Which nullifies the prospect of any discussion, because nothing that could be said would make any difference. — Wayfarer

And you presume that logical justification is the only possible means of making any difference why...?

But I still like my armchair. — Banno

Yes, well... I don't really do any fMRI interpretation, questionnaire asking or behaviour reporting any more either, but rather spend a considerable amount of time in my armchair reading the results of other people's efforts and writing the occasional report on such. Armchairs are good.

All those quotes imply that you would act kindly toward the victim, and that there is therefore no need for censure in order to reach that point. I'm saying that you can't know this to be the case because you don't know what role censure played in forming those feelings which you now apply without need for such rules.

The alternative interpretation is that you see it as unimportant to society that there are people like you - who would act kindly.

If you think it's important to society that such people exist, then it is important to know how to mould such people. If it is unimportant then why the defensiveness in "I don't understand why whenever I share this view people worry that it will somehow suddenly make people cold and uncaring towards each other."

So I suppose I skipped a stage in my assessment. Do you think it's important to a society that at least a large proportion of it's members are kind? Or do you just not care what we do to each other?

So it's mistaken to assume that because you now would act kindly even without the censure of your community that you would have reached that point without it. — Isaac

When did I claim that? — khaled

Because I'm not a heartless bastard? Why are you implying that if it wasn't a duty people wouldn't do it? — khaled

Why would I not save a drowning person if I can? — khaled

For me virtue is doing more good than the system demands without expecting any compensation for it. — khaled

I don't understand why whenever I share this view people worry that it will somehow suddenly make people cold and uncaring towards each other. — khaled

I would assist them so what difference does it make? And I would furthermore argue, again, that I'm not the only one that doesn't see such an obligation. That this isn't some universal law or anything inherent in the definition of community.

I'm more so surprised by people who must make it a duty to help. Is that to imply that if it wasn't a duty you wouldn't do it? — khaled

If you meant that it's better to save a drowning person than to not, then no one is disagreeing there, sorry for misunderstanding if that's the case. — khaled

Certainly one should not unnecessarily impose suffering on others no matter what. But it also stands to reason, which I will just call Argument Against Paternalism, is to try to benefit someone else by imposing on them challenges to overcome which they could not consent. — schopenhauer1

Calling it an argument doesn't make it into one. Where is the 'Argument Against Paternalism'? All we've read so far is the 'Assertion Against Paternalism'.

Agreeing with several parts of different theories may not have a label but it's basically as close to scientifically accurate as you can get. Several different brain regions are involved in different types of moral decision-making and these regions are variously associated with status, disgust, pleasure, group-identity, empathy, planning and fear (of punishment usually). So any and all philosophical systems which try to make out that morality is about harm reduction, or cultural norms, or golden-rules, or nothing at all...are all categorically wrong. We have irrefutable evidence that moral decisions are not made by consultation of any one of these rules, but rather by a varying, often contradictory consultation of several models at once depending on the specifics of the moral choice to be made.

Of course if you want to completely ignore the science and build your own castle in the air like everyone else seems to then I suggest nihilo-hedo-emoto-relativo-pragma-dubism.

Drop the notion that the stuff between your ears has primacy. The stuff you might describe as "out there" is just as valid. Minds do not come into existence by themselves, but by interacting with the world. — Banno


@Isaac might disagree, which would be interesting. Presumably, for example, there are neural structures in place in a new born that permit the development of vision. But that is not Kant's a priori concepts. — Banno

There are indeed such neural structures and they have an enormous impact on the way we interpret what's 'out there', but...those neural structures are 'out there'. I look at fMRI scans, I ask people for phenomenological reports, I record behaviour...all of which is 'out there' (to me). So I agree it would be lunacy to give primacy to what's between our ears when we have no clue what that is other than by treating it as an object 'out there'.

Cognitive scientists are in an odd position in that we need to communicate something about objects prior to their being recognised as such by the brain (which I hope we all agree does the recognising work). This sometimes necessitates an odd turn of phrase, but it's us that are being odd, not the rest of the world - an (intentionally) self-contained little language game to get a job done so we can move on with what is (hopefully) useful research.

It's translation into philosophical frameworks is fraught (so I'm discovering). Doesn't mean it's irrelevant (that would be to reject naturalism entirely - I'm too Quinean for that), but it also doesn't mean we can simply replace our ordinary talk of apples with talk of 'models of apples' (otherwise, what the hell are actual apples?).

