Tao is a whirling emptiness (ch'ung),
Yet (erh) in use (yung) is inexhaustible (ying).
Fathomless (yuan),
It seems to be the ancestor (tsung) of ten thousand beings.

It blunts the sharp,
Unties the entangled,
Harmonizes the bright,
Mixes the dust.

Dark (chan),
It seems perhaps to exist (ts'un).
I do not know whose child it is,
It is an image (hsiang) of what precedes God (Ti).

According to this verse, the Tao is:
A whirling emptiness
Inexhaustible
Fathomless
An image of what proceeds God.

Emptiness doesn’t whirl, does it? Inexhaustible in doing what? Maybe in creating and recreating the 10,000 things. There is a theme of return in the TTC. It comes up more in later verses. I struggled with the idea for a long time. Now, I’ve come to think the Tao doesn’t create the world once, but is creating it over and over again, continuously.

And what about “an image that proceeds God?” So, the Tao is older than God. That means, I guess, that God is one of the 10,000 things. That can’t be right. Can you imagine a more radical idea than that? This is my favorite line in the TTC.

According to this verse, the Tao seems:
Not to be anyone’s child
To be the ancestor of 10,000 things
To exist, maybe.

I’m not sure what Lao Tzu means by “seems.” It usually means “appears” and may imply that appearance is misleading. Nothing can be before or greater than the Tao. It comes before God. The Tao can’t be “anyone’s child.” It is the ancestor of, creates, the multiplicity of things....

As for “It seems perhaps to exist,” I have always thought that the Tao doesn’t exist. It is, after all, non-being. Does “seems” mean that it is misleading to think of the Tao as existing? I don’t know. — T Clark

I guess that depends on what you mean by ‘exist’. Non-being is not the same as non-existent. For me, ‘seems’ would refer to a phenomenal existence, appearance or being, but ‘seems perhaps’ refers to the contradiction at the heart of the Tao. I think it is misleading to think of the Tao as only existing, without acknowledging the possibility of it not existing, and vice versa, if that makes sense. Remember that we cannot tell anything about the Tao - the best we can do is relate to it as openly as we can manage, and acknowledge the qualities and limitations of that relation.

I think we can sometimes underestimate how difficult it was for ancient writers to describe abstract ideas to an audience whose reality is so grounded in the actual. We’re much more accustomed to talking about potentiality and possibility after thousands of years of refining our language use (and yet we still struggle). To describe the Tao as ‘whirling’ does not mean it is static; and to describe it as ‘emptiness’ does not mean it is actual. Likewise, to describe the Tao as ‘inexhaustible’ does not mean it is a process and to describe it as ‘fathomless’ does not mean it is a concept. The Tao is all of these aspects and more.

The description in this verse reminds me of Kant’s aesthetics, and the progressive transcendence of the four moments: quality beyond object, quantity beyond concept, relation beyond purpose and delight beyond necessity. ‘Whirling’ suggests more than is tangible, ‘emptiness’ more than is observable, ‘inexhaustible’ more than is potentially measurable, and ‘fathomless’ more than is possibly understandable. For me, these correspond to transcending dimensional structures of awareness.

“It seems to be the ancestor of 10,000 beings” - this description takes the Tao beyond the notion of being. He’s included a level of uncertainty here, in the use of ‘ancestor’, and later when he talks about it being a “child of”. Perhaps he doesn’t want to imply a Creator-Being, which also makes sense as he then describes it as “an image of what precedes God”. This reaches beyond even this seemingly ‘absolute’ Being as a named aspect of the Tao, with all of our preconceived or ‘told’ notions of what ‘God’ is.

Affect consists of valence/attention and arousal/effort, and is measurable only by one OR the other of these - like a photon. When we quantitatively measure one aspect, that measurement is in necessary qualitative relation to the other aspect.
— Possibility

I really don't know what your post means. The terminology you use is not familiar. Are they psychological? Philosophical? — T Clark

Sorry - the terms I’m using here refer to a collaboration of neuroscience and psychology in understanding how the mind constructs and utilises concepts in relation to sensory information. The work of Lisa Feldman Barrett in describing both brain states and conceptual predictions using affect not only demonstrates its significance in dissolving any apparent mind-body problem, but helps to align the temporal relativity of consciousness with that of physics.

This may seem unrelated, except that the TTC is very clear about us being bound by affect (desire), and the implications this has on our ability to understand the Tao (objective reality). This is something that Barrett is also clear about. So when Lao Tzu talks about value concepts in this way...

When people see some things as beautiful,
other things become ugly.
When people see some things as good,
other things become bad. — T Clark

...he’s talking about the role of affect in how we make sense of the world. Beautiful, ugly, good and bad are the “manifestations” we see (that we construct) while “caught in desire”. I think it helps for us to understand what affect is and how we construct these value hierarchies from our affected relation to the Tao.

The bottom line is this: the human brain is anatomically structured so that no decision or action can be free of interoception and affect, not matter what fiction people tell themselves about how rational they are. Your bodily feeling right now will project forward to influence what you will feel and do in the future. It is an elegantly orchestrated, self-fulfilling prophecy, embodied within the architecture of your brain. — Lisa Feldman Barrett, ‘How Emotions Are Made”

What do you make of 'you will get lost'. To me it sounds something like infinite regress. — Tom Storm

I think it has to do with losing sight of our relation to the Tao. There is a risk in focusing only on what is ‘good’ or only on what is ‘bad’ that loses sight of these as constructs naming the upper and lower limits of one qualitative relation. It’s not the good or the bad that matters, but the ongoing relation between them.

Throughout the TTC there are verses that make this point over and over - The danger of success. The damage done by the struggle for advancement and recognition. — T Clark

I think it’s the danger of particular success, individual advancement and personal recognition, especially in a way that divides the Tao with ignorance, isolation and exclusion. This is different to a more general idea of working (including not-doing) in awareness of, connection to and collaboration with the Tao. I don’t think the TTC advocates for stagnation so much as a dynamic overall balance. Advancement, for instance, requires a linear view of time, but even physics now tells us that the universal aspect of time is not linear - a fact we ignore at our local level.

I was thinking about this too. Not-doing and acting without acting are certainly related, but I don't think they are the same thing. I've gotten in discussions previously - "So, is Lao Tzu saying we should just sit back and wait for things to happen?" Well.. I guess sort of. For me, not-doing is a reflection of patience and trust in the natural way of things. Letting things take their natural course. Wu wei, acting without acting, refers to action that is spontaneous. — T Clark

I agree with your description here of not-doing, but I’m not sure if I quite agree with wu wei as spontaneous action. I think perhaps this has something to do with intentionality. It’s more about our insistence on being the one to act, which relates again to seeking personal recognition. We can intend an outcome and set up conditions for it to occur without being the one to perform any action that can be credited with the outcome. For me, wu wei is collaboration that resists localised attribution of success, advancement or recognition.

I was struck by the following:

What is a good man but a bad man’s teacher?
What is a bad man but a good man’s job?
If you don’t understand this, you will get lost,
however intelligent you are.
It is the great secret. — Tom Storm

I think it helps to relate this to verse 2 - where ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are relational constructs and a masterful teacher can teach without saying anything. A ‘good man’ is named as such only in relation to a ‘bad man’, but he should then redress the balance in this experience, to share the ‘good’ value ascribed to him with those who lack it. When we label a ‘bad man’ we are relating this to our own apparent ‘good’. So it is not enough to simply label him - in doing so we should recognise that we have a comparative ‘good’ that we have not shared with him.

