As a panpsychist I believe that the rarity and privilege of my experiential transformation from typical matter into a human is literally unimaginable. In fact, I think my miraculous existential fortune should be justified by something other than "it just is that way". My question is what you think this justification might possibly be, or why you think "it just is that way" suffices. — Dogbert

Are you asking about the emergence of the sentient from the insentient?

I didn't see this at first but I think you likely are. If so it is a restatement of the 'hard problem' in other words. It's good that you have seen it for yourself. If so 'it just is that way' is highly unsatisfactory. And panpsychism is an alternative, one that I happen to endorse.

I think you're right, I do presuppose a reason, and maybe that is just a bad habit. However if there is, in fact, an unknown reason, then we have a natural mystery that explains the phenomena we experience.

Moral principles

As far as I can see, all formal moral philosophies, and certainly any philosophy that specifies how other people should behave, is not moral at all, or even really a philosophy. It’s a program of social control - coercive rules a society establishes to manage disruptive or inconvenient behavior — T Clark

Yes, I agree. If there were only one sentient being in the universe, it would go around gobbling at will. There would be no other to impede it. If there are more than one, it is possible that the stronger eats the weaker. Still no morality. Morality happens when two sentient creatures of roughly equal power encounter each other, and they have to come to terms. Morality is the terms that they come to, perhaps. It's is about controlling the behaviour of the other, so they are less of a threat, or so they work for you. Morality is always about others, what you want them to do and what they want you to do.

It might be contrasted with virtue ethics perhaps, where the concern is to be virtuous, and the focus is on oneself and not others, perhaps.

I only say that because it was the reason given in the setup. You were discussing why a person who is already religious would wonder why God exists, why not just follow the rules. So the reason for following the rules assumes the existence of God, in this setup, no? Maybe I misunderstood. But the existence of God is an important factor here because the assumption of his existence is behind the drive to follow the rules. This drive would be on a much more certain footing if God's existence could be established rather than being assumed. Maybe I'm overlooking the importance of faith.

Of course, I don't believe, even if I were a theist, that source of my morality would be in God's will, however revealed. It is in my will. Then God and I can have a fight, or we can negotiate, or agree, or I can submit, or whatever.

Why not simply follow the given manuals and act righteously? — ssu

Because it's stupid and pointless if there is no God. So you need to figure out if God is real, and if so it is the God of the bible, and if so is the bible literal, and if so, it might make sense to follow the rules (or it might not, the moral thing might be to fight God the evil basted and his bastard children and curse him even if it is futile).

Scientists and scientifically literate persons do not misuse (misinterpret) physical laws that way – and obviously, bert, you're neither a scientist nor scientifically literate if you believe nature's regularities / structures are "inexplicable" (akin to supernatural mysteries ... miracles, woo-of-the-gaps, etc). — 180 Proof

If you keep asking 'Yes but why?' eventually even scientifically literate people like yourself, will say 'That's just how it is'. That's a mystery. I make no claim to it being akin to 'supernatural mysteries ... miracles, woo-of-the-gaps, etc'

Yes, but they are still used in explanations. And the regularities are describable but inexplicable.

Can anyone prove a god, I enjoy debates and wish to see the arguments posed in favour of the existence of a god. — CallMeDirac

If cosmopsychism is true (panpsychism with an emphasis on the macro rather than the micro), and at the moment I think it probably is, then we have a very large (possibly infinite) and powerful conscious blob. Should we call it God? Who knows. But it's a possible candidate for Goddishness. Does it mean we should believe in miracles, hate fags, give it a name and then stone people who say the name out loud, start wars in its name, try to make out that it is really really bothered about which ethnic group should have rights to a piece of land on one tiny planet in an infinite universe, use it to explain odd things that sometimes happen, and otherwise make up stories (that coincidentally happen to align with our interests) about what it wants? Probably not.

So, again, no proof, even if perfect would change a thing. — Sam26

I don't think that's entirely right. Reason does change people's views, but slowly, and very occasionally quickly. The rationale lodges in some deep recess of the brain, and slowly starts rearranging neurons around it I reckon, although may never reach a critical mass. Admittedly there are much quicker ways to influence the beliefs on another.

What question is not begged (is not fallaciously answered) by "a mystery"? None. — 180 Proof

Naturalists offer explanationsi nterms of natural laws, but the laws themselves are taken to be brute and inexplicable, no? A mystery that answers questions.

This topic was called the problem of 'natural kinds' when I was at university. Someone might have mentioned this already, I haven't read the whole thread.

I think @unenlightened is taking the only remotely promising approach, and that is to stipulate a God-idea and then check the world (in a broad sense of 'check') for a corresponding reality.

Why would you expect this? — Dfpolis

I not sure if I would. I think I was replying to @flannel jesus who might expect it and did give an answer. See above.

Oh, I see. Didn't understand that when I wrote my previous answer. So where is the boundary between the layers?

We've crossed the language-level boundary when we say "My thoughts about consciousness caused my fingers to move the pen which wicks ink up from the ink-cartridge according to physical laws x,y,z", for example.

Sorry I don't understand. Writing things involves moving physical objects around, pens, keyboards etc. What am I missing?

It's casual at it's own lever of abstraction. — flannel jesus

Oh, OK. Can you give an example of consciousness causing something in a way that doesn't tread on the toes of any physics?

Interesting article. It's extremely dualistic, in a way, isn't it? It seems to suggest a fairly radical disconnection between the two 'levels'. Is he saying that the levels exist in language alone, perhaps, and not physically? And nowhere is there an explanation of, say, how consciousness came to be, or even if he thinks consciousness is real.