What I've been advocating here is the approach that Seth takes which is to use data from cognitive sciences to better understand how we might have arrived at the phenomenological experience we have, and, more importantly, what exactly goes wrong when those experiences are at odds with normal humans. What I object to is not talk of apples as apples (I'm quite happy with that). It's the confusion we see hereabouts between the actual phenomenological experience (which is the end-point we're trying to better explain) and and armchair speculation as to the process by which it came about.

Ah yes, I cited that most famous of conspiracy theory publishers, the British Medical Journal. Not to mention that hotbed of zealotry that is The Lancet. And I can't think what came over me when trusting sources as obviously partisan as the actual published trial data!

Clearly, what I should have been doing, to avoid this rampant tin-foil hat brigade, is watching videos on YouTube.

I'll leave you with the former head of that famous conspiracy-theory promoting agency the European Medicines Agency

“Personally I would have expected a robust review of all available data, which the British government has not done"

...but I couldn't find a YouTube video on it, only Reuters, so who knows it's authenticity... I'll be sure to check my sources with the relevant arm of Google in future.

Somehow this is seen as "justified" by the paternalistic types that think people should be born, to overcome challenges so they can experience the higher "meaning" in overcoming them. — schopenhauer1

We could say exactly the same about your obsessive liberalism...

Somehow this is seen as "justified" by the neo-liberal types that think people should be completely unimposed upon, to experience the higher "meaning" in being completely independent.

Just paraphrasing your opponent's position using emotive terminology doesn't constitute a counter-argument.

Why should 'paternalistic types' not think people should be born, to overcome challenges so they can experience the higher "meaning" in overcoming them? You've yet to provide anything more than your personal distaste for the idea.

Where the corners have been cut in the "race to a vaccine" is that before the approval was gotten, the large scale production of the vaccine was started. This is the multi-million dollar risk here, what was deemed OK. — ssu

Rather than just invest in the healthcare services that could have saved the overwhelming majority of those lives? — Isaac


This is simply not true. It eats holes in people's hearts, it destroys brain tissue, it turns lung into concrete. — frank

You'd both have some evidence to back up these claims I presume?

How are we determining that the only corners cut were in early production?

How are we determining that heath service and critical care improvements would only have saved an insignificant number of lives?

Yes, Isaac, we need a vaccine. — frank

Where have I suggested that we don't need a vaccine?

no lives are ever "saved" eh. The end gets delayed, best case scenario. That's it. The finish line is moved back a bit, but the race always ends. — Book273

It's just a colloquial term. We could talk about Quality Adjusted Life Years if we wanted to be more accurate, but generally a 'life saved' in this context just means a reversion to the risk spectrum they were exposed to prior to the threat under consideration.

I was kind of surprised they were saying 95% for the mRNA. — frank

It may well be 95% effective at what it's been tested for, but that's the generation of a sufficient immune response to limit subsequent infection in healthy adults.

What we need, to escape this pandemic, is a way of minimising hospital admissions among the vulnerable and reducing transmission. Two things we have absolutely no idea if the vaccine will do because it's not been tested for either.

What we do know is that investment in critical care, general health improvements, community healthcare and poverty reduction all lower hospital admissions. We also know that contact tracing, social distancing and mask-wearing reduce transmission.

So I remain baffled as to why people have suddenly decided to intern themselves to provide free marketing to the largest industry on the planet when it can't even demonstrate that it's 'holy grail' is any more effective than measures that have been around (and woefully underfunded) for years.

What's going to happen next time (and there will be a next time)? Another million dead while we wait for the vaccine? Rather than just invest in the healthcare services that could have saved the overwhelming majority of those lives?

Why does it matter whether it's self-imposed? If it's about avoiding suffering, it's not necessarily obvious why we care about concepts of choice or consent. Why aren't we paternalistic and just make sure no one suffers, regardless of choice? — Echarmion


Oh can we make no one suffer? Please tell me how? But since we obviously can't, simply not procreating is sufficient to prevent all harm to a future person, and it is sufficient to not impose unnecessarily challenges to be overcome on someone else's behalf. — schopenhauer1

You've just dodged the question. The question was "why does it matter whether it's self-imposed?", which goes to the heart of the issue. Why is autonomy of choice so monumentally important that it trumps all other considerations? You keep coming back to the same trope that you shouldn't impose inconveniences on others without ever justifying why this is such an important (indeed singular)axiom for you.

Sounds pretty ridiculous. It would be a different world if there was a law that incarcerated people who do not donate to the poor. — khaled

There are not laws enforcing all moral duties. Notwithstanding which, the existence of a law does not make it that one 'has to' do something. One could try and get away with it.

