"I think I am, I think I am, I think I am..." - The Little Descartes That Could

"Significance" in this sense means "importance", not like semiotics.

Will write more about abiogenesis later.

"Meaning" in this sense means "significance", and that's the missing picture in your view of evolution. Evolution does not proceed by a completely random walk through possible configurations of molecules, but by randomness filtered through its significance for survival and reproduction: if a random change makes a positive difference in that change being propagated, then in the future you'll find more of it, and if it makes a negative difference, you'll find less of it. Thus over time, you'll find the world increasingly dominated by things that are good at surviving and reproducing in that world.

Likewise, it would be really really improbable for a random number generator to randomly produce exactly the complete works of Shakespeare, but if random output was filtered through its readability by humans, then you'd have much better chances of coming up with some kind of natural-sounding, sense-making text, albeit still not probably exactly the complete works of Shakespeare.

What alternatives are available that we've been deprived of? — Ciceronianus the White

This is actually part of what's sometimes made the existential dread I've been suffering from this past year so horrible. Usually, when I have some kind of practical problem in life, I calm myself at night by just imagining it being better, fantasizing in a way that I imagine serves a similar function to prayer in religious people. But when it came to suddenly feeling awful about facts of the universe I'd always known, there was no alternative I could imagine that would make it better. I even tried to just imagine that a religious worldview was true, which was a little comforting to think of for a bit, but in the end I found myself feeling like even if that worldview was true, it still wouldn't actually solve the problems that were really worrying me.

I see. Reminds me of the pragmatist critique of Cartesian doubt, that it is feigned and hyperbolic beyond reason, and that we should instead start from our ordinary view of the world and then only doubt that when we find reason to do so, instead of insisting that everything that can possibly be doubted be rejected.

Can you elaborate / give examples?

What is there to be afraid of when it comes to 'cosmic stuff'? I'm sorry if you've already been asked this, I haven't read through the entire thread. — creativesoul

I'll just quote a paragraph from the last essay of my book:

The immense difficulty most people face in living a life of enjoyment rather than suffering, much less bringing others, never mind the rest of humanity, never mind all sentient beings on Earth, and possibly elsewhere, along for the ride. The apparent inevitability of death bringing even a good, enjoyable life to a premature end, where any end at all to such enjoyment would be premature. The threat of any projects and organizations, whole civilizations, maybe even one's entire species coming to an end, and so any good one might have done before death, any legacy left behind that maybe made even a hard and short life count toward some greater good that outlasted it, still being lost to time. The threat of the entire planet being destroyed by the natural aging of the sun, should any legacy of anyone or anything that exists now even manage to survive until then. And even if we manage to cure all of life's ills for everyone, even stopping death by aging, and survive all the threats to civilization and the planet itself by becoming a technologically advanced starfaring civilization, there is still the threat of the entire universe itself winding down to uniform lukewarm nothingness over cosmological timescales, as all available energy sources are used up, life of any kind becomes impossible, and all signs that any life ever existed are lost forever, not that anyone could be around afterward to appreciate them anyway. — The Codex Quaerendae: On Practical Action and the Meaning of Life

Also more recently since I wrote that, the prospect of living forever is also terrifying because boredom.

But when I'm not feeling so pointlessly anxious, I can look at all that stuff and just hope for progress in overcoming it, not worry too much about failure at that endeavor, and also not feel that fear of eternal boredom because so long as I'm happy just to be alive ("ontophilic" I've started calling it) there's no need for distractions to fill the time.

Did you once believe in the God of Abraham? — creativesoul

I was raised in a household that did, but then gradually grew out of it thinking they were just stories for children like Santa Claus, only to be surprised as I reached adulthood to realize that adults honestly believed those stories and didn't just tell them to children. So I guess "not really", but "technically".

to be wretched and miserable about what is outside our control is unwise. — Ciceronianus the White

:clap: :up:

Yes my stance is entirely about what to assume when you don’t actually know for sure whether anything will work. However I hold that since we never know any empirical truths with absolute certainty, that is always at least somewhat the case, with particular evidence about particular actions in particular circumstances just distorting the distribution of odds this way or that. We can be more or less confident that a particular action will or will not lead to a particular successful outcome, but we can never be completely certain that success is either completely guaranteed or completely impossible, so it always remains prudent to remember that success is possible but not guaranteed.