If you overesteem great men,
people become powerless.
If you overvalue possessions,
people begin to steal.

The Master leads
by emptying people's minds
and filling their cores,
by weakening their ambition
and toughening their resolve.
He helps people lose everything
they know, everything they desire,
and creates confusion
in those who think that they know.

Practice not-doing,
and everything will fall into place.

I’m not sure how much I have to say on this verse. Others, please see if you can fill in the blanks.

I do have this overall comment – There is a general theme, maybe more of an undertone, in the TTC. Emptying, releasing, shrinking, weakening, losing, surrendering, waiting, withholding, giving things up, allowing, seeing, not doing. — T Clark

In Western culture, we don’t like these words. There’s a sense of humility to them that undermines what we tend to think of as individual achievement. Our interpretation of this verse is very Westernised - the concepts jar in a similar way to Buddhism’s approach to suffering. Submission, loss and not-doing carry a negative value for us - but in the previous verse we learned that this negative value is nothing but a construct from our affected relation to the Tao. If we were free from desire (affect), there would be no negative value or unpleasantness to loss, weakness or emptiness. They would simply be a quality of greyness that is closer to black than to white.

He’s not saying don’t esteem great men or value possessions - that’s black and white thinking. The Master has ‘mastered’ the art of balancing the variability of experience, despite affect that renders ‘surrender’ for instance as a negative term.

Not-doing refers to the earlier verse: to act without doing anything, or teach without saying anything, is to recognise that mastery is not about control but about balance. It’s not about always striving for ‘good’ and eliminating ‘bad’, but about recognising that sometimes we need to let relatively ‘bad’ things happen, or to give people silence to work things out for themselves, or to seek nothing. If we’re constantly trying to do, say and be everything, then we end up exhausted, unappreciated and seemingly thwarted at every turn.

You're talking about affect and valence. What do those mean in this context? Value? Preference? Is it like one of those surveys - on a scale of 1 to 10, how do you rate this? Is that what you mean by "relational?" — T Clark

Affect consists of valence/attention and arousal/effort, and is measurable only by one OR the other of these - like a photon. When we quantitatively measure one aspect, that measurement is in necessary qualitative relation to the other aspect. This is what I think Lao Tzu is trying to describe here. He’s referring to the ‘on a scale’ part of those surveys. To differentiate affect, we qualify upper and lower limitations of experience on a particular scale or value structure: good and bad, beautiful and ugly, one and ten, and then we can not just name but quantify the 10,000 things in necessary relation to these limitations and each other.

Except I don't think Lao Tzu is talking about judgments and distinctions as shades of gray. I think he's saying they are illusions. "Illusion" is probably not the right word. That's more of a Buddhist thing, but it's something like that. — T Clark

You’re right, illusion is the wrong word. I think of them as constructs, like scaffolding. I agree that this qualification of upper and lower limitations is arbitrary, but it’s a dimensionally different kind of naming to the 10,000 things. Good and bad, black and white, beautiful and ugly - these are not naming things or concepts but boundaries to value structures that differentiate our relation to the Tao.

I’m saying that black and white, for instance, we have arbitrarily named as upper and lower limitations to the variable quality of greyness. Good and bad, beautiful and ugly, etc are also nothing but constructs of our own limited relations. I’m saying that the variability of greyness can be differentiated and named as particular ‘shades’ only in relation to black and white. The variability of our experience can be differentiated and named as particular things only in relation to these upper and lower limitations of value structure. This is how we make initial sense of our relation to the world.

I think it’s important throughout the TTC to keep in mind the qualifications set up from the beginning: that we can’t really tell anything about the Tao (any description is partial); and that we must recognise our understanding as coloured by desire (affect).

When people see some things as beautiful,
other things become ugly.
When people see some things as good,
other things become bad. — T Clark

This verse, I think, refers again to the central paradox, and to the role of affect. This is how we qualitatively differentiate experience - by valence, positive and negative. But in relation to the Tao this distinction isn’t digital - it’s relational. There is no definitive line between good and bad because reality is not just black and white, it’s shades of grey. Have you tried to define a shade of grey? In computer graphics, we refer to a percentage of black, but this percentage implies a total of 100%, and therefore the existence of a percentage of white. Any description of a shade of grey is necessarily relational.

Being and non-being create each other.
Difficult and easy support each other.
Long and short define each other.
High and low depend on each other.
Before and after follow each other. — T Clark

The difference between this type of differentiation and conceptual distinction is dimensional, in my view. Good and bad, beautiful and ugly, difficult and easy, long and short - they’re are all transcendental or aesthetic ideas. Naming a particular thing consolidates the relational structure of a concept, effectively isolating it from other concepts. Valence, on the other hand, points out that nothing is ever really isolated, that there is no being except in relation to non-being, no after without a before.

Therefore the Master
acts without doing anything
and teaches without saying anything.
Things arise and she lets them come;
things disappear and she lets them go.
She has but doesn't possess,
acts but doesn't expect.
When her work is done, she forgets it.
That is why it lasts forever. — T Clark

This reminds me of Deacon’s absentials. When we’re not choosing, we’re still choosing. It’s about being conscious of what we allow and enable by our inaction (ignorance, isolation and exclusion) as well as by our action (awareness, connection and collaboration). It’s about the fact that we are continuously in relation to the Tao even when we’re deliberately not. In this sense, too, we understand the Tao most clearly when we’re not striving to identify and attribute an intentional act, a rightful possession, a personal accomplishment, etc. We are closer to the Tao when it appears as if we are, do and have nothing at all.

A few points I feel I should mention:

I think you may have mixed up International Women’s Day with Mother’s Day.

Being a woman is not just about being a mother. In celebrating women, we also celebrate those women who choose NOT to be mothers, because they, too are women, and worth celebrating for everything they bring to the table.

Women do not exist in the world as a vessel of selfless love to be given to humanity - sorry to burst your bubble.

The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name. — T Clark

The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things. — T Clark

This sets up the paradox or disclaimer that underlies the entire book: all he can do here with these phrases is paint the shadows. They won’t directly tell us what the Tao is - even naming ‘the Tao’ is an approximation that implies we can imagine a point beyond, looking back. To entertain this illusion is to limit what it is we could possibly understand (by excluding ourselves), which then renders any depiction inaccurate as such. We could find some beautiful words, as Lao Tzu has, but that’s not the Tao.

Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.
Yet mystery and manifestations
arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.

Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding. — T Clark

There are various ways to interpret this, but I find it’s clearest when I simply experience what it says, without trying to describe what it means to me for your benefit. But that doesn’t help the discussion, does it?

This reminds me of the nature of affect (desire). I like how he says ‘realise’, not ‘solve’ the mystery. Theoretically, free from affect, reality may seem potentially knowable, but in fact without affect we have no way to determine the uncertainty and inaccuracy of our knowledge.

We are irretrievably bound by affect, by valence and arousal. It is the medium of our consciousness, what we use to render the world. This is all we see: the manifestations (concepts) or predictions in terms of how their uncertainty and inaccuracy affects us. This suffering from prediction error (‘darkness within darkness’) is the most effective and efficient method we have to understand the world.

Appreciating this - I loaned out my copy of the TTC, and I’m missing having the little book at hand.

Every time I’ve picked it up, the phrases have resonated with my understanding, and the limitations of language and concepts dissolve...

This reminds me right now of the discussion on another thread on materialism and metaphysics:

“The old problem...if everything is metaphysics then nothing is metaphysics” I think fails to really understand the Tao.

