Yes and no questions? Really? :-} — Barry Etheridge

I mean, that is binary, lol

Ayn Rand isn't exactly a great example of philosophy in action.

That is not the same with a Bigot. The Bigot pretends that he is willing to discuss something because he pretends he's open to be proven wrong but really his motive is to prove him self above others. To inflate his ego with the feeling of being right and another wrong. — intrapersona

Sounds like most bloggers.

such as? — intrapersona

Do we have an ethical priority to help those in need?

Accepting that I might be wrong doesn't preclude me from having an opinion to begin with, or to have a sense of exigency based on that opinion. The fact that I'm willing to discuss something means that I'm open to be proven wrong.

That's the difference between an open-minded and a close-minded person: whether or not they are willing to have their beliefs changed.

However, there are some things that have exigency and thus can't be legitimately postponed forever for the sake of discussion.

Are there not strategies used by humble people to avoid this kind of thing? — intrapersona

One strategy would be to not participate in discussion with them in the first place.

Though we have to be careful not to confuse bigotry with exigency.

Interesting. I knew that natural selection was not equivalent to evolution but was under the impression that it was the most powerful force in the evolutionary process.

In any case, evolutionary psychology is rife with appeals to "fitness" and natural selection as an explanation of behavior.

The admission that evolution is not equivalent to natural selection, however, opens up the possibility that evolution is a distinctly metaphysical aspect of the world, i.e. we should look at the world through the lens of evolution.

Yes, Ruse is the author I was referring to.

Oh, and fuck Dawkins, the pretentious and ignorant twat.

Interesting quote by Nagel, I believe I read it a long while back but forgot about it. Although I consider myself agnostic, I will admit that I hold a preference for atheism being true. There's also a book by Oxford that was recently released that apparently talks about how the theory of evolution was created in a context of scientific disenchantment and that Darwin's theory unfortunately evolved into Darwinism, or a secular religion of sorts.

They could take a drug and be moved to high heaven with spirituality and come back and say "nothing of it, it was all in my mind and completely meaningless... who said they needed some powerlines fixed" and go back to whatever they were doing. — intrapersona

I can see myself doing that. I'm pretty skeptical myself.

But in general the engineering crowd, or the STEMlord crowd for that matter, is filled with either a bunch of hyper-religious nuts or obnoxious nu atheists. The scientism is real, any philosophical discussion over dinner is cringey AF. Yo, what if, like, we're all one mind haha and it's just like energy dissipating in one string...that'd be awesome...

A lot of freshman choose engineering because they wanna make loads of money. They're weeded out pretty quickly once they realize that engineering's fucking hard and a lot of work. Nobody pays you 60+k out of college for a walk-in-the-park degree.

lol I'm an engineer. We tend to be kinda weird but an inability to deal with abstract information is definitely not one of our qualities.

Many professors are quite simply very strange, awkward human beings. — Thorongil

You should check out the engineering department, lol.

I found the engineering informed my philosophy stuff more than the other way round.
Classes on machine learning, computer vision techniques etc. — shmik

I've found that as well. Object-oriented programming in Java complemented my excursions into analytic metaphysics.

Currently electrical engineering, but I'm switching to computer engineering next semester. I'm also minoring in philosophy.

I have a love-hate relationship with Amazon. I recently binged four books off that website, all philosophy-related. The first was a book on process philosophy by Rescher, another was on meta-ethics, and the last two I got at a bargain price of $10 combined, both on artificial intelligence (the science and philosophy behind it).

I don't know why I bought these to be honest. It's not like college offers me much time to read anything anyway. At least the latter two books are somewhat related to my degree.

So questioning can stop (because more questioning would be fruitless) when we have identified a logically complementary limits on ontological possibility. That is simply what intelligibility consists of. — apokrisis

This reminds me of Kant, except instead you're a realist (like me) and that the noumenon is just unintelligibility.

Leibniz is an idealist. A monad is basically a mind. It's a "windowless container", accessible only by the outside by a special monad known as God. God's creation act, according to Leibniz, was that of forming all the monads.

How would I describe consciousness?

I would argue that consciousness is the presence of a world.

Metzinger has some interesting thoughts on this:

For minimal consciousness:

• Constraint 1: Globality - consciousness is globally available for many different functions
• Constraint 2: Presentationality - consciousness implies presence, or an experience of "now"-ness
• Constraint 3: Transparency - a phenomenological concept that implies epistemic darkness, or an inability to explore the roots of consciousness itself by consciousness alone. I would personally call this "limited flexibility", or what Metzinger calls "autoepistemic closure".

For a robust sense of self:

• Substantiality - the feeling that one could exist all by oneself, see Avicenna's "floating man" thought experiment.
• Essence - the perception that one possesses an "innermost core" of essential, unchanging properties
• Individuality - the feeling that one has a unique personal psychological identity.

For a