What I'm getting at is that you're creating a hard line where there is none. That feeling you have 'obliges' you to certain kind acts. Even so much as an unimpressed sniff from a social group member creates a small incentive. And to suggest that the reason you'd do the kindnesses you do is not almost entirely a consequence of the influences of the community you grew up in would be naïve in the extreme.

So community censure and encouragement is what creates the fact that you would perform these acts of kindness. You may not be legally forced to, but that's not what we're talking about with morality anyway.

That something is a moral duty just means that your community will censure or ostracise you if you don't do it. It's exactly that environment during development which causes your (now independent) desire to do kind acts. That plus a hefty dose of biological priming.

So it's mistaken to assume that because you now would act kindly even without the censure of your community that you would have reached that point without it.

Just want a point out that our ancestors evolved the ability to see color prior to language and public models. You can't quine color away without consulting evolution first. — Marchesk

No, our ancestors evolved to respond to wavelengths of light, prior to language. Had they not then they would not all have picked the ripe berries (which are united in the wavelength the reflect, not the experience they produce). If you want to have wavelengths of light as 'colours' I'm happy with that, but qualia aren't required here either.

I had kind of a funny thought today: What if you were to make one of those overlapping pie charts with "nazi" on one end and "radical far left" on the other: Don't you think calling certain segments of the population "parasites" would go in the overlapping middle portion? What else would go in that portion? — BitconnectCarlos

Having noses? Your point is?

Inference doesn't make colors or pains go away anymore than it does hands. Except for zombies. — Marchesk

Yes it does, that's the point. Naming colour names is part of a response to stimuli modelled at a cultural level. You do not 'experience' redness. But we've been through this to no avail, I'm not just re-doing it, I'll leave you all to it.

Moore's waving his hand about is no different than us pointing out colors and pains. They're both just as much a part of experience. — Marchesk

No, that's not Moore's argument at all. It had nothing to do with experience and everything to do with the alternative the skeptic had to offer in place of his naturalism. Active inference presents not only a cogent alternative, but one which is better at making predictions than the Cartesian theatre version.

Just what it means anywhere else. Be obligated to. — khaled

But being obligated to has no practical consequences, and you said it was a 'practical difference'.

I would have said adverse side effects are the bigger concern. 1 out of a million people vaccinated for small pox will die from the vaccine. So if we vaccinate everyone in the UK, we know we'll be killing a bunch of people. Approving a vaccine is a heavy decision because you could hurt people who would be fine otherwise. — frank

Possibly you're right there.

Ineffectiveness should have shown up in the phase 3 testing of either Pfizer or Moderna. — frank

Do you even read what I write?

You do take many things as obvious. For instance, if you hold up a hand and say "Here's a hand.”, there's nothing wrong with that. There's no ontological commitment in that.

Clean away the strawmen piled in the idea of phenomenal consciousness, and it's the same situation. — frank

Yeah, but since that's not a sufficient reason to accept all matters which seem obvious prima facie, it hardly stands alone without further justification. Even Moore wrote at great length as to why we should accept that 'here is a hand' and the like.

You have to make an argument for it being the same situation, not merely claim it is.

Moore's argument was that the skeptic could not provide more reason to doubt than he had to not. That is evidendtly not the case for qualia as both knowledge of physiology and confusion over intuitions gives ample reason to doubt.

Where has any scientist reduced minds to brains? — Isaac

Nowhere, to my knowledge. — Olivier5

Then why bring it up?

there were on this thread many attempts to deny a phenomenological ‘layer’, a ‘representation’ of the world constructed in (or for) our minds based on sense data — Olivier5

The second is not just a simile for the first. There's a world of difference between merely asserting a 'phenomenological layer' and asserting that it is 'constructed in (or for)our minds based in sense data'.

Bug then this has been the standard trick. Make some fundamentally indubitable claim, then tack on a load of properties to it which have no warrant and attempt to smuggle them in under the certainty accompanying the more basic claim. I've really no desire to play that game.

It’s always a mind that speaks, writes, observes, deducts, etc. And therefore any attempt by any scientist to reduce minds to brains is self defeating. — Olivier5

Where has any scientist reduced minds to brains?

There is a practical difference. I don't have to donate to charity if I don't want to for instance, whereas by your standards you have to. You would also have to volunteer, etc as long as you're capable. — khaled

What could 'have to' possibly mean here? I don't understand your use of the term when discussing 'practical differences'.

seems to have given up. His contribution was pivotal, giving a solid foundation to the physiological background.

