:smile: :up:

This might help out:

Historically, fallibilism is most strongly associated with Charles S. Peirce, William James, John Dewey, and other pragmatists. Global fallibilism (also called pragmatic fallibilism, contrite fallibilism, epistemic fallibilism, epistemological fallibilism or fallibilistic empiricism) implies that no beliefs can be conclusively justified,[3][5] or in other words, that knowledge does not require certainty.[6][7] Moreover, global fallibilists assert that because empirical knowledge can be revised by further observation, any of the things we take as empirical knowledge might turn out to be false.[4][8] The claim that all assertions are provisional and thus open to revision in light of new evidence is widely taken for granted in the natural sciences.[9] — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallibilism#Global_versus_local_fallibilism

the latter is Socratic knowledge (I know that I don't know). — Agent Smith

Why not? "I fallibly know that I infallibly know nothing."

There's another thread, by Jack Cummins, on human judgment & error. Can error ever get a handle on accuracy? — Agent Smith

I'll fallibly affirm "yes". I'm a fallibilist, after all.

Even so, we could set that aside and run with it. Where does the path of relativism lead before it bleeds to death from a self-inflicted gunshot? — Agent Smith

Ah. I'll leave that for the relativists to answer.

I see that as rephrasing of what I affirmed. Am I missing something?

No doubt. But here there is a logically invalid conflation of these concepts in their absolute form - Truth with a capital “T”, and so forth - with non-absolute, and hence imperfect, instantiations of these perfect ideals …. Or so the argument might go.

But yes: The rapist, for one example, rapes because the rapist’s desires are gratified by so doing and, so, the raping is good for the rapist, minimally, while the action takes place. Ever seen the movie Perfume; it illustrates how acts such as murder can be or become aesthetic for the murderer. So too I imagine can become most any commonly deemed wrong that is a personal good for the person engaging in it, like the act of manipulating others. Or, the reality that many truths can hurt, at least in the short-term, and are thereby often treated as bad, furthermore often deemed untrue on this count. Human caused global warming comes to mind.

Nothing new in all this, I would think.

Nevertheless, in any supposition of True = Good = Beauty these terms can only be interpreted in terms of absolute ideals, or universals, from which all imperfect variations which we deal with result. So, for one example, the doing of wrongs is good for the wrongdoer, otherwise they wouldn’t be done, but this instantiation of “good” would be so far removed from the “Good” so as to either be deemed a bad or an evil by most.

To not be addressing these perfect ideals is to instead be addressing the notion of “truths = goods = beauties”, but I’ve never read it expressed as such by any philosopher, and this expression would indeed at best be buffoonery I would think - as per above examples.

Then again, there’s always relativism to fall back on for some - such that there is no such thing as a universality shared by all truths, by all goods, and by all beauties.

Maybe, just maybe, Truth = Good = Beauty. They're the same thing?!

My analysis is incomplete. Maybe someone can help out. Establish the truth ( :chin: ) of the following equalities:

1. Truth = Good
2. Good = Beauty — Agent Smith

This might make a little more sense if interpreted along the lines of:

1. (Complete) Conformity to that which is real = (Complete) Gratification of life’s deepest ingrained desire (i.e., the deepest ingrained desire of each and every psyche)
2. (Complete) Gratification of life’s deepest ingrained desire = (Complete) Fairness, as a composite of both that which is (completely) just - correct, right - and that which is (completely) aesthetic

Since we are imperfect, we can’t have it (this equivalency) in its complete, absolute, form - this being instead the ideal - but can only appraise proximity or furtherance from this complete state of Truth/Good/Beauty as ideal, this being the pragmatics of life

And such means of interpreting would not necessarily be equivalent to:

What is = what ought to be = what is desirable? — unenlightened

But then establishing the truth of it? Some of us are still trying to establish the truth of “I am”.

As a psychotherapist in training — ZzzoneiroCosm

A psychotherapist ... Cool.

If the book's theme intrigues you, see is you can do anything with the musing that "depression is nature's way of telling there's something wrong". No references; kinda a personal partial takeaway from "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger". Basic point: figure out what's wrong, resolve it to a good enough extent, and you grow as a human being because of it, rather than being debilitated by the same states of mind. No problem if not interested. But it's helped me out in my life often enough.

Good luck in your endevors!

IOW, per SCOTUS, a woman doesn't have a right to choose, but the state does have the right to choose for her. — Relativist

How libertarian / laissez faire / anti-government control of our human liberties the current conservative SCOTUS is!!!*

* sarcasm, if I need to spell it out

I'll let others comment on this as they will.

There is no specific point: an individual human life gradually emerges during the development of that "bundle of human cells". — Relativist

No, there is no mathematically strict dichotomy to this transformation. Agreed. This can be likened to the questions such as that of "when does the color orange become the color yellow?": no strict dichotomy, but it yet happens all the same. This being in many ways very entwined with the paradox of the heap: roughly expressed, asking at which point does a heap take form. To me, Roe v Wade in its addressing the three trimesters of pregnancy and their significance gives a very good and informed overall answer to this question you've quoted.

As to my use of the term "point", it was not meant to be taken so literally. My bad, if required.

