:up:

:rofl:

If you think living things are "conscious" or aware or have a "me" from which they reference the world, does this apply to all living things? — Benj96

No. All living things are responsive, some – relatively very few – are "conscious" (and only intermittenly).

Or where is the cutoff point?

For me "the cutoff of "consciousness" would be any organism with at least a central nervous system sufficiently complex enough to generate a phenomenal self model (the function of which being to facilitate adaptively coordinating the organism's behavior with both external and internal stimuli) by interacting with an environment. I suspect this subset of organisms includes many (though not all or most) mammals like primates, cetaceans, elephantidae ... canines, felines, ursidae (bears), etc; and even apparently cephalopods.

And why?

If "consciousness" suggests more than just some degree of (i) awareness or (ii) self-awareness but also (iii) self-awareness of others-as-self-aware-selves, then "conscious" organisms have to have biological capabilities – repertoire of behaviors – complex enough to recognize other "conscious" organisms as "conscious" organisms like themselves (with a self) rather by reflex-instinct being incapable of discerning other "conscious" organisms from living food or waste.

Finally, do we not ultimately base this in the 'how much of us do we see in them?'

A theory of mind. It's all we have to go on with each other since "consciousness" is (intractably?) subjective; otherwise we humans are all just zombies to one another.

Recent science indicates that trees and other vegetation in a forest communicate with one another through a complex network of fungi. You could consider that the brain of a communal entity. Whether individual plants have similar capacities is doubtful but not impossible — Vera Mont

:up: :up:

I very much doubt the elements of that definition come as a package. Rather, I think they're consequent and cumulative, as evolution built on simple capabilities and equipment to produce ever more complex ones. No solid lines in between; just continuity. — Vera Mont

:fire: ... like the simplistic fossil-picture of the reptilian, mammalian & sapient layers of the human brain.

[deleted]

I could have sworn you meant to subject these to critical revision. — Pantagruel

And again, your contention has nothing to do with what I've writeen. To wit:

philosophies (re: reflection) [ ... ] as critical/dialectical/existential self-correctives — 180 Proof

i.e. examining one's own 'unexamined life' (e.g. one's 'unexamined' assumptions, biases, desires, etc).

My guess (wishful thinking?): the oligarchic-corporatist "neoliberal" establishment (i.e. bankers-military industrialists) is hellbent on keeping a "neofascist" coup d'etat from killing the US hegemonic goose that's still laying the postwar-globalist golden eggs (e.g. currently $32 trillion petrodollar denominated US debt). Simultaneous proxy wars with Russia, Iran & China are the collective counterweight, perhaps for another decade, offsetting what looks like an inevitable American ethnopopulist implosion. No doubt a "superpower" nightmare the world can't wake up from soon enough. :death: :fire:

Hamas killed 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped c225. On the other hand, in retaliation, Israel has so far killed 23,000+ Palestinians and displaced c2 million more, and continues this onslaught in Gaza. That seems disproportionate to me. :mask:

You are criticizing these elements as faux-values — Pantagruel

I have not stated or implied this.

to be reflectively corrected.

The unexamined life is not worth living. ~Socrates

I stand with Collingwood's view, that everyone has a philosophy.

Your dogma, sir, flies in the face of the demonstrable fact (throughout history and across cultures) that very few people actually live examined lives (i.e. actually philosophize).

... (I hope I've got that right). They suffer from being misinterpreted by first-level dogmatic scientisms whose goal is to subjugate these disparate values, rather than understanding them.

Strawmaning non sequitur. We're obviously talking past one another .. :roll:

↪180 Proof You're a biased leftist. — Benkei

And there's no shame in my leftist game! :smirk:

You seem to be implying that mythologies, theologies, and ideologies do not have actual impacts on how people behave. — Pantagruel

Just the opposite as my previous references to 'evolutionary psychology', 'cognitive neuroscience' & 'critical/dialectical/existential self-correctives' of philosophy make clear (if you carefully read my post). I'm pointing out that any or all of these constituents of hand-me-down worldviews – mythology, theology, ideology – are the dominant drivers (i.e. culturally enabling constraints) of almost all human judgments and not, as you (or your reading of Collingwood) seem to imply, philosophical reflections (e.g.) on "absolute presuppositions".

From what I have seen (and experienced) the real challenge to reason is less an external than an internal one. We don't discover, embrace, and implement optimal truths because, at some perplexing level, we don't want to. — Pantagruel

Yes, as is confirmed in large part by many decades of cross-cultural reseaches in e.g. evolutionary psychology (we are primates, not "cartesian subjects") and cognitive neuroscience (with a large brain hardwired with cognitive biases constituting a dominant, atavistic survival engine rather than a "truth engine") with which Collingwood's 'cultural idealism' is substantively inconsistent. Thus, the overwhelming majority of human beings only have worldviews (re: fantasy (e.g. mythology, theology, ideology ...)) and not philosophies (re: reflection) which they struggle – as you say, Pantagruel, "the real challenge" – to attain as critical/dialectical/existential self-correctives.

A more than just "symbolic" appeal for justice by ICJ indicting the apartheid, settler-colonial State of Israel of deliberately committing Crimes Against Humanity ...

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2024/jan/11/south-africa-accuses-israel-of-genocide-gaza-the-hague-international-court-of-justice

As of today 11Jan24, it's estimated that over 23,000 dead Palestinian mostly women, children & elderly noncombatants in Gaza have been mass-murdered by the US-supported & armed IDF in disproportionate retaliation for Hamas' terrorist attack of 7Oct23 since then.

My guess (wishful thinking?): the oligarchic-corporatist "neoliberal" establishment (i.e. bankers-military industrialists) is hellbent on keeping a "neofascist" coup d'etat from killing the US hegemonic goose that's still laying the postwar-globalist golden eggs (e.g. currently $32 trillion petrodollar denominated US debt). Simultaneous proxy wars with Russia, Iran & China are the collective counterweight, perhaps for another decade, offsetting what looks like an inevitable American ethnopopulist implosion. No doubt a "superpower" nightmare the world can't wake up from soon enough. :death: :fire:

IMO, everyone "has" a worldview (i.e. an acculturated perspective consisting of (tribal) prejudices, customs & conventions aka "common sense", or what Socrates called "an unexamined life") but almost no one critically reflects on their/our "existential commitments" (i.e. engages in, or "enacts", philosophizing). R.G. Collingswood seems to exaggerate (re: "absolute presuppositions") in order to dramatize the importance of cultural ideology / symbology in a similiar vain as the neo-kantian Ernst Cassirer (or, to a much less coherent extent, the psycho-mystagogue C.G. Jung).

... philosophy (and the humanities in general) is broken down to the advocacy of the position of meaning or power ...
— Dermot Griffin

They are not separable. For most of us, both ancient and modern, the art of living is not something that can be practiced cloistered and removed from the demands and necessities of life. — Fooloso4

:100: :up:

Nonetheless, we are not "special" just animals with different defects and capabilities.

Yeah, and in the grand scheme of things those "issues" seem quite trivial.

Doing philosophy tends to be about making choices wisely, no? — Ennui Elucidator

I think philosophy consists in questioning choice and the choices one makes in order to understand how and why one chooses. One tends to learn more from making unwise choices, IME, than from "making choices wisely" – in other words, failure, like loss, is the teacher, and those who do not seek to learn such lessons are foolish (i.e. unwise, or do not 'love wisdom').

The search isn’t, but the results of the search are — mentos987

As I've pointed out already about so-called "results" ...

... "answers" are merely how philosophical questions generate new (more probative) philosophical questions. — 180 Proof

To my mind science's horizons are explicitly philosophical.

Which is why I wrote habitually unknown (i.e. unexamined).

My point is "the search for the unknown", as you said, is not "new" within or without philosophy.

Nothing "new" in that ... Socrates teaches "Know Thyself" since self – desires, biases, taken-for-granteds, assumptions, limitations – are habitually "unknown" (i.e. unexamined).

What "new thinking" are you talking about?

You're still only talking about philosophy without doing it – at most, IMO, that's gossip, not thinking.

Putting aside the quality of why one might prefer the Buddhist answer to the Western one, how do we evaluate, philosophically, the limits of our own intellectual garden and evaluate whether we wouldn't be better off being replanted somewhere else? — Ennui Elucidator

Well, "we evaluate our limits", so to speak, by actually doing philosophy instead of just talking about philosophy given that "answers" are merely how philosophical questions generate new (more probative) philosophical questions.

not a philosophical materialist/naturalist (he considered the two terms synonymous) but he was a methodological materialist/naturalist. He then went on to clearly explain the difference. So, are you declaring the same as him, in the quote above? — universeness

Yes, there's a difference ... (Btw, I adopt both positions as the latter, I think, is a function of, or entailed by, the former.)

You are a methodological naturalist and not a philosophical one as you refuse the burden of proof that is assigned if you state that there IS no existent outside of the natural universe. — universeness

As a philosophical naturalist, I speculate that

whatever else the whole of reality is, the aspect of reality that beings like ourselves are ontologically inseparable from, cognitively enabled-constrained by and that asymptotically encompasses us as the fundamental horizon of our possibie prospects I think of as nature (i.e. the universe).

Whatever is "outside of the natural universe" – supernaturalia – I further surmise natural beings like us are naturally incapable of both perceiving and cognizing (i.e. more than merely fantasizing about) and that, therefore, does not contribute anything explicable to our understanding of either nature itself or the flourishing of natural beings.

This is only a 'metaphysical supposition' – not an axiom, theorem or statement of fact – so no "burden of proof" required. :smirk:

Furthermore, consistent with this supposition, I'm also a methodological naturalist, by which I mean that

aspects of nature are assumed to be sufficient for various uses which facilitate in explaining other aspects of nature (and their dynamic relationships) to the exclusion of supernatural ideas, entities or considerations "outside of the natural universe".

Does that clarify my position?

... the assumption that we humans are special. We're not. We're instead just another kind of creature in a vast universe, not special but different from others in some respects. I don't see this recognition as a defense mechanism; it's merely what is the case. — Ciceronianus

:fire:

(à la atoms swirling in void ... modes of substance ... the mediocrity principle ... descent with modifications by natural selection ... entropy ...)

:sweat: Projection (i.e. confession) ... okay.

I want to learn!! — AmadeusD

So do I but I can't learn anything from time-wasting questions like yours which a close, or careful, reading of my posts make unnecessary. Lazy (shallow) responses get old quick – especially semantic muddles & word salads. Disagreements are great only when they are substantive and thereby facilitate reciprocal learning.

I've stated and clarified my position. My apologies if it's still not clear enough. You antinatalists seem to worry yourselves about what you can't change or control and thereby make yourselves more miserable than you need to be, then spread that self-inflicted, pointless misery in order to have company. You wish were never born, or 'that is a better to never have been born', and yet, like other antinatalists, you're very much still here – apparently, surprise surprise, you'd rather suffer than 'not to be' – oh, but that's self-refuting, ain't it? Well anyway, good luck with all that, Amadeus – tediously spoon-feeding ain't my jam, so I'm off to find a more substantive topic to chew on.

There's nothing to be done about current suffering. — AmadeusD

Nonsense.

i cannot see what the futility is in relation to? — AmadeusD

Choosing (as I inadvertantly have, btw) to defy one's biological drives, or genetic programming, in order not to breed ...

neither undoes – compensates for – the suffering of past sufferers nor, more significantly, reduces the suffering of current, or already-born, sufferers. — 180 Proof

In other wods, antinatalism as speculation or (voluntary) policy does not positively affect the quality of the lives of those who are suffering here and now.Thus, what's the point of opposing (human) reproduction (which can ony make most sufferers suffer even more (e.g. despair))? :mask:

Neither.

And like it or not, humans are as much a part of nature as any other animal. — Ciceronianus

:fire:

Influenced by Ravi Shankar's music and John Coltrane's album Impressions, particularly the piece "India"

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/870442

"Eight Miles High" turned on Western listeners along with the psychedelic-raga rock groove of the mid-1960s ...


"Eight Miles High" (3:34)
Fifth Dimension, 1966
writers G. Clark, R. McGuinn & D. Crosby
performer The Byrds

along with


"Tomorrow Never Knows" (2:58)
Revolver, 1966
writers Lennon-McCartney
performer The Beatles

followed-up and surpassed by


"Within You Without You" (5:05)
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, 1967
writer George Harrison
performer The Beatles (only G. Harrison & members of the Asian Music Circle)

[ ... ]

and eventually back to Miles ...

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/870507

"Shhh/Peaceful" (16:16)
In a Silent Way, 1969
composer Miles Davis
performers M. Davis, W. Shorter, J. McLaughlin, C. Corea. H. Hancock, J. Zawinul, D. Holland & T. Williams

my own conclusion that 'anitnatalism is futile'
— 180 Proof

Hey mate - would you mind bumper-stickering your basic reasoning here? — AmadeusD

Gladly. From a previous post ...

Antinatalism proposes 'preventing future suffering' that neither undoes – compensates for – the suffering of past sufferers nor, more significantly, reduces the suffering of current, or already-born, sufferers. — 180 Proof

So of what value is it?

"India" (14:10)
Impressions, 1963
composer John Coltrane, 1961
performers J. Coltrane, E. Dolphy, M. Tyner, J. Garrison, R. Workman & E. Jones

Ok, but how, why? — schopenhauer1

Besides our many previous exchanges on the topic in the last few years, schop, this post sums up my outlook:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/870315

Ligotti isn't really pessimistic enough (like e.g. P. Mainländer was) about his pessimism (which is kind of funny). Antinatalism proposes 'preventing future suffering' that neither undoes – compensates for – the suffering of past sufferers nor, more significantly, reduces the suffering of current, or already-born, sufferers. Useless, futile, absurd. :sweat:

I did not state or imply that I agree with Ligotti (or Zapffe), only that his book inspired – reinforced – my own conclusion that 'anitnatalism is futile' (which I only characterize as 'Zapffean').

We're alive. No amount of bewailing will change that; in fact, it will likely make us miserable (more miserable, if you prefer). Horror can be self-imposed, particularly that horror claimed to be cosmic. This is the ultimate example of disturbing yourself over matters beyond your control. — Ciceronianus

:clap: :100:

:up: :up:

Trying to slip spirituality or Zen into physics is like trying to win Chess by presenting a full house. — Banno

:smirk:

I suspect you just lost @Wayfarer @Gnomon et al.

The discussion is about physicalism, not physics. Physicalism is a philosophical doctrine. — Wayfarer

Told ya. :roll:

'Spirit' comes from the Latin word 'to breathe.' What we breathe is air, which is certainly matter, however thin.
— Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Should I be a smart-ass and disprove Carl Sagan? — Lionino

Yes please.