Well, it's mostly by removing yourself from the problem by not entertaining it by doing so that you address the problem. Hence, yes, the Zen part. — Posty McPostface

Ah yes. Well, unfortunately, you cannot remove yourself from your goals. The problem is the need for problems, in a very general way.

Yeah, I meant to say that by focusing on the problem you eliminate it by not entertaining it. Kinda Zen? — Posty McPostface

I still don't get what you're getting at, but maybe that's the Zen part?

Pragmatism would say something like, distract yourself with more enjoyable things, with a taste of utilitarianism. Otherwise, focus on the problem and don't entertain it... Would be my take. — Posty McPostface

Yes, that's essentially my version. Except, more enjoyable things is just what we do, because we are little entropy machines, working our little worker goals until we are unable to any longer. Focus on problem and don't entertain it though doesn't make sense with how you stated it.

What's the alternative though? — Posty McPostface

Clearly striving for more work to do to keep us occupied and focused on something, right? Just kidding, that is the common "pragmatic" response. Perhaps seeing the world as it is, rather than just following the standard pragmatic response?

But it is good, no? — Posty McPostface

Not that we are put in the situation to overcome, I would say not.

You can limit their amount though... — Posty McPostface

Then it is the ceaseless striving for not striving.

Sure, those are small goals that are attainable like going to see your doctor or a visit at the dentist. What's so insurmountable about such goals? — Posty McPostface

Who said anything about insurmountable. More like innumerable, unending, ceaseless.

Like what? My only goal is not to be sad or unhappy. Meaning the less goals I have the better off I will be as per Buddhism. — Posty McPostface

What were some things you did today? What will you do tomorrow? This week? This weekend? This year? Each activity, even if just sitting under a tree, requires a goal.

Yes, though some people seem to just want to get by in life. What do you tell those types? — Posty McPostface

Still got to have goals to maintain. Doesn't have to be lofty goals. If you are a human with language, enculturated in a social setting, you will have goals at almost all times.

What does that even mean? — Posty McPostface

We strive for goals ceaslessly (unless we are asleep/coma/unconscious). Perhaps the root of existential types of angst.

No. Work is becoming redundant with the advent of AI. So, no. — Posty McPostface

Work is just one manifestation of work.. And even if you were completely right about AI utopia.. it ain't happening in yours or my time.

You don't rebut nonsense. You laugh at it. — apokrisis

Ridiculous response. You also use "modelling" as a kind of weasel word that stands in for anything including mental and non-mental processes and it allows for the slipperiness of your argument. Can't catch a fish with too much slime.

LOL. — apokrisis

Nervous laughter that I'm right? :razz: . If you have a rebuttal, let's hear it.

So have you given up your Cartesian framing of the question - the one where the view would emanate from some now unlocated "mind" having "feelings of what it is like to be a third person"? — apokrisis

For this question it is required.

The third person objective point of view is the one that can afford to ignore every particular fact, every contingent fluctuation ... at least to the degree that is efficient for constructing a lived model of the world. — apokrisis

Why would there be a constructing going on? The view from nowhere has a point of view of modelling? What is doing the ignoring?

There is not much point knowing about neutrinos and quarks unless you can potentially do something with them. And there is absolutely no point in knowing the individual state of every neutrino and quark in the history of the Cosmos as what possible good purpose would that serve? Efficient modelling prefers to get by on making the least effort. So it is how much we can ignore - by summing reality up in t-shirt equations - which is the useful measure of our "objectivity". — apokrisis

What is the perspective of every state in the history of the cosmos? You jumped right back into the modelling done post-facto. Tsk tsk.

The third person point of view then becomes some actual physical model of the world - an equation plus some set of measurements that will pump out a prediction. — apokrisis

This is yet another error in conception. The models become a stand-in for the third person perspective. The view from nowhere, has no models.

