So serious scientific minds that are dedicated to the idea that it is explainable in physical terms say we cannot do so. While that is not evidence that it is not explainable in physical terms, it is certainly not evidence that it is. The Hard Problem is hard, and unsolved, according to the experts on opposite sides of the fence. — Patterner

But we fools rush in...

I asked a chatbot. — Wayfarer

I asked the ice, it would not say
But only cracked or moved away,
I thought I knew me yesterday
Whoever sings this song. — The Incredible String Band

Ducks on a Pond.

But this fool will declare, if anyone cares to attend, that just as marriage is not to be found in a man or a woman, but in a relationship, which is an ongoing process of dance, back and forth, so consciousness is a relation between an organism and an environment. ChatGPT is a materialist's teddy; a comfort-blanket/imaginary friend.

...meaning that appears does not precede the relationship that actualizes it. — JuanZu

Footprints mean feet, dinosaur footprints mean dinosaur feet. The Earth holds memory of the past as much as any brain. the information is there just as this post is here, but it is first in the writing, and later across the world in the reading that it becomes conscious. Or rather, a post is firstly a product of consciousness, and secondly an object of consciousness, or a content of consciousness. And to the extent that something of this is understood by another, we are 'of one mind'. This is called communication. There is a sameness produced when you see what I mean or I see what you mean. And, "where is this sameness or when is it?" are misleading, foolish questions.

I thought I knew me yesterday, because all knowledge is memory, but whoever writes this post is conscious, and that is not knowable, because it is presence, not the past.

A paper for COP OUT 28 that they will not be hearing because the authors cannot be bothered to go.

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2023/Miracle.2023.12.07.pdf

I think everything should be legal. — NOS4A2

Your wish is granted, including that it is legal to make laws and enforce them. The fundamental problem with anarchy is that it fails to forbid government.

This has got to be the one of (if not the most) off topic discussions I can recall. :rofl: :joke: :lol:
an hour ago — EricH

We have the best words.

This is writing, not talking. I’m writing to you. Such a simple mistake that it’s no wonder your grasp on this and other topics is lacking. — NOS4A2

And literal minded as well. That I have already noticed. I'm sorry, I wasn't really addressing you to be honest.

There are no voices in my head, no. Do you? — NOS4A2

That goes a long way to explaining the curious sensation one has in dialogue with you that one is talking to no one; that text is produced according to some algorithm that is entirely unaffected by the process of the dialogue.

Now me, when I look at the screen with your post on, it is as if you are talking to me. but it seems from what you say, that I nor anyone is talking to you.

evidence — Angelo Cannata

You are only going to get words and pictures on this site. That much is evident, but my finding it so is not evidence to you, just more barking. Seemingly nothing is evident to you; that's rather sad. Because even a dog's barking is more meaningful and communicative. A bark can be playful or warning mournful or aggressive. but you wouldn't know that I suppose.

It's odd, I had you down as more substantial than this blanket unassailable scepticism. Never mind, I'll know better next time even if you won't.

Thinking that it works, even just a little, means that we have some ability get access to the truth, to reality, to how the world really is — Angelo Cannata

If I believed you, I would be rather more quiet. It is only because I do not believe your self-undermining pontifications that I am inclined to produce my own contrary ones. But why are you barking so loud?

in the illusion I do not see what my eyes see. — Art48

It's not an illusion, it's a picture. It's not chequer square and a vase with a shadow, it's a picture thereof.

At no point do you or I actually see or think we see an actual vase or chequerboard. But one might for a moment mistake a picture for reality.

Your eyes, and my eyes do not see something other than what we see, because it is part of the act of seeing to make sense of the light entering the eye. And sense one makes, of "squares and shadows" is one that discards the irrelevant sameness of A and B in favour of the understanding that one is in shadow and the other in light, and they represent the different colour squares. To see them as the same is to misinterpret the image.