I like Kuhn too. I just meant that I liked Popper's appreciation of what's good about metaphysics. (I actually have come to dislike the word metaphysics. Maybe because it's pompous? Or because there's such a thing as physics? Or because I think of metaphysicks ?) — norm

I’ve struggled with the term as well. There are many who interpret it as ‘outside’ or ‘what isn’t physics’, and while I can understand the desire to isolate science from not-science, I think a complete scientific methodology at the outset must include both a framing of the question and a structuring of our uncertainty about the topic that are decidedly metaphysical - ie. inclusive of, but importantly not limited to, scientifically processed experience. Without this, scientific research risks stagnation from a kind of myopia and inbreeding.

So, for me, metaphysics amounts to refining the frameworks of uncertainty and potentiality from which we interact with the world.

At what point does the framing of a question cease to be philosophy and start to be science?

I don’t think philosophy is about who wins the argument. The practical value of philosophical thinking and discussion is in the distribution of human effort and attention.

While I don’t think metaphysics is necessarily a higher science, I do think it frames scientific endeavour, and as such is prone to religious and political motivations, among others. You can try to dismiss metaphysical discussion as a ‘harmless vice’, but all human endeavour nevertheless occurs under a variable framework of distributable effort and attention, and metaphysics is part of that, however it’s described. Learning how to map it, make predictions from it and alter it requires science to somehow accommodate quantitative uncertainty, intersubjectivity and qualitative structure. Until then, I think the distributed effort and attention of science will continue to be determined by those with religious, ideological, political and especially commercial motivations.

Lorber’s studies demonstrate degeneracy in the brain - the highly adaptable quality of neuronal structures that enable the brain to redirect and reassign functionality to regain efficiency and effectiveness. Sam Harris also cites studies demonstrating that consciousness is a whole system process that has no specific location in the brain in his book ‘Waking Up’, but to interpret these studies to mean that the brain is unnecessary for consciousness is to stretch the evidence waaayy too far to support your assumption.

More interesting studies about degeneracy in the brain can be found in Norman Doidge’s book ‘The Brain That Changes Itself’.

I don’t consider myself a materialist, but I am convinced that human consciousness as such is contingent upon a self-organising relational structure between variable ongoing events occurring amongst organic systems. I think we commonly overlook the ‘variable ongoing events’ part of this structure, and tend to view a living organism as a singular event. This singular event is consciousness, but Feldman Barrett argues that it is manifest in an interaction between two internally constructed events - interoception and conception - in a predictive system. In the same way that DNA interacts with chemical variability in a living organism to manifest mRNA instructions, our conceptual system interacts with the variable interoception of affect in a conscious organism to manifest an ongoing predictive instruction of distributed attention and effort.

Consciousness, therefore, has a four-dimensional (meta)physical structure - its location in spacetime is probabilistically determined at best, but just because we can’t definitively locate it, does not mean it isn’t there. Incidentally, the self-consciousness of the human mind is a five-dimensional (meta)physical structure that enables me to differentiate my consciousness from yours, but that’s another discussion, I think.

I’m not familiar with the studies, but I think we will almost always have an answer available as to why we do or say something we can both choose and consciously verify, unless it’s obviously contrary to our self-identity. Whether the reason presented is true or not is inconsequential - our conceptual structures don’t allow us to come up blank on this. So the most probable answer given the information available will do.

The qualitative actions we determine and initiate without conscious deliberation don’t require certainty or logic. They’re probabilistically determined based on an ongoing prediction of attention and effort (from our conceptual reality) in relation to an ongoing interoception of affect. If you put time pressure on the subject to think of an animal, their momentary attention directed towards the subliminal animal image will be enough to feature in the limited amount of information they can access in that time, despite being insufficient to feature in apperception.

When the subject goes back to explain their choice, they have time to draw from a larger bank of information to sufficiently bolster the rationality of their choice, and will actively seek only data that supports it. They may have matching visual data without sufficient temporal orientation, and may be confident the image wasn’t viewed today or even yesterday, but less confident that it wasn’t viewed in previous days. All of this fuzziness helps to support a sufficiently reasonable explanation.

Lisa Feldman Barrett’s meta-analyses of psychology/neuroscience research in relation to constructed emotion concepts supports this.

I don't need my senses to know that my mind is not physical, in the sense that materialists/physicalists use the word. It's simply not in that category of things, because it's missing physical characteristics. You're saying it could have those physical characteristics, except my senses could be fooling me, but I don't need my senses to know my mind isn't a physical object. I don't need to try and smell it to know it doesn't have an odor, or try and look at it to know it doesn't have a shape. — RogueAI

I think it’s not so much missing physical characteristics as undefinable by its physical characteristics - in a similar way that a photon is considered physical, yet undefinable by its physical characteristics as such. We know a photon by its predicted potentiality or by an observable result. In between is an event structure that is probabilistic at best.

To be honest, it depends on whether a person can reach maximally informed state, or at least sufficiently informed state, with respect to a certain aspect of their overall experience. For example, quantum mechanics changed a lot about our perception of atoms, and atoms changed a lot about our perception of the reaction of objects to heat, but I think that to some extent, a chair is till a chair to us, as it was in antiquity. I think that while we might perceive certain features of a chair differently, such as what happens when we burn it, or how much energy is in it, or what is in it, its most basic character, namely that of an object which offers solid support for your body when you rest yourself on it, is unchanged. The problem with the convergence of information is its reliance on the potential to acquire most of the discernment value from a reasonably small number of observations. After all, this is a large universe, with intricate detail, lasting a long time. — simeonz

I think this sense that a chair is still a chair to us relates to goal-oriented concepts. Barrett references the work of cognitive scientist Lawrence W. Barsalou, and demonstrates that we are pre-programmed to develop goal-oriented concepts effortlessly: to categorise seemingly unconnected instances - such as a fly swatter, a beekeeper’s suit, a house, a car, a large trash can, a vacation in Antarctica, a calm demeanour and a university degree in etymology - under purely mental concepts such as ‘things that protect you from stinging insects’. “Concepts are not static but remarkably malleable and context-dependent, because your goals can change to fit the situation.” So if an object meets that goal for you, then it’s a chair, whether it’s made of wood or plastic, shaped like a box or a wave, etc.

In retrospect, I think that there are two nuances to intelligence, and I was addressing only one. The empirically representationally aimed one.

Edit. I should also point out, that the intelligence you describe, is the more general mechanism. I have previously referred to a related notion of distinction, that of pragmatic truth versus representational truth. And pragmatic truth, as I have stated, is the more general form of awareness. But it is also the less precise and more difficult to operate. It is outside the boundary of empiricism. Your description of allostatic conceptualization is actually something slightly different, yet related. It brings a new quality to pragmatic truth for me. I usually focus on empirical truth. Not because I want to dispense with the other, but because it has the more obvious qualities. Even if both are evidently needed, if the latter then operates under the former. — simeonz

Charles Peirce’s pragmaticist theory of fallibilism, as described in Wikipedia’s article on empiricism: “The rationality of the scientific method does not depend on the certainty of its conclusions, but on its self-corrective character: by continued application of the method science can detect and correct its own mistakes, and thus eventually lead to the discovery of truth". The historical oppression of pragmatic truth by empirical truth translates to a fear of uncertainty - of being left without solid ground to stand on.