And we find this third person model useful even if it doesn't itself contain anything but the most generalised kind of reason or telos - the thermodynamic imperative that is its maximally generic "point of view", the anchoring locus from which its description of the Cosmos emanates. — apokrisis

I'm not sure where this fits into the debate.

And understand that to be the epistemic game is the way to avoid falling into your idealist trap of forever complaining that "mind" doesn't get explained by science. Science does explain mind to the degree that is anthropomorphically useful.

And if you are not too much worried about that level of neurocognitive detail, then in fact standard theistic/romantic conceptions of the "mind" are the only model you need for day to day life. Cartesianism works as the standard model of everyday living for the ordinary person. Why make things more complicated? — apokrisis

I notice you never really explain the mechanism of mind. You mention the error of Cartesianism a lot, semiotics, and your profound distaste for pan-experientialism vs. your model, and then say your model is neither pan-experiential (because its triadic and that negates it somehow?) and that it does not fall into the fallacy of the Cartesian theater (even though, at some point mind "feels" like something). Anyways, these arguments are a bit beside the point of this particular thread which is the question of what is the point of view outside of the subject object relationship we know.

But the models are about something which is outside all subjective views, or at least human/animal ones, because as Apo mentioned, it's invariant across all such views. The mass of a table is not relative to any view. It's true that the concept of mass is human, but the property mass is about is not. It's real. — Marchesk

Yes, and what is the point of view of mass?

Yeah sure. But would you conclude from that that brains model worlds or that there is a realm of mind that is somehow getting it all wrong about how the world actually is? — apokrisis

This is the naive realism that I was mentioning. The view from nowhere might be nothing like how the mind perceives it. The object needs a subject. Math only describes. Models are only an echo. etc. etc. To take the math or the models as reality because it is how humans translate is anthropomorphisizing the universe. You are taking the human view to be THE view outside all subjective views.

This genuinely made me laugh out loud. :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: . You get three schops.

Back in the day people nigh say it’s due to creating labor for their farm or to pass on their family:tribal lineage. Now the excuses are near the individual level of giving an “opportunity” coupled with a “lifestyle” choice if it’s not a downright accident. But for the “thoughtful” people it’s to create an “ideal” person (i.e a version of themself).

It’s as banal as banno.

I don’t see it as a need to blame. Rather, it is a need to see where suffering begins. It begins at birth. Non existence never cared. We can’t even postulate a view from nowhere. But people are worried that there needs to be a view from somewhere! Albeit, they are the arbiters of this somewhere through their progeny!

As I was saying, the efficient cause of suffering (and th need for its alleviation) is procreation. Similarly, the deficits that we must “overcome” are caused by procreation. No deficits have to be overcome in the first place if no one is born.

Everything that causes harm is after the fact. Being born is the efficient cause to the harms. I’m sure the consensus here is that people will be born to be little versions of their ideal person (hint: they usually think it’s themselves!). How is that not the height of narcissism?

Torturous pain is the acceleration of the structural pain of living. In a sense, the structural pain is almost imperceptible torture. It's a sigh, rather than a scream. — darthbarracuda

Agreed, but this would mainly be about the decay of the body leading to death, right? How about the other forms of structural suffering? Can you elaborate on that?

Because the third person point of view is literally a "view from nowhere". If you conceptualize it, then you are back to a subject conceptualizing the object- perhaps in some pseudo-Platonic "removed" sort of way in your imagination. However, in "reality" we cannot know what this "real" third-person view from nowhere is. In fact, maybe it's something like a first person perspective! But what is certainly the case is things aren't just objects as we conceive them in some Platonic realm of just be situated as we would normally imagine it when we imagine things from a third-person perspective.

This to me seems like a veiled ad hominem. Let's stick to what the topic is about. I don’t think psychologizing my point of view changes the structures of life..those brought about by being born in the first place. Why do you suppose it is the job of anyone or less radically, why is it justified to put people into the world at all- anhedonia or not? What do you think the major project of people being born, society, human endeavor is for? Why are we the arbiters of these things?

