Not conscious in the way humans are - but note humanity is conscious in different ways - on a spectrum.
Animals are also conscious, but to a lesser extent. Ecologists are describing plant consciousness. — Pop

You've decided that anything has a conscience because conscience is anything. There's no one there who won't agree with this logic.
But I doubt that the ecologists will agree with you and say that plants have a consciousness. Where have you read this?

There, no doubt you will now agree — Pop

There are a lot of objects that offer entangled, integrated, and unified information. A schedule board, a newspaper page, a puzzle book, my hat tag... I don't think any of them have a consciousness.

I think if I hammered my TV is would be very painful for me. — Benj96

Everyone has their own tastes.

but in a qualitatively less injurious way and more psychologically. — Benj96

You have just recognized an important difference between the "psychological" and the exterior of the mind. I would add another: in an immediate way, without the need to resort to hammers or other extreme means, you have the intuition that the TV is out there, it is an object of the world. In the same way, you don't hit your mother-in-law with the hammer, even though sometimes she may deserve it, because you immediately recognize her as a human being and, more importantly, you feel recognized as such by your mother-in-law. This recognition takes place especially through the look. All of the lucubrations about solipsism, subjectivity and objectivity, are subsequent to this basic intuitive recognition. Since I find no reason to doubt it, I accept this intuition and it seems to me that it is the cornerstone of my world or my life.

However limits on travel between worlds could be enforced to prevent them crossing paths or residing in the same jurisdiction/ area where they could encounter one another. — Benj96

The Galactic Court appreciates your efforts to resolve the case but regrets to say that they have not been helpful. The DNA of the two Mr. X's is identical. Impossible to tell them apart. The fact of one's precedence does not resolve their differentiation in the present because, being the exact replica, the problem is not one of precedence, but one of present rights of the person, which are well defined in the Declaration of Rights of the Person and the Animal proclaimed by the Great Luthor in the second year of his Blessed Universal Regency.

We take this opportunity to inform you that the case has been resolved after the declaration of Mrs. X before the Galactic Court, in the sense that Mr. X-Alpha is much more fun than Mr. X-Earth and more affectionate so she doesn't give a damn which one is the original, because she keeps the one of Alpha.
The Court has ruled that, although ideally identical at the moment of conception, the two Mr. X's become different at the 0+1 instant when both begin to have different sensations and emotions. Therefore the Court has decided to condemn the company Calamity Viajes Siderales with a fine of 100,000 neobitcoins to be paid as a wedding gift for the X-Alpha couple.

Do you accept the verdict?

They exist, but are grounded upon a more basic and holistic form of reality, — Mickey

Correct me if I am wrong, but Heidegger did not identify the Being with any form of consciousness. Therefore, turning to Heidegger to justify that consciousness exists outside the brain doesn't seem helpful. Therefore, I ask you to describe this Being common to all things and to explain what makes you think it is a consciousness that exists outside the human brain. In your own words, if possible.

The OP isn't, it's consciousness in general. — bert1

The philosopher said that what you can't talk about is best left unsaid.

It's consistent with two theories: — bert1

It is also consistent with the myth of Hades and the Styx lake. But that doesn't mean that we are going to consider all the infinite combinations consistent with the concept of consciousness. We are talking about the one that responds to the facts that we know. And the basic fact is that, with the brain gone, we find no trace of that consciousness anywhere, which (almost) certainly implies that it has disappeared from the world.

it is possible for the theatre to be empty, — bert1

The metaphor of the theater doesn't work with consciousness. You can describe an empty stage. You cannot describe an empty consciousness. Consciousness is literally what happens in consciousness. Nothing more.

In your normal experience, the hammering shows up in a referential totality, — Mickey

It's much simpler than that. When you hit your finger with the hammer, it hurts. When you hit the TV, it doesn't. Pain is a subjective experience. There is someone who is in pain (you call him the Dasein if you like) and this someone is oneself. The TV is not me. It is something in the world that I share with my mother-in-law. There is also a radically different experience in hitting my mother-in-law with the hammer and hammer the TV. What is it?