Yes, pragmatic truth is less precise in a static sense, but surely we are past the point of insisting on static empirical statements? Quantum mechanics didn’t just change our perception of atoms, but our sense that there is a static concreteness underlying reality. We are forced to concede a continual state of flux, which our sensory limitations as human observers require us to statistically summarise and separate from its qualitative variability, in order to relate it to our (now obviously limited sense of) empirical truth. Yet pragmatically, the qualitative variability of quantum particles is regularly applied as a prediction of attention and effort with unprecedented precision and accuracy.

Max Planck struggled for years to derive a formula that fit the experimental data. In frustration, he decided to work the problem backward. He would first try to guess a formula that agreed with the data and then, with that as a hint, try to develop the proper theory. In a single evening, studying the data others had given him, he found a fairly simple formula that worked perfectly. — Rosenblum and Kuttner, ‘Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness’

I will try to make a connection to a neurological condition of reduced amygdala volume, which renders people incapable of any affective empathy, and for the most part, highly diminishes their sense of anxiety. They are capable of feeling only anger or satisfaction, but the feelings fade quickly. Such individuals are extremely intelligent, literate, articulate. They conceptualize the world slightly differently, but are otherwise capable of the same task planning and anticipation. Considering the rather placated nature of their emotions (compared to a neurotypical), and the exhibition of reasonably similar perception of the world, intelligence isn't that reliant on affective conditions. Admittedly, they still do have cognitive dispositions, feel pain or pleasure, have basic needs as well, are unemotionally engaged with society and subject to culture and norms (to a smaller extent). But the significant disparity in affective stimuli and the relative closeness to us in cognitive output appears to imply that affective dispositions are a secondary factor for conceptualization. At least on a case by case basis. — simeonz

This is a common misunderstanding of affect and the amygdala, supported by essentialism, mental inference fallacy and the misguided notion of a triune brain structure. The amygdala has been more recently proven NOT to be the source of emotion in the brain - it activates in response to novel situations, not necessarily emotional ones. Barrett refers to volumes of research dispelling claims that the amygdala is the brain location of emotion (even of fear or anxiety). Interpretations of behaviour in those with reduced or even destroyed amygdala appear to imply the secondary nature of affect because that’s our preference. We like to think of ourselves as primarily rational beings, with the capacity to ‘control’ our emotions. In truth, evidence shows that it’s more efficient to understand and collaborate with affect in determining our behaviour - we can either adjust for affect or try to rationalise it after the fact, but it remains an important aspect of our relation to reality.

The bottom line is this: the human brain is anatomically structured so that no decision or action can be free of interoception and affect, no matter what fiction people tell themselves about how rational they are. Your bodily feeling right now will project forward to influence what you will feel and do in the future. It is an elegantly orchestrated self-fulfilling prophecy, embodied within the architecture of your brain. — Lisa Feldman Barrett, ‘How Emotions Are Made’

I’m not sure which research or case studies you’re referring to above (I’m not sure if the subjects were born with reduced amygdala or had it partially removed and I think this makes a difference in how I interpret the account) but from what you’ve provided, I’d like to make a few points. I don’t think that an impaired or reduced access to interoception of affect makes much difference to one’s capacity for conceptualisation, or their intelligence as commonly measured. I think it does, however make a difference to their capacity to improve accuracy in their conceptualisation of social reality in particular, and to their overall methodology in refining concepts. They lack information that enables them to make adjustments to behaviour based on social cues, but thanks to the triune brain theory and our general preference for rationality, they’re unlikely to notice much else in terms of ‘impairment’.

I would predict that they may also have an interest in languages, mathematics, logic and morality - because these ensure they have most of the information they need to develop concepts without the benefit of affect. They may also have a sense of disconnection between their physical and mental existence, relatively less focus on sporting or sexual activity, and an affinity for computer systems and artificial intelligence.

As for anxiety, this theoretically refers to the amount of prediction error we encounter from a misalignment of conception and interoception. If there’s reduced access to interoception of affect by conceptualisation systems, there’s less misalignment.

You are right that many complex criteria are connected to values, but the recognition of basic object features, I believe is not. As I mentioned, we should account for the complex hierarchical cognitive and perceptual faculties with which we are endowed from the get go. At least, we know that our perceptual system is incredibly elaborate, and doesn't just feed raw data to us. As infants, we don't start from a blank slate and become conditioned by experience and interactions to detect shapes, recognize objects, assess distances. Those discernments that are essential to how we later create simple conceptualizations and are completely hereditary. And although this is a more tenuous hypothesis, like Noam Chomsky, I do actually believe that some abstract notions, such as length, order and symmetry, identity, compositeness, self, etc - are actually biologically pre-programmed. Not to the point, where they are inscribed directly in the brain, but their subsequent articulation is heavily inclined, and under exposure to the right environment, the predispositions trigger infant conceptualization. I think of this through an analogy with embryonic development. Fertilized eggs cannot develop physically outside the womb, but in its conditions, they are programmed to divide and organize rapidly into a fetus form. I think this happens neurologically with us when we are exposed to the characteristic physical environment during infancy. — simeonz

Well, not once you’ve identified them as objects, no. I don’t think that’s how these initial concepts are developed, though. I think the brain and sensory systems are biologically structured to develop a variety of conceptual structures rapidly and efficiently, some even prior to birth. Barrett compares early development of concepts to the computer process of sampling, where similarities are separated from differences, and only what is different from one frame or pixel to the next is transmitted:

For example, the visual system represents a straight line as a pattern of neurons firing in the primary visual cortex. Suppose that a second group of neurons fires to represent a second line at a ninety-degree angle to the first line. A third group of neurons could summarise this statistical relationship between the two lines efficiently as a simple concept of ‘angle’. The infant brain might encounter a hundred different pairs of intersecting line segments of varying lengths, thicknesses, and colour, but conceptually they are all instances of ‘angle’, each of which gets efficiently summarised by some smaller group of neurons. These summaries eliminate redundancy. In this manner, the brain separates statistical similarities from sensory differences. — Barrett

I do, however, believe that notions such distance, shape, space, time, value and meaning refer to an underlying qualitative structure of reality that is undeniable. We ‘feel’ these notions long before we’re able to conceptualise them.

This heritage hypothesis can appear more reasonable in light of the harmonious relationship between any cognizant organism and the laws of the environment in which it operates. To some extent, even bacterial lifeforms need to be robotically aware of the principles governing their habitat. Our evolutionary history transpired in the presence of the same constraining factors, such as the inertial physical law for objects moving in the absence of forces, and thus it is understandable that our cognitive apparatus would be primed to anticipate the dynamics in question, with a rudimentary sense of lengths and quantities. Even if such notions are not explicit, the relationship between our reconstruction of the features of the world and the natural laws would be approximately homomorphic. And the hypothesis is, that at some point after the appearance of linguistic capabilities, we were further compelled by natural selection towards linguistic articulation of these mental reconstructions through hereditary conceptualization. Whereas fundamental discernment of features of appearances would have developed even earlier , being more involuntary and unconscious. — simeonz

I think bacterial lifeforms are aware of the principles governing their habitat only to the extent that they impact allostasis. Any rudimentary sense of values would be initially qualitative, not quantitative - corresponding to the ongoing interoception of valence and arousal in the organism. But as Barrett suggests, the neuronal structure conceptualises in order to summarise for efficiency, separating statistical similarities from sensory differences to eliminate redundancy. Our entire evolutionary development has been in relation to the organism’s capacity to more efficiently construct and refine conceptual systems and structures for allostasis from a network of interoceptive systems. The systems and network we’ve developed now consist of whole brain processes, degeneracy, feedback loops and a complex arrangement of checks and balances, budgeting the organism’s ongoing allocation of attention and effort.