EDIT:

This is a nice quote from the article:

I really do think that enormous confusion is caused in many areas — not just consciousness, but free will and even more purely physical phenomena — by the simple mistake of starting sentences in one language or layer of description (“I thought about summoning up the will power to resist that extra slice of pizza…”) but then ending them in a completely different vocabulary (“… but my atoms obeyed the laws of the Standard Model, so what could I do?”) — Sean Carroll

It doesn't have to be either/or. — flannel jesus

Maybe. I think that would make a great topic for a thread. Does psychological causation compete with physical causation?

I heartily agree. EDIT: you may be interested in @apokrisis posts on the forum about complex systems and top-down causation. Is that the kind of thing you are thinking of?

It would. But it leaves no evolutionary role for consciousness to play, which was @wonderer1's point.

EDIT: my own tentative view is that only consciousness is causal.

Suppose miraculously I was able to produce an accurate account of every detail of the evolutionary path leading to humans. Would it then be unreasonable to conclude with, "So that's just the way evolution went?"

BTW, Do you think Chalmers is an evolution skeptic? — wonderer1

When philosophers like Chalmers ask questions like "Why doesn't all this information-processing go on "in the dark", free of any inner feel?" they don't really mean 'why' in the sense of "what evolutionary benefit has it?" They're looking for a 'how', as in "Explain how, exactly, that information processing (or whatever function) somehow produces/causes/is-identical-with consciousness?"

So what reason do we have to think human behavior in general could be as it is without consciousness? — wonderer1

Because of the causal closure of the physical

What are you talking about?

What does 'rodeo clowning bulls' mean?

Sure, I agree. That's a good point, but one @180 Proof didn't make. There were a number of things that @180 Proof could have meant, I was just wondering which one it was. I respond to 180's posts quite a lot because his style is ambiguous, and when people miss his point, he invariably blames the reader, something no good writer should ever do. And 180 is a very good writer some of the time.

If some observation corresponds to some Star Wars-specific proposition, then it is evidence that Jediism is true. — 180 Proof

Do you think there is something wrong with that?

A pointless comment. — Janus

That's exactly what someone who was teased by their sister as a child would say.

Sure, let's do that on the psychology forum.

When we say "transcendence", don't we usually mean something metaphysical like 'X transcends, or is beyond, Y' (e.g. ineffable, inexplicable, unconditional, immaterial, disembodied, etc)? This differs from "transcendental" which denotes 'anterior conditions which make X epistemically possible' (Kant, Husserl). I usually can't tell from their posts what most members like Wayfarer or @Constance intelligibly mean by either of these terms. — 180 Proof

I tend to avoid the term as it can very quickly tend to irresolvable dualisms or obscurantism as you suggest. It might be salvaged as a concept by identifying the transcendant with the subject and the worldly with its actions, in the sense that the sea transcends its waves, or I transcend my walking. The world is the actions of spirit.

@Tom Storm

With apologists it always comes down to "you must not understand" if you disagree with them and/or present arguments they can't cope with. Also, they argue from the mindset of wanting something to be true and ignoring anything that doesn't confirm their wishes, rather than seeking to discover the truth with an unbiased disposition. — Janus

Could you teach me how to read minds?

My thinking is this: Religion rises out of the radical ethical indeterminacy of our existence. This simply means that we are thrown into a world of ethical issues that, in the most basic analysis, are not resolvable. Yet they insist on resolution with the same apodicticity as logical coercivity. Meaning, just as one cannot but agree with something like modus ponens or the principle of identity in terms of the pure logicality of their intuitive insistence, so one cannot resist the moral insistence of moral redemption. This latter is the essence of religion, and I further claim that in proving such a thing, I am giving the world and our existence in it exactly the metaphysical satisfaction is seeks. — Constance

I think there is probably a lot to this. But if you are correct, doesn't this mean that everyone is religious in some way, even the atheist, who also has to grapple with these issues, and in some way yield to the moral insistence you describe? Do you want to modify your concept to exclude atheists and those who identify as irreligious? Or do you want to say that everyone is religious in the sense you mean it, whether they like it or not?

Atheists tend to base their irreligiosity on the grounds that an essential element of religion is a set of beliefs about the world that there is no reason to think are true. But you've explicitly said that's not the feature of religion you are talking about.

(1) Evidence is a correspondence between some proposition and some observation of reality.

(2) If some observation corresponds to some Bible-specific proposition, then it is evidence that Christianity is true.

(3) If praying induces experiences for a biological reason, then prayer-induced experiences are not observations of reality but hallucinations.

(4) Prayer induces experiences for a non-biological reason, therefore prayer-induced experiences are observations of reality.

(5) There are prayer-induced experiences of observations that correspond to Bible-specific propositions, therefore they are evidence Christianity is true. — Hallucinogen

Is this intended to be an argument?

Is (4) an assumption?

Granting (4), doesn't this apply to other religions as well? Are you as happy for this line of thinking to support other religions than Christianity? Perhaps you think that all religions are culture-specific approaches to one spiritual reality?

Can you explain his sarcasm?

Well, at least Sam26 got the sarcasm. — 180 Proof

'yes' doesn't work either.

I can ask the question ainy clearer If you don't get it, then I assume the answer is "no". LLMs are still just sophisticated toys. Never mind, carry on. — 180 Proof

In a fit of your famous clarity, I think you may have meant 'can't'. And 'no' cannot be an answer to the question you asked:

So what, if any, philosophical questions does ChatGPT# ever raise (without begging them)? — 180 Proof

no — 180 Proof

See? It doesn't work.

It's obviously totally possible.

Has to be satire, no?

The answer depends on the argument. — 180 Proof

Indeed. The argument seems to be some kind of Pascal's wager. But if I were God I would likely look more favourably on atheists who made some effort to figure things out than someone who confuses the American constitution with the Bible.

Are you married? Have you made a life-long commitment to another adult? — Banno

That's two different questions. Which do you want answered?