I would like if you disagree with my analysis (very phenomenological, by the way) to let me know in order to have a fruitful discussion.

About Heidegger I prefer not to talk too much. Sometimes I find him unintelligible.

n other words, he uses phenomenology as a tool to show that the subject-object distinction is not fundamental to reality, and neither is the idea of an inner and external world. — Mickey

If that's what Heidegger says, I find it incomprehensible. Hammer the television. Then hammer your finger. You'll catch a vital difference between inside and outside. How does Heidegger explain that?

Consciousness is a mental state of entangled, integrated, and unified information. — Pop

And what is mental?

If the content of consciousness is 'states' of consciousness and I experience a point at which I died and a point at which I came back to life, is temporary death therefore a state of consciousness? — Benj96

I think you should clarify what you mean by conscience. Is it the same as mind?

Your hypothesis of resurrection is quite curious, although not very plausible. I suppose you want to question the concept of mind and identity. So as not to get tangled up in religious preconceptions, I'll give you another example.

In an unlikely future, having mastered global warming -this is the improbable-, human beings can move from one side of the universe to the other by means of a fictitious dematerialization. I mean that the dematerializing machine sends by intergalactic rays the complete data of their body and brain, memory, personality, etc. and a similar machine materializes them in Alpha-Centaur. Then the Earth machine removes your Earth self and that's it. But one day the machine has a problem and does not eliminate the Earth self.
The problem is in the Galactic Supreme Court since years ago because each one of the two Selfs pretends that it must dematerialize the other one and the World Bureaucratic State does not admit that there can be two equal human minds (the inhabitants of the planet Krypton enjoy an exception since the times of the Great Luthor, be his Name always praised).

How would you solve the problem? The Galactic Supreme Court would certainly appreciate it.

I didn't make up the story. It' was conceived by a warm-minded philosopher whose name I don't want to remember.

But this sheds no light on what the general necessary and sufficient conditions for consciousness (or identity in my view) are in anything other than humans. — bert1

First of all, we don't know whether other animals have a conscience or not. We're talking about human consciousness and more especially our own.
About sufficient and necessary conditions I suppose you mean 'causes'. About this we have a certain amount of evidence: We do not know of any cases of a brain dead which speak of Cartesianism, of the last Premier League football match or of his unfortunate love for Jennifer Jones. I think it's good evidence that the brain is a necessary condition to produce conscious behaviour.
Besides, I don't know of any case of a chair, a cockroach or an electron that were singing in the rain (you know, Gene Kelly) or similar. It is good evidence to think that a living human brain is a necessary and sufficient condition to have a human consciousness. That is, the cause of consciousness.

Whether my dog has consciousness is another matter. I think so, but I admit I'm not impartial.

The definition of consciousness is different from the definition of experience. — bert1

What is consciousness then? If you introspect into your consciousness you will find experiences and emotions. Nothing more. Remove the experiences and emotions and your consciousness will be empty.

What would be interesting is a theory that explains the cause of violent actions. — TheMadFool

There is no one theory about the causes of many, if not all, human behaviors. Motivations, reflexes (conditioned or not) or, more vaguely, the drives that conditioned some behavior can be explained. In the case of violence there are many interpretations in terms of frustrations, genetics, social reinforcements, pathologies, etc. For example, how the media encourage violent actions as a necessary and "glamorous" means of resolving conflicts.
If you want a simple explanation, politicians, journalists, priests and others make beautiful statements for peace while stimulating war with their left hand.

The conclusion is that violence is a permanent fact of the human condition and that only feeble attempts to control it - if any - are made by those who can. Two examples: the business of war and violent video games.

Therefore, in the end, the masses are responsible for the crimes of the Nazi regime. — Number2018

Whatever the explanation for the formation of a fascist personality, a large majority of the population in Europe (not only in Germany, nor possibly even this one was the worst, speaking of masses) was actively responsible for the crimes of Nazism. The extent of collaborationism was such that a detailed repression of those crimes was impossible. Nor was it in the interest of the leaders of the "regeneration" of Europe, because its aim was "recuperate" all forces against communism. There is a great film about this: Judgment at Nuremberg, by Stanley Kramer.

The height of cynicism: the current Polish government which has forbidden by law to talk about the crimes committed by the Poles against the Jews. A great mini-series exposes it: Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter, Without hiding the German responsibility.

I think we're going off topic. But it's a very tough subject that can't be avoided in a thread about violence.

What is duality? Do you mean that it (duality) explains your position on violence? How? — TheMadFool

Humans are violent and compassionate, or cooperative, if you like. There is a predisposition to one thing or another that society reinforces or represses. This duality may explain how basically peaceful men can react in an aggressive sublimated or non-sublimated way.

The problem of ‘how can power be desired?’, (‘how can the subjugated group support domination?’) has allowed to develop the conceptual framework, explaining fascism as well as the contemporary capitalist production of our subjectivities. — Number2018

Sure. It's popularly known as the carrot and stick policy. If the carrot doesn't work to get the donkey to walk, the stick is used. The problem is that at the end you don't know if people are because of the carrot or because they are afraid of the stick. Within human psychology there is a reluctance to recognize that if you do something it is because you are a coward. Then you become a fanatic of the tyrant and hate those who draw attention to your cowardice and immorality. This is a classic of all cultures and submissions.
The coward who is caught hitting the weakest one with the herd, instead of stopping, he will intensify the blows to show that he does it this way because he is very macho.

I don't know the exact reason why but some here are of the opinion that when one assigns a quality to everything it becomes meaningless. — TheMadFool

They're two different things. If you say that all x is y (all pain is pleasure) and you are identifying x and y (x=y) you are making a tautology that means nothing. Something like "men do what they are inclined to do".

This is not my case. I'm not identifying all men with violence. I admit that men do violent and non-violent actions. "Every man is violent" is a way of saying that there is a duality in men. It doesn't mean that being a man is the same as being violent.

I hope I've explained myself.

So, you feel that the ends justify the means but what if the means, as is the case with violence, is in direct contradiction to the ends? — TheMadFool

I think the relationship between means and end is complicated.
In principle, it is the end that justifies the means. When we say that the end does not justify the means, it is for two reasons:
- Because it's not evident that these means actually produce this end.
- Because some of the means are more or equally relevant than the end and may negate its value.

In the first scenario, we have the case of Kautsky vs. Lenin. In the second, we have the case of Ivan Karamazov vs. God.
Kautsky believed that revolution was not an effective path to socialism.
Ivan Karamazov believed that the death of children on Earth invalidated the happiness of Heaven.

Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. — Eliot


There are more like this. Plenty of modern English poetry is not so easy to separate from philosophy. Poets arguably obsess over density. They want the 'music' and 'concept' to be fused together unforgettably. — path

I forgot this: I really liked the two final verses of Eliot that you include. They make you think. I have a very good friend who is also a great poet, I think, and a complex metaphysician in a pack. That is, his verses shake you up and make you think about man, time and the celestial vault. But he once wrote an article about Ausiàs March, a medieval poet, and I didn't like it that so much. Too obvious, too flat, too simple. My personal impression is that he was very good at handling complexity and irresolution, and not so good at giving clear explanations. This is the difference between poetry and philosophy.

Of course, I didn't tell him that. You have need to be a little hypocritical to keep friends.

Thank you for the excellent reply. We're not so far apart after all. — path

Thank you for the undeserved praise. One has moments of inspiration... rather rare. But, in general, we tend to like what matches us. There is nothing to do about it., we're gregarious. And, as you say, we agree on quite a few things. A relief among the quarrelsome tendency of the philosophy forums.

Locke says personal defense is necessary to protect property. Would that be considered institutional violence, because it protects a system, or personal violence because it protects an individual too? — ernestm

I would say that the institutions in charge of defending private property through violence are the legal ones, state or private. But personal violence against a banker who has stolen your savings, as they usually do, cannot be considered institutional. Although it may be more than understandable. Keep in mind that not all personal violence is reprehensible.

Right. The issue of the relationship between social classes and violence is not easy. Even if property is thought of as theft, our society is complex enough not to believe in simple recipes. If you are able to eliminate poverty and inequality you will probably have eliminated two major causes of violence. Foucault himself, who was an anti-Marxist, recognized that exploitation provides a good framework for explaining most of the violence that capitalism generates. But it is not clear that the framework explains everything.

what are the various human actions that fall under the category of violence? — TheMadFool

It's not a naive question. It is easy to distinguish many violent behaviors at both the act and language levels. The violence of a defender at a football match, the violence of a lover having sex, the violence of a political discourse. I don't think there is such a big difference between common language and experts. Some points are more debatable, especially when the expert analyses some supposed scientific or objective discourse. The violence in the speeches of Jesus Christ, the patriotic emotion, the scientific studies or the paternalistic sermons are more difficult to accept. Violence in ratings, irony, jokes... with our wife, children or my best friend. In the end everyone is violent... more or less. The problem is with those who can't control it or use violence for their own benefit.

Oh, yeah. It is precisely the art of politics, so little practiced nowadays, that is the search for consensus while it is possible. A world in which there would be a general consensus (consensus, I mean, and not mindless or submissive) between minorities and majorities, exploited and exploitative, violent and peaceful... would probably be a utopia, but one not to be lost sight of.

I don't blame you if you just get tired of answering me. — path

No, for god's sake, I wasn't tired of your interpellations. I was overwhelmed by the amount of ideas you put out in a row and I thought and I think I can't answer all of them here. I have my limits. I'll try to select a few to give you an answer.

Do scientists agree? — path

Think also of rejecting all political theory because there is no consensus. — path

Talk of the 'roots of reality' sounds good, but it's the same old metaphysics. — path

Deciding what's so special about science, if anything, is philosophical and contentious — path

And your anti-philosophy view is familiar to me. — path

Of course, in the higher spheres of science, consensus is broken. But we have to admit that they still have nothing to do with the philosophical chicken coop where there is not even consensus on terminology.

What is special about science is its humility (pride is for positivists). That is to say, to limit itself to explaining a concrete field of knowledge and to leave the cosmic fantasies to the poets. Science is capable of saying "if x and y, then z" and it is right and it is not magic. A great deal that instrumentalist philosophy can only explain if it goes from humble to falling into the well of radical skepticism that satisfies no one except the stubborn ones who maintain it. Neither Dewey nor anyone else can be satisfied by saying "This works". Everyone, including Dewey when he lets his guard down, wants to know what's in there. I mean, they want to get to the roots of things, as much as possible.
And that's why we walk around wondering what could produce life on Earth and what's behind the collapse of the wave function. This is a metaphysical task, in the sense that theoretical scientists themselves have to go beyond scientific certainties to pose it. But I don't despise metaphysics. You have to be foolish to despise something that you have no choice but to do. I'm just asking for a cautious metaphysics. That is to say, not to pretend to function independently of the data that science provides and to move too far away from them.

So I'm not against philosophy. Just that it should be a philosophy that knows where to step, asphalt if it's asphalt and quicksand if it's quicksand. Those who hear the word "quantum mechanics" and start seeing the Holy Spirit make me nervous.

And, unfortunately, my experience with philosophers is that there are quite a few who see the holy spirit and have no idea what quantum mechanics is.

I will think about it to see if I can give a condensed answer within my limited knowledge: — David Mo

I go there: If we divide a problem between diagnosis and prescription, modern positions owe a lot to Hobbes and Rousseau, even if it is to grumble against the theory of contract, like Foucault.
The Hobbesian diagnosis appears in Sartre as violence inseparable from the human condition, but it is rejected by Marx, who considers the origin of violence in relation to private property, in a similar way to Rousseau.
The Hobbesian prescription has been classically interpreted as a defense of absolutism and that does not please anyone today, except the Fascists. But there are more recent interpretations that believe it is possible to read Hobbes as a defender of absolute sovereignty... of the people. That would be more in line with the idea of sovereignty of the last Foucault. Naturally, Marx and Sartre differ from all this, because they do not believe that the solution lies in a people divided into classes, however controlled private property may be, as in the Rousseaunian model. But if you look, neither Marx nor Sartre says that the end of violence, or at least the conflict, comes in a classless society. Sartre says it expressly in the Critique of Dialectical Reason and Marx was never anything precise about the classless society. He is more a theorist of the end of capitalism than of the prediction of socialism. The end of history would be the classless society, but how post-history would be is an enigma.

I hope this will give you an answer. I don't like this jumble I've written at all. But, unlike Groucho Marx, I don't have another one.

Of course, the similarities I have pointed out are only similarities. The differences are also many.

It's a question that demands a long answer. I will think about it to see if I can give a condensed answer within my limited knowledge: I know little about Hobbes and less about Locke. I have read something about the others.

Are there experts in violence? — TheMadFool

Sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists and some philosopher. I don't know if politicians should be considered experts or part of the problem.

That's not unlike rejecting art because artists vary or all of religion because religions vary. — path

But artists don't pretend to know the truth of what they paint. Some do, but that's their problem. As for priests, they're much worse than philosophers when it comes to scandals. Politics is not a form of knowledge. And don't make an example out of professional politicians. Plato already made them look bad and things haven't changed much since then.
:sad:
Don't overwhelm me with so much comment. I can't cope them so quickly. I'll get back to them when I can.

But these are also philosophical virtues. — path

Not very widespread among the popes of philosophy.
Philosophers don't convince others. At most they convince themselves.

On the other hand, you'll have to recognize that science is more than just machinery. Apted's pre-coordinated spins, time dimensionality, wave collapse, not to mention string theory, are more than beaters and gameboys. If you force me, even gravity theory seems like a metaphysical thing. The problem is that most scientists don't even realize what they're doing and think Einstein is a washing machine.

All of this connects to our current economic arrangement, which encourages a 'technical interpretation of thinking.' — path

The problem with metaphysics is that it remains anchored in the scandal that Kant denounced: no progress, no agreement between metaphysicists. With that barrier, it's hard to convince anyone. Especially when today it is impossible to talk about the roots of reality and infinity without knowing quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity.

I believe that Kant had perfectly pointed out the way: stop wondering about questions without answers and postulating contradictory entities and worry about looking for philosophy in the analysis of knowledge. This is the way to start.

I'm not going to discuss your theory here. You say yourself it's off-topic. Just one main objection.
There's a great consensus on the knowledge of facts: its purpose is to tell, predict and control the facts.
There is no similar consensus in ethics: there is no agreement on what might be called "good" that we can seek by different methods. You have decided that it is the experiences of pleasure. But there are many people willing to tell you that there are pleasures that are bad, not because they produce dissatisfaction but because they lead to higher order evil. There will even be people who will say that all pleasures are bad.

I'm afraid your argument is not going to be convincing to many experts and non-experts in ethics.

Nevertheless, you will agree that the general opinion on violence seems to be restricted to bodily harm — TheMadFool

If general means popular, I agree. If general includes experts, I disagree.

What do you think of Ted Turner's statement. If you ask me, it seems to fit somewhat loosely with your beliefs on violence. — TheMadFool

The emphasis on personal violence and the neglect of institutional violence would be a very frequent case of symbolic violence. It is very widespread in the mainstream media and among politicians... institutional.

Indeed. Most show-sports are usually quite violent. Even if they don't - always - kill.
It seems that in their origins these sports were a way to channel social violence. But today it is not very clear whether they channel it or encourage it through initiation rites.

Baurdieu concieved it as the way to impose not just a set of discriminatory or coersive positions. — Number2018

I said it encouraged forms of coercion, not that it was that.

I agree.

I think that Foucault's view of discipline allows to consider seemingly non-violent methods of control - — Number2018

more saturated within wide domains of social practice. — Number2018

When the mass media shows a series of particular images for 24/7, so that a specific narrative and agenda should become dominating, one could consider symbolic violence as the leading one. — Number2018

I find Foucault's last five years confusing, inconclusive and full of holes. I prefer his classical phase even if it was also debatable. But at least it was coherent.

Anyway, what I find compelling in Foucault is the theory of power as a network of mini-powers. I think this explains very well the apparent withdrawal from institutional violence that is replaced by a softer but omnipresent tension over civil society. This tension can often be called violence.

But the disciplinary society has not disappeared. (Even the late Foucault acknowledges this). ) When the powers of domination feel threatened the old violent-disciplinary society emerges and we can see in the media the hidden face of repressive institutions in action. The US has received a good dose in recent days.

I think we agree on basic points, including the symbolic violence that is constantly present in the media, parliaments, etc. They live on these things. So we feed on violence every day. Symbolic or physical.

but can we ever live this ideal separation of reason from empirical observation? — path

It seems that Hume or Kant lived very well with that separation of fact (ideal?). I trust science when I want to know what a galaxy is and I add philosophy when I want to analyze the scientific method. Where is the problem?

To me it makes more sense to think of philosophy as concerned with the world or existence as a whole and then understand science as part of that world. — path

Okay. But how do you get reliable information from the world if not through the senses systematized into scientific knowledge? Pure reason? A sixth philosophical sense? Doesn't ring a bell.

The comment about hedonic experiences is meant to be analogous to empirical experiences, — Pfhorrest

But the mere analogy doesn't go very far.

or not limited to — David Mo

You don't need to be very patient to see the state go berserk. We get images every day. That's why I wrote "not to limit itself to" direct and overt violence.

I think that a teacher’s major institutional task is to include her students into a wide educational network by using primarily nonviolent, seemingly objective professional pedagogical techniques and methods. — Number2018

The problem of violence is not the ends (see my previous comment) but the means to the ends. In that sense, simply forcing every teenager to stay locked up for several hours a day listening to uninteresting talk is violence. Even more so when he can be qualified as "unfit" or "very deficient" -or similar.
I sincerely believe that in order to believe that there is a permanent violence in the classroom, you need just to have been in the classroom for a certain time -not much- without prejudices.

Further, ''government'' covers various non-disciplinary modes of power, such as bio-power, pastoral power, normalization power, etc. — Number2018

I think that Foucault conceived 'freedom' as produced and constructed , as the effect of power. — Number2018

You give a soft idea of Foucault. As if he authorizes all means of domination that are not directly violent. I remind you that on discipline and punishment he wrote more than one book and on "pastoral power" he made a very harsh criticism in volume I of the History of Sexuality. For example: Under the pretext of ensuring the salvation of the sheep, the shepherd builds a subtle device of power, capable of unfolding even over the intimate solitude of the believer and leading him towards a new form of widespread servitude.

About the interpretation you give to his idea of freedom I will have to review his books. I don't remember anything about freedom.

Do you mean a father is justified to "nullify" and "weaken" his child? — TheMadFool

I didn't intend to evaluate the violence. The first step is to define violence. The second step is to identify it. The third is to assess it.
I don't think it's possible to override violence in general. Therefore, only two criteria seem possible:
- Is it fair the end of this violence?
- Are the violent means proportional to the end?

Nullifying a child does not seem to be a valid end in any case. For moral reasons and because of its consequences. But verbal or controlling violence seems unavoidable in bringing up children. The less the better. Persuasion is preferable in almost all cases.