This is a long post already - I will return to the rest of your post later...

Sorry for not replying, but I am in a sort of a flux. I apologize, but I expect that I may tarry awhile between replies even in the future.

This is too vast a landscape to be dealt with properly in a forum format. I know this is sort-of a bail out from me, but really, it is a serious subject. I wouldn't be the right person to deal with it, because I don't have the proper qualification. — simeonz

No problem. Persist with the flux - I think it can be a productive state to be in, despite how it might feel. I realise that my approach to this subject is far from conventional, so I appreciate you making the effort to engage. I certainly don’t have any ‘proper’ qualifications in this area myself. But I also doubt that anyone would be sufficiently qualified on their own. As you say, the landscape is too vast. In my view that makes a forum more suitable, not less.

The idea of this oversimplification was merely to illustrate how concepts correspond to classes in taxonomies of experience. And in particular, that there is no real circularity. There was ambiguity stemming from the lack of unique ascription of classes to a given collection of previously observed instances. Such as in the case of 3, there is inherent inability to decide whether it falls into the group of 1 and 2, or bridges 1 and 2 with 5. However, assigning 1 and 3 to one class, and 2 and 5 to a different class would be solving the problem counter-productively. Therefore, the taxonomy isn't formed in arbitrary personal fashion. It follows the objective of best discernment without excessive distinction. — simeonz

It is the qualification of ‘best discernment without excessive distinction’ that perhaps needs more thought. Best in what sense? According to which value hierarchy? And at what point is the distinction ‘excessive’? It isn’t that the taxonomy is formed in an arbitrarily personal fashion, but rather intersubjectively. It’s a process and methodology developed initially through religious, political and cultural trial and error - manifesting language, custom, law and civility as externally predictive, four-dimensional landscapes from the correlation of human instances of being.

The recent psychology/neuroscience work of Lisa Feldman Barrett in developing a constructed theory of emotion is shedding light on the ‘concept cascade’, and the importance of affect (attention/valence and effort/arousal) in how even our most basic concepts are formed. Alongside recent descriptions in physics (eg. Carlo Rovelli) of the universe consisting of ‘interrelated events’ rather than objects in time, Barrett’s theory leads to an idea of consciousness as a predictive four-dimensional landscape from ongoing correlation of interoception and conception as internally constructed, human instances of being.

But the challenge (as Rovelli describes) is to talk about reality as four-dimensional with a language that is steeped in a 3+1 perspective (subject-object and tensed verb). Consider a molecular structure of two atoms ‘sharing’ an electron - in a similar way, the structure of human consciousness can be seen to consist of two constructed events ‘sharing’ a temporal aspect. This five-dimensional anomalous relation of potentiality/knowledge/value manifests as an ongoing prediction in affect: the instructional ‘code’ for both interoception and conception. How we go about proving this is beyond my scientific capacity, but I believe the capacity exists, nonetheless. As philosophers, our task is to find a way to frame the question.

No matter what process actually attains plausible correspondence, what procedure is actually used to create the taxonomy, no matter the kind of features that are used to determine the relative disposition of new objects/samples to previous object/samples and how the relative locations of each one is judged, what I hoped to illustrate was that concepts are not designed so much according to their ability to describe common structure of some collection of objects, but according to their ability to discriminate objects from each other in the bulk of our experience. This problem can be solved even statically, albeit with enormous computational expense.

What I hoped to illustrate is that concepts can both be fluid and stable. New objects/impressions can appear in previously unpopulated locations of our experience, or unevenly saturate locations to the extent that new classes form from the division of old ones, or fill the gaps between old classes, creating continuity between them and merging them together. In that sense, the structure of our concept map is flexible. Hence, our extrapolations, our predictions, which depend on how we partition our experience into categories with symmetric properties, change in the process. Concepts can converge, because experience, in general, accumulates, and can also converge. The concepts, in theory, should gradually reach some maximally informed model. — simeonz

I agree that concepts are not designed according to their ability to describe common structure or essentialism, but to differentiate between aspects of experience. Partitioning our experience into categories is part of the scientific methodology by which we attempt to make sense of reality in terms of ‘objects in time’.

I also agree that concepts can be perceived as both fluid and stable. This reflects our understanding of wave-particle duality (I don’t think this is coincidental). But I also think the ‘maximally-informed model’ we’re reaching for is found not in some eventual stability of concepts, but in developing an efficient relation to their fluidity - in our awareness, connection and collaboration with relations that transcend or vary conceptual structures.

It’s more efficient to discriminate events than objects from each other in the bulk of our experience. Even though our language structure is based on objects in time, we interact with the world not as an object, but as an event at our most basic, and that event is subject to ongoing variability. ‘Best discernment without excessive distinction’ then aims for allostasis - stability through variability - not homeostasis. This relates to Barrett as mentioned above.

I guess I wanted to point out that there is more structural process to the development of concepts than categorising objects of experience through cluster analysis or dimensionality reduction, and that qualitative relations across multiple dimensional levels play a key role.

In relation to the OP...

From IEP: “So, the issue at the heart of the Problem of the Criterion is how to start our epistemological theorizing in the correct way, not how to discover a theory of the nature of truth.“

The way I see it, the correct way to start our epistemological theorising is to acknowledge the contradiction at the heart of the Problem of the Criterion. We can never be certain which propositions are true, nor can we be certain of the accuracy in our methodologies to determine the truth of propositions. Epistemology in relation to truth is a process of incremental advancement towards this paradox - by interaction between identification of instances in experience and definition of the concept via reductionist methodologies.

If an instance doesn’t refine either the definition or the methodology, then it isn’t contributing to knowledge. To focus our mental energies on calculating probability, for instance, only consolidates existing knowledge - it doesn’t advance our understanding, choosing to ignore the Problem and exclude qualitative variability instead of facing the inevitable uncertainty in our relation to truth. That’s fine, as long as we recognise this ignorance, isolation or exclusion of qualitative aspects of reality as part of the mental process. Because when we apply this knowledge as defined, our application must take into account the limitations of the methodology and resulting definition in relation to our capacity to accurately identify instances. In other words, we need to add the qualitative variability back in, or else we limit our practical understanding of reality - which is arguably more important. So, by the same token, if a revised definition or reductionist methodology doesn’t improve our experience of instances, thereby reducing prediction error, then it isn’t contributing to knowledge.

Ok, I think I can follow you here. The three-dimensional universe of the denizen is assumed trivial, and collapsed to zero. I want to make sure this is clear, so that we don’t invite idealist interpretations that descend into solipsism. I think this capacity (and indeed tendency) to collapse dimensions or to ignore, isolate and exclude information is an important part of the mental process in developing, qualifying and refining concepts.

Because it isn’t necessarily just the time axis that renders the universe one-dimensional, but the qualitative difference between 1 and 2 as experienced and consolidated quantities. It is this qualitative relation that presents 2 as not-1, 5 as not-3, and 3 as closer to 2 than to 5. Our grasp of numerical value structure leads us to take this qualitative relation for granted.

I realise that it seems like I’m being pedantic here. It’s important to me that we don’t lose sight of these quantities as qualitative relational structures in themselves. We can conceptualise but struggle to define more than three dimensions, and so we construct reductionist methodologies (including science, logic, morality) and complex societal structures (including culture, politics, religion, etc) as scaffolding that enables us to navigate, test and refine our conceptualisation of what currently appears (in my understanding) to be six dimensions of relational structure.