But how do you interpret this lack of a strict moment of dichotomy to weigh in on the issue? Are you one to rationally uphold because of it that Y’s potential to become X at some time in the future entails that Y = X in the present? This so as to justify that a human blastula = a human being? But then a seed would of itself be a tree. And so forth in innumerable directions.

Consider that there is no set of necessary and sufficient properties for "human personhood". We can identify traits that most humans have, ranges of DNA, and reference to parenthood,, but it's impossible to narrow any such properties into being necessary and sufficient. — Relativist

I've considered it. What conclusions are we to then draw from this: that no such thing as "human personhood" occurs?

Neglected the question of what our reason for trusting reason is, else what our logic for trusting logic is. Yes, reason is rationally baseless - founded on infinite regress, circularity, or ad hoc dictums - and so forth. But I’ll argue that, we are existentially determined to so trust reasoning on grounds that we have no other choice but to so trust. Even if the specific form our reason/logic takes is, for example, that of dialethism, it is yet there. As is also the case with our possible mistrust of reason/logic: we can only accomplish this mistrust via use of some reason/logic which we innately trust.

Or does it correspond to reality — Paulm12

Not on any grand scale, no. — bongo fury

Question: For the principle that “a claim about X cannot both be true and false at the same time and in the same respect” to hold (given that “true” is “conformant to that which is real”), how is it not inevitable that the principle “the reality of X or any of its properties cannot both be and not be at the same time and in the same respect” must also hold?

This on the grandest of scales ... I'll add that the answer should preferably withhold from entering realms of Cartesian Skepticism.

The first principle pertains to what can result from psyches, the second to what is ontic; both, however, being covered by the Aristotelian principle of noncontradiction – which, tmk, is foundational to all consistent logic.

Hence, for one example: if a claim about X can both be true and false at the same time and in the same respect, then the reality of X or any of its properties must be able to both be and not be at the same time and in the same respect. Yet this latter state of affairs doesn’t specify the world as we know it day to day.

I will update.
In order to use logic to understand our world, we in some way have to assume our world is logically intelligible and predictable. — Paulm12

Yes. I'm in agreement with this.

But instinct is sharply differentiated from reason by most. Describing reason as an instinct was highly controversial in its day and it's hardly elaborated at all by Hume. Animals perform extraordinary feats by dint of instinct, so it is said, but that does not amount to reasoning — Wayfarer

instinct: A natural or inherent impulse or behavior.

I think that, in a nutshell, what you say here conveys the pivotal issue. And I believe that it is hardly elaborated at all by Hume because it was - as it remains - highly controversial that humans are instinct driven, as is all other life, albeit to far lesser extents then lifeforms of lesser intelligence. The concept of religious heresy was, after all, not foreign in Hume's time, and the concept of biological evolution hadn't even entered the picture.

I'm however far more sympathetic to the idea. Yes, in part from a Darwinian point of view. Far more pertinently though, from a metaphysical one. The principles of thought are not of themselves thoughts nor conscious reasoning nor concepts (general ideas) we produce, hence bring about, by abstraction. We neither think, nor reason, nor abstract the principles of thought into being. Yet they facilitate all the thinking, reasoning, and abstracting we do, including that via which we discern them to be. And these same principles of thought are "natural or inherent impulses or behaviors" in us - which defines instincts.

And neither are instincts in the form of principles of thought thus conceived (for instance, but as can also be said of the instinct to discern causation) given in experience, while yet being necessary for experience.

This in my humble mini-defense of Hume. But I get how controversial it must be, even today.

(As to the maybe Peircean-like metaphysics that I'm contemplating, it's far more complex and probably idiosyncratic, so I won't get into it. But, in synopsis, the basic laws of thought are fully determinate aspects of the cosmos and thus necessarily pivotal to any lifeform's experience.)

But without those basic principles already in the mind, it would not be possible to make any inferences. — Wayfarer

Exactly, and Hume classifies these as instincts (as "instinct" was understood back in his times rather than our own, in our times being interpreted as genetically inherited predispositions of behavior ... different issues, though). Instincts being roughly interpreted as "basic principles already in the mind" not acquired via experience.

Nevertheless, we gain insight into these same basic principles, or at the very least justify their so being, via experience-filled reasoning - such as Kant is doing in the quote you reference. And such as Hume likewise did with the principle of association regarding causes and effects:

[...]

Since we’re determined—caused—to make causal inferences, then if they aren’t “determin’d by reason”, there must be “some principle of equal weight and authority” that leads us to make them. Hume maintains that this principle is custom or habit:

[...]

Custom and habit are general names for the principles of association.

Hume describes their operation as a causal process: custom or habit is the cause of the particular propensity you form after your repeated experiences of the constant conjunction of smoke and fire.

[...]

— https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume/#CauInfConPha — javra

Instead of reading "habit" as that which is formed a posteriori, in the context of Hume's arguments regarding causation read it as that which is a priori to all experiences of cause and effect. As it being an/the a priori instinct which causes - or leads us to make - our causal inferences.

Having read Hume - albeit some time back - this so far is the only sensible way I can interpret what Hume said given his arguments. And to me it seems well enough supported by the SEP article just mentioned. Hence my intuition that Kant misinterprets Hume on this important point. To me, one says "instinct" the other "category of understanding" and both refer to the same basic thing: basic principles already in the mind prior to experience.