Or to put it another way, most of this thread is his fault. — Banno

Yeah. It was a great idea for a thread, and, Dennett's frequent invocation of neuroscientific principles (especially section 5), justifies the introduction of neuroscience into the topic.

I just don't see the point in continuing a discussion in which the primary counter-argument is "...but it's obvious". If we take that which seems obvious to just be the case then all discussion is rendered pointless, not to mention us being stuck banging rocks together in a cave somewhere.

If it's about avoiding suffering, it's not necessarily obvious why we care about concepts of choice or consent. Why aren't we paternalistic and just make sure no one suffers, regardless of choice? — Echarmion

I've already been through this with @schopenhauer1 in a previous thread. He can give no answer as to why avoiding the imposition of inconvenience and trials has been glorified into a goal so worthy as to outweigh the extinction of the human race (or all sentient life).

If I had a plan to avoid all headaches, then decapitating everyone would be a fine way to achieve it, but why anyone would take such a plan seriously to the exclusion of all other considerations is beyond me.

Then all pharmaceuticals developed and released to the public carry relatively high risk to be counterbalanced against vastly greater gain. — magritte

Thus only works as an argument if you assume the only consequence of 'complexity', as you diplomatically put it, is negative side effects. It's not. Serious short-term negative side effects are, most of the time, very rare. More often if there's side effects they're mild and treatable. Long-term, of course, we can't really know, but there's no general correlation to worry about, so unlikely to be anything there.

The real concern is not side effects, it's ineffectiveness. Most of the cover-ups and pay-offs have been for drugs which simply don't work. That's the worry here. As Peter Doshi (Associate Editor of the British Medical Journal and assistant professor of pharmaceutical health services research at the University of Maryland) put it recently...

None of the trials currently under way are designed to detect a reduction in any serious outcome such as hospital admissions, use of intensive care, or deaths. Nor are the vaccines being studied to determine whether they can interrupt transmission of the virus.

Yet do weigh then them on the fact that now the US has lost daily the equivalent of those lost in 9/11 to Covid-19 and the pandemic has killed more than heart disease kills annually. — ssu

How does the number of Covid deaths impact on the likely efficacy of the vaccine as a means of reducing them (together with collateral deaths from pandemic-related impacts)? Is there some threshold of deaths at which a previously inefficient approach to reducing them suddenly becomes efficient?

It seems to me the number of deaths only serves to make it all the more urgent that we work out some effective course of action. So an argument about the negative effects of any strategy is not to be 'weighed against' the death rates, it's fully about the death rate.

Pfizer's lack of honesty was about Celebrex being easier on the stomach. And sure, that's bad, especially for all the people who ended up in the hospital with GI bleeds. It's terrible. I don't see what it has to do with the safety of Pfizer's vaccine though. — frank

No. According to the NYT who broke the story...

Pfizer said in October that no completed study had ever shown any increased heart risks related to Celebrex. ..

...the 1999 study, which was intended to examine whether Celebrex could treat Alzheimer’s disease, found that the number of Celebrex patients suffering heart attacks was almost four times that of those taking a placebo. Pfizer’s own analysis found the difference statistically significant.

But the study was never published and not submitted to the Food and Drug Administration until June 2001, four months after the F.D.A. conducted a major review of the safety of Vioxx and Celebrex.

They outright hid and lied about a negative trial to maintain sales, and it's absolutely not a one off.

And you ask what this has to do with the efficacy of the vaccine they stand to make billions from?

At least you said so:

You think those billions now poured into various vaccine programs by major countries won't have an effect? — ssu


Yes, absolutely I think that — Isaac — ssu

The context of 'effect' was the global decease in deaths due to the pandemic and it's collateral damage. Obviously I didn't mean to claim that it would have no effect on the world whatsoever. The entire argument I've been presenting is about the negative effects it will have, for goodness' sake.

Edited

I could list the full rap sheet, but it's common knowledge which has already been publicly written about at great length, there's little point in me reproducing it here. If you're not convinced already, just by being involved in healthcare, then you probably never will be.

Who gave false info about their testing? — frank

Pfizer. 2004 Cereblex, trials showed evidence of elevated risk of heart problems and they withheld them. $894 million in lawsuits. Didn't even break their stride.

