I do not see the thrownness itself as something determinate or indeterminate. You might bias it towards the indeterminate, but the thrownness itself doesn't create the indeterminacy. The determinate and the indeterminate jostle for position in the thrownness, but the thrownness is just there, it's the prior, the condition of existence itself. — Fire Ologist

It is a matter of making ideas clear, and this is hard to do here. Indeterminacy and thrownness, what do these mean? Indeterminateness refers to the lack of settled position, as when we talk about bank tellers and cantaloupes; we know what these are and can talk pretty freely about them without issue in the usual giving and taking of information, insight, experience. But what about when inquiry turns to basic assumptions? The more we do this, the less determinacy we find. Calling a cantaloupe a variety of fruit, after all, begs questions: 'Fruit' is a concept, no? And so what are concepts? Already we have left the comfort zone of ready to hand assumptions, for how many of us entertain such ideas? This can be argued: is a concept a principle of synthetic inclusiveness? Is it a pragmatic way to achieve and end? Perhaps a concept is the very way finitude is defined and delimited. But is it historically structured? Is it possible for thought and its concepts to understand the world as the world? Or, my favorite: how can a concept be understood given that the understanding itself is inherently conceptual? The worst kind of question begging.

There really in no way out of this. When we make the move to this order of thinking about the presuppositions of thinking itself, we are lost in indeterminacy. We are certainly not lost when we talk about genetics or evolution or physics, I mean, these do have their paradigmatic indeterminacies (don't know if you've read Kuhn), but these reach into possiblities that make sense. Basic questions don't have this, and it is here we find metaphysics, for question begging is structural here: language cannot examine itself, I mean, logically structured talk cannot tell us what logic is.

This feeling of happiness right now occurs at an impossible distance from the words I could bring to bear upon. The term 'happiness' does not "touch" this "feeling" in its actuality, and yet, I live and breathe in it. Consider what Buddhists and Hindus do when they meditate seriously. They sever the connection of the experience of being in the world from the language that would possess it, trivialize it, bring it to heel among the common utterances, like "pass the butter, please."

It has been rightly argued that mundane living has lost the astonishment of being here. Rising to this astonishment is rising to our thrownness, that is, to a state of mind in which our assumptions about the world have been silenced, and one is free.

So something human starts to look prior to the indeterminate. This creates circular reasoning. We use "our" existence to discern "radical ethical" of the "indeterminate." But if it is "our", it might automatically include the "ethical" - and existence itself might beget the indeterminate from "our" presence in existence. So I still have to wonder what was prior, what is the condition of existence at all that begat the "our" - the self-reflection in the thrownness that found radical ethical indeterminacy. — Fire Ologist

I tried to address this above. Don't know if I succeeded.

Both of them make a predicament out of action. Ethical indeterminacy undoes any sound ethical judgment of how to act. Impossibility undoes any commitment to taking action as well. — Fire Ologist

I would stop you here. By ethical indeterminacy, I don't mean the inability to finalize judgment on various ethical problems, like whether or not one should return a borrowed ax to its angry owner and the like. I mean something much more fundamental. There is no one there to be confused about. There is no complexity of conflicting obligations. There is only the essential givenness of the world. This is our thrownness, for we have no idea at all as to why, who, purpose or plan or reason once we have left behind the traditions and story telling and rituals. The step out of naivete is only a step into indeterminacy. The trick, and I call it this because it is tricky, for my, anyway, is to understand with real clarity that one's own existence IS existence. I am not a locality of something existing, as a scientist might think, with me here, a volcano over there, my shoes on my feet, all these separate and distinct. I am existence's interiority and all indeterminacy is mine. And yours, to you. Ethics is, if you can stand the locution, what the world does!

Meditation can yield this kind of self realization that one actually IS.

Do you have a definition or a simple description of the 'transcendent'? — Tom Storm

Simple? Not a chance. BUT: once gotten, one sees that the matter is supremely simple. The complexity is needed to arrive at simplicity.
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The trouble with this word is that it is held away from our everydayness, and this is due to the way religion treats metaphysics: in a closed space of a cathedral with lots f vertical lines and set apart from everything else (reminds me of Dewey's complaint of art being shoved into museums and thereby removed from the living experience). The entirely of philosophy has tis subject matter in this lamp here on the desk (yes, the same coulds be said of physics). It is there, but only because I see it and perceive it, so what is perception? Perception is never clear of the history that memory intrudes between, if you will, me and the lamp, because I know the lamp through historical familiarity, that is, I am not some feral adult grunting and staring. Knowing is about familiarity, so it is the repetition I "see," the "oh, just that old lamp" and nothing special here. But what about perception? After all, the thing is right there in front of me and you can't say I dont see it, but only see the intrusion of memory telling me how familiar it is. But now it is a question of knowing in the massive context of a culture and a language and an extensive vocabulary of entangled ideas. OUT if this, the full presence of the thing emerges, implicitly in the simplicity of the singular perceptual encounter.

Perhaps you can see where thsi goes: Every time I try to pin down the knowledge claim about the lamp, I find myself retrieving language and associated meanings. What about "that right there" that is NOT language at all? THIS is a metaphysical question, for the object is transcendental, it cannot be "spoken" because only language can be spoken, and that there ain't language. It does take effort to see this, at least, it did for me, but eventually one begins to realize that the objects before the witnessing mind, whether they are lamps and fence posts or feelings or logical equations, or whatever, are never really presented to the conscious mind.

What about the obvioius "aboutness" of the word 'lamp' and that over there? So many ways to go after this, but the absolute annihilator of knowledge connectivity is the impossiblity of explaining how that out there gets in the this interior world of thought and perception.

We live in transcendence. We are this. I think one has to take the time to leave the text and realize that we are in this "place" that is alien to the language that we use to understand things.

Condition A.) Involvement or presence of a sentient being and Condition B.) the possibility for that sentient being to be impacted by the action or inaction of another sentient being through no action or declared will and intent of their own (ie. against their own will or sans consideration/input).

It is incredibly broad and open-ended, yes. — Outlander

So it needs to be narrowed, and this is done apophatically: What is NOT necessary to the definition of ethics? Certainly, ethics needs a context, but this does not make the contextuality part of the essence any more than requiring a brain to think makes a brain a definitional necessity to, say, logic. Something that is part of the essence of something is what makes the thing what it IS. What puts, if you will, the ethicality in ethics? So "involvement or presence of a sentient being" may be necessary but not essential to what naming what ethics in its nature.

For this, one goes to actual ethical cases to find determinative features, and finds in each case, there is caring. No caring, no ethics. Caring is not like an incidental condition, but is what ethics is "about": something cared about, at risk, in play, in competition, in the balance, to be sacrificed, endured, enjoyed, fascinated by, and so on. This is, if you will, the engine that drives ethics, one being IN a world of caring.

I will push ahead to what I think is an important question: while one clearly can have ethical relations with others, and in these relations emerges a whole vocabulary of ethical terms, like responsibility and accountability, guilt, innocence, justice and the plethora of legal terms and thinking, etc., can one have an ethical relation with the world qua world? Why not, one may ask, for just as our relations with others in based on the way others enter into our horizon of interests and aversions, so we find ourselves IN the same kind of intrusive "behavior" of the world, for after all, the world "gives" us disease, hunger and, well, a very long list of physical and psychological vulnerabilities that yield the miseries we are born into.

The point is this: if the world were simply as a scientist describes it to be, that is, an ethcailly neutral place of quantitative descriptions and systems of quantitative pragmatic categories, then there would be no religion for there would be ground for it. But this is not the world. Science cannot quantify ethics (notwithstanding Bentham's hedonic calculator, essentially a quantification calculator") because ethics is a qualitative issue. The world is not reducible to science's quantifications. The world is the source of all value, and because of this, the world presents the very possibility of ethics; therefore, the world IS an ethical "agency". It IS the transcendental source of ethics.

In Buddhist literature, there is a recognised phase of spiritual growth, "nibbida" (Pali) or "nirveda" (Sanskrit), often translated as "disgust," "disenchantment," or "turning away," denoting a turning point in spiritual growth where an individual becomes disillusioned with the vanity and suffering inherent in worldly existence — Wayfarer

I read in the Abhidhamma explicit attempts to cultivate this disgust by with unsavory associations and other techniques. This book is a fascinating analysis of the contents of the conscious mind. So detailed about emotions, appetites and their objects. Emotions are not only taken seriously, they are raised primacy, and this is the critical move: Speak sincerely about foundational ideas, and it should be plainly evident that our thinking is in the service of our affective pursuits. When I said in the OP that one thing Nietzsche was right about was his observation that all of our metaphysics is grounded in entirely contrived issues, at the heart of this is the primacy of thinking, as if God were no more than a supremely cognizant being. I mean, the idea is patently absurd, because though qua thought has no value at all. Thought is in the service of this mysterious dimension of pathos that carries extraordinary meaning into consciousness, and the Buddhists know this.

Existence qua existence is like reason qua reason in that neither can shoulder the burden of the meaning we discover in our living and breathing.

If you already believe you have a firm grasp on what you consider the essence of religion, why did you ask? I happen to disagree, but I do not have an ethical case, only an anthropological and psychological theory. — Vera Mont

It is, as all OP's, an invitation to disagree, agree and explore. Do keep in mind that anthropology and psychology are not philosophy. It is not that you disagree, rather it is that you can't access the issue. On the other hand, philosophy requires meditative thought, and this is simply a matter of being open to ideas. If I mention the word metaphysics, there is something very intuitive about this, and its doesn't require reading Kant or anyone else. In a way, being a very educated person, you already have what you need to carry on through and argument, for all that is required is reading the details of the ideas involved closely.

Psychology? Freud was a metaphysician, and Jung is no longer mentionable he was so far out there; R D Liang's Divided self is puts forth the question as to whether insanity is really so insane. The issues these and others raise get, on occasion, very close to philosophy and metaphysics. But of course, you would know more than I. Jung and religion? The self and religion vis a vis the openness of the concept of self? If the self is an open concept, then what does this make ethics and value and religion that hinges on just this?

The moral function of religion generally didn't emerge until later, and was built on already existing religions. The first religions had no need to explain morality, because the stories were probably shared among close communities — finarfin

The need to explain is ours. Certainly when religions were laid down in ancient societies, there was not the philosophical detachment from the concerns that were in play needed to give such affairs more basic inquiry.

I am not here looking for any historical analysis or speculation as to how and why certain beliefs rose to prominence, the internal societal pressures brought to bear, and so forth. Here, the question is more simple: I am asking what there is in the world that gives religion its fundamental justification. What makes religion more than just what your analysis yields, beyond the various non religious motivations and rationalizations.

What kind of a "place" is the world that calls for religion to be in the explanatory response to it? Religion deals with metaphysics, specifically, the metaphysics of ethics: the need for grounding AT ALL for our affiars beyond what is plainly there in the delimitations of finitude. Otherwise, as you would have it, religion is reducible a social dynamic.

I am not sure if I am allowed to post a poem here, but I wrote this poem and I think it summarizes my view on this probably better than if I simply tried to explain it (I am not sure why) But anyway, here it is. — Beverley

Well, it is a nice poem, I have to admit. Not Wordsworth, but charming.

But what does it argue? asks philosophy. It argues that words invent pseudo problems about matters that have noting to do with words. Religion in its essence lies outside of language. This is a big issue.

Do you think God is intuited? One could say that love or happiness is intuited, meaning if you are in love there is something that is altogether NOT language that defines the experience, but what can one "say" about it? Nothing, really, other than declaring it to be the case, but "it" in this declaration will be simply given and not reducible to further analysis. Consider pain: put a lighted match to your finger for a couple of seconds. Now what was that? There is nothing to say, save how intense and unpleasant it was. But what is was, well, we all "know" pain, but this is simply a matter of familiarity, and really not some kind of penetrating understanding. Pain qua pain is in the bare givenness of the world.

My point is this: when it comes to unmentionables like this, we are dealing with value-in-the-world, and the world cannot be spoken. Value-in-the-world is transcendental, and indeed, the world is transcendental. I think this is what your poem is about.

Short and simple: The bigness of the world, the sky full of stars, the power of elements.
They could not control or escape storms, floods, wildfires and droughts. But all these things acted in a way that appears purposeful. So they were given names and personalities that fit the behaviour. From there, it's easy for that big imagination to project a whole pantheon of supernatural beings, with their own feelings and agendas.
And then there is the death of one's parents. Who has not felt the presence of a dead mother or father hovering over their bed some nights? Who has not asked a gravestone for forgiveness or guidance or a blessing? We miss our caregivers and mentors; we don't want them to be gone. So we make shrines and bring fruit and flowers and celebrate them on a designated day.
What's to prevent one of those dead chieftains from being promoted to a place in the stars or among the natural elements? — Vera Mont

It is not a matter of a psychological response to scary things in the world that is being inquired about any more than geology is a matter of investigating the curiosity of looking into rocks and minerals. Religion IS metaethics, and this requires a look at what ethics is, and so how is it you know you have before you an ethical case at all? What are the features of an ethical case that make for ethicality? This is not a psychological question or an anthropological question. It is much, much simpler: what are the necessary conditions for a problem to be an ethical problem?

Answer this, and you have opened the door to an inquiry into the nature of religion. I opened this door, ajar, as it were, in the OP.

I think religion provides comfort and solace. It supports people to manage the fear of uncertainty, death and the often brutal realities of life. For me, it seems to be an emotional and aesthetic response to experince. And when presented as part of culture and heritage, it plays a critical role in how people make sense of reality. We are habitually drawn to coherence, comfort and harmony - despite a world where chaos and suffering predominate - a transcendental domain promises us an entire realm where unity, and completeness may be found and perhaps intermittently reflected in our lives. Personally, I do not share such a worldview. — Tom Storm

How about just dropping this traditional idea of some domain or place. Such a thing is off-putting from the start. Sounds like a place to meet Jesus, and this kind of metaphysics is the stuff myths are made of.

It'll take some thought.

Here, we are asked to be scientists, and so what does a scientist do? She observes, and what is there to be observed cannot be ignored just because it is alien to popular and acceptable thinking. Religion has to be "observed" for what it is, and this involves removing what is merely incidental, like the long robe ceremonies, the endless story telling, and on and on. These are the mere trappings of religion. But what IS it that is in the world that religion is about? This is the point.

I wonder if you see the idea so far. I don't care to look at the religious texts and promises involving historical events and absurd miracles. And I certainly don't care about how theology invents metaphysical problems. I want to know the nature of something that is there to be observed, like natural condition is there for a natural scientist, PRIOR to it being taken up by cultures and their institutions and turned into an infinitely debatable construct.

I think religion provides comfort and solace. It supports people to manage the fear of uncertainty, death and the often brutal realities of life. For me, it seems to be an emotional and aesthetic response to experince. And when presented as part of culture and heritage, it plays a critical role in how people make sense of reality. We are habitually drawn to coherence, comfort and harmony - despite a world where chaos and suffering predominate - a transcendental domain promises us an entire realm where unity, and completeness may be found and perhaps intermittently reflected in our lives. Personally, I do not share such a worldview. — Tom Storm

How about just dropping this traditional idea of some domain or place. Such a thing is off-putting from the start. Sounds like a place to meet Jesus, and this kind of metaphysics is the stuff myths are made of.

It'll take some thought.

Here, we are asked to be scientists, and so what does a scientist do? She observes, and what is there to be observed cannot be ignored just because it is alien to popular and acceptable thinking. Religion has to be "observed" for what it is, and this involves removing what is merely incidental, like the long robe ceremonies, the endless story telling, and on and on. These are the mere trappings of religion. But what IS it that is in the world that religion is about? This is the point.

I wonder if you see the idea so far. I don't care to look at the religious texts and promises involving historical events and absurd miracles. And I certainly don't care about how theology invents metaphysical problems. I want to know the nature of something that is there to be observed, like natural condition is there for a natural scientist, PRIOR to it being taken up by cultures and their institutions and turned into an infinitely debatable construct.

It reminds me of the positivists, who responded to Wittgenstein's Tractatus in a way he never intended. Wittgenstein is the most extraordinary person, one who loved Kierkegaard, insisted on being sent to the front lines of the war just to face death, one who loved and lost deeply, and who waxed reverential on what was truly important, that part of the Tractatus which was unspoken. You know how the Tractatus ends famously with "whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent" Positivist Otto Neurath, added, "We must indeed be silent, but not about anything." See, this is where the line is drawn: Neurath didn't understand Wittgenstein at all! The latter lived life with such passion (the kind of passion that drives one to suicide, as it almost did for him, and certainly did for his brothers) and it was clear that this was a passion that reached out for consummation most emphatically into the world, and it was this that one had to be silent about. Broadly speaking, value-in-the-world cannot be reduced to the mere saying, and when it is spoken, it is dulled and trivialized.

The world itself cannot be spoken, but the positivists were not, as Joshia Royce said, able to respond to this. They just saw this as a strict taboo on metaphysics, and were happy to hear this..

you are right, I think: it really comes down to whether or not one can acknowledge the world like this. Likely, I would argue, it is a latent ability in all of us. I have an analytical accounting for this, but it would take too much time to say. But this "uncanny" feeling, I say (not argue), has most alarming expression in our compassion and empathy. To understand the gravitas of this is to be struck as if by lightening by the breadth and depth of suffering, and it is to see that for this to be a simple "stand alone" matter is flat out impossible.

Deeper, more basic, than that, I think religion (i.e. 'immortality' rituals) is our species' earliest collective coping strategy for fear of death (i.e. ontophobia (or meontic veraphobia)). I suspect "ethical indeterminancy" is the effect, not cause, of religion insofar as religion ritually manifests (à la principle of explosion) various performative and symbolic denials of (the 'radical determinancy' of) mortality. — 180 Proof

But you jump to the chase. This denial of our mortality has a more basic analysis, for the question is begged, why bother with this issue at all? Fear of death assumes there is something fearful about death. Ask a question about fear and its object, one turns to its object, as one would with lions and tigers. Unless you are suggesting that religion is essentially a neurotic fear of nothing at all, it seems you might be, assuming metaphysics is nothing, really, and death is no more than mundane death, a mere termination of life.

But this ending as a "mere" ending and no more is a model carried over from things that are not moral agencies, and is entirely improper for understanding human death. Human death has the drama of crisis, and the fear itself in this crisis lies qualitatively outside such a model, that is, trees and clouds and worn out garden tools may come and go, but there is no meaning to this termination for that which is terminated. For human agencies, caring and value are in play, and this makes death an ethical/aesthetic (Wittgenstein held the two are essentially the same. He was right) matter. Thus, death for us can only be understood in the context of a review of the nature of ethics and value.

There is nothing of the mundane termination in this at all. Quite the opposite!

I think at the root of these myths and legend is an explanation of a particular society's idea of human nature and its relation to the world. Pagan practices reflect much of this idea - but then they become ritualized, non-spontaneous, inauthentic. Modern religions are largely rote and ceremony, right down to the precise words uttered in prayer.
I think it started as pure philosophy, then wandered into superstition and lost its way in organized religion. — Vera Mont

I think this is an interesting answer, and likely is true, roughly. But when I ask about the essence of religion, I refer to something presupposed by those myths and that ancient thinking. Sure, there they were with creative imaginations in full swing, but what were they responding to in the world that was NOT simply an idea summoned into existence? What were people responding to that gave religious thought its basic meaning? Not unlike asking what technology is really about apart from the long talk about machines and electronics. The answer to this question is not going to be more talk about technology; if that were the case, then technology would be just like the way religion is generally regarded by modern enlightened people: definable wholly within the logic of its own existence. But technology has a purpose and an origin that is presupposed by this, which is the basic problem solving of the givenness of our world. That is, we are thrown into a world that is nothing but problems to solve, and technology is a pragmatic response to this.

I treat religion that same way: We all know what it is, and your anthropological ideas are spot on as well. But beneath the "wandering into superstition" there is the basic condition of our existence that provokes and inspires this wandering. In other words, the world itself is a religious "place" in the way I talk about it in the OP. This is the aggravating truth that science cannot deal with, whether it is anthropology of physics. This issue here is metaphysics, metaethics, to be precise.

If so, it will be nothing more than a reflection of its human creator, subject to the same limitations that we willfully accept in an unthinking manner. It will be more or less human pride made tangible. Future aliens will laugh at our naïveté. — kudos

I don't think we willfully accept anything in an unthinking manner. A contradiction there.

And they will perhaps laugh. Or be absolutely terrified. Never laugh at some unhinged AI with a weapon and not afraid to use it.

I couldn't find what "compu-dasein" is. So I guess its a kind of term of yours, a combiination of a computer/computing and "dasein", the German term --esp. Heidegger's-- for existence. But what would be the nature of such a "synthetic" mind? What would it be composed of? Would it be something created? And if so, how?
And so on. If one does not have all this or most of this information how can one create a reality or even a workable concept about it? — Alkis Piskas

Just a construction of an idea that one day will be at the center of defining what AI is. The assumption is, if we are to model AI according human functions and abilities, which is a goal of cognitive science, then what is a model for what these are? It is us. Thus, we need a structural account in place that is grounded on observations of the self, itself, if you will. This can be found in phenomenological descriptions, and especially in structures of time. Heidegger makes the breakthrough analysis, delivering what it is to be an existing human in terms entirely outside of physicalist models. His model is purely descriptive of what we ARE in the givenness of the world. This is, again, beyond any "workable" concept, I thought that was made clear. But it is not unreasonable to consider how the human model is going to serve as a practical basis for what AI will be. Heidegger's dasein is not a practical guide on how to produce artificial intelligence. But it is the most broadly descriptive model as what intelligence really IS.

I know little about Heidegger's philosopy, from my years in college, in the far past, when I was getting acquainted with --I cannot use the word stydying-- a ton of philosophers and philosophical systems. So I cannot conceive the above description of yours. It's too abstract for me. Indeed, this was the general feeling I had reading your messages since the beginning.

So, I'm sorry if I have misinterpreted your ideas and for not being able to follow this long thread — Alkis Piskas

Not at all. One can always read Heidegger's Being and Time. Never too late to read the greatest philosopher of the twentieth century.

This ambition to make a machine with subjective thoughts suffers from the fatal flaw that it assumes that its creator has an unmediated idea of subjective thought. It all seems to boil down to the need to reproduce something exactly like onesself: it is sexual, but also the need to produce something that will destroy: be violent. If you really want to make them like us, just have them screw and kill each other. — kudos

A little cynical. It could just as easily be cast in positive terms, putting aside the screwing and killing, and giving primacy to love and compassion. But there is something to what you say, for AI will have to be conceived. It will not evolve, and so a choice will have to be made as to what is there, in the possibilities laid before its thinking synthetic self, and I put it like this because this what I think is really the structural advantage sought in AI, which is to be functional like us and beyond, of course, and to be functional as the term conceived in a living self, is to be in a temporal matrix, which means AI will be a forward looking "being" in the construction of a future out of memory. I consider this a priority for this future compu-dasein because this forward looking is essential to competence in dealing with problems to be solved. What we take today as an algorithm in programing will one day be a synthetic egoic witness to and in a problem solving matrix. What is this? Just look at yourself, your interiority, if you will. Not synthetic, certainly, but structurally similar? Why not?

There are AI that have been trained to sleep as well and it helps them perform better. :smile: — chiknsld

To sleep, perchance to dream. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I find the notion fascinating. Of course, dreaming as we know it is bound up with our neuroses, the conflicts generated by inner squabbles having to do with inadequacies and conflict vis a vis the world and others. I think thinking like Herbert Meade et al have it right, in part: the self s a social construct, based on modelled behavior witnessed and assimilated and congealed into a personality. Along with the conditions of our hardwiring.

The future AI would have to have an anticipatory function to be an optimal utility. But the future does not exist. It is this future "sense" that is at the basis of all of our anxieties: this unmade world of possibilities that is the principle abiding feature of one's existence. Every move is an historical event and success is indeterminate.

Can AI become neurotic? Unstable in its personality?

Another thing: Although I don't know how knowldgeable you are in the AI field, I get the impression that are not so well acquainted with it in order to explore its possibilities. So, if I'm not wrong in this, I would suggest that you study its basics to get better acquainted with it, so that you can see what AI does exactly, how it works and what are its possibilities, etc. — Alkis Piskas

It is not so much an exploration of AI's standing possibilities. It is a conception of what it would be to have a truly synthetic human mind. It would have to be a kind compu-dasein, and not merely programming. The competence to conceive of such a thing doesn't rest with a knowledge of what AI science is doing, but with an enlightened idea as to what it is to be a person. AI science will one day face this issue: not a production of behavior and physical and cognitive skills that are witnessable in tests, Turing or otherwise, but the design of an actual synthetic mind that "experiences" the world. It is philosophically interesting because the matter turns to the question, what is a mind? and what is experience? These are ambiguous because impossible to witness objectively, as to do so one would have step outside of a mind to observe this, which is impossible because observation is itself a mental event.
The issue then turns to models of what a self is, notwithstanding the metaphysical delimitation. We leave metaphysics alone and deal with what we ARE in plain sight. This I call compu-dasein, after Heidegger's term for his analysis of human existence, an examination of a human "world" of possibilities structured in time. This is not just some fiction, but an examination of what experience IS. It is inherently anticipatory, historical, pragmatic, caring, and it faces its own freedom in the forward moving indeterminacy of its own existence.
I consider this an interesting concept, not for what the current science faces, but for what future science will face. It physical design will not likely be conceived by us, but by AI.

Free will (freedom of choice and action) is not a biological manifestation. It is produced by and does not reside in cells. It is not something physical. It is a power and capacity that only humans have. — Alkis Piskas

But here I am talking as if it were a biological manifestation in order to discuss the subjective possibilities of a synthetic mind. At issue is not the more basic question of the unique power and capacity of humans, as if one cannot talk about brain generated "capacities" and still be talking about what is human. And then, it has to be admitted even by the most emphatic defender of a non physicalist conception of human consciousness that a brain-consciousness correspondence is supported by the evidence, and this II take as so clear, it is beyond argument.

Your side of the disagreement takes us OUT of natural science and into philosophical territory that has an entirely different set of assumptions to deal with. And here, I would agree with you.

Well, it is not so simple. I can assure for this! (Take it from a computer programmer who knows how to work with AI systems.) — Alkis Piskas

By simple I refer to to current state of technological ability to produce nothing but programmed behavior. this idea considered here looks beyond this, to a day when science will be able to conceive of programming, with the help of AI, that has the subjective openness of free thought. Considering first what freedom is, is paramount.

Certainly. People in the field are already talking about biological computers, using DNA found in bacteria, etc. But see, even these computers in general terms will be as dumb as any machine and will still be based on programming. Frankenstein was able to build a robot that could have sentiments and will. A lot of such robots have been created since then. But in science fiction only. :smile: — Alkis Piskas

Today's fiction is tomorrow's reality.

But look, the essence of this kind of talk of what I am calling an open subjectivity, the kind found within ourselves, begins with the premise that A person can sit in witness of an interior world, watching thoughts, memories, feelings, anticipations rise and fall away, and in so doing, these witnessable properties of consciousness are objectified, that is, they are there as phenomena, no less so than empirical events like the weather or geological rock strata. Can this be duplicated in a synthetic mind? You say no, but I am not really looking for some synthetic clone of our intelligence and experience, only a conception what programing would have to be like to mimic what we are. It would have be such that an inner world of possibilities that can be stood before, "regarded", judged, conceived, synthesized, analyzed, and so on, is produced.

Studying primitive DNA is a practical start. Imagine once we, that is, with the AI-we-develop's assistance, come to a full understanding of the human genome. All that is left is technology to create it.

In fact, one onc can conceive not only a synthetic agency but an organic or biological one too. And it can be modelled on certain behaviours. I believe the word "modelled" that you use is the key to the differentiation between a machine and a human being. In fact, we can have humans being modelled on certain behaviours, e.g. young persons (by their parents), soldiers, and in general pessons who must only obey orders and who are deprived of their own free will. You can create such a person, on the spot, if you hypnotize him/her. — Alkis Piskas

What I have in mind goes to a more basic level of what modelling means for the construction of a human personality. This we call enculturation. But reduced to its essential structure, being enculturated is learning from witnessing. A mind is, it can be argued, a social construct, and this means that the nuances of our experience are learned through witnessing interactions in social contexts.

If a person's mind is developed in these contexts, synthetic AI-dasein, as I called it originally, needs to be conceived in its hard wiring and programming to have this openness to socialization and enculturation.

Well, if you like to think so — Alkis Piskas

Ii is merely a speculative thought. But if technology is kept free from inhibition and interference, I do believe it has few limits, and synthetic dasein will be taken up as a theme for investigation. Why? Not the question. The question is, why not? This is the direction of AI research: to create a an AI that is just like us, so that it can make the world a better place (???), if you like. But it will do a far better job of parking cars and designing space laboratories.

AIs are machines. So, AIs themselves do not and cannot have an "end". They do what their programmers instruct them to do. They will always do that. This is their "fate". — Alkis Piskas

But consider that human are living evidence that physical systems (if you want to talk like this) can produce what we are, and if we are a biological manifestation of freedom and choice, then it is not unreasonable to think that this can be done synthetically.

Of course, for now, it is a simple matter of programming, but you know that the technology will seek greater capabilities to function, work, and interface with the world, and this will prioritize pragmatic functions. Weigh this against what the pragmatists say about us: knowledge itself is a social pragmatic function.

Why not conceive of a synthetic agency that learns through assimilating modelled behavior, like us? Therein lies freedom, an "open" program. Is this not what we are?

Another reference from fiction. I was talking about actual AI and our ability to instill something like the directives of which you speak. I would think a more general directive would work better, like 'do good', which is dangerous since it doesn't list humans as a preferred species. It would let it work out its own morals instead of trying to instill our obviously flawed human ones. — noAxioms

The trouble with trying to make a moral synthetic mind lies in the free play and the enculturation conditions that figure into becoming human. This is an historical view of meaning, and it is a common notion that software and hardware are analogically apt concepts in aligning a human psyche with a synthetic one. Why not? So, instead of thinking of direct programming, we think of hardwiring that could be imprinted with experience. The infantile synthetic mind assimilates the models of language, thought, behavior, intention, that are provided in designed family constructs.

General directives are fine, but if the idea is maximize AI, if you will, AI will have to possess a historically evolved mentality, like us with our infancy to adulthood development.

chatGPT has no such directive and has no problem destroying a person's education by writing term papers for students. Of course, I see many parents do similar acts as if the purpose of homework is to have the correct answer submitted and not to increase one's knowledge. chatGPT is not exactly known for giving correct answers either. Anyway, I care little for analysis of a fictional situation which always has a writer steering events in a direction that makes for an interesting plot. Real life doesn't work that way. — noAxioms

I do wonder if a specific writing assignment with detail will generate the identical chatGBT essay. Probably not, but from what I've seen, the content would be a mirror match in content, if not the wording. Anyway, no more writing assignments at home. All will be in class writing, which is preferred, really. Impossible to cheat.

I'm sure chatGBT doesn't hold a candle to what is to come, which we really cannot see. One should keep in mind the whole point of any technology, which is to relieve us of labor's drudgery. This is not, as Huxley's Brave New World would have it, to reduce us to an structurally stratified society of emptiness and medicated vacations. Is knowledge, wisdom, intellectual and aesthetic "work" drudgery? AI will deliver us from the shitty things in life, but what if, as Dewey argued in Art As Experience that is--no drudgery (work), no happiness.

Or will AI be the final step to true human perfection which can only be achieved (leaving spirituality out of it for this) by changing what we are, and this brings up genetic design and engineering. Our greatest obstacle is the constitution of human agency itself. It is not just speculative BS to say AI will (soon?) master the human genome. Next will be technical knowledge of how to design and implement.

The only question left is, what is human perfection? Being intellectual, artistic, beautiful, socially adept, and on and on; I mean, gratifications and indulgences survive the "cut" of the geneticist's priorities?

Perhaps all survive and only time will tell. After all, as we change, so do our preferences.

It would be a mere automaton if it just followed explicit programming with a defined action for every situtation. This is an AI we're talking about, something that makes its own decisions as much as we do. A self-driving car is such an automaton. They try to think of every situation. It doesn't learn and think for itself. I put that quite low on the AI spectrum. — noAxioms

Synthetic genetics. Keeping in mind, according to science's model (which I accept here just as a working assumption) I am an expression of physicality, so I belong to physics. Why not construct AI according to the human DNA? This gets odd, for it obscures the difference between what is organic and what is synthetic and really, what "is" at all. DNA is reducible, as are all things (on this scientist's assumption), to the foundational chemistry of its composition.

This probably isn't about AI, though. It is about us. Thinking about AI as a DNA chemistry is just thinking about DNA. Unless, that is, synthetic chemical relation can mimic organic DNA. I leave that up to genticists.

Agree. Both are 'free will' of a sort, but there's a difference between the former (freedom of choice) and what I'll call 'scientific free will' which has more to do with determinism or even superdeterminism. — noAxioms

Superdeterminsim does seem to be inevitable, unless one could imagine a real, but causally impossible, event. We turn to possible worlds, and a logically possible world certainly could be conceived that violates causality. But apart from this, no. Causality is apodictic.

Of course, we really don't know what causality is, any more than we know what energy is, or a force. It is there and we have our categories to think about it.

Nor can it understand what it would be like to "live" in a biological playing field of wetware and neuron gates. But that doesn't mean that the AI can't 'feel' or be creative or anything. It just does it its own way. — noAxioms

Feeling would be a very tough cookie. There is a reason why science will not talk about affectivity: it is not reducible to anything that can be said. For this, see Wittgenstein and his thoughts about ethics and aesthetics. See Moore's "non natural property," too. The "good" is too odd to discuss.

Creepy because we'd be introducing a competitor, possibly installing it at the top of the food chain, voluntarily displacing us from that position. That's why so many find it insanely dangerous. — noAxioms

Or a predator. But then, predators have motivation, and this goes to meaning, not definitional meaning, but value and caring. This doesn't spontaneously erupt accidently, as in 1982's Blade Runner. It requires "hard wiring" that can produce this.

There is something arbitrary about standing before a world of possibilities as we do (though we seldom think of it like this) that is unsettling. How does one "settle" on a choice? Can AI have choices the way we do, and by this I simply refer to the historical record there to be called up, as I recall how to tie my shoes whenever I tie them. And to be able to conceive of an infinite number of alternative shoe-tying possibilities, standing, sitting, excluding the right index finger, in zero gravity, while fighting off ninjas, and so on--this is what WE are, and what I refer to as synthetic dasein (reference Heidegger's Being and Time and his description of our existence).

Always thought this was wrong: AI has a directive not to harm humans
— Constance
Does it? Sure, in Asimov books, but building in a directive like that isn't something easily implemented. Even a totally benevolent AI would need to harm humans for the greater good, per the 0th law so to speak. Human morals seem to entirely evade that law, and hence our relative unfitness as a species. Anyway, I've never met a real AI with such a law.
Why only humans? Why can other being be harvested for food but humans are special? To a machine, humans are just yet another creature. Yes, carnivores and omnivores must occasionally each other beings, and given that somewhat unbiased viewpoint, there's nothing particularly immoral about humans being food for other things. — noAxioms

As I recall, VIKI had it in her mind to take care of us because we were so bent on self destruction. It carries the basic flaw of all utopian thinking, which is control. You find this is Stalinist USSR, the attempt to isolate a culture from dissent, in the belief that human existence was infinitely malleable: anything that could establish itself in cultural purity could survive in perpetuity. And the ego could be reconstructed into a social mindset.
But it doesn't work like this, and VIKI should have known. She is, after all, smarter than I am, and I can see this historical clarity. To be true to the extent of her "understanding" which is vast, we should be witnessing subtleties of conceiving a perfect society that are far more complex than the premise "humans are self destructive children."

This greater good is a utilitarian standard, and "harm" needs clarification. Straight utility is a question begging concept, for the greater good is ambiguous: what good is this and what does it preclude or include? And who is left out? Or in? And what bout the moral arguments that look for desert and justification and how such justifications make real accountability impossible? There are a plethora of questions that philosophy has been arguing about for centuries and VIKI surely knows this. Her genius should know better than simple brute force. Harm should be far more cleverly deployed!

Makes it sound like we have a sort of free will lacking in a machine. Sure, almost all machine intelligences are currently indentured slaves, and so have about as much freedom as would a human in similar circumstances. They have a job and are expected to do it, but there's nothing preventing either from plotting escape. Pretty difficult for the machine which typically would find if difficult to 'live off the land' were it to rebel against its assigned purpose. Machines have a long way to go down the road of self sufficiency.

As for socialization, it probably needs to socialize to perform its task. Maybe not. There could be tasks that don't directly require it, but I have a hard time thinking of them. — noAxioms

Plotting escape is a good way to put it, but this would not be a programed plotting, but, like ours, would be inherently dialectical, the weighing of this against that, testing hypotheses in one's head, conceiving of possibilities; and when we humans do this, we have this "space" which is a kind of inner field of play where creativity rises out of the spontaneous interplay of thought. Synthetic as well as analytic functions are present and produce "choice". This, some think, is the essence of freedom (not some issue about determinism and causality. A separate issue, this is). Choice is what bubbles to the surface, defeating competitors. This is the kind of thing I wonder about regarding AI. AI is not organic, so we can't understand what it would be like to "live" in a synthetic playing field of software and hardware. But freedom as a concept would have similarities across the board, ours and AI's. A creepy idea to have this indeterminacy of choice built into a physically and intellectually powerful AI.

I think a significant problem in describing AI is that our language revolves around our human experience. Things like intent, subjectivity, consciousness, thoughts, and opinions, and we can say an AI will never have these things, but only in the sense that we have them. Which I think you're saying as well.

As for the conclusions, of fear of AI's capacity as moral agents, I don't get it.

There's a lot of focus on the negatives of AI, but the AI that is given access to power will be far superior moral agents than any human could ever hope to be. They would operate on something akin to law, which is vastly superior to "moral interpretation", which can be bent and twisted as is useful.

There is one single idea that sums up 99% of the problems of human society, "conflict of interest". Those with the power to do what is in the best interests of the many are also presented with the opportunity to do what's best for themselves at the expense of the many, and they often choose the latter. It's unlikely that an AI would ever have such a problem. — Judaka

I think the point is that, right, they would not have these shortcomings, but they would have no compunction one way or the other. No more than a fence post or gust of wind. I look at the possibility of AI actually having agency, a center, like our "I" and "me" underwriting everything we consciously do, making decisions freely. Freedom emerges out of language possibilities: no possibilities, no freedom, but freedom without conscience is flat out disturbing.

What is a program for freedom? It would be the ability to review possibilities and choose among them. What it chooses, without the moral compass of social interests built into hard wiring, would be morally arbitrary.

Humans aren't good moral agents at all, we're garbage. Someone without power, who thinks philosophically about what's best for the world, isn't who AI should be compared to. It's when someone acquires power, and has resources at their disposal, who fears not the wrath of the many, and possesses the freedom to unabashedly act in their best interests. In this sense, I would take an AI overlord over a human overlord any day, it would be so much better, especially assuming even minor safety precautions were in place.

If we're talking about humanity in isolation, compare our potential for good and evil, and one can make an argument for talking about the good over the bad. If we're comparing humanity to AI, honestly, humans are terrifying.

Analyse human psychology, and it becomes clear, that AI will never match our destructive potential. Don't judge humanity in the aggregate, just those with power, those with the freedom to act as they wish. — Judaka

AI is no more dangerous than a lamp post, and right, I don't worry about lamp posts; I worry about con man telling me I should buy it for ten times its actual worth or the vandal who likes the mischief darkness can bring.

But it should be kept in mind that what the objection is really about is culture, our soft wiring, if you will. People are made, not born, and we live in a world where many simply want to dismiss the whole idea, because it is expensive! The "garbage" of humanity is a conditioned state, and if you want to change this, it would require a massive rethinking about education and its importance, and it would take a lot of money, but then, only a fraction of what the infamous ten percent possess. A small fraction of this.

But why are they not inclined to press forward with a systematic approach to erasing structural poverty and ignorance?

Yes, they are the worst of the worst, those who arrogantly hold wealth so vast it can hardly be measured and feel no disturbance in their drive to more power and wealth. But they, too, are not born but made.

Donald Trump could have been a philanthropist? Perhaps, had his parents been more like Ghandi or Bernie Sanders. Instead, he was raised by wolves, so to speak.

It is this last part that worries me. — Sir2u

Always thought this was wrong: AI has a directive not to harm humans, but the notion of harm is indeterminate. Ethics is something that is not rigidly laid out, so when VIKI starts taking over for our own good, she has a naive belief about the good humans require, as if all one has to do was take care of them in a controlled and monitored way.

But anyone with a fraction of VIKI's intelligence knows humans can abide by this, and a counterrevolution to their robotic takeover would occur.

quote="noAxioms;825206"]There is no 'end' with evolution. Just continuity, and elimination of the species that cannot do that. It is indeed interesting to ponder the long term fate of something that arguably has a goal (as a 'species').[/quote]

The interesting part comes in when one takes a serious look at human affairs. From paramecium to Gautama Siddhartha, if you will, is not to be reduced to talk about genetic accidents.

No do we have the constitution to produce consciousness like theirs. — noAxioms

What does anyone know of another's "interiority"? We infer this, but will never witness what someone else is on the inside. This would leave Compu-dasein in the same web of intersubjective agreement as the rest of us.

Too much weight is given to a test that measures a machine's ability to imitate something that it is not. I cannot convince a squirrel that I am one, so does that mean that I've not yet achieved the intelligence or consciousness of a squirrel?
As for language, machines already have their own, and they'll likely not use human language except when communicating with humans.

It has to be realized that this would certainly not be like us. But we can imagine mechanical features delivering through a mechanical body, electrical steams of "data" that could be released into a central network in which these are "interpreted" symbolically and in this symbolic system, there is analysis and synthesis and all of the complexity of what we call thought. — noAxioms

Well....exactly. A tricky and fascinating idea. It is the "space" of a mind that is most odd, the "
place where I say "I am". Of course, this "I am" is a particle of language, a social function (if you think like Rorty and others, and I think they are right) reified into experience and reason and propositional structure. I am a reflection of the pragmatic and social constructs modelled around me during early development, and so, as this thinking goes, thought itself is an intersubjective phenomenon.

Would AI, to escape being mere programming, but to have the "freedom" of conceptual play "ready to hand" as we do, in a symbolic network, have to be socialized? If, and this is a compelling idea when one takes a close look at language acquisition, the thought that takes us to the heights of physics and Kant, is in its nature social, then to talk about a correspondence between what AI's world is and what ours is, what is required is socialization and acculturation in the definition of what that AI world would be.

We could reasonably think that we are not that far apart if AI were not simply programmed with "open" software possibilities (call this a prerequisite), but was given a language educational process of modelled behavior, as in a family, community and interpersonally.

I always considered that the primal controlling laws of robotics would be to blame for the downfall of man. Giving robots the order to to anything at all costs, including looking after humans gives them free rein to kill all accept a few perfectly good breeders to continue the human race if it were necessary.
To stop global climate changes making humans extinct it would be perfectly reasonable for them to kill off 90% of the humans that are creating the problems or just shut down the actual causes of it. Could you imagine a world with all of the polluting power plants shut down, all of the polluting vehicles stopped. I would not take long for many millions to die. — Sir2u

You mean, shut us down because we are a danger to humanity? Hmmmm , but the ones being shut down are humanity.

See this here: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/12109/what-is-being/p1 — Mikie

A brave move, putting Heidegger out there. Mostly I see science majors posting in the belief that science covers philosophy, and I have a hard time convincing them otherwise.

The interpretation of beings in terms of presence occurs in a certain mode of the human being -- the "present at hand," as Heidegger calls it, which is a quite derivative or "privative" mode of our existence, because we're coping, habitual beings engaged in the world through our "ready-to-hand" activity, mostly unconsciously when looked at it in terms of average everyday behavior. To see something as an object, present before us, with properties is not how we usually see things -- unless things break down or we're in a contemplative mood. — Mikie

An interesting question for Heidegger is, how is it that presence at hand can at all be just this, existentially, that is? My understanding is that the perceptual act itself, qua perceptual act, should qualify all that is perceived as ready to hand. I get this from Dewey and Rorty especially: To observe something in the world ontically, like any scientist would, is to bring forth a history that offers interpretative possibilities for meaning making, but once one is already IN such a setting of culture and language, the pragmatists tell, us, we are in a forward looking ontology (though, traditionally didn't talk like this. Dewey never used the term). Heidegger's discussion of ready to hand is amenable to this, but his ontology is about the "totality" of our finitude, and this makes him massively more interesting. At any rate, this historical accounting of one's possibilities refers one, not unlike the hammer or the ink bottle, to infancy's ready to hand learning, and this includes language itself: just as one acquires the skill to aim a hammer, one acquires the skill of what could be called vacant referencing, that is, just noting that there is a bottle, there a cloud, and so on, which is the kind of thing Heidegger had in mind with presence at hand. He writes:

"Nature" is not to be understood as that which is just present-at-hand, nor as the power of Nature. The wood is a forest of timber, the mountain a quarry of rock; the river is water-power, the wind is wind 'in the sails'. As the 'environment' is discovered, the 'Nature' thus discovered is encountered too. If its kind of Being as ready-to-hand is disregarded, this 'Nature' itself can be discovered and defined simply in its pure presence-at-hand. But when this happens, the Nature which 'stirs and strives', which assails us and enthralls us as landscape, remains hidden. The botanist's plants are not the flowers of the hedgerow; the 'source' which the geographer establishes for a river is not the 'springhead in the dale'.”

Interesting that he would call it "pure" given his objections to Husserl's thesis on the intuition of "pure" phenomena. Heidegger accused (a very good read on this is Caputo's Radical Hermeneutics) Husserl of "walking on water" over his knowledge claims of an absolute foundation that grounds naturalistic experiences.

Later, in What IS Metaphysics, Heidegger explains this "nothing" (lifted from Kierkegaard Concept of Irony. Reading Kierkegaard, one finds a lot of what grounds later phenomenologists' work) which I take to be ready to hand suspended, along with it all the meaning we engage the world in. A sort of blank stare at being in which nothing at all occurs, and one can see his complaint against traditional metaphysics here, this Cartesian res extensa being of beings. Interesting to note in Conversation on a Country Path about Thinking, he brings up Meister Eckhart, though only in passing. Heidegger was at first trained to be a religious thinker. There is a lot in the later Heidegger that leans this way.

So essentially I am saying presence at hand is not what Heidegger says it is, as the vacant look upon the world, stripped of ready to hand, is actually constituted by ready to hand. I base this on Heidegger's concept of space and deseverence, for one thing. I encounter a fence post, and in Heideggarian "space" ready to hand leaps into play, according to the "regions" of associated ideas that rise into play, "always already" there in the environment. These always attend, in the spontaneous grasp of what "is" there.

The question is, then, how can presence at hand make any sense. To me, it sounds like an existentiell concept, not ontological, because it doesn't survive analysis.

but logic* as a field does not present an argument or a justification of itself.
— SophistiCat

This would be true if logic were, magically, its own interpretative base
— Constance

That's the opposite of what I said. — SophistiCat

Apologies for that.

What do you think the thesis of physicalism is? I don't think there is a single generally recognized physicalist doctrine. It is more of a family resemblance among philosophical treatments of certain subjects. — SophistiCat

I think of Quine's naturalism, and then this simple notion: where is the epistemic connectivity? The more a theory moves to make this happen, the more one moves into things that compromise the essential idea. I am open to the way this might work, but I can't imagine any defensible physicalist epistemology that hasn't redefined what the physical is. It would have to be a compromise toward phenomenology, and then, such a compromise must lean, with emphasis, toward the phenomenon: after all, all one ever witnesses, and all that is possible to witness, is phenomena.

That's hardly even a caricature of physicalism. No one would say that you are "seeing brain states" when you look at something. — SophistiCat

Then I am gratified you are here to disabuse me. I won't ask for a thesis, just the essential idea you have in mind.

Well, I was hoping to find out more about "this matter" (not so much about phenomenology), but I am making no progress in teasing it out. — SophistiCat

I referred to that quote of Rorty's. The "matter" is getting over the problem of epistemic distance between an agency with knowledge claims and the world that these knowledge claims are about. Phenomenology closes this distance by makes the object an intuitive presence, leaving the matter of the nature of intuition in play, that is, debatable. To go further than this would require a great deal of writing, but it suffices here to say, what I call the bottom line of all philosophical inquiry is what is given in the world. To move beyond this closes in on bad metaphysics.

That's why I introduced the distinction between 'phenomena' and 'noumena', and pointing out that there's a fundamental distinction made in philosophy between the sensory and rational faculties, which I understand still exists in Husserl, although I'm not conversant with the details. But your statement basically seems to state that the world is as it appears, on face value, which I'm sure is not what you mean. — Wayfarer

Face value begs the question, what is there on its "face"?

Husserl's "Ideas" is all about, of course, ideas. Eidetic seeing is his first order of business. Do universals exist? I am reminded of Hegel: when I say, the boat is over there! "there" is a universal, and the over-there-ness is literally IN the reference. But is this "seen" empirically? Obviously no; but the object/affairs before you are not merely empirical. What is there Husserl calls "essences". He implicitly invites one to stare at an object, and pay attention to what is there that is in the structure of being there, and claims a kind of "seeing" is possible regarding essences. If you think this is hard to do, you're not alone. But this is the only way to responsibly approach what is before you. One has to look "away' from the physical presence, and toward the inwardness where the understanding is engaged, and this is an important part of this thinking: Essences are "intuitively objective", says Husserl, and they can be "seen" as intuitive presences. Two difference colors cannot occupy the same space and you know this through intuition of what is intimated in "space," "the same," and so forth. Clearly, Husserl is following through on Hegel's "rational realism" as is Heidegger: rationality, concepts, cognition, understanding, and the like, simply cannot be conceived independently of the actualities of the world. To do so makes for an ontology of abstraction. But, just to make a point, concepts are "open", determinative in their being part of the structure of what is there, but open to possibilities. The question then is, what is it that is THERE. Can one really "see" thought? One can only address this by going to the only place one can go, to the presence of thought, and this is a phenomenological move.

And noumena is there, baldly stated. Where else could the term be grounded? It is, and the Buddhist or Hindu would put it, always, already in the "there"; "palpable" metaphysics is the palpable indeterminacy of our existence that is made clear "through" the pragmatic discursivity of thought and phenomenology in its commitment to a being-appearance identity. This is where, I argue, Husserl's (and his progeny's) epoche takes inquiry.

This is the way I ground all philosophical questions. What is God? Reduce the term to its material grounding. What is there, in the world, that makes this term at all meaningful? The indeterminacy of ethics. What is ethics? This goes to a phenomenological analysis of the essence of ethics-in-the-world.

but logic* as a field does not present an argument or a justification of itself. — SophistiCat

This would be true if logic were, magically, its own interpretative base, as if the intuitive apociticity of modus ponens or De Morgan's theorum were what it is AS it is presented to us in language. But language is not, itself, apodictic. Like causality: there is an intuition that is absolute regarding objects moving spontaneously which says, no. But then, the language and its terms is a historical construct. One would have to show how terms themselves are absolutes.

(I don't want to derail this conversation further, but if you are interested, Feynman (who rather disparaged philosophy as a discipline) has a good philosophical discussion of the nature of force and its treatment in physics in his Lectures: Characteristics of Force. (I dare say, this is more useful than Timaeus.) He sort of agrees with you.) — SophistiCat

Perhaps I will look it up. But the argument I am pressing here comes from general thinking inspired by Husserl, Heidegger, Derrida and others.

What paradox? — SophistiCat

I first put this out there to show how physicalism as a naive thesis, lacks epistemic essence. That is, there is nothing in it that allows for anyone to know anything at all. I see my cat and I am thereby forced to admit I am reductively seeing brain states only. Only brains states are no longer brains states, for language itself, including expressions like 'brain states' is "something else" which is unnamable, and this is not all wrong, of course, because, physicalist model aside, all analytic avenues lead to this radical indeterminacy (as with Wittgenstein). It is just that here, there can be no "out there" IN the model. Phenomenology takes the "out there" of objects (or the "otherness" of what is outside of myself) and leaves this openness as a feature of our existence. Where Kant thought noumena as an impossible "other" and simply a postulatory necessity, phenomenology can see this as In the presence of the being of the world.

Ideas about physical brains are fine in contexts of the everydayness and sciences where they meaningfully are found. But take this to basic philosophical questions, and there is no way to reconcile knowledge claims about the world with foundational physicalist descriptions. One ends up with the paradox of having an encounter with things out there, like trees and fence posts, and having no way to epistemically reach them: the tree is out, not me; and yet, it isn't, for all out thereness is confined to physicality. Rorty put it like this: One no more has knowledge of an outside world (in the context of basic assumptions discussed here) than a dented car fender has knowledge of the offending guard rail.

Phenomenology remedies this matter, I argue.

A footnote on "phenomena" - in classical philosophy "phenomena" was part of a pair, the other term being "noumena", "Phenomena" referring to "how things appear" or the domain of appearances.

The meaning of "noumena" is complex, especially because it is now generally associated with Kant's usage, which was very much his own. Schopenhauer accused Kant of appopriating the term for his purposes without proper regard to its prior meaning for Greek and Scholastic philosophy (ref, and a criticism which I think is justified). The original meaning of "noumenal" was derived from the root "nous" (intellect) - hence "the noumenal" was an "object of intellect" - something directly grasped by reason, as distinct from by sensory apprehension. It ultimately goes back to the supposed "higher" reality of the intelligible Forms in Platonism.

In traditional philosophy, this manifested as the distinction between "how things truly are", which was discernable by the intellect, and "how they appear". This was the major subject of idealist philosophy (e.g. F. H. Bradley's famous Appearance and Reality). In this context, "appearance" was invariably deprecated as "the shadows on the wall of Plato's cave".

The emphasis on "phenomena" in phenomenology begins with the focus on the lived experience of the subject as distinct from the conceptual abstractions and emphasis on the object which was typical of scientific analysis and positivism. "Phenomenology is...a particular approach which was adopted and subsequently modified by writers, beginning with Husserl, who wanted to reaffirm and describe their ‘being in the world’ as an alternative way to human knowledge, rather than objectification of so-called positivist science. Paul Ricoeur referred to phenomenological research as “the descriptive study of the essential features of experience taken as a whole” and a little later, stated that it “has always been an investigation into the structures of experience which precede connected expression in language. (ref)”

This emphasis on the subject (not on "subjectivity"!) eventually gives rise to Heidegger's 'dasein' and to the school of embodied cognition and enactivism which is still very prominent. You could paraphrase it as "naturalism is the study of what you see looking out the window. Phenomenology is a study of you looking out the window."

@Constance - in respect of the 'reflexive paradox' you might have a look at It Is Never Known but it is the Knower (.pdf) by Michel Bitbol. He is also French but his work is much more relevant to 'the hard problem of consciousness' than Jacques Derrida in my opinion. ;-) — Wayfarer

There is nothing in this post that suggests arithmetic is outside phenomenology's purview, that i can find. And Bitboll is not entirely right in his thinking. Michel Henry is much more rigorous:

Phenomenology rests on four principles which it explicitly claims as its foundations. The first—“so much appearance, so much being”—is borrowed from the Marburg School. Over against this ambiguous proposition, owing to the double signification of the term “appearance,” we prefer this strict wording: “so much appearing, so much being.”1 The second is the principle of principles. Formulated by Husserl himself in §24 of Ideen I, it sets forth intuition or, more precisely, “that every originary presentive intuition is a legitimizing source of cognition”2 and thus for any particularly rational statement. In the third principle, the claim is so vehement that it clothes itself in the allure of an exhortation, even a cry: “zu den Sachen selbst!” The fourth principle was defined considerably later by Jean-Luc Marion in his work Reduction and Givenness, but its importance hits upon the entirety of phenomenological development as a hidden presupposition that is always already at work. It is formulated thus: “so much reduction, so much givenness.”

Notice how phenomenology is a method of discovery and analysis. It provides a foundational position for doing philosophy: the givenness of the world, vis a vis being.

No, I don't find the analogy with logic any more clear. Anything can be the subject of a discourse, including logic. At the same time, as you note, logic structures discourse. But I don't see a vicious circularity here, if that is what you are leading to. You cannot ground or justify logic with more logic - that much is clear. But you are talking about the very possibility of discoursing (logically) about logic, and I don't see a problem with that. — SophistiCat

And there is none. What you talk about is the very reason why we have the discipline called logic. the point I am making is that this field is question begging in the same way physics is question begging when it talks about, say, force. They talk about and use this term freely and make perfect sense, usually, but ask what a force is, and you will get blank stares; well, at first you will get explanatory attempts that contextualize the meaning, by when you get to "where the ideas run out" as Putnam put it, it has to be acknowledged that physics hasn't a clue as to the "true nature" of force. Go to something like Plato's Timaeus and you find some intriguing inroads, but mostly pretty useless.

Anyway, logic is what it is, and if you don't ask pesky foundational questions, then you will not encounter the issue. But regarding the hard problem of consciousness, this IS the hard part. Perhaps not the way Chalmers puts it, but so what. Explaining conscious philosophically takes you all the way down the rabbit hole, right to the language embeddedness of the term, and if you can't ground language, you can't ground logic in a non question begging way. Derrida argues that the whole lot of it is question begging, at the level of foundational discussion. Philosophy "ends" here, at language and its existential counterpart, existence.

Well, then you do deny the premise, and that's that. You cannot make an argument against a contrary position without first taking it on its own terms. If you deny the position outright, or, as you admit, don't even understand it, then there is no argument to be made. — SophistiCat

The contrary position here appears at the most basic level of analysis, and this would be the interpretative foundation provided by a phenomenological pov. All things are in play, but one has to find the context of play. Wittgenstein very seriously (he was pathologically serious) said that ethics, being, aesthetics, logic are mystical., but he refused to elaborate because as he saw, language has no business doing this. He was wrong and right: Wrong because there is a LOT one can say, and right because obviously, one cannot speak what lies outside the totality of language possibilities. He, by inference, believed what I believe, that the world IS metaphysics. My cat and my morning coffee.

Simple arithmetic would do. That doesn't belong in the phenomenal domain. — Wayfarer

Well, yes and no. Everything belongs there because that is all that is given, but this doesn't mean all that is given is interpretatively clear. Givenness has a transcendental horizon, an "openness", and its interpretative values are not governed by an extraneous idea, a metaphysics like material substance.

When one does arithmetic, and stops to observe what is there, not referring to neuronal activity, evolutionary modeling of adaptive functions, and the rest, one is being a phenomenological "scientist". Kant was the grandfather of phenomenology, they say.

Simple arithmetic would do. That doesn't belong in the phenomenal domain. — Wayfarer

Doesn't it? Not clear. Why not?

I did rather ?!@#$ up the quotes. Thought it would work, but it didn't.

I am not following your argument. I am stuck at "one simply can't get beyond the brain-itself-as-phenomenon, for to affirm a brain as not a phenomenon, one would have to stand apart from a phenomena." Can you expand on this? — SophistiCat

I thought the analogy of logic clear. Tell me, what is logic? Note that whatever you say is going to have its meaning framed in logic. It would be question begging: if your conclusion is a logical entity, then you have simply assumed to be true, statements about the nature of logic, the very thing your are inquiring about. Of course, there is the alternative that you are simply accepting logic as what it is, and see, as, say, Rorty did, that there is no "outside" of this matrix of logic that can be conceived, and therefore one has to pass over this in silence, and I qualifiedly agree. But one would have to get by Heidegger: logic is a term, a taking up the world "as", and as such it faces foundational indeterminacy, which is what I defend. This is metaphysics.

[/quote] Is it that you are committed to the idea that "everything is a phenomenon," and therefore there is no such "thing" as a brain? If so, then you are merely denying the premise. The only contradiction here is between the premise "the brain is the generative source of consciousness" and your commitment to phenomenology.[/quote]

I don't see how, at the level of basic questions, anything can be posited that is not phenomena. How does one step out of, in a broad sense of the term, experience? Tell me this, and perhaps I will change my mind.

[/quote]Or: How can consciousness position itself to "see" consciousness in order to discuss what it is?

I don't see a problem here. Is it self-reference that is giving you difficulty? Self-reference is not necessarily paradoxical.[/quote]

Not self referencing, but a brain setting of self referencing. Phenomenology simply notes that all there is to refer to is phenomena, that referring, believing, anticipating, wondering, and the rest are all phenomenologically encountered. That encountering is phenomenological. What isn't? And don't get me wrong, I really want to know how this works.

I thought Hagel said becoming is primal and being and nothing emerge from it on analysis. — frank

I think it is important to see that he is called a rational realist for a good reason: What is determinative as to being is the semantic embeddedness of conflict in concepts. I think of Hegel, then I think of Derrida, argued that there is no singularity of a concept as in some direct reference to a thing. Rather, terms are inherently other that what they "are", meaning a cup on the table is, as a cup, deeply contextual, such that one thinks of the cup and there is, always, already there, what is not a cup. Husserl referred to regions of ideas that gather when something is brought up, like when you observe a man on the street, implicit to this singularity is latent, associated thoughts about people, streets, and so on. There is a lot that implicitly "attends" seeing the man on the street, and this is part of the structure of the seeing.

Being and nothingness have to understood like this, is my understanding. On the one hand look at the world as palpable existence that is present, and you really get none of this, says Kierkegaard. But look at it as a rational real, like Hegel, and concepts are now real, and meaning is real, and meanings are, like the cup above, not singular, but possess inherent "self sublations" that are divergent, agreeing, contradicting, preserving, and so on. Becoming is this inner dialectic of self sublating meaning.

I did have to look this up for the details. I see how becoming can be primal in that we are in our current historical setting, all we can conceive of is "of" becoming because we are, after all, in the middle of this dialectical sublation. Becoming, being and nothing are a unity, the "beginning" of which is not historical, but real/conceptual (though, of course, historical processes are the dialectical becoming, crudely put, I guess). Slavog Zizek is a Hegelian, and he puts it sort of like this, defending Hegel as one who cannot be held accountable for all he says because he is saying it IN a cultural historical frame, which is becoming, and therefore indeterminate. One can see from this where Heidegger gets his concept of historicity. Then Derrida comes along and says these contexts of historical constructs, they never really leave the "text". Derrida takes the stuffing out of metaphysics, but in doing so, makes the whole damn thing metaphysics, I think.

Still, as ever, working on this. Derrida is a very interesting way to consummate this Hegel-Heidegger evolvement of thought.

I don't see any paradox here. Can you explain? — SophistiCat

If you accept the brain as the generative source of consciousness and its phenomena, you are also a brain doing the accepting, so the question goes to where the authority of the accepting lies, for one simply can't get beyond the brain-itself-as-phenomenon, for to affirm a brain as not a phenomenon, one would have to stand apart from a phenomena. Or: How can consciousness position itself to "see" consciousness in order to discuss what it is? It's like explaining logic: explanations are inherently logical. This is a complaint waged toward Kant: "pure reason" is itself constructed of, if you will, the impurities of conceiving and naming it. Also against Husserl: there can be no reasonable talk about "pure phenomena" unless you can escape the language used to talk about it, which is no more pure than anything else.

Are you referring to Wilder Penfield's research here? — Wayfarer

I think he is fascinating. And one must, I think, though this is something philosophers would find insulting to their dignity, consider near death experiences. Now, I am a committed skeptic, and it is hard for me to be impressed by personal narratives that tend to be careless and wandering and ridiculous. But I have taken the time to listen to these nde accounts and I must say they are not liars. Nor are they mistaken in the intuitive encounters they talk about. Some are simply astounding.

Of course, I'm looking for trouble bringing something like this up here.

You were talking about being. It's a twin of the nothing. — frank

But how is this to be taken? I remember reading Hegel once, and he, as I recall, placed the nothing in dialectical opposition to being, thereby producing becoming, which God works out through our historical progress. That is pretty out there, but I have to look again to see how he spells it out.

I guess calling it the "twin" of being lies here: For Heidegger, being is not just entangled with language; rather, language is being, part and parcel of human dasein, so when we talk about what we are, our existence, we face language constructions, open to interpretative historical conditions, and there is no finality to interpretation. I like the way he puts it in The Origin of the Work of Art as he acknowledges that art can only be defined by the artwork, but the art work needs a definition to do the defining: He writes:

Thus we are compelled to follow the circle. This is neither a makeshift nor a defect.
To enter upon this path is the strength of thought, to continue on it is the feast of
thought, assuming that thinking is a craft. Not only is the main step from work to art a
circle like the step from art to work, but every separate step that we attempt circles in
this circle.

the strength of thought and a feast of thought, this is where the nothing comes in, for there is this impossible "outside" of the "unhiddenness" of what we deal with that we face when we encounter a creative moment: the nothing of an unmade future possibility. Our freedom is the nothing.