How we define a concept relies heavily on these social and methodological structures to avoid prediction error as we interact across all six dimensions, but they are notoriously subjective, unstable and incomplete. When we keep in mind the limited three-dimensional scope of our concept definitions (like a map that fails to account for terrain or topology) and the subjective uncertainty of our scaffolding, then I think we gain a more accurate sense of our conceptual systems as heuristic in relation to reality.

The concept is subject to change, as you described, because it is gradually refined by the individual and by society. The two, the popularly or professionally ratified one and the personal one, need not agree, and individuals may not always agree on their concepts. Not just superficially, by how they apply the concepts in a given context, but by how those concepts are explained in their mind. However, with enough experience, the collectively accepted technically precise definition is usually the best, because even if sparingly applied in professional context, it is the most detailed one and can be reduced to a distilled form, by virtue of its apparent consequences, for everyday use if necessary. — simeonz

The best definition being the broadest and most inclusive in relation to instances. So long as we keep in mind that the technical definition is neither precise nor stable - only relatively so. Awareness of, connection to and collaboration with the qualitative variability in even the most precise definition is all part of this process of concept refinement.

The example I gave, with the zero-dimensional inhabitant was a little bloated and dumb, but it aimed to illustrate that concepts correspond to partitionings of the experience. This means that they are both not completely random, because they are anchored at experience, direct or indirect, and they are a little arbitrary too, because there are multiple ways to partition the same set. I may elaborate the example at a later time, if you deem necessary. — simeonz

I’m glad you added this. I have some issues with your example - not the least of which is its ‘zero-dimensional’ or quantitative description, which assumes invariability of perspective and ignores the temporal aspect. You did refer to multiple inhabitants, after all, as well as the experience of different quantities ‘over time’, suggesting a three-dimensional universe, not zero. It is the mental process of a particular perspective that begins with a set of quantities - but even without partitioning the set, qualitative relation exists between these experienced quantities to differentiate 1 from 2. A set of differentiated quantities is at least one-dimensional, in my book.

Not all people have practical use for the technical definition, since their life's occupation does not demand it and they have no personal interest in it. But I was contending that those who do use the fully articulated concept, will actually stay mentally committed to its full detail, even when they use it crudely in routine actions. Or at least for the most part. They could make intentional exceptions to accommodate conversations. They just wont involve the full extent of their knowledge at the moment. Further, people can disagree on concepts, because of the extrapolations that could be made from them or the expressive power that certain theoretical conceptions offer relative to others. — simeonz

I think I see this. A fully articulated concept is rarely (if at all) stated in its full detail - definitions are constructed from a cascade of conceptual structures: technical terms each with their own technical definitions constructed from more technical terms, and so on. For the purpose of conversations (and to use a visual arts analogy), da Vinci might draw the Vitruvian Man or a stick figure - it depends on the details that need to be transferred, the amount of shared conceptual knowledge we can rely on between us, and how much attention and effort each can spare in the time available.

I spend a great deal of time looking up and researching terms, concepts and ideas I come across in forum discussions here, because I’ve found that my own routine or common-language interpretations aren’t detailed enough to understand the application. I have that luxury here - I imagine I would struggle to keep up in a face-to-face discussion of philosophy, but I think I am gradually developing the conceptual structures to begin to hold my own.

Disagreement on concepts here are often the result of both narrow and misaligned qualitative structures or patterns of instances and their extrapolations - posters here such as Tim Wood encourage proposing definitions, so that this variability can be addressed early in the discussion. It’s not always approached as a process of concept refinement, but can be quite effective when it is.

I will address the rest of your post when I have more time...

So, to summarize. I agree that sometimes the concept is indecisive due to edge cases, but sometimes the fuzzyness is in its application due to incomplete information. This does not change the fact that the academic definition is usually the most clearly ascribed. There is also the issue of linguistic association with concepts, I think that people can develop notions and concepts independently of language and communication, just by observing the correlations between features in their environment, but there are variables there that can sway the process in multiple directions and affect the predictive value of the concept map. — simeonz

You seem to be arguing for definition of a concept as more important than identification of its instances, but this only reveals a subjective preference for certainty. There are variables that affect the predictive value of the concept map regardless of whether you start with a definition or identified instances. Language and communication is important to periodically consolidate and share the concept map across differentiated conceptual structures - but so that variables in the set of instances are acknowledged and integrated into the concept map.

The Problem Of The Criterion has, at its core, the belief that,

1. To define we must have particular instances (to abstract the essence of that which is being defined)

2. To identify particular instances we must have a definition

The Problem Of The Criterion assumes that definitions and particular instances are caught in a vicious circle of the kind we've all encountered - the experience paradox - in which to get a job, we first need experience but to get experience, we first need a job. Since neither can be acquired before the other, it's impossible to get both.

For The Problem Of The Criterion to mean anything, it must be the relationship between definitions and particular instances be such that in each case the other is precondtion thus closing the circle and trapping us in it.

However, upon analysis, this needn't be the case. We can define arbitrarily (methodism) as much as non-arbitrarily (particularism) - there's no hard and fast rule that these two make sense only in relation to each other ss The Problem Of The Criterion assumes. I can be a methodist in certain situations or a particularist in others; there's absolutely nothing wrong in either case. — TheMadFool

The way I see it, the Problem of the Criterion is not just about defining concepts or identifying instances, but about our accuracy in the relation between definition and identification. The problem is that knowledge is not an acquisition, but a process of refining this accuracy, which relies on identifying insufficient structures in both aspects of the process.

To use your analogy, the process of refining the relation between getting a job and getting experience relies on each aspect addressing insufficiencies in the other. To solve the problem of circularity, it is necessary to acknowledge this overall insufficiency, and to simply start: either by seeking experience without getting a job (ie. volunteer work, internship, etc) or by seeking a job that requires no experience (entry-level position or unskilled labour).

In terms of identification and definition, it is necessary to recognise the overall insufficiency in our knowledge, and either start with an arbitrary definition to which we can relate instances in one way or another, or by identifying instances that will inform a definition - knowing that the initial step is far from accurate, but begins a relational process towards accuracy.

To point in the direction of the mop and say 'it is not that case that there is a Muppet in the mop cupboard' sounds like an example of the problem of counterfactual conditionals. People who are anxious about the metaphysical aspects of realism will argue that there are no negative facts and thus correspondence breaks down. This proposition about the mop cupboard doesn't seem to have any corresponding relation to objects and relation to objects in the world. Or something like that. — Tom Storm

It is when we exclude negative facts from realism that we limit the perception of truth in which we operate. That’s fine, as long as we recognise this when we refer to truth. Counterfactual conditionals are only a problem if we fail to recognise this limited perception of truth.

The proposition ‘it is not the case that there is a Muppet in the mop cupboard’ is made from a six year old perception of truth, the limitations of which have been isolated from the proposition. A six year old would make a proposition in order to test conceptual knowledge, not to propose truth. A more accurate counterfactual conditional here (pointing in the direction of the mop) would be: ‘if it were not the case that there is a Muppet in the mop cupboard, then that would be a Muppet’. This clarifies the limited perception of truth in which the proposition operates, with correspondence intact.

As far as I'm concerned a definition must focus on the essentials, otherwise how would we identify that which is being defined? If that which is being defined can't be identified from a "...line-up..." then the discussion ends there. Nothing more can be said. — TheMadFool

I’m saying that a dog can be identified from a line-up of instances without a prior definition, and that this process also serves as informing a potential definition. Likewise, a definition can be given prior to experience of any instances, but can only be known in relation to instances identified either side of that definition. Either way, a definition need not focus on essentials, but on a relational structure between identifiable instances - and must be refined accordingly.

