similar traits from different starting points. Hence we have mechanisms like the Red Queen Hypothesis, sexual selection, divergent and convergent evolution, etc. The processes eventually shake out into patterns based on these constraints. So I meant a kind of structuring logic based on the constraints of the system.

What are you saying, that evolutionary processes follow some sort of informal logic? Who would have been carrying out this logical thinking which took place in the early development of language? — Metaphysician Undercover

Oh c'mon, this rather uncharitable interpretation. Evolution mainly works through differential survival rates. And as explained above, these do indeed create a kind of structuring system- an informal logic of its own, if you will. Systems can produce patterns of action. These are language games again. I am not using logic in the "formal logic" sense nor even in the "general inferencing" sense, but more of the arrangement and structure of a system sense. The "logic" of how a human heart works, or the "logic" of evolutionary mechanism clearly means something different than, "he is practicing logic".

Your problem stems from this:

3) We cannot know the noumena behind phenomena — Jonathan McCormack

If anything, Schopenhauer's World as Will and Representation uses a methodology that does just that. He uses our own individual wills- the inside perspective, to posit that there is a double-aspect to reality. He then extends this to all appearances. Will is the metaphysical flipside to representation which is the appearances or epistemological constraint. Thus, very much uses the "this world" to speculate about the ontology of being. Being happens to be Will in his philosophy- a striving force that goes nowhere but is tied intricately with the appearances of space, time, and causality, the transcendental grounds for our cognitive capacities. Now, how Will is connected with the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason is interesting and a bit knotty, but I think this sufficiently proves your third claim otherwise, and thereby also counters your first two claims as well.

Clearly, logic is derived from, or comes from language. Therefore there is no such thing as logic prior to language, nor was there logic when the first language-games started to exist.. Furthermore, the structure or order which underlies natural language games, just like the structure and order which underlies the entire universe, cannot be attributed the property of "logical", because there was no such thing as logic when these things came into existence.. — Metaphysician Undercover

We have to be careful here not to mince words. There is this sense that people are using Wittgenstein as an escape hatch for any sense of meaning. One can always be accused of not playing the language-game right, and thus "making no sense". There could be a sense that languages had to conform to some sort of coherency while it was developing. Evolution also plays by certain rules, dictated by the necessity of survival for biological organisms. Also, it could be said that humans are a "symbolic species", the groundwork for conceptual thought itself is already there, and the background for which language-games play out. So in all these senses, @Fooloso4 could have a point. Presumably, he is not talking about logic in the formal sense, but a structuring that takes place in the development of language.

As I understand it, Wittgenstein is not claiming that there is a universal grammar, but that any grammar must make sense. — Fooloso4

No, I wasn't suggesting he does, just the idea that grammar might have universal elements possibly due to how cognition in humans generally works. Chomsky's UG is definitely of a different language theory than Wittgenstein's. It does not mean I am discounting it, but giving another theory. I don't like only viewing these problems with one strategum. For example Quine, Russell, Chomsky, and others represent a different approach, at least how I interpret it. Actually any one of these isolated theories can be combined. Witty doesn't have to be contrary to any other theories, but they can accord but apply to different areas or levels of investigation of the large phenomenon of language.

One might imagine a language game in which "Milk me sugar" makes sense, but the grammar of the invented game would have to make clear what this means, how the phrase is being used in that game, what one is supposed to do with it. — Fooloso4

Yes, phrases must make sense in their use-contexts. What makes science interesting is falsification. Falsification and the ability to get a result other than prediction tells us something. The data doesn't necessarily accord with the initial logic. However, that any data can be systematized can then subsume this position back to plain old epistemological constraints. This is true, but a lot of what is predicted is not what would be readily apparent to a common sense worldview.

Language has no single purpose, but it could not serve many of its purposes if it did not have a logical structure, that is, if what is said does not make sense. There is something arbitrary about language and something non-arbitrary about the grammar or logic of language. This does not mean that there is a fixed logical structure underlying language, but that all language-games have a structure. This is not an empirical claim but a logical one. — Fooloso4

This reminds me of ideas of the Chomskean sort. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_grammar

Here's a question that I would genuinely want to get the views from people on PF. Hopefully people understand my question.

Let's assume that there would be an explanation to why we have Russell's paradox and the incompleteness results of Gödel, Turing etc. Hence there would be a central axiom in mathematics, axiom X, that without it we have get into paradoxes and incompleteness results, because we don't take into consideration axiom X, so our logic "breaks down" and we have to settle with ZF-logic or other kinds of logic.

Would there be any other problems with Frege's ideas (naive set theory) and the idea that mathematics is comes out of logic? Is the set-of-all-sets the only problem? — ssu

Let's assume that there would be an explanation to why we have Russell's paradox and the incompleteness results of Gödel, Turing etc. Hence there would be a central axiom in mathematics, axiom X, that without it we have get into paradoxes and incompleteness results, because we don't take into consideration axiom X, so our logic "breaks down" and we have to settle with ZF-logic or other kinds of logic.

Would there be any other problems with Frege's ideas (naive set theory) and the idea that mathematics is comes out of logic? Is the set-of-all-sets the only problem? — ssu

I'm not sure if he would weigh in, but that might be a great one for @fdrake, though I am not sure how much he is familiar with Russell's Paradox and Godel's Incompleteness Theorem's impact on Frege's logical project. I think Russell's Paradox and Godel's Incompletness is one example of the flaw in the logic itself. There may be broader criticisms that this approach is erroneous to begin with. Math may not be subsumed in a broader logic.

Kantian readings of him* can't explain this fact, even if they avoid the problem of armchair empiricism of which Wittgenstein was accused of but he himself denied that he was undertaking. — 2019

There may be a bit of this in Witty in regards to language when it comes to research on the origins, neuroscience, etc. But he was getting at a priori understanding at a much broader level, which from the 10,000 ft. level can be considered a legitimate move when characterizing what is going on. He is being "meta" here of empiricism, logic, and ordinary language and the approaches of these in themselves and combined.

That is, there is no possibility of another’s agreeing or disagreeing with us; for we really indicate only a method. It is as if Boltzmann’s model were simply placed beside the phenomenon of electricity and someone said: ‘Just look at that!’." — 2019

Yes, science never has to be "exact", just point the way of correlation. But the fact that this correlation is there, is in fact, "saying" something itself. That is my theme in this thread, or at least what I am currently entertaining for a point of discussion here.

My response is here: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/295093 . Anyone who wanted to further comment on this particular response to Wafarer is found in that thread as Wayfarer chose to continue the discussion there, which may be more appropriate.

It’s a whole other thread, but I don’t necessarily accept evolutionary accounts of reason. Which is not to say that humans didn't evolve, as we clearly did, along pretty clear (albeit complicated) lines. But when we get to be able to reason and speak, then those abilities really escape the gravity of biology, as it were. (I've been reading about an evolutionary theorist, Kenneth R Miller, whose book The Human Instinct: How We Evolved to Have Reason, Consciousness, and Free Will goes into questions like that. He's not an ID proponent, in fact has testified as an expert witness against ID in US court proceedings.)

I think there's this kind of unthinking assumption that reason evolves, like teeth or tentacles or whatever (to put it crudely) but what see evolving is the capacity to reason - the ability to grasp abstract truths. And I don't think that is accounted for by Darwinian theory as such, as it's not necessarily a question that's strictly biological. (Interesting footnote: neither did Alfred Russel Wallace, who broke from Darwin on this exact question.) So when we perceive necessary truths, etc, we're actually thinking and reasoning in a way that animals generally don't (notwithstanding bee dances, caledonian crows or puzzle-solving octopuses). Hence the Greek definition of 'man as rational animal', which, I think, connotes a genuine ontological distinction. — Wayfarer

Sure, weeding out what is an exaptation and what is truly selected for is a tricky area. I am not sure experiments that are/could be done to prove one way or the other. But, we can posit that certainly inferencing ability whether an exaptation that "piggybacked" on an actual selection (better tool-making, increased brain size, better social learning, etc.) did not hurt the animal, and in turn lead to other possible selections that actually refined this ability further. So what once was a "spandrel" (pace Stephen Gould) is now an integral part of the organism. So not only genetic changes, but phenotypic changes that were generally just happenstance, become coopted as a necessary functioning of that organism.

Hence the Greek definition of 'man as rational animal', which, I think, connotes a genuine ontological distinction. — Wayfarer

I actually agree with you/them here, but for possibly different reasons. We are ontological distinct in the fact that our language ability subsumes everything about our cognition. In order to understand "glass has water" we must have the underlying ability to formulate the world into distinct concepts/use syntax etc. How this occurred is another interesting area that has a lot of current imaginative approaches (see Terrence Deacon's "Symbolic Species" approach for example). Certainly to me, it seems there had to be a synthesis of sexual selection, greater need to pick-up social learning already present in our chimp-like ancestors, and tool-making which was evident early on.

You're still operating with naturalistic premisses when you say this which, again, you reinforce by re-stating that 'Recognizing patterns becomes the reason why humans can survive'. So, again, this implicitly subordinates reason to survival, (which I *think* is rather similar to what the Frankfurt school criticized as the 'instrumentalisation of reason'.) — Wayfarer

Yes that is the point. One can say this is a highly anthropic point of view contra speculative realism. That is to say, that patterns had to be apparent to us in order to survive. These patterns, more-or-less had to be "true" in order to maintain our survival, or we would die out fairly quickly or have to find other modes of survival that do not involve leaps in cognitive inferencing, pattern-recognition, and accumulated knowledge. In turn, contingently, through time we turned that inferencing nature on the world itself and have "hit upon" some fundamental patterns of the world that can be harnessed and used for accurate predictions. These patterns aren't arbitrary, or based on contingent circumstances of culture either. Mathematically-derived empiricism works. If one wants to subsume it in the idea that it is only "useful" that also works, as in this case, what is "useful" is what is exactly what is telling us about the world itself.

And one visible consequence of that is the diminishment of the sense of wonder, which, I think, is undermined, whenever we seek to rationalise our abilities in biological terms. — Wayfarer

Perhaps, but there is room in realism with extreme Pythagoreanism (all is math, and we can more-or-less understand some of it, clearly), or Whiteheadian panpsychism, the hyper-chaos theory of Meillassoux, and many other speculative approaches that are "real" in the sense of the theories bieng ontologically grounded rather than focusing on how they epistemically constrained. Of course, I think there is room too for seeing the ontological through the constraints.

That is the distinct characteristic of the modern mathematical sciences commencing with Galileo. — Wayfarer

Yes, but this is simply explaining the question again. Why is it so? If humans can't help but think this way, then why? Sure, we can say humans have a tendency to systematize, predict probabilities, find patterns, inference, etc. But then, why when investigating the world, do these properties work? Okay, we can say "evolution". But then what is it about evolution that allows for properties to work? Evolution works by way of differential survival rates. Thus, it may be said that it was advantageous for humans to think in these ways.

To use Heiddeger's ready-at-hand concept liberally, this might be about being's way of interacting with the world through non-reflective capacity. It would be "doing without thinking about it". This may be many types of animals without the recursive nature that language-syntax-conceptual capacities provide. With the slow but steady decoupling of the human animal from "just do" with more recursive modes of cognition, we get inferencing and social learning mechanisms that form the world into ever-present concepts. Thus "water in glass" presuppose a world composed of divisible concepts like water and glass. This conceptual decoupled cognitive capacity was useful precisely because of its ability to see the patterns of the world in a way that allowed for survival. Recognizing patterns becomes the reason why humans can survive. Thus the patterns weren't meant "for humans", humans wouldn't be otherwise without recognizing patterns as this is how survival differentials played out. Thus we couldn't help but recognize patterns, and accurately. Thus these patterns were prior to and independent of human conventionalizations of the best ways to recognize them.

It is just this tendency to posit a hidden world behind the world that Wittgenstein rejects. How does one peak behind the curtain? By imagining that there must be something going on and speculating that it must be this or that? — Fooloso4

A quote from a book review of SR philosopher Steven Shaviro (https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/the-universe-of-things-on-speculative-realism/):

The most significant parallel between Whitehead and the speculative realists, on Shaviro's account, follows directly from Whitehead's critique of the bifurcation of nature. When it comes to the bifurcation between the phenomenal appearances of "the red glow of the sunset" and the physical reality of "'the molecules and electric waves' of sunlight refracting into the earth's atmosphere", Whitehead is quite clear in arguing that one is not more real than the other. To the contrary, for Whitehead "we may not pick and choose". The red glow of the sunset and the electric waves of sunlight each have for Whitehead, as Shaviro points out, "the same ontological status" (2). Stated differently, nature is not divided between material things that are inaccessible to us except insofar as they are taken up by the mind in the form of impressions and ideas; rather, things are always already present in other things. Whitehead is clear on this point: "an actual entity is present in other actual entities" (Process and Reality, 50; cited 8).

How does speculation avoid being something other than some way we see the world? It seems to be self-deluding - picturing some hidden way things must be and ignoring the fact that the picture one conjures or deduces is a human artifact. — Fooloso4

Again, a quote says it more aptly than me from Critique of Shaviro (COS)

Shaviro, by contrast, will accept the idea that there is more to reality than what is actually given or present to us -- "Things are active and interactive far beyond any measure of their presence to us" (49). This surplus or excess, however, is not a hidden reserve withdrawn from relations but is instead an excess of relations that cannot be captured and constrained within a predetermining set of normative categories and objective types. The goal for philosophy, Shaviro claims, is therefore "not to deduce and impose cognitive norms, or concepts of understanding, but rather to make us more fully aware of how reality escapes and upsets these norms" (67). This is again why when we do philosophy "we are compelled to speculate," for when we are "confronted with the real" this reality escapes our "cognitive norms, or concepts" and puts us into a situation where "we must think outside our own thought" (67). We are forced into doing philosophy as speculative realism, and speculative realism, if done right, "must maintain," as Shaviro sees it, "both a positive ontological thesis and a positive epistemological one" (68). The ontological thesis asserts that "the real not only exists without us and apart from our conceptualizations of it but is actually organized or articulated in some manner, in its own right, without any help from us" (68); and the epistemological thesis claims that "it is in some way possible for us to point to, and speak about, this organized world-without-us without thereby reducing it yet again to our own conceptual schemes" (68).

This is a misunderstanding of Wittgenstein. Once again: In On Certainty Wittgenstein quotes Goethe: “In the Beginning was the Deed”(402). The relation of other animals to the world is not via thinking and at its most fundamental level it is not for us either. — Fooloso4

A SR philosopher might reply

Shaviro's strategy in providing both a positive ontological and epistemological thesis is to push the anti-correlationist arguments one finds among speculative realist philosophers to their logical conclusion. Underlying these arguments is perhaps the central claim of his book: that "all entities have insides as well as outsides, or first-person experiences as well as observable, third-person properties" (104). For Shaviro, "the problem with Harman is that he seems to underestimate this latter aspect," the public, third-person aspect of entities. By accepting the two-sided nature of entities, Shaviro adopts a form of panpsychism, and one of the motivations for this move is that it responds to an alternative approach one finds among speculative realists whereby they overcome the problem of correlationism by purging thought from being (see 73). Both Meillassoux and Brassier, for instance, offer a version of this argument. Meillassoux calls for a version of the distinction between primary and secondary qualities in order to show how an object can be "formulated in mathematical terms . . . (and hence) can be meaningfully conceived as properties of the object in itself" (citing Meillassoux, 74). Brassier goes even further and argues that our thought, including mathematical thought, "is epiphenomenal, illusory, and entirely without efficacy" (74). Whether a meaningful grasp of objects as they are in themselves is possible or not, both Meillassoux and Brassier are agreed on one thing, according to Shaviro, and that is "that they both assume that matter in itself -- as it exists outside of the correlation -- must simply be passive and inert, utterly devoid of meaning or value" (77). Thought and matter are thus put into polar opposition with one another -- or Meillassoux and Brassier continue to assume the validity of the bifurcation of nature (77) -- whereas Shaviro, following Whitehead, calls for a contrast of thought and matter, a contrast wherein everything entails both a subjective aspect and an objective aspect, an inside and an outside. — COS

@Fooloso4@Luke These are good too :lol:

http://existentialcomics.com/comic/290
http://existentialcomics.com/comic/284
http://existentialcomics.com/comic/268