That the lack of agency and awareness of oneself in a dream is a respite from the tyranny of waking life. Yes? — Posty McPostface

Exactly. Tyranny is a great word here. I'd like to explore that. What makes waking life tyrannical as opposed to the gentleness of the sleep-state (sans nightmares, I guess)?

Yes, this is the absolute truth. Sleep is my favorite activity or rather inactivity. I get to relinquish any form of agency, in a safe and controlled manner.

Sleep anytime you can. — Posty McPostface

What does it say when sleep is preferred more than awake?

A lot of the time, consciousness is simply waiting. Enduring. Since we can't just turn ourselves off.

Consciousness is an ever-vigilant insomnia — darthbarracuda

An ever-vigilant entropic force which we are trying to keep at bay with ordering our lives, decisions, and maintaining social institutions.. But for what?

Sleep is only the reprieve- a tiny escape. We always come back. I picture us as little mechanics trying to maintain and construct this behomoth, but the more we construct, the more mechanics are needed to fix and maintain the system.

The holy ritual is sleep. That is the communion. There is where we drift back into a reality that echoes a time before us and after us. But its always a taste. Not enough. It's only seen as "restorative" rather than preferred. Odd, being its the most peaceful part of life.

It's just like the after images seen by the eye. The nervous system is set up on the principle of constructing sharp counterfactual contrasts. It applies to feelings like all other forms of perception. — apokrisis

What is doing the seeing? There is a ghost in your machine.. and its name is Decartes.

A joke ribbing the NYT's biases: The world is going to end tomorrow.

Wall street Journal's headline: World ends tomorrow; markets will be closed.

New York Times' headline: World ends tomorrow; women and minorities will be disproportionately affected. — Bitter Crank

:lol: Yep, sounds about right!

Personally, I would think that raising children would be a better job than a lot of the dull work that people end up doing in offices, never mind factories or farms. It's a choice I don't have to consider. — Bitter Crank

Again, what are we trying to get out of having more people, and so on and so on?

I did mention the lifestyle and economic reasons given. Being the New York Times they also wanted it to have a feminist bent: it is saying women have more freedoms and thus use time for things other than parenting but at the same time saying that the government deincentivizes having children with little support like no paid family leave etc. Either way, the main reason is not putting another person into existence.

See this article in the New York TImes: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/05/upshot/americans-are-having-fewer-babies-they-told-us-why.html . What's good in the US is that more and more people of child-bearing age are deciding it is not a good idea to have a child. Unfortunately, the reasons they give are more to do with economics and lifestyle than it is from the idea that the child that will be born will suffer. What bothers me about the article though (and many about population growth) is that it focuses on the idea of labor shortages, as if future children are a future resource to be culled and grown as a crop to be used as the next workers. Governments hope that people's individual attitudes are positive about children so they can have more economic output in their GDP and economic indicators. The future children are used as a mere means to an ends to add to the labor pool. Everyone unintentionally doing their part to provide the next generation of workers.

Indeed everyone thinks they are going to be a good parent. One of the big problems is that hope is a nasty drug that deludes the reality of the day-to-day struggles people actually experience. Everyone thinks their child will be the ones to achieve happiness on all levels of human endeavors when, in reality, most people reach a mediocre life at best..

Nothing is distributed such that everyone gets the same level of happiness-attainment in life. Some people will have it much easier- the best work, lifestyle, love, relationships, etc. This level of attainment can be due to all sorts of factors of genetic, experiential, circumstantial, and most of all fortune. While some will have it easy, others won't.. This is not determined by the hopes of the parent!

Let's look at something as (seemingly) essential as a good love-life (significant others, relationships, etc.). While some people find (what they deem to be) their true "love".. others will struggle much of their lives.. Maybe they aren't "doing it right", maybe they have bad circumstances, maybe they gotta try a bit harder.. While the parents probably had in mind ideal circumstances when projecting into the future their child's life, that is never the reality for most people.