If I'm wrong, I haven't yet seen anything to evidence that I am.

You can "be" whatever you want to "be" on an anonymous forum. Even anxiety-free. :smile: — ZzzoneiroCosm

And I say: Not if one hangs around the forum for a long-enough period of time. :razz:

(The forum's mostly about philosophical bickering, where we think we're right but where each believes some other shmuck is wrong. Smug oversimplification, granted. And in no way demeaning the forum's good.)

Interested to look at your quotes when I can. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Well, found them on goodreads; no reference to where they belong in the book was given. Like them all the same, though.

Anxiety only befalls the weak and the unworthy. — baker

:rofl: Oh, man, that gave me a good laugh. As a member of this category of weak and unworthy humans, can anyone provide me one example of someone who has not experienced anxiety at any point in their life?

It’s like claiming to learn in manners perpetually devoid of questioning, and hence in manners devoid of any uncertainty. Yea, I know, uncertainty being for unworthy weaklings as well - or so some will say - rather than being the driving force behind new insights, be these in the form of knowledge or wisdom. This latter take as the book "Meaning of Anxiety" might want us to believe.

… Like anxiety over global warming pertaining to those weak and unworthy that might lead to insights in how to satisfactorily resolve the matter sooner rather than later, this verses the robust confidence of those strong and worthy who don’t give a damn regardless of the existential risks right in front of their nose.

Two related quotes from the book I found online:

“Anxiety has a purpose. Originally the purpose was to protect the existence of the caveman from wild beasts and savage neighbors. Nowadays the occasions for anxiety are very different - we are afraid of losing out in the competition, feeling unwanted, isolated, and ostracized. But the purpose of anxiety is still to protect us from dangers that threaten the same things: our existence or values that we identify with our existence. This normal anxiety of life cannot be avoided except at the price of apathy or the numbing of one's sensibilities and imagination.”

and

“But attempts to evade anxiety are not only doomed to failure. In running from anxiety you lose your most precious opportunities for the emergence of yourself, and for your education as a human being.”

To whoever cares to read, some thoughts while passing through:

The meme that “life begins with conception” stands contra the most rudimentary of human reasoning. Zygotes are alive, yes, and so are all gametes. Pollen is alive, never mind eggs and sperm - not dead, nor inanimate, but living. Rebuttal: “But a human zygote is a human being because it holds the potential to so become a human being.” Leaving the logic of this aside for now, so too do human eggs and sperm “hold the potential to become human beings”. Most if not all contraception is enacted with the intention of killing gametes, hence, yes, life, which furthermore holds the very potential to “become a human being”. Hence why some hold contraception to be murder - this in the very human history we are now reenacting.

And the “potential to so become” argument is blatantly irrational. That which has the potential to so become X is not yet X. Moreover, we can clone humans from individual human cells' genome, granting the cells we defecate along all other excrements the “potential to become a human being”. Should those who go to the restroom be considered killers of human life?

“But a zygote left to its own devices …” … will often enough result in miscarriage anyway, likely much higher than the 10-20 percent reported (which most always do not account for miscarriages in the very early stages of the fetus).

The pivotal question to this issue remains: at which point does a bundle of human cells actually become a human being?

The intentional killing of a zygote or of a fetus is not the intentional killing of a human being unless one considers these to in fact be human beings. And then on what grounds other than that of “potential”, which, again, is not a rationally cogent argument.

-----

Aside from which, too many of the pro-lifers that talk of zygotes as being human beings pretty much shit on all unwanted human life once birthed: e.g., the intentional killing of a zygote verses the potentiality of 80-years or longer of misery and suffering of an unwanted member of society that society at large does not want to help out. You see plenty of these lives homeless on the streets most everywhere.

Finding the latter more moral than the former? I’d really like to understand why. Empathetic - hence non-sociopathic - humans that we all are.

-----

My two cents, at least. This, so as to express my own stance: that of pro-life-quality, which requires choice in regards to abortion so as the maximize the wanted human beings in this world.

I think Hume wants it understood that the generalized relation between cause and effect is always given by experience. The principle grounding the relation is constant conjunction, and constant conjunction is itself merely an instinctive condition of human nature. If so, then the particular concrete examples merely represent the general principle.

Kant denies that principles can be given from experience, but must be derived from reason and then applied to experience. — Mww

My readings of Hume have been I think more charitable - tending to view the Kantian interpretation of Hume as a misinterpretation of what Hume argued for. So, as I find Hume saying, the principle of constant conjunction is epistemically, not ontically, given by our experience only in the same sense that the basic principles of thought are given to us by experience: we infer them based on what we epistemically realize ourselves able to do and incapable of doing. Just as we learn of our existential limitations, or boundaries, of thought by our experiences wherein we take note of our thinking, so too we learn of our instinctive (unproduced and unchangeable) impetus to associate causes and effects via experiencing our comportments. Again, this innate, active principle of association is not, and cannot, be gained from experience - contra what Kant finds Hume to say. And the particular instantiations of this association between causes and effects are only facilitated, else enabled, by - rather than representations of - the very principle of association in question, which of itself holds no particular content. This just as all the particular instantiations of our thinking in the manners we do are only facilitated/enabled by - but not re-presentations of - our basic principles of thought, which again of themselves hold no specific content. And, in both cases, we infer, hence reason, from our experiences to general principles that facilitate our experiences.