Let’s take a more complicated concept of ‘consciousness’ - when we seek to define consciousness by its essential features, we are left none the wiser. Because it is not by a checklist of essentials that we define a concept, but by the qualitative relational structure between identifiable instances.

I think the idea that we identify concepts by ‘essential features’ is a myth we use to constrain the reality of experience to rational, consolidated forms.
— Possibility

Can you expand? — Tom Storm

Well, consider what would be the essential features of a Muppet, for instance?

We talk as if everything has essential features - some unique properties without which it would not be what it is - but these are just non-essential properties that are qualified in relation to each other such that they exclude alternate qualitative structures. So a definition of a Muppet or a dog is not based on so-called ‘essential features’, but on qualitative structural patterns of NON-essential properties.

We know that:

1. Muppet is the name given by Jim Henson to his puppet/marionette characters in order to distinguish them from the work of other puppeteers.

2. Something made of fabric, with a roughly personable shape, that moves seemingly of its own accord has been identified as a Muppet by a six year old.

3. A ‘muppet’ is also defined in the dictionary as “an incompetent or foolish person”.

We can say that the ‘essential features’ of a Muppet are a puppet associated with Jim Henson, but on their own these are non-essential features of other concepts. It is by the relational or qualitative structure or pattern of these features that a Muppet is commonly defined, not by the consolidated features themselves.

But does this mean 2 and 3 are wrong? Or does it mean that how we identify and how we define the concept are two different processes?

When you say this is a Muppet you are not reflecting some platonic ideal of a glove puppet in the world of universal puppet forms. You are simply connecting to one or more visual aspects of the object which adds up to a Muppet. Of course none of that stopped our 6 year-old calling the mop at our place a Muppet. — Tom Storm

Yes. No doubt the mop fits all the patterns of qualitative structure that your 6yr old currently applies to the term ‘muppet’, a concept more frequently applied to their experiences than ‘mop’. Plus, it’s cute, so no-one can bring themselves to correct it at this point. The association appeals to our imagination.

Another more colloquial use for the term ‘muppet’ is in derogatory reference to a foolish or incompetent person. The superfluous character of the term (the only difference between ‘muppet’ and ‘puppet’ being a reference to Jim Henson) lends a certain fluidity to its meaning. When we say that we ‘know’ what a Muppet is, we’re not referring to a clear-cut definition or a grasp of ‘essential features’, but an experience of sufficient instances to construct a pattern of qualitative structure in identifying a Muppet.

I think the idea that we identify concepts by ‘essential features’ is a myth we use to constrain the reality of experience to rational, consolidated forms.

It’s not about essential features, but about recognising patterns in qualitative relational structures.
— Possibility

I beg to differ. In the absence of essences to dogs or whatever else is the topic, there can be no further discussion. Can you tell me what "dog" means? I'm supremely confident, as out of character as that is, that you'll be listing a set of essential features. — TheMadFool

it's an impossibility! How can I find something when I don't know what that something is? Don't take my word for it...try it out for yourself if you don't believe me. — TheMadFool

To answer the question requires an ongoing and continually refining process of interaction between an imperfect sensory perception and an imperfect conception. It’s the experience of “I’m not sure what I’m looking for, but I’ll know when I find it”. We articulate an unknown concept by what it may be like, but isn’t - its non-essential features. So, if I don’t know what a dog is, I can still find a dog by referring to its non-essential features - fur, claws, ears, eyes, tail and fangs - in a qualitative relational structure that enables me to exclude cats, bears and tigers from the search.

So I’m going to throw this back to you: can you define ‘dog’ without a qualitative pattern of non-essential features?

I’m pointing out a distinction between the linguistic definition of a concept - which is an essentialist and reductionist methodology of naming consolidated features - and an identification of that concept in how one interacts with the world - which is about recognising patterns in qualitative relational structures. Asking me to linguistically define a dog does not prove that I or anyone would identify a dog out of a line-up of creatures based on this essentialist methodology - as much as rationality would beg to differ. Yes, we may confirm this identification by a checklist of ‘essential’ features, but I’m arguing that we would already have identified the concept ‘dog’ (as a prediction) in order to identify a set list of features to check off - or more accurately, qualitative relational patterns to match.

Why are we discussing predictions? — TheMadFool

Prediction is a manifestation of the problem: sensory interoception generates a current state of the organism in relation to reality, while the mind organises what we know of the universe in relation to past states of the organism, and from this predicts interactions of the organism with reality as an instruction of effort and attention for the brain. In other words, prediction is the ongoing difference between our current sensory perception of the organism in relation to reality, and our current conception of reality in relation to the organism.

So the point at which we appear to be settled on the matter is when we linguistically define our prediction as a summary of past instances. But this is not the truth of the matter - it’s a proposition. The truth of that proposition is determined from three angles: its relation to a conception of reality (ie. knowledge); its relation to sensory perception (empirical evidence); its relation to alternative propositions. But none of them are true. We’re not in a position to construct propositions of ‘clear-cut truth’.

It still seems to me that the criterion is not about establishing unambiguously the truth of propositions, but of designing descriptions for a proposition that matches particular experience. The problem does elicit however many considerations involved when matching the descriptions between individuals through exemplification. — simeonz

This makes sense to me. Much of what you have written is difficult for me to follow, but I get the sense that we’re roughly on the same page here...?

not essentialist
— Possibility

What's the alternative? Anything goes? So, for instance, a dog could be defined in terms of non-essential features like fur, claws, ears, eyes, tail, fangs but then...event cats, bears, tigers have these and then every one of these essentialism-based categories would be dogs. Do you want to go down that road? I could be mistaken of course and that's where you come in I guess. — TheMadFool

The concept ‘dog’ is constructed in our minds with the help of language in relation to instances. So, a ‘dog’ may be initially understood in terms of a relational structure of shapes, size, sound, texture, etc. - depending on whether those early instances are a family pet, pictures in a book, or sounds from next door. This is how my daughter initially understood ‘bath’ to describe bodies of water. From there, she soon realised that ‘bath’ referred to more specific instances of ‘water’. She may also see another furry creature with pointed ears, four legs and a tail and say ‘dog’ - only to be gently corrected with ‘cat’. Remember ‘Monsters Inc’, when the little girl calls the big furry monster ‘Kitty’? It’s not about essential features, but about recognising patterns in qualitative relational structures.

Nec caput nec pedes. Can you clear the matter up for me? I don't see the relevance of fuzziness to The Problem Of The Criterion. For my money, the issue of vagueness comes much much later - after we've settled the matter of what truth means and which statements are true. Even if truth is a fuzzy concept there have to be propositions that are clear-cut truths. — TheMadFool

Why do there have to be propositions that are clear-cut truths? In order to think, speak or act with a degree of certainty or confidence in what is, for all intents and purposes, a prediction. We haven’t settled the matter - we’ve constructed a prediction, which we’ve then defined in a summary of past instances. The accuracy of this definition is temporary: fragile and fleeting from the moment it’s proposed. Hence the fuzziness of the concept.

I didn't say that it did. The question, as it stands, is vague and ambiguous. Hence the need to ask for clarity. But if it turns out that the questioner is asking - as they almost certainly are - what the 'purpose' of their being here is, then their question most certainly does presuppose that someone has put us here. For it is persons and persons alone who can confer purposes on things.