Thanks! That’s actually the underlying principle of my entire philosophical system.

I think a lot of the disagreement here is getting mired in different senses of the words "optimism" and "pessimism", which is why I was looking for some extended terminology earlier.

I think there not two possibilities here but four, getting falsely lumped together as two:

"Broad Optimism" in the sense that a solution is possible, the negation of narrow pessimism.
"Narrow Optimism" in the sense that a solution is guaranteed, a subset of broad optimism.
"Broad Pessimism" in the sense that a solution is not guaranteed, the negation of narrow optimism.
"Narrow Pessimism in the sense that a solution is impossible, a subset of broad pessimism.

These are just the four basic logical modalities (possibility, necessity, contingency, and impossibility) applied to the solvability of the problem.

It seems to me that some people are arguing against narrow pessimism and so in favor of broad optimism (but not necessarily in favor of narrow optimism), while other people are arguing against narrow optimism and so in favor of broad pessimism (but not necessarily in favor of narrow pessimism). Those two arguments are compatible with each other, and if both are right (as I agree) then [the right attitude is to assume that] a solution is what I like to call merely possible: possible but contingent.

Because either narrow optimism or narrow pessimism is an excuse not to act, and only if we act might a solution be possible, though even if we act it is still not guaranteed.

Thanks for the sympathies. (@creativesoul too). The philosophizing I did a week ago didn't actually have anything to do with metaphysics really, but was more an insight that certain philosophical questions (how to deal with "the Absurd" in short), that had never made any sense to me at all until I was struck with this emotional condition of anxiety, dread, and horror, are actually just an illusory byproduct of that emotional state, exactly opposite to the non-rational "this is important, this means something" feeling of so-called mystical or religious experiences (of which I've had plenty, never attributing them to anything mystical or religious though, just recognizing them as nice emotions). IOW that "the Absurd" is just a non-rational "this means nothing" feeling attached to the exact same thoughts and experiences that, in different moods or to other people, would not prompt such feelings; and that despite what those feelings insist, there isn't actually any problem there to be solved, which is why it feels unsolvable. There isn't a problem, just an illusory feeling of a problem, and the solution is to get rid of the feeling, not to dwell on the non-problem pointlessly to no end and thereby perpetuate the feeling. "The meaning of life" is just to feel like there is a meaning to life, because there is nothing more to the question, it's just about feelings.

I thought that that realization had broken me free from the loop of feeling bad because life seems meaningless because I feel bad because life seems meaningless... which all started with me feeling bad, just about nothing in particular, until my brain found things to chalk those feelings up to, which then perpetuated those feelings. When I had this realization (thanks to someone here on this forum actually, comparing the feeling of existential dread to the opposite of a mystical experience) I simultaneously entered a nearly week-long period of near-mystical-experience high, feeling better than I've felt maybe all year long. And then between yesterday and today, for no reason I can find besides maybe either lack of good sleep or too much caffeine trying to counter that, I found myself spiraling into a panic attack about pointless cosmic bullshit there's no sense worrying about again, and even reminding me "there's no actual problem there, this is just an illusion of a problem prompted by an irrational state of mind" didn't break me out of it again like I thought had happened a week ago.

(I added about 13 paragraphs on this topic, starting about 7 paragraphs down, in the last essay of my book early last week).

My take on this is that the feeling of “meaningfulness” (what I’ve coined as ontophilia in its most profound version) not only feels pleasant and alleviates personal suffering, but also makes us more insightful and creative and better motivated to get things done. It not only feels enlightening and empowering, it functionally is. In converse, feelings of existential dread or horror, ontophobia, not only make us feel awful about things that we would otherwise be able to accept and live with or move past, but also floods our minds with clouds of stress and drowns us in despair, so we are functionally less able to think clearly and act decisively. It is pragmatically better to have that ontophilic feeling that the bad things are not such a big deal and they can get better and everything is fundamentally okay, so that we can stop worrying about everything and get on with actually making better what we can and enjoying it what we’ve already got.