Also related: I fail to understand how conscious reasoning devoid of any content can manifest, nor of how this content can obtain if not from either present or former experience in the broadest sense - to include not only perceptions of the external world but our experience of things such as thoughts, emotions, wants, states of being, and so forth.

Well, I know I’m against to populist flow of things with my belief that Kant misinterpreted Hume - in spite of my respect for Kant. And, though I don’t much want to bicker on the subject - unless there’s reason to - I’m so far not convinced to the contrary. Basically, just wanted to express this for what its worth.

But they're not strictly separate faculties, are they? — Wayfarer

:smile: Hard for me to conceive of any faculty of mind that isn’t in some way interconnected with some other. To take this into the left field a bit, as regards perception and abstraction/generalization, an ameba – being unicellular, having no nervous system to speak of – is known to be able to discern what is relative to it predator from prey. This ability to distinguish categories/generalities/types based on the functionality of that perceptually apprehended is - or at least so I argue - an aptitude of abstraction, however minuscule. I also cannot find how any lifeform can perceive anything in the complete absence of any and all abstraction regarding that apprehended. On the other hand, reasoning is wanting a universally acknowledged definition. But it's commonly understood to be required for forethought. The same lowly ameba, by sheer fact of finding optimal means to evade predators and consume evading prey, exhibits - again, minuscule but present - forethought. Hence some measure of reasoning.

Or so my thoughts go: reasoning and abstraction are very prevalent in life and can be very roughly measured in amplitude on a cline.

So, again, for me existential understanding is built in part upon abstraction and reasoning, yes, and so they are all interconnected - but it yet is miles apart from the mere presence of these latter faculties as a faculty of mind.

Ah. Thanks for that. Much to agree with.

Where I’m still iffy:

Having read Hume a long time ago, but as also affirmed in the SEP quote: Hume terms the principle which determines - hence, causes - us to make causal inference “custom”, or “habit”. This principle is not something that Hume, tmk, ever argues to be of itself acquired via experience but, instead, to be a requisite and innate aspect of our psyche - i.e., to be instinct - which, as an innate driving principle, facilitates our acquired experiential and inductive knowledge of connections between specific effects and causes.

Making use of what you've provided, first looking at this:

but Kant criticized him for leaving it at that, which is found in E.C.H.U. 1.5.1.36.....

“....By employing that word**, we pretend not to have given the ultimate reason of such a propensity****. We only point out a principle of human nature, which is universally acknowledged, and which is well known by its effects....”
**custom/habit
***constant conjunction

.....which he made worse by insisting....

“....All these operations are a species of natural instincts, which no reasoning or process of the thought and understanding is able either to produce or to prevent....” — Mww

and then this:

This is what woke Kant up: there’s got to be a way to show the relationship between cause and effect doesn’t have to come from experience, — Mww

To Hume natural instincts, such as that of making causal inferences, are by default not acquired via experience (nor can they be in any way prevented nor produced, but are an innate aspect of our psyche - whatever explanation for their so being there might be). Otherwise stated, the generalized relation between cause and effect is instinctive in us, and hence not acquired via experience; only the particular concrete relations between cause and effect are acquired via experience. And this to me stands in contradiction to what Kant suggests Hume to have affirmed in relation to the drive to make causal inferences.

That's the part that gets me.

Thanks again for the input.

:up:

Then you must have read this by now, although it’s in Sec II not III.

“.....David Hume perceived that, to render this possible, it was necessary that the conceptions should have an à priori origin. But as he could not explain how it was possible that conceptions which are not connected with each other in the understanding must nevertheless be thought as necessarily connected in the object—and it never occurred to him that the understanding itself might, perhaps, by means of these conceptions, be the author of the experience in which its objects were presented to it—he was forced to drive these conceptions from experience, that is, from a subjective necessity arising from repeated association of experiences erroneously considered to be objective—in one word, from habit....”

Have fun!! — Mww

I understand that's what Kant says. I'm probably missing something. How do you make sense of it in relation to this:

5.2 Causal Inference: Constructive Phase

Hume calls his constructive account of causal inference a “sceptical solution” to the “sceptical doubts” he raised in the critical phase of his argument.

Since we’re determined—caused—to make causal inferences, then if they aren’t “determin’d by reason”, there must be “some principle of equal weight and authority” that leads us to make them. Hume maintains that this principle is custom or habit:

whenever the repetition of any particular act or operation produces a propensity to renew the same act or operation … we always say, that this propensity is the effect of Custom. (EHU 5.1.5/43)

It is therefore custom, not reason, which “determines the mind … to suppose the future conformable to the past” (Abstract 16). But even though we have located the principle, it is important to see that this isn’t a new principle by which our minds operate. Custom and habit are general names for the principles of association.

Hume describes their operation as a causal process: custom or habit is the cause of the particular propensity you form after your repeated experiences of the constant conjunction of smoke and fire. Causation is the operative associative principle here, since it is the only one of those principles that can take us beyond our senses and memories.