In the sense that seeing is remote, one gets news of the world indirectly by sampling and sorting the ambient light, one is not in direct contact with - not the chequerboard because there is none - but the screen, or the paper. But nevertheless, one sees what the artist intended; a chequerboard in which A and B are different colour squares. When you cut up the squares and destroy the image, you end up with diamond shapes about which one can say what one likes. Put one in a shadow, and they will look different again; turn one over and it will probably look white. One is not looking at the image, but at scraps of paper.

But how come you can cut up what you cannot see? How come you can then see the sameness that you cannot see. How for god's sake have you been convinced by a pile of mere words that you cannot see what you can perfectly well see?

Words don't have the power you pretend they do.
— NOS4A2

Of course they do, and you know it. Why do you continue defending Trump if words do not have power? — Fooloso4

The judges' words seem to have some power though. Otherwise @NOS4A2 wouldn't be criticising them, would he? It really is a most fatuous argument that has unfortunately undue influence on the hard of thinking. The whole attraction of power is that what one says can and does change the world, and if it were not so no one would bother to speak at all.

Good grief! where do you find the time?

I'm not sure, (because what the fuck was all that?), but I think I am going in the opposite direction. I want to be biased - in favour of kindness in favour of care, and small birds, and this and that, tasty food, good music. I want to be angry when children die needlessly, I want to cry at all the terrible things humans do, and cry again for joy at all the beautiful things they do. I don't want to be some super chat robot.

a degenerative sub-species of homo erectus. — Benkei

The race that speaks with a forked tongue? :gasp:

could you please explain more. I think you are perhaps referring to a person’s judgement of their emotions? — 0 thru 9

What I'm getting at is that one looks at the world and oneself from the perspective of one's feeling. No one ever claims to look through rose tinted specs, they get accused of it by someone else. Necessarily so, because if one felt over-optimistic, one would automatically, in being aware of their optimism, make an adjustment to a more realistic attitude.

The same thing happens to me sometimes here on the forum, I write a response to a post and when I read it back, I discover that I am really pissed off with this idiot - and then I edit or delete, because as soon as I see my anger, it is over.

I think there's something inherently wrong with allowing people to be endangered by false and inflammatory public language. — Relativist

Yes. it's dangerous, for a start. And false and inflammatory.

Is it to be expected that there will be much, or anything, common to all emotions?

It does seem to me that I discover my emotional condition from outside. When someone says "I feel angry", they might do so with sadness, or with surprise as often as they say it angrily. The tone of the discussion is thus far neutral to the point almost of indifference, as if emotion is too near, even for the most myopic self observer to bring into focus. Rather as one has to take off one's spectacles to see whether they are rose tinted or some other colour. As the old joke has it, when two psychologists meet on the the street one says to the other, "How am I?" - "You're fine, how am I?" That's not much of a bridge over troubled water, is it?

Is it even possible - and this is a heresy - but has philosophy any business to have a view at all? Might one not be just slightly inclined to tell Sophia to butt out of one's sensibilities and mind her own business?

I would have thought that any legal process would involve arrest, detainment, mandated appearances and questioning, imprisonment, or any combination plus many other possible abatements of freedom including confiscation of snake oil and possibly fraudulent papers, and a rather strict ban on blackmail, threatening behaviour, slander and libel. So annoying, so unfair.

Or, here is a talk that starts off with brain talk, and answers your question only in the last minute.

https://academic.oup.com/oocc/article/3/1/kgad008/7335889?login=false

What have intellectuals ever done for us?

They have no idea how to save humanity from itself. None!

But they sure know how to make themselves seem indispensable.

OK. I'm gonna imagine for a moment that we all know that Brexit is nonsense, that Trump is inane and insane, and we support stupid just to fuck you off, because you have fucked up the world so completely there is nothing else to be done.

So get out of that without moving!

For all the old hippies, a requiem for humanity. Headphones for preference. Not ashamed to cry.

A subtle distinction? — Janus

Mere semantics? — Janus

They can look similar. — unenlightened

Do you think we are going to arrive at more clarity with these questions? I think I explained things clearly enough. A goal that leads somewhere, and end that is a becoming? Yeah, mere semantics.