Update: Thinking I had philosophized my way to happiness turned out to be wrong. I was just happy for a week, and coincidentally doing good philosophizing at the same time. Back to panic attacks again for no good reason despite reminding myself of the philosophy I thought had solved it a week ago.

Can anyone think of good terms for the “rest assured, success is guaranteed” kind of optimism and the “give up, success is impossible” kind of pessimism, in contrast to the more pragmatic “try your best because success is possible” optimism and “try your best because success is not guaranteed” pessimism?

optimism I believe is overall a healthier frame of mind and probably does equip us to make better choices. — Pantagruel

:clap: :up:

When I say all belief is incompletely justified, I’m referring to the problem of infinite regress, how you can keep asking for reasons to justify your reasons forever, until you give up on trying by either asserting a foundation on faith or writing everything off as unjustifiable. This shows the flaws of justification and motivates critical rationalism in its place: you don’t have to “completely” justify a belief as in answering that infinite regress, that’s impossible; instead believe whatever you want, but only tentatively, until it can be shown false, and then move on to a remaining option.

As I elaborated immediately already, I take a pragmatist approach to mean that there is a POSSIBLE way but not a GUARANTEED way, in contrast to the excessive optimism of thinking there is a guaranteed way or the excessive pessimism of thinking there is no possible way. There might or might not be a way, so we must try for the best and neither give up nor rest assured, as either of those leads to inaction and so guaranteed failure.

With pragmatism: acting as though success is possible but not guaranteed, as only in that condition is there reason to try, and only if we try is success possible (though still not guaranteed).

Same attitude we should take toward everything.

Being clearly sufficiently supported and being excluded from all attempts at questioning are different things. There are lots of things that was for all practical purposes sure enough, but agreeing with that and saying “nope, not going to consider any arguments against it” are different things.

for all x, p, and q, it is not obligatory that if x(p) then x(q)

or equivalently

for all x, p, and q, it is permissible that x(p) and not x(q)

where obligation and permission are the equivalent of necessity and possibility in deontic modal logic

I don’t understand the sense of “contingency” people seem to be using here. As I know that word, it’s just the negation of necessity: something is contingent if and only if it’s not necessary.

Do I understand correctly that your take is that the problem is not so much doing color-blindness, but talking color-blindness while not doing it?

So people who do actually do it should be free to talk it too then, right?

Philosophy (as the imfamous badinage goes) really is the history of who said what when, and people who haven't learnt it aren't going to have a clue no matter what their native skill. — Isaac

I had that impression when I first started studying it too, especially when I would be introduced to a new topic, form an opinion on it quickly, and someone would immediately label me a Whoever-ist, as though that dead Greek guy owned the idea I had just come up with myself. In time though, I came to view it more sympathetically: it's not so much that it's important who said what, as it is what questions are there to ask (by looking at all the questions that have been asked), and what is the range of possible answers there are to them (by looking at all the different answers that have been proposed), with the names of the figures asking questions and proposing answers often just convenient names for those questions and answers, because we've got to label them something if we want to refer to them without restating them in whole over and over again.

nd yes, those who choose to get trained in it formally will inevitably pick up a bit of 'brainwashing' along with the methodology. It's not hard to break out of, but I think it's naive to image some kind of culturally neutral 'how to think' instruction could ever happen. — Isaac

One of the things that I liked most about philosophy classes as opposed to any other humanities classes was how we were never judged on what our answer was, but on how well-supported our argument for it was. So long as you explicitly called out any strange assumptions you were starting from, and made only valid inferences from them, any strange conclusion could be acceptable; how you get there was what was important. In contrast, most other humanities classes seemed unbearably dogmatic, whole fields often taking for granted philosophical positions that I knew were contentious because we were just talking about the ongoing arguments for against them in another class an hour ago!

Enjoy! Also take a look at On Meaning And Language and On Intention, and On Practical Action, all of which cover in more detail the relationship between belief and intention on my account. I'll be away for the weekend as soon as I go to bed shortly, but might be able to make brief replies from my phone.

Who's complaining about his pronouns now? I thought you were against that kind of thing.

(You know I'm just taking the piss out of you for fun and don't actually give a damn, right?)

Powerful first impression(linking your site). — creativesoul

Thanks!

How important is it, by your lights, for us to get thought and belief right? — creativesoul

I'm not sure I understand the question, but maybe this will answer it: I think all of our actions are driven by a combination of beliefs and intentions, so everything we do hinges entirely on us having the right beliefs and intentions. So, I guess my answer is "very important". But still within limits; being right in your beliefs or intentions about circumstances that have no effect on you or that you can have no effect on is not, in practice, very important.

I suppose the same could be said (about) Sisyphus and the stone ... — 180 Proof

Sisyphus doesn't have a choice. I doubt Swan is trapped here in his own personal afterlife unable to die because he's already dead yet unable to truly live because he's forced to do nothing but read our philosophizing all day every day.

Austin's How To Do Things With Words maybe? — creativesoul

That sounds familiar, so maybe.

On your account are promises moral claims? — creativesoul

I hadn't really thought before about where promises fit into this scheme, but on a bit of quick consideration my first-pass answer is that they're probably double-direction of fit, the same category as things like the utterances "I do [take them to be my spouse]" and "I now pronounce you man and wife" in a wedding. That's different from either the direction of descriptive assertions or prescriptive assertions.

Alternatively, they could possibly be interpreted as in the same category of moral claims, if a promise is taken to be a declaration of one's intention to do something, where on my account an intention is identical to what others would call a "moral belief" (see below).

I’d very much like to hear your opinions of Humeanism in this regard as it will make an interesting study in discussing new beliefs from the same geographical location today by comparing them to my own. (Me and Hume are both from Edinburgh although admittedly his family also had an estate down south in Berwick.) So I’d be very interested to hear your thoughts on how the Cultural context of Scotland effected the status of Humes moral beliefs and then I can tell you what contextual differences there are there now. — Mark Dennis

I don't actually know very much about the sociocultural context of Hume, just his philosophical conclusions. I'm not sure if this is at all what you were asking or something you already know, but Hume's position on moral beliefs is that there is no such thing, there are only desires, non-cognitive feelings that something should be some way, about which we cannot reason (though we can reason about what will bring about those things we desire).

In contrast Kant held that moral beliefs are genuine beliefs that are cognitive and can be true and false and reasoned about in all the same ways as non-moral beliefs.



My position is that there is a false dichotomy between Hume and Kant, and that in addition to prescriptive feelings (desires) and descriptive thoughts (beliefs), there are also descriptive feelings (perceptions), and prescriptive thoughts (intentions). Feelings cannot be reasoned with, neither prescriptive nor descriptive, but they can be judged (by the same person having them) and accepted or rejected to form thoughts, prescriptive or descriptive, which can be reasoned about. The form of logic used in that reasoning is the same either way (with some suggestions I have for formally clarifying that), and the standards of evidence for both are experiential, phenomenal, but different aspects of our phenomenal experience for each, empirical in the case of descriptive beliefs, hedonic in the case of prescriptive intentions (as elaborated earlier in this thread).

I find this forum stressful as hell. — Swan

Why are you here then? (That's not meant to be snide, I sincerely don't understand why you'd hang around a place on the internet that stresses you out).

It originates with Austin and was mostly developed by Searle in regard to Speech Act Theory, yes. I don't remember what name was associated with whatever I read about it in the moral psychology class I learned about it from over a decade ago (I've always been bad at bibliography), but since I think that was also the place I first learned of Speech Act Theory I'd guess it was probably Searle. Some quick Googling suggests that someone named Velleman is mainly responsible for its introduction to philosophy of mind, and since we were discussing the status of moral beliefs (a la Kantianism vs Humeanism) in the context where that was introduced, rather than the meaning of moral assertions (though I might be confusing that class with my metaethics class, which were the same term at university and I think back to back), I think it might have actually been Velleman that we were reading, and maybe Searle was just mentioned by Velleman or something.

And here it is apparently distinguished from "what it's like-ness", and hence presumably also distanced from qualia. — Banno

Yes, "what it's like-ness" and qualia are matters of phenomenal consciousness instead.

SO I guess a thermostat is access-conscious of the temperature, without being experience-conscious? — Banno

Unless you're a panpsychist, like @TheHorselessHeadman and me, in which case everything is "experience-conscious" (phenomenally conscious, in Block's terminology), and consequently that doesn't really mean anything of importance. (I explained my view on what that means and why it's trivial more succinctly in this post in another thread recently. I have a note to integrate that shorter explanation into my essay I linked earlier).

Also the thermostat may not be access conscious either, depending on exactly what kind of reflexive informational functionality you take to be necessary to constitute access consciousness. I don't think thermostats are access conscious, because their functionality doesn't fit the criteria I described in that essay I linked earlier.

I did worry that differences in educational systems would make this poll difficult to answer for some. In my American English dialect "college" and "university" are roughly synonyms. (There are two-year colleges, which give Associate's degrees, that are not universities, but they are equivalent to the lower division of a Bachelor's degree, and many people do two years there, then finish up the last two years of their Bachelor's degree at a proper four-year university; I did that myself).

In any case, since it sounds like you didn't major in philosophy, but studied some of it as coursework in another degree, I would put "some incidental college classes", which is meant to include that kind of scenario. (I would likewise answer "some incidental college classes" if the same kind of poll were asked about sociology or cultural anthropology or religious studies, for example, since I did a bunch of those as electives alongside my philosophy major).

The terms originate from Ned Block, and were taught in my philosophy of mind class at university a little over a decade ago, and are mentioned in the Wikipedia article on consciousness, and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on consciousness.

Anyway, I thought that you were saying that "experiential consciousness and material consciousness" made sense to you as the difference between first and third person (which is the same way I take them), and that you were confusing my mention of dualism in my essay with that distinction. I'm just clearing up that those are two different distinctions: ontological dualism like Descartes' is what I reject briefly at the start, and the two different (first-person and third-person) ways of looking at ontologically monist consciousness are what I spend the rest of the essay discussing.

The mention of dualism was not meant to reject the distinction between "material consciousness" (access consciousness) and "experiential consciousness" (phenomenal consciousness), which you'll note I go on to spend the rest of that essay discussing, agreeing in the end that that very much is just difference between third-person and first-person perspectives on the same thing.

I only mention dualism to dismiss out of hand view that hold that minds are immaterial substances, and bodies are material substances, and somehow or another those two kinds of object interact with each other (or don't, on some accounts). Like Descartes believed. In the essay preceding that one I already laid the ontological groundwork that rules that out, so I'm just mentioning that at the start to say why I don't even bother considering that option.

I actually explicitly include secular authoritarianism (including of the political variety) within my definition of fideism.

Oh and (at others, not you jellyfish) I get the impression that this thread isn't supposed to be for arguing for or against faith, religion, god, or theology, but just for trying to come up with definitions of all of those things that satisfy all parties. It seems like some people are trying to argue for or (mostly) against some of them here. I'm definitely against all of them, but I'm not trying to argue against them here, just to give my understanding of what they are. Refined a bit from the conversation since I last stated it, that understanding its:

Faith is uncritical belief.
(I think that's a bad thing).

Religion is a system of belief appealing to faith.
(Belief about anything, not necessarily about God).

God a perfect person, the best that is possible in all the ways a person should be.
(I don't think that exists).

Theology is the study of God.
(Any kind of study, not necessarily religious).

TL;DR: but just wanted to say "fuck yeah, panpsychism".

Oh and also:

Conceptually I want to make a division here. Into the material consciousness and the experiential consciousness. Let's call it MC and EC. (maybe there's terminology for it already, I'm such a noob). — TheHorselessHeadman

"Phenomenal consciousness" (the experiential stuff everything has) and "access consciousness" (the functionalist stuff only some things like humans have) is the usual terminology.

Thank you for that hope spot.

As to the OP, I agree completely that it's more useful for basically all space technologies besides the rockets to get things there to be applied here on Earth. Surviving the worst possible conditions on Earth is way easier than surviving on any other planet, so before we will be able to survive on other planets, we will have to develop the technology to survive basically anything that could befall Earth, which then largely undermines the point of traveling to other planets.

I've been thinking for a while that it could be a good idea to build prototype Mars habitats on Earth (or rather, build robots that will build such habitats from found materials, as they'll need to do on Mars) as self-contained self-sustaining cities in the desert, and let people live there for free (supported by the robots doing the hydroponic farming etc). Welcome any homeless, starving people, refugees, etc... give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to eat free from the robot-tended hydroponic farms. Proof-of-concept for a Mars habitat and immediate humanitarian support on Earth too.

On a longer timescale, the technology needed for us to terraform another planet would also enable us to completely control the climate of our own planet, thus mitigating most disasters that would make those kind of biodomes necessary.

And, yeah, if selling that projects as "woohoo Mars" gets people to actually fund it, good on ya.

How does the direction of fit play a part(apply) in "One ought not literally beat oneself up over their failures"? — creativesoul

The "ought" part. It's what distinguishes the sentence from "One does not literally beat oneself up over their failures."

Both of those sentences are concerning the same state of affairs: someone beating themselves up over their failures.

One of them (the descriptive, "does" statement) compares that idea (of someone beating themselves up over their failures) to the world, and if they don't match (or "fit"), judges the idea wrong, in need of changing so that it fits the world.

The other (the prescriptive, "ought" statement) compares that idea (of someone beating themselves up over their failures) to the world, and if they don't match (or "fit"), judges the world wrong, in need of changing so that it fits the idea.

The question (one that I think virtue ethics tackles) is whether the flaws in these calculatory systems are not so massive as to render them less useful than intuition. — Isaac

I don't really see how it could possibly be less useful than intuition, since intuition is where you start from and then try to improve upon it. (E.g. "I think this ought not happen" [intuitively] "Why not?" [asking for reasons] "Because I suffer in this way when it happens." "Really? Let me see... oh yeah, that sucks. But if we do that other thing, I suffer in this way, see? So I don't think we should do that either." "Oh you're right, that's awful. Well what else can we do besides those two things that don't cause either of those problems?" etc...)

1. I don't see the benefit in asserting that the moral 'good' is satisfactory hedonic experiences. So many people would disagree and you get mired in an argument that can't be supported. Why not just say if you want to maximise satisfactory hedonic experience, then it seems empirically indicated that you should do X. Turning it into an if/then statement removes all the mess of the is/ought problem and, if you're right about most people's desires, would still resonate with the vast majority of people. — Isaac

It's not a matter of just asserting or defining that satisfactory hedonic experiences are goodness, which people will argue about for sure; it's that for something to be a satisfactory hedonic experience just is for it to seem good, in the same way that an empirical experience of something is for it to seem true. So we can completely sidestep the (IMO malformed*) question of whether that's "really" good, we're just trying to find a common ground of agreement to work from, so it's just a matter of getting people to have a common base of experiences that, they can all confirm for themselves, sure enough seem good or bad at least, and then from that common base working out what states of affairs avoid the experiences that seem bad and only leave ones that seem good (or minimize/maximize at least), and then the hard work of figuring out how to bring about those good(-seeming) states of affairs while avoiding bad(-seeming) ones.

*(Arguing about whether satisfactory hedonic experiences are "really good" seems akin to arguing about whether the world as it appears to empirical observation is "really real". Sure, mumble mumble evil demon philosophical nonsense, but at the end of the day what we're trying to do is to explain how the world that appears to us operates, to understand and predict it, so whether that appearance is "really real" is beside the point. Likewise, bracketing all philosophical mumbo jumbo about what's "really good", we're generally all concerned about avoiding suffering at least, so "does this hurt?" is good enough to work with for those purposes as "does this observation contradict the hypothesis?" does for the physical sciences. Any crazy people who think suffering is morally irrelevant are as dismissable as people who think observation has no bearing on reality).

2. I don't see anything there about judging hyperbolic discounting (future possible hedonic gains are worth less than current definate ones). — Isaac

I'm not sure what you mean here, you'll need to elaborate.