Hume concludes that custom alone “makes us expect for the future, a similar train of events with those which have appeared in the past” (EHU 5.1.6/44). Custom thus turns out to be the source of the Uniformity Principle—the belief that the future will be like the past. — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume/#CauInfConPha

and

Ortega is just defending the elites. — javi2541997

This is the context in which I typically hear the book invoked. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Haven’t read Ortega, but the issue that I find is this: Is “immoralism” to be displaced by the whims of some authority that stands removed from the masses it commands - i.e. by autocratic authoritarianism, even if only oligarchic - or, else, by the principles which support earnest systems of democracy … principles such as what nowadays have often become deemed the bullshit of “liberty, equality, fraternity” and the like?

The fist defends rulership by some elite, the second rulership by the masses people themselves. And the two systems of rulership cannot coexist in any harmonious manner.

This is a hunch on my part, but rather than finding a sharp demarcation between humans and lesser animals in terms of reasoning and abstraction - both of which research evidences to be found on a cline - might not this sharp demarcation be more properly stipulated to be that of a consciously held existential understanding (here to include issues of ethics, if not meta-ethics, and the like)? We humans have semblances of it; lesser animals have none.

Since no one has yet commented on your post ...

It seems to me that the move Kant makes is correct, in essence. Nevertheless, causality is a bit harder that merely arguing that it must be an a-priori aspect of our cognition. It undoubtably is, but there is no guarantee that these apply in "ordinary experience", as a necessity, there are exceptions and illusions.

But, even granting that most of the time, we are roughly correct in our causal inferences in everyday life, the problem of causality in the objects outside ourselves remains entirely untouched. — Manuel

As is also the case for causality within us. Whether we as conscious agents actually cause anything (by which agency is here defined) - rather than our sensations of so doing being an illusion - is tmk yet an open question in philosophy.

And the concept is rather obscure, in as much as we can only perceive that it is a constant conjunction, though there has to be more than this to causality.

Of course, Kant would say, plausibly, that of these things in themselves we know nothing. Maybe we don't. But Hume's statement of the problem remains rather fierce, as I see it. — Manuel

I'm in agreement. Though to me Hume's statement on the matter is not the presentation of a "problem" so much as a lucid observation of the way things inherently are.

The lurking problem is, that we can't seem to able to concieve of anything like purpose or intention, without understanding it as conscious purpose or intention - just the kinds of purposes and intentions which we, as conscious agents, are able to entertain. — Wayfarer

Without denying the epistemic importance of egos in all of this, nations and cultures can be said to have differing agencies of behavior and different intelligences of comportment. For instance, “does a nation or culture that self-annihilates itself via shortsightedness exhibit intelligence?” makes sense as a question. Nonetheless, no nation or culture is endowed with a conscious agency - and no nation or culture of itself intends. Very roughly expressing at least my own take of it, in the Peircean view, the physical world as effete mind is in some ways akin to the global, or cosmic, manifest culture of all coexistent active minds. I grant that it’s a bit more than this, but still: its intelligence in terms of logos, reason, can well be conceived as present in manners devoid of a governing conscious agency. In parallel, the notion of dharma and karma also are conceived to occur universally - in a manner of speaking, with intelligence - in manners devoid of any cosmically governing ego. So I’m approaching the matter from the viewpoint that the universe - replete with its causal reasoning, i.e. logos - itself does not intend (intentions being something that individual minds/egos do), though the universe does hold global teloi as part of its logos, making it operate, in part, teleologically. Which I find in keeping with both quotes you mention.

As before, I’m shying away form the term “purpose” in all this due to its ambiguities.

The article you link to addresses the teleology of individual life-forms – rather than that of any global telos. Other than that, interesting.

Also, many animals are known to recognize types and categories, which are conceptual/abstract rather than concrete particulars. As one easy to digest mention: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/many-animals-can-think-abstractly/

It may be metaphorically said that Natural Selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, the slightest variations; rejecting those that are bad, and adding up all that are good; silently and insensibly working whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being. — Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species — Wayfarer

The passage you quoted from Darwin is metaphorical, as he acknowledges. and again it's not clear what you intended it to address. — Janus

While I don't want to derail the thread from the OP more it already has been, for the sake of historical accuracy, Darwin himself was a teleologist. (Disclaimer: I've only skimmed through parts of the linked-to article, but it serves its purpose of providing strong evidence for the claim.)

The metaphorical aspects of Darwin's given quote regards the very conscious intentionality that we've been previously addressing - but not the issue of goal-directedness. Better expressed, as the terms have been so far used by us, Darwin viewed the very process of Natural Selection as telos-guided yet devoid of that notion of purpose which is contingent on a conscious agency (i.e., that of an omnipotent God).

:grin: :up:

OK, I think I see where you are coming from now, and I agree that telos, considered as simply denoting the seemingly invariant tendencies of things to go certain ways (what we call "laws") is everywhere to be seen in nature as we perceive it.