If you chaps would have read Bateson, you might have accumulated the conceptual tools to think this through rather more clearly. Alas, there was not much interest in that careful thinker.

tldr: Feedback produces circular causation, like a thermostat regulates a heating system that operates the thermostat. This produces "in effect" a system with a purpose - to maintain a temperature between limits. Human bodies and living things do the same or similar things to maintain themselves in dynamic equilibrium. It would be foolish to try and understand a heating system without reference to its purpose; one could make no sense, for example, of its having "gone wrong". Understanding is another purposive relationship with feedback.

I think it would be wise to leave stupidity undefined.

It is where I always start and what I seek to leave.

Are you confusing a goal with a gateway? Goals are ends, gateways are beginnings. They can look similar.

My "have to" is innocuous. I only meant that one would have to agree to some form of the categorical imperative in order to have the kind of motive you described. — J

And I was saying with my innocuous "ought to" only that this conversation has no meaning unless we are morally committed to truth.

But what is the problem here?

If I say I have a desire to do something, no one makes a fuss, but if I say I have an obligation to do something, it is problematic and someone will demand that I get it out of my pocket and show them.

So here I am, getting the obligation out of my pocket and showing you - that talk only works if you commit to truth and refrain from crying "wolf!" when there is no wolf. The game of lying can only get off the ground in a community of truth-tellers, because only when there are truth tellers does anyone have any reason to understand what is being said.

Nobody has to tell the truth, sometimes people don't want to tell the truth, but they always ought to tell the truth. It is when someone tells me I ought to do something when I don't want to do it that I start to get all sceptical, but if I cry wolf when there is no wolf, I might find that when there is a wolf, no one heeds my cry and no one comes to my rescue. What you ought to do matters to you, and stuff that matters is real.

And this is not a matter of convention, because an opposite obligation cannot function; lies become spam and we stop listening and responding. It is a simple fact that society, and civilisation is necessarily a cooperative affair and such mutual obligations are integral to every human society without exception.

But this is the Kantian problem of universalization. I have to first accept that my actions can serve as a "maxim" for others, — J

You don't have to accept anything. But you ought to accept the truth, otherwise there is no reason or meaning to our discussion.

When we claim something like "one ought not murder" we are trying to describe an objective feature of the world. As such, if there are such features then realism is true and if there aren't such features then error theory is true. — Michael

And the true feature of the world in this case is that A society of murderers cannot exist. They die out.

Point of order.

Feedback is not a place to have the discussion of a deleted topic. The mods have deleted the topic because it was poorly set out and argued. They have answered the feedback, and should have closed the thread already. The solution is to set it out more clearly and cogently in a new thread, or else move on.

Maybe we should listen to the ghost of Nelson Goodman and argue for moral irrealism: that there are incompatible different versions of value systems, and in any given context at least one of them needs to be taken so seriously as to be called 'moral'. — mcdoodle

That would work fine for which side of the road to drive on, and result in some aphorism like "When in Rome, drive according to the rules the Romans follow."

But ... "Speak roughly to your little boy,
And beat him when he sneezes;
He only does it to annoy,
Because he knows it teases." ... is patent nonsense, and incompatible with human flourishing, which is not infinitely adaptable, but finds some social environments inimical.

There is a game babies play of throwing their toys out of the pram. This is a non-verbal behavioural negotiation. For a while, the attentive parent will play along, but eventually will get bored. Learn the limits of parental responsibility with your baby! This is morality before language – social regulation being enacted. Of course it's real; without such learning through negotiated relationship you will die.

I have no problem with this...except I don’t see how it is a moral realist position: morality can have social value (and can conflict with personal value) without there being moral facts. Are you also arguing that those social values are moral facts? — Bob Ross

Are there personal desire facts? "I like to breathe." sort of thing?
To the same extent there can be moral facts. "Societies like truthful communication."

There is a real difference between a pile of car components and an assembled car. A big difference and a vital difference, that we use words like 'structure' and 'function' and 'interaction' to get at.

At the level of living things, there is the same kind of structural interacting of parts that make a functional whole, but in addition, this functioning is reproductive; that is an organism has a functional relation to itself, and hence to the environment such that some environments are good for it and others are inimical. This is a differential self preserving relationship with the environment that is the root of what we experience as desire or need. Yeast needs sugar, and chooses to ingest it.

Humans need social nurturing as well as food and shelter. Parents need to love and nurture their children, and children need to be nurtured. Are you having any difficulty with the reality of these things I am saying?

Why did they write in the article about 'artificially' raising oil demand? — ssu

Probably because they're a bunch of conspiracy theorists a doom merchants. Unless the policy was a secret one that directly contradicted their public commitments on climate or something complicated like that.

Conspiracy theory anyone?

https://www.channel4.com/news/undercover-filming-highlights-saudi-plan-to-artificially-raise-oil-demand#

Odd mod. — BC

You think that's odd? @Hanover made me stop talking to him.

With regards to my previous positive argument for moral anti-realism, I no longer accept it (thanks to the useful critiques by fellow moral realist members). — Bob Ross

It is a rare and beautiful thing when a chap changes his mind even a little as a result of discussion. I am inclined to say it is also a good thing to be swayed by cogent argument and to seek the truth. Truth is better than falsehood. and this is necessarily the case because a community of habitual falsehood speakers would have no use for each other's speech, and meaning and language would be lost entirely.
Now life can manage perfectly well without language, but whenever the question is raised, the question itself presumes that a truthful response will be forthcoming - whether it is raised in a philosophy forum or scrawled on a toilet wall.

So in general, I would suggest that morality is social value, and the sense of unreality arises because social value and personal value can and do conflict at times. No one complains that their own desires are unreal, it's always those values that conflict with them that might not be real...

You made me stop talking to you.

I don't see the moral equivalence you're trying to draw. — Hanover

You know, I really believe you don't. That is the tragedy.

But "Hamas made me do it" is pathetic.

In the scenario posed, the question is whether we can shoot a child who is being used as a human shield in order to save our city (or, in the alternative, whether we can invade a hospital in order to remove an enemy military base underneath). — Hanover

And the answer you give is yes. The answer I give is no.

Incidentally, I understand that British policy is never to negotiated with hostage takers, on the grounds that to negotiate would be to encourage hostage taking in the future. I don't know if the policy is implemented on every occasion, but it is certainly advertised. Strange that tough minded Israel doesn't follow such a policy. All a matter, I have to suppose, of whose child it is whether it is or isn't moral to sacrifice them.

However, this ability of some individuals to have an outsized role in the course of historical events is instructive for "every day people," as well. Gavrilo Princip happened to be positioned to change history when he shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Mohamed Bouazizi's self immolation likewise set off a cascade of world shaping events in the form of the Arab Spring. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The old flap of a butterfly's wing creating a hurricane. The human world is a chaotic system of unrivalled complexity, and there are unknowable moments when one life can have a large effect, and sometimes all too knowable periods when one life is caught in an inescapable flow. Who knows, but I might meet a future Gavrilo on the street today, and just a friendly smile divert him from the path of destruction? For certain every mover and shaker needed to suckle and have their diaper changed before they rocked the world.

Damn, this so far feels like some really melancholically pessimistic stuff. — javra

Now a poem, one gives thanks for, but one does not ask for it to have a goal, not even to comfort the melancholy. But they illustrate my point. One does not denigrate the lives of others who choose a different path, not even a poet, not even a bad poet. Yet the op in sublime ignorance passes judgement over not one but two venerable traditions because they fail to satisfy his own feeble criteria of instrumentalism. It's a piece of egregious "what's-the-point-ism?" that deserves to be exposed for the depressing elitist nonsense that it is.

So I repeat, there is nothing about goals that make them worthwhile. Once get that into your head and you can begin to live a life in freedom.