And because the answer "whatever purpose your parents were pursuing by trying to create you" is so obviously not going to satisfy the questioner, we can see that their question presupposes some kind of a divine purpose giver. — Bartricks

So you ARE interpreting the question to presuppose an arbitrary assumption that someone has put us here, thereby limiting the scope of the question as stated.

But who says that purpose must be conferred by a person? There doesn’t appear to be any evidence supporting this. It’s simply how you’ve chosen to define ‘purpose’.

As an observation, given that the highly improbable event of us being here has occurred, it seems strange that you continue to appeal to probability, or what is ‘most likely’, for an answer as to why.

I could make the same point another way. I could just say "If God exists, then most likely the purpose of our being here is to protect others from us, to give us our just deserts, and to give us some chance at rehabilitation". — Bartricks

Sure. But there are more assumptions here that you’re reading into it. You’re assuming that ‘others’ exist, that God intentionally chose ‘here’, that we’ve somehow already done something ‘wrong’ prior to being born...

This whole argument just seems straw-like to me...

Initially I was wondering whether Possibility's daughter's ability to identify dogs had something to do with innate knowledge but the matter is much simpler than that. Pointing to dogs and uttering the word "dog" is an act of providing instances to the audience (here Possibility's daughter) and if that's all that's being done, leaving the audience to figure out what the word "dog" means i.e. it's the audience's job to abstract the essence of a dog from the instances provided. It appears this is a valid method of defining words. That's that. — TheMadFool

Well, my take on this is not essentialist, so I don’t see it as ‘abstracting the essence of dog from the instances’, but as abstracting recurring patterns in qualitative relations. This will always be ‘fuzzy’ to a certain extent - a definition seems to be just a linguistically-structured summary or reduction of these patterns.

Defining truth may be similar too. We do a systematic survey of propositions and sort them based on different attributes and decide that propositions with such and such attributes (whatever they maybe) should be called true propositions and absent these attributes are not true.

However, there's an, for lack of a better word, intuition albeit vague as far as I can tell that truth has to be something specific i.e. there are constraints on what truth can be. The thorough study of the atrributes of porpositions don't result in truth being defined based on just any constellation of attributes. To the contrary, we're drawn to certain groups of attributes (correspondence, coherence, pragmatic, etc) - it feels natural to define truth in these terms - and this I consider as an indication of a preconceived, how shall I put it, idea of what truth should be.

In other words, it may look like we're trying to abstract a definition of truth from instances of truth, from a careful analysis of propositions but in fact we already possess a definition of truth and are simply looking for propositions that match that definition. That is to say that, at least on the matter of the definition of truth if not dogs the impression that we get of examining propositions so that we may extract the essence/form of truth is an illusion. — TheMadFool

Here’s a better word than intuition: assumption.

To define something - to state or describe exactly its nature, scope or meaning; to mark out its boundary or limits - is a reductionist methodology that discards qualitative variability or ‘fuzziness’ in the information we have about that something.

It feels more comfortable to ignore, isolate or exclude a relation to truth that lacks sufficient attributes to be positioned with certainty on this side of an arbitrarily-drawn true/false dichotomy. The idea of truth includes an understanding why we feel so uncomfortable with this uncertainty. The idea of what truth should be, however, excludes this relation to what is possibly but not certainly true.

Are you suggesting here that a definition of truth is a priori analytical knowledge?

Great discussion - respectfully handled. I am reading along with interest...just wanted to say...

The creation cannot imbue itself with purpose. Purpose is imbued by an outside force not from within. So it cannot be given to oneself. — Darkneos

Purpose: the reason for which something is done or created OR for which something exists.

There is no ‘outside force’ presupposed by the term ‘purpose’. That’s an assumption in your interpretation.

The interesting thing about laying out the rational characteristics of love is that it ceases to resemble ‘love’ as we experience it.

I agree that @Pinprick’s list outlines what should be characteristics of all relationships, regardless of whether we classify it as ‘love’. This often leads to sexual compatibility and/or physical attraction seen as the distinguishing feature of ‘love’ within a marriage. I would say that a sexual aspect to any relationship intensifies the implications of the other seven - we don’t have anything to smooth over the sharp edges of our personality or to shield us from the damage we inflict.

For me, the idea of love is pure relation: if we could understand fully how the world works, theoretically speaking, then we could love the world fully. That includes ourselves. But we partition our relation to the world because some aspects may be beyond our capacity to understand - right now, under certain conditions, yet or ever.

The question ‘what’s the meaning of us being here?’ does not necessarily presuppose that someone has put us here. Neither does it presuppose that the answer is either intentional or predetermined. These are teleological assumptions - conditions that you’re imposing by your interpretation.

What the question presupposes is that we are here, and that we are searching for meaning.

If we attribute possible meaning to my cat...

Can we be wrong? How could we possibly know that we are? What standard of comparison could we use as a means to know what sort of stuff is meaningful to her, could become meaningful to her, and what sort of stuff cannot possibly be, or cannot ever become meaningful to her? — creativesoul

I’m not suggesting we attribute possible meaning to your cat. I’m saying that our awareness of the aquarium’s significance to your cat has meaning for us. With this information, we attribute possible meaning or purpose to the aquarium beyond its significance to us.

There is a distinction between meaningful and meaningful TO someone.
— Possibility

I missed this. I completely disagree.

If we replace "someone" with "a creature capable of attributing meaning" there is no distinction between being meaningful and being meaningful to a creature capable of attributing meaning. — creativesoul

Okay, now I think we might be getting somewhere. You’re talking about meaningful as a way of being or becoming in relation to a creature. This seems to be a temporal relation for you, as if at some point the relation, once meaningful, can cease to be so. Would that be accurate?

Your notion of significance blurs the distinction between causality and meaning. Causality is always significant, but not always meaningful. That's part of my rejection of significance being equated to meaning. They are not equivalent. — creativesoul

Causality refers to a temporal relation, significance and meaning (in my view) do not. But I agree, they are NOT equivalent.

The way I see it, if WE recognise causality as always significant, then all causality is at least potentially meaningful to US. But your cat is unaware of causality as such, she is only aware of those aspects of causality that are potentially significant to her. When we recognise this significance, we might consider them meaningful to her, but really we’re just projecting our own awareness of possible meaningfulness (to us) onto the cat.

er, what? — Bartricks

You’re going to have to be more specific...

I get what you’re trying to say, but I think you’re oversimplifying.

Being able to identify an instance of dog is not the same as knowing dogs. By the same token, any definition of ‘dog’ is not necessarily as exact as it claims to be. So, while knowing dogs without knowing dogs IS an obvious contradiction, I maintain that it IS possible to find or identify an instance of something without knowing definitively prior what that something is - until you find it, that is. In fact, it appears to me that knowing an instance and knowing a definition may indeed be one and the same process.

That there are different definitions of truth (correspondence, paragmatic, coherent, etc.) is suggestive...hints at some degree of arbitrariness...something I referred to in the OP.

If truth were abstracted from instances of truth this wouldn't be the case for then that which can be described as the form (Plato?) of truth would be constant, precluding, in my humble opinion, variety in the definition of truth. — TheMadFool

The more instances (limited definitions) of truth we incorporate, the closer we may get to a broad ‘definition’ of truth. But in all honesty, I think truth would be formless as such - any possible ‘definition’ of truth is necessarily inclusive of its relation to what is not true.

We keep returning to a contradiction, and we keep rejecting it, convinced there must be some other, more logical structure underlying it all...