You still refer to these as "aims", though and that is pushing the idea further than I would. It seems the actual concrete tendencies of things do begin to look like aims when we generalize and abstract them as laws. It is easy in thought to reify the notion of a law into something which stands over and above the actual things, the phenomena and processes of nature, directing them, so to speak. — Janus

I see that. Thanks. Something to consider. One however cannot reduce all teloi to laws since laws, at least as traditionally interpreted, are invariant - this contrasted, for instance, with the Peircean notion of (for me, personally, at least some) natural laws as ever-evolving global habits. Natural laws are also understood to be global. A consciously held goal (which one has chosen among other alternative goals at some point in the past and now pursues) will itself be a telos, but it is neither global nor invariant. But yes, I agree, "aims" is too cognitive for all instantiations of teloi if one is to go about thing as impartially as possible.

I think we are arguing for and/ or from and/ or about different conceptions of 'purpose'. I don't think of the general ways things tend to go as being purposes; I reserve the concept for those things that are either consciously planned. or at least sub-consciously driven by felt needs or wants. — Janus

Right, I can see that when it comes to purpose. As I initially said, to me it's a fairly fuzzy term when it comes to precise meaning. It's why I initially used the term teleology rather than purpose in my reply to Wayfarer. And why I tried to elaborate on purpose being a type (maybe better expressed, a subset) of teleology - maybe all too poorly - in my reply to you.

Teleology is the study of final causes, or teloi, which bring about motion by drawing things toward themselves. You were addressing that that all life strives to survive. Here granting this, and though I know this the issue of teloi is contentious in metaphysical discussions, this to me indicates that one of the teloi of life is the sustaining of life. Such that this non-conscious aim, which can become conscious in some such as us humans, limits the activities of all life such that these activities remain aligned to optimally approaching and/or actualizing this aim ... which, after all, is an ideal when considered in absolute, or complete, or perfect form.

Not really odd when you think about it. Many people think that true pleasure and happiness comes from moderation (rather than indulgence) and cutting out that which is unnecessary - hence the appeal of minimalism in this vulgar consumerist era. — Tom Storm

:up: All things in moderation is, I think, a good motto. My thoughts were framed in terms of what Epicureanism has come to commonly signify today. Thought the same distortions of belief can be said of Cynicism, to not also get into Ancient Skepticism. :razz:

Funny in its oddness but true: Epicurus’ hedonism was pretty much about aiming to be an ascetic to obtain the greatest state of pleasure that could be obtained. From the last paragraph of this section at IEP:

An example of a natural but non-necessary desire is the desire for luxury food. Although food is needed for survival, one does not need a particular type of food to survive. Thus, despite his hedonism, Epicurus advocates a surprisingly ascetic way of life. — https://iep.utm.edu/epicur/#SH5a

Emphasis mine. No indulgences in grandiose feasts or Roman orgies, or the like. Go figure.

And, from The University of Chicago Press, the more traditional rendition of Epicurus’ thoughts on the issue of sex (although, in fairness, the article argues that it is improperly translated): “They say that sex is never beneficial, and you are very lucky (or, “it is surprising”, or “it is marvelous”) if it does not do harm as well.”

From which you get this:

[...] when asked "why it was that pupils from all the other schools went over to Epicurus, but converts were never made from the Epicureans?" [the Academic Skeptic, Arcesilaus] responded: "Because men may become eunuchs, but a eunuch never becomes a man." — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicureanism#Criticism

… and this, I think, only gets the ball rolling.

At any rate, history has a weird way of sometimes distorting people’s views.

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But to remain on topic, as to the issue of letting go of hedonism:

Pleasure is obtained from that which pleases one. It is, tmk, impossible to do without. If it pleases one to do away with being pleased, there is yet the pleasure that awaits when this goal is reached, as well as the pleasure held in the active pursuit of this goal … if only one could figure out how to obtain it. But I don't see how one can.

If you mean biological evolution as a scientifiç principle, then indeed it is not sentient nor does it consciously plan. In it's ultimate form, based on the, get this, central dogma of molecular biology (!), teleos is incorporated into selfish(!) genes, a most extraordinary theory of life and being. — Hillary

Yes, indeed. For Dawkins, the implied final cause is immortality, of genes that is. Which in turn makes them selfish.

Dawkins’ Selfish Gene has become very well known and accommodated within fields of neo-Darwinism. (Having read Darwin’s works and his autobiography, I’m confident he would have objected to Dawkins’ theory, whose book I’ve also read.) There however are other, granted so far more fringe, interpretations from scientists in the field. Here is the blurb from a book called "The Genial Gene: Deconstructing Darwinian Selfishness" published in 2009. The book is loaded with data to back up the claims.

Are selfishness and individuality—rather than kindness and cooperation—basic to biological nature? Does a "selfish gene" create universal sexual conflict? In The Genial Gene, Joan Roughgarden forcefully rejects these and other ideas that have come to dominate the study of animal evolution. Building on her brilliant and innovative book Evolution's Rainbow, in which she challenged accepted wisdom about gender identity and sexual orientation, Roughgarden upends the notion of the selfish gene and the theory of sexual selection and develops a compelling and controversial alternative theory called social selection. This scientifically rigorous, model-based challenge to an important tenet of neo-Darwinian theory emphasizes cooperation, elucidates the factors that contribute to evolutionary success in a gene pool or animal social system, and vigorously demonstrates that to identify Darwinism with selfishness and individuality misrepresents the facts of life as we now know them.