It's more that I have faith that neither Pfizer nor Moderna want to deal with the legal downside of giving false info about their testing. — frank

Well, it didn't stop them with Neurontin, Genotropin, Bextra, Detrol, Lipitor, or Rapamune...all of which were proven to have been based on false information and marketed illegally. So what makes you think they'd stop now?

the FDA has given the mRNA vaccine the big Checkity Check — frank

Ah! This would be the same FDA whose paid off officials continued to approve opiods despite clear evidence of the harm they were doing and that they were ineffective?

Or in the UK, perhaps you'd trust the MHRA? The same MHRA whose paid off officials during the breast implant scandal looked at no evidence at all apart from that provided to them by the manufacturer?

Big pharma's lobbying budget is double that of any other industry and over half are former government employees.

So your faith in the FDA comes from...?

They're in business to make money. — frank

Yep. It's right there in black and white in the company's articles of association. Their objective is to make a profit for their shareholders. Why would we even expect them to produce a product which has a net benefit to society? It's not even on their list.

It sounds like you don't have faith in the three stage testing system. You're not alone there. — frank

What's really worrying is that anti-cancer drugs are now so profitable that it is actually an economic viability to simply run enough trials to ensure at least one is positive simply by chance. Since there's no requirement to publish failed trials, we could soon see companies producing drugs which are no better than placebo but seem so on the basis of one chance trial...if we haven't already...we wouldn't know.

It's astonishing what fear will do. You couldn't make a more archetypal villain than big pharma if you tried, now they're the shining white knights.

That's partly because the mRNA vaccine is a new technology. Future vaccine production will also be sped up due to this innovation. Cool, huh? — frank

Let's have a look at the mRNA trial. Take Moderna's mRNA-1273.

Did the trial include children and adolescents? No.

Did the trial check for ADE reactions? No.

Did the trial include pregnant or breastfeeding mothers? No.

Did the trial include the immunocompromised? No.

Did the trial even check for reduced severity of symptoms? No.

Did the trial test for reduction in transmission? No.

...

Or we could take AstraZeneca's AZD1222... oh no, we can't, because the scale, scope and all failed results in that trial are secret.

In fact have any of the seven major contenders actually trialled for a reduction in transmission? No (qualified with the fact that some of the latest trial data isn't out yet, this was certainly true as of phase 3 trials last month),


Seriously. Would we trust a massive multinational business to act in the interests of the wider community under any other circumstances? Do we need to go through the track record of giant multinationals with social welfare?

I think your point was that we don't need a vaccine because we have working therapeutics. What drugs were you talking about? — frank

No, my point was firstly, that a rushed vaccine based on new technology may be either falsely effective, have unexpected side effects (already we're getting allergic reaction that was not anticipated), or too expensive to help poorer countries.

And secondly that a huge proportion of the deaths are in poor communities coupled with poor healthcare services. Investing in core service provision and community healthcare is a far more efficient as it helps not only this pandemic, but also future ones. I've previously cited papers showing how proper ICU care more than halves the mortality rate. The overlap with poorer communities and existing health issues is well documented, but I can cite some if you like.

Thirdly, investment doesn't spring out of nowhere. It's taken from other budgets. I've just cited figures for TB excess deaths which result from only a fractional drop in the availability of frontline services.

Basically if you've already decided that the solution is an expensive vaccine then the investment is great. If your aim is to increase the number of vaccines in the world then this is a big score. If, however, your aim is to look after the immediate and future health of the population with the scarce resources we have available then the fact that a few rich countries have used up years of healthcare investment on a luxury vaccine is hardly the Holy Grail.

Well, coming back to the discussion above with Isaac just two months ago: I think we can say that indeed yes, when there is an urge to do something, a concentrated effort to do it and far more resources are put on something than normally, it does have an effect on the timetable:

The vaccine development took nine months, not two to five years. Something worth noting. — ssu

At what point did I say that the level of investment would not produce a vaccine more quickly?

Shyness is a psychological state explained with reference to external behaviour. — Michael

Absolutely. It the the implication of either/or that I was interested in. Both, I have no difficulty with.

As explained by WHO, "gender refers to the characteristics of women, men, girls and boys that are socially constructed. This includes norms, behaviours and roles associated with being a woman, man, girl or boy, as well as relationships with each other. As a social construct, gender varies from society to society and can change over time." — Michael

Thar's a definition I think works very well, but that all sounds behavioural to me. Sure, they''ll be psychological consequences, even causes (of the behaviours), but I struggle to see how one might come to use a word to describe one's psychological state (absent of behavioural cues) without engaging in one's own private language.