So holism i.e. antireductionism? :chin: — Agent Smith

Non sequitur.

We know that other people have inner experiences because we are able to talk about them in a comparative way. — Jack Cummins

Yet if another didn't have "inner experiences" but acted or spoke as if she did, you wouldn't – couldn't – know. It seems to me, Jack, that's not a reliable way of knowing.

... common aspects of such experience.

If by "inner experiences" what you mean is subjective, then I don't see what about them can possibly be called "common" (i.e. public, objective). :chin:

... the inner experiences of human beings — Jack Cummins

Tell me how do you know that any other human being than yourself has "inner experiences". None of the concepts in the OP make clear how you (or anyone) can know that.

If I rubbed two sticks together and consciousness emerged that would be an emergent property but it would also be magic and inexplicable like neurons firing creating consciousness. — Andrew4Handel

Equivocating non sequitur. :roll:

↪180 Proof You didn't cite any of the article.

The article offers a further reading reference, not an argument. I gave an example of how 'a whole greater than the sum of its parts' is the most ordinary, least mysterious thing (again, such as semantics of a sentence). It's a mystery to me, Andrew, how any numerate person would find emergence – nonlinear dynamic (i.e. chaotic) processes or systems – "mysterious".

The issue which I am trying to think about is how these concepts emerged and inform thinking, especially in relation to human consciousness. — Jack Cummins

So tell us what you think ...

Why do you belieeve "emergence is a mystery"? What's "mysterious" in the wiki article I linked above?

How can a group (the brain) consisting of stuff that can't understand (neurons) understand? — Agent Smith

Just as this sentence consisting of individually meaningless letters conveys meaning. :roll:

Emergence.

:smirk: :up:

If I have a favorite Beatles' song ...


"You Never Give Me Your Money" (4:03)
Abbey Road, 1969
writers Lennon-McCartney
The Beatles

wut ...

"into this world we're thrown" (Heidegger)

IMO, religion is for mystifying answers (i.e. placebos, snakeoil) whereas philosophy is for clarifying questions (i.e. medicine, surgery). Believers seek certainty; thinkers seek lucidity.

In other words, does future self exist from the beginning as a blueprint? — Jack Cummins

I don't think so. 'Future self' is 'present self's' handiwork (or wreckage). Insofar as there's a "blueprint", it's the 'past self' that both enables and constrains the 'present self' – that genetic-existential hand each one of us is dealth at birth when "into this world we're thrown".

:smirk: :up:

I'm uncomfortable with the word truth. — Tom Storm

Well, aren't facts (non-tautologous) truth-makers?

Btw, "transcendent" being indistinguishable from imaginary or fictional, I agree there are no such "truths" (moral or otherwise).

The graph represents the continuous propagation of discrete electrons (i.e. electricity). Ever look at a Seurat painting from a distance and then up close where the continuous lines & shapes are revealed to be an illusion of discrete (pixellated) dabs of color? After all, movies are sequences of discrete pictures (aka "motion pictures") and smooth beaches are made up of discrete grains of sand, no? I suspect the Law of Large Numbers (LLN) probably has something to do with 'the continuity illusion' (gestalt). :chin:

I don't have good reason to think there are moral truths or moral facts ... — Tom Storm

There's no good reason to think 'suffering' is not a moral fact?

There's no good reason to think 'a natural person knows what makes natural persons suffer and therefore that she can avoid making a natural person suffer or reduce her suffering' is not a moral truth?

Or a five-sided triangle. :smirk:

Well I was referring only to philosophical puzzles (per the OP). Otherwise, I suspect neither QFT or GR are "solved" (i.e. complete) theories which may be why QG is so intractably elusive. String theory, btw, makes untestable (due to astronomically high energies required) predictions. And, as @Gnomon says, "Enformationism" is not scientific but "Meta-physical", therefore its a pure speculation (e.g. transcendental illusion) that does not make any predictions, testable or not, in the first place ... like "First Cause", "Intelligent Design" or other woo-of-the-gaps.

What about "Ten Favorite TV Series" (maybe another thread)?

Your rambling has lost me again.

Cancel my subscription to the
Resurrection ...

... moksha :fire:

The question of a stable sense of 'self' for philosophy or living is an interesting dilemma. — Jack Cummins

Isn't each one of us simultaneously and fluidly a 'past-self, present-self, future-self' imbedded in, or enabled and constrained by, some 'past-population, present-population, future-population' – a heteronomous rather than autonomous agent (i.e. existent)? Consider this old thread ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/344126

Who am I and what happens to me (postmortem)? — Agent Smith

"Who" you are is constituted by your personal and social relationships. Self-identity (ego) supervenes on self-continuity (embodiment). And, like an orchestra after the final encore of an evening's symphony performance, your (everyone's) identity's constitution dissipates due to entropy into oblivion "postmortem". Anicca —> anatta, no?

:death: :flower:

To me, the absolutely crucial thing about Kant is his recognition that 'things conform to thoughts' rather than vice versa. I still think very few people really get the significance of that. If you understand it, it completely undercuts 'scientism'. — Wayfarer

Kant's idea is that phenomena – representations – "conform to" categories of reason (not "things" & "thoughts", respectively). If you understand it, it undercuts idealism.

https://epochemagazine.org/14/kant-and-the-idealists-reality-problem/

the subject/object dichotomy is the private/public dichotomy dismantled by the private language argument. — Banno

:fire:

I do not understand this argument. — KantDane21

It's not an "argument"; Schopenauer takes his extension of Kant's 'phenomena-noumena' distinction (à la Plato's 'appearances-forms' & Descartes' 'subject-object' / 'mind-body') as axiomatic and stipulates this 'idea' in the first sentence of the World As Will and Representation (vol. one): "The world is MY representation (Die Welt ist MEINE Vorstellung)."

... practical applications of philosophical concepts. — Gnomon

:rofl:

... you have just labelled YOUR 'god-model of Enformationism,' confirming that your proposals are modelled on god posits. God of the gaps imo. — universeness

:clap: :smirk:

Nothing in 'material' science, is accepted 'meekly,' or 'without question,' that only happens in theism or mysticism. We observe intent and purpose in lifeforms like humans. We observe 'natural processes' in spacetime that happened due to very large variety combining in every way possible, over a very large timescale.

:100:

If you 'don't believe' in democracy, then you must never be given any political power.

If by "democracy" you also mean economic democracy, then I agree. :up:

A puzzle solved fits some other puzzle.

"Fake it till ya make it." :pray:

Yes, that's Iris Murdoch's position too. She was quite political as well as sociable in her day.

Good taste! I agree :up:

She has been a significant influence for me, especially The Sovereignty of Good, as I've briefly discussed ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/705105

Btw, I don't care for her fiction but I believe I've read all of her (collected) philosophical papers & lectures a few times, though decades ago.

I suspect there are other less stringent – rigorous – forms of non-cognitivism for those inclined to it which probably accounts for the general neglect of Hare. I'm in the cognitivist camp (perhaps a vestige of Catholicism I couldn't exorcise back in the day) and only vaguely recall reading some of his work back in the '80s before moving on to other Oxbridge thinkers.

Maybe I've asked this of you before (if I have pardon me), but are you familiar with Iris Murdoch's The Sovereignty of Good and, if so, what do think of her moral-aesthetic reconception of 'Platonic Good'?

A far far less shallow read on the relation of speculative history to contemporary physics (c1993), IIRC, is The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question? by Leon M. Lederman. I've been meaning to read his follow-up Beyond the God Particle which he co-authored after the LHC confirmation of the Higgs Boson.

Have you read Capra's Tao of physics?
If you have, was it worth reading? — universeness

:lol: Too much woo for me.

There is NO more evidence for a non-intervening god than there is for an intervening one. — universeness

:up:

It's just as possible that an ASI might be very benevolent towards us. Much more so th[an] humans currently are towards other humans. — universeness

:fire:


"We shall take care of them."
"Eminently practical."
"And we shall serve them. And you will be happy. And controlled."

:nerd:

I think the wise passage you quote is better understood with more context ...

A truly good man is not aware of his goodness,
And is therefore good.
A foolish man tries to be good,
And is therefore not good.
A truly good man does nothing,
Yet leaves nothing undone.
A foolish man is always doing,
Yet much remains to be done.
When a truly kind man does something, he leaves nothing undone.
When a just man does something, he leaves a great deal to be done.
When a disciplinarian does something and no one responds,
He rolls up his sleeves in an attempt to enforce order.
Therefore when Tao is lost, there is goodness.
When goodness is lost, there is kindness.
When kindness is lost, there is justice.
When justice is lost, there ritual.
Now ritual is the husk of faith and loyalty, the beginning of confusion.
Knowledge of the future is only a flowery trapping of Tao.
It is the beginning of folly.
Therefore the truly great man dwells on what is real and not what is on the surface,
On the fruit and not the flower.
Therefore accept the one and reject the other. — Daodejing, Chapter 38, translated by Gia-fu Feng and Jane English, 1989

In ethics, I think 'X is less harmful than Y' (or 'X is least harmful of all') is much less vague or arbitrary, therefore more reliably actionable, than "X is good". It's pragmatic to address disvalue by preventing or reducing disvalue (e.g. harm to h. sapiens); however, we can only aspire to value because value tautologically transcends (in "platonic heaven") our condition such that "moral value" judgments / actions are arbitrary in practice (à la nihilism). Moore seems half-right but wholly for the wrong reasons. Rather than "good", less bad – minimize ill-being (re: disvalues) for its own sake (like medicine or ecology) rather than tilting at the windmill of "well-being" (re: value, ideal). Epicureans / Stoics rather than Bentham-Mill / Kant.

So how do you mean "modern" whereby Hobbes and Spinoza, Descartes and Leibniz are not modern philosophers?

:up:

:up:

IIRC, Zoroastrianism is the belief that two gods are eternally at war with one another (light vs darkness).

NB: "Pandeism" is my jam. :smirk:

Nor is Spinoza modern — schopenhauer1

Are Descartes, Hobbes & Leibniz modern?

Wait a minute. When did "speculation about the nature of existence and metaphysics" have great appeal? — BC

:fire:

:100:

Why are we able to understand reality at all? — Andrew4Handel

We are real beings inseparable from reality – the same reason fish are able to understand the sea.