Considering the actual evolution, sentient beings are actually on the scene, and these beings have actual plans. — Hillary

Here is what I think is a related take:

Other philosophers of biology argue instead that biological teleology is irreducible, and cannot be removed by any simple process of rewording. Francisco Ayala specified three separate situations in which teleological explanations are appropriate. First, if the agent consciously anticipates the goal of their own action; for example the behavior of picking up a pen can be explained by reference to the agent's desire to write. Ayala extends this type of teleological explanation to non-human animals by noting that A deer running away from a mountain lion. . . has at least the appearance of purposeful behavior."[49] Second, teleological explanations are useful for systems that have a mechanism for self-regulation despite fluctuations in environment; for example, the self-regulation of body temperature in animals. Finally, they are appropriate "in reference to structures anatomically and physiologically designed to perform a certain function. "[49] — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleology_in_biology#Irreducible_teleology

And yes, sexual selection in animals, as one example, is greatly based on choice regarding which mate(s) to copulate with.

If these are in service of some higher ideal as dogmatized in evolution theory, is highly questionable, and the new dogma is probably an attempt by lack of better or inability to understand truly. — Hillary

Agreed.

Not easy issues to explain in soundbite form, but I'll give it a go.

Firstly I can't see how the notion of purpose has any purchase without the accompanying idea of conscious planning, and I can't see how we can imagine conscious planning occurring in the absence of an at least sentient, if not sapient, agent. — Janus

As one example: Do you need to consciously plan on choosing that alternative which you deem optimally beneficial, hence good, relative to your principle, momentary conscious interests in order to so choose? Both purported saints and the vilest of villains will do this at all times regardless of their conscious planning. As will toddlers. I'll opine that, to the extent that lesser animals do in fact choose, the same will apply to lesser animals. Sentience cannot help but choose that which it deems to be optimally beneficial for itself, hence that which it momentarily feels to be optimally good for itself. This affirmation could be questioned (and can easily become complicated by issues such as that of short v. long term benefits), but supposing it's not here questioned: here, all our choices are partly manifested via the pull of the Good as a telos we all invariantly pursue at all times for ourselves - and this without any conscious planning to so pursue. It's instead a predetermined facet of our being we cannot escape: for in deeming it (consciously or unconsciously) good to escape it, we are nevertheless bound by it. Here, then, is telos (final cause) doing its work in the absence of conscious planning. This of course gets complicated, in part, by conscious planning ... but all such is yet existentially bound to the same telos of doing what is deemed best for you regardless of what is concretely planned.

But I grant that - even despite it's many potential points of contention - this example yet requires sentience which does the choosing.

There's also the example of biological evolution as having a telos. Momentarily suppose this to be true. This telos pulls towards itself. It does not push things this way and that - for such pushing would not be teleological. Were there to be a sentient agent (omni-God) in charge of evolution, it would push things this way and that; it would thus not be the telos addressed that teleologically moves evolution along toward itself as end... for ease of argumentation (nonsensical as this may technically be to those with biological knowledge), say for example toward a state of perfect fitness as end. Biological evolution is not sentient and has no conscious plans; in this example, it yet has a telos, hence purpose, that is independent of sentience and its conscious planning.

That offered, can you form an argument for the logical necessity of all final causes being themselves driven by, or else dependent on, sentient agency?

As to the vague idea of a teleology that is neither that of an individual mind or a "cosmic' mind; I fail to see how it could have any explanatory power when it comes to human values, which I think are readily explained as being formed on account of the significance that things and entities of the world commonly have for us as embodied beings. — Janus

Human values include ethics, metaethics, and aesthetics - none of which are to my knowledge satisfactorily explained in such simplistic terms. As to explaining teleology's explanatory power when addressing such values, they all address wants, which can be accounted for teleologically: see, for one example, the aforementioned drive to optimally approach that which is good for oneself.

To be clear, I argued for a teleology that neither pivots on individual minds nor on an omni-God of any sort. This, however, does not imply that such teleology does not apply to all coexistent minds, both sapient and non-sapient ... as I reckon it must if it is to hold. And again, I'm a lot closer to a Peircean objective idealism than I am to any materialism in my overall metaphysics.

As a reminder, I'm not here arguing about proofs, but only about the quite valid possibility that cosmic teleology can operate in the absence of a monotheistic deity. You've overlooked issues regarding the contradictions that unfold when considering such monotheistic deity the arbiter of purpose/telos.

You've also not offered a defense of nihilism.

However, as you pointed out, there's going to be inconsistency issues. Axioms will clash. I'm not proficient enough in logic to predict how and where exactly contradictions will appear. Do you have any ideas? — Agent Smith

Hmm. I ascribe to the law/principle of noncontradiction, which expresses that contradictory propositions cannot both be true at the same time and in the same respect. For instance, the position of dialetheism (the view that true contradictions occur) cannot be both a true claim and a false claim at the same time and in the same respect. As to justifications for my so ascribing, I'm among those who find true contradictions utterly nonsensical and thereby absurd. Have to make due with the reasoning I have.

Or did you have in mind forethought of future occurrences as regards the unfolding of contradictions? In which case, my knowledge is as falliable as anyone else's.

well said — Wayfarer

Thanks for that. Though I'm positive there's plenty about here that disagree.