So, hope is the drug.

So what is a first person point of view in your metaphysical scheme? — apokrisis

I don't know. I don't have a metaphysical scheme that fully answers this question. The best I can think of is that all natural processes have a point of view that goes all the way down. This eliminates the need for an abstracted "space" where process concresces into something (the hidden Cartesian Theater). I can't think of a way out of the bind. This doesn't mean this point of view is right, it is just one way out of it.

You mention interprative aspect of process.. to me that sounds like a point of view of the process- the same thing.. You say it isn't.. That's fine, but the Cartesian Theater of there being a "somewhere" this coheres into a first person experience then becomes an issue again.

So what is a first person point of view in your metaphysical scheme? Give us a useful definition that excludes interpretance as something models do. Let's see you shake that dualism one more time, tell us how the mind is some kind of unphysical thing rather than some kind of natural process. — apokrisis

Again this use of interpretance- what do you mean by this? What, metaphysically is going on when you say this? "Where" is this happening? From a first person perspective of the parts involved? Use the example of sight if you want. How does this not avoid the Cartesian Theater? Instead of panpsychism experience, we have interpretance? Sounds fishy.. sleight of hand. Same concept, different name and a lot of protest.

You have words but not really explanations. Modeling relations, interactions, organism..none of it makes sense unless there is already a first person point of view in the equation. Yes the “space” does matter. Unless there is some already-there interpreter (first person point of view) this concrescence of behavior has to cohere and “do” its internal thing. I’m waiting to see your explanation of that.

What has physical space got to do with it? The model is about an organism in a world. So it is an abstraction as far as that physical space is concerned.

Then I should hardly need to point out that your talk about "physical space" is itself a modelling interpretation. So you are simply doubling down on the epistemological missteps. — apokrisis

No, I don't mean "physical space" in this case. What I meant is more abstract.. If all this physical stuff is happening.. "where" is this modelling happening?

Experience can be understood as en embodied physical process if you don't have an eliminative or mechanically reductive notion of the physical, thus obviating the need to posit a separate mental substance. — Janus

I guess I just don't understand this embodied physical process as much. I wouldn't mind if you told me more what that really means as opposed to eliminative or mechanically reductive notion of physical. There's just a lot of word salad thrown around at this point.. Not that it's necessarily wrong.. I just feel we need our definitions defined first and we can see if we even agree.

It is not the behaviour that has "internalness" here. It is the modelling. So again, stop deflecting and focus on the question as it was asked of you. Discover for yourself that you really don't have any concrete reason to deny an "internalness" to a modelling relation between the brain and the world. You might in fact realise that the semiotic story is all about the organismic construction of an "internal and meaningful point-of-view". — apokrisis

I mean come on.. Internalness of modelling of the brain and the world? There are so many steps there.. Yeah lets start with sight. Light hits the eye, all this happens right: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/the-science-of-vision-how-do-our-eyes-see-10513902.html
(abbreviated version obviously)...

You can call this process combined with more strictly neural processes (stuff like this: https://www.dartmouth.edu/~rswenson/NeuroSci/chapter_11.html#chapter_11_visual)

And we can add more very specific articles, textbooks, and the like..

Okay, that is the substrate. Where does this modelling "take place"? What is the "space" that this modelling is happening? Where does interpretive space happen? We can't assume what is being inquired about... We know there is internalness, but it is not obvious from the substrates themselves.. and modelling is a process.. but where is this process space occurring? It is all physical stuff happening at this point.. All material. Unless you make underhanded Cartesian theater claims.. I don't see your way out of the bind.

If an entity could respond in different ways to the same stimulus, what other than some self-regulative "internalness" could give rise to that possibility? — Janus

I don't know but, that is definitely a sort of panpsychism that @apokrisis would deny. I think I've seen that posited by some philosophers though.