Just saw the Western Buddhist Review quote. To confess, haven't yet read Nagel's Mind and Cosmos, though I've been itching to. This is a good reminder that I should sooner rather than later. Nice quote to read, btw.

Yea, I maybe unthinkingly opened up this can of worms ... I'll work with it for the time being.

If nihilism is the idea that there is no purpose behind the manifestations of the cosmos, and teleologism is the idea that there is a cosmic purpose;and given that the very meaning of 'purpose' is something like " the aims or wishes of a conscious agent", how are we to avoid anthropomorphizing the notion of cosmic teleology? — Janus

Purpose is nowadays a fairly fuzzy term. In terms of teleology, though, it is the causal motions toward an end such that the given end propels the movements toward it. Causal agents have goals as various ends they pursue, yes. This signifies teleology/purpose for us, conscious agents. The envisioning of a cosmic teleology/purpose does not however necessitate a cosmic psyche that governs all via its own personal goals ... this, hence, toward who knows what ends that gives this deity purpose (a bit of a logical contradiction to me in relation to cosmic purpose, akin to the contradiction regarding laws of thought I previously mentioned, but this aside).

As to the alternative I at least have in mind, it's a mouthful, but here goes: Cosmic purpose/teleology could be self-consistently upheld - though not in any materialist conceptualization - in what has been termed "the One" or "the Good" as an ultimate state of reality, which is not itself a mind that thinks, wants, perceives, and judges but a non-dual (hence, lacking any dichotomy between self and otherness; hence, perfectly selfless; hence, in an important sense, a perfectly objective and non-quantitative) state of awareness (think of the eastern notion of Nirvana for one possible example: in short, not a mind), one which serves as an Aristotelian final cause as the unmoved mover of all that exists in states of duality/quantity (the "unmoved mover" read as: not a mind that has goals and hence wants, hence ends it itself pursues, but a state of pure and selfless awareness devoid of all otherness and wants ... on which all else is in either direct or indirect manners dependent but which is itself fully unconditioned, instead just being) ... which individual, naturally dualistic minds such as our own can either choose to approach (via earnest love of truth, or goodness, or impartiality, etc.) or to further ourselves from (via attempts at benefiting by means of deception, falsehoods, egotism, etc.).

If one happens to be theistic, the same can then be well argued of incorporeal gods (necessarily plural and non-monotheistic) and angels ... or whatever other faith one happens to theistically uphold: they too can either approach or distance themselves and their contexts from the ideal of the Good. All this without there being such a thing as a monotheistic deity, which would necessarily have will and hence wants, i.e. would necessarily be wanting by sheer fact of willing. Or, one can uphold the same state of "the Good" in a perfectly atheistic manner.

Yes, I get that its a strange conception to most nowadays. But this general notion of "the One" is nothing novel. Nor is the reinterpretation/misinterpretation of "the One" as a human-like psyche that determines and controls everything via its human-like will something novel. I argue that the latter postulation is and can only be bogus. The former, though contradicted by the position of materialism, is however not itself logically inconsistent.

This notion of "the One" then being that which defines what is correct, right, and good in existential, non-biased manners. Signifying an overarching moral objectivity that can yet manifest in context-relative manners. One that is un-created and unconditioned to which we are all willingly or unwillingly subjects of.

Yes, lots of justification would be required to make this position even close to bulletproof - and I think we both know a forum isn't amenable to such.

But as a shorter answer to the same question you ask: by not being egotistic about what is and can be, while yet remaining rational about what is and can be possible.

Surely the human imagination is bound to think god or gods in terms of the human writ large, or else the whole notion of cosmic purpose becomes too vague to be of any use, no? — Janus

I'll offer that "too vague to be of any use" would only apply to something that has little to no explanatory power. To the extent that value is important to us - inclusive of notions such as right/wrong and good/bad - teleology that is neither pivoted on the of ego-centrism of individual human minds nor on the imagined cosmic presence of such a human-like mind would be of considerable conceptual usefulness.

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While I'm defending my credence in a godless cosmic teleology, what defense for nihilism is there ... other than the knee-jerk rejection of some monotheistic deity that controls everything we think and do?

In fact I think it's one of the reasons for the wholesale rejection of religion and such ideas of 'universal reason' in the Enlightenment. — Wayfarer

Yea, and I have my hunches that it goes hand in hand with the turn to reject teleology as well. When teleology is only understood anthropomorphically, it then can only be interpreted as necessitating a globally governing psyche via which it manifests. So it gets rejected wholesale, baby out with the bathwater and all, and we end up with the meaninglessness of nihilism - which might ring just a bit truer if the very concept were to in fact be meaningless to people as well. :smile:

Ah, got it now.

Words can be powerful and maybe even change lives, though of course it takes more than them aline. — Hillary

Yea, there's the truism that the pen is mightier than than the sword to further back this up.

Funny thing though, when it comes to "logos" I always get frustrated that in English it translates into the plural of "logo". This missing the point of the term. As can also be said of the term interpreted in an Aristotelian sense. Still, I'm glad that the term "logos" in its Heraclitan and Stoic sense is of value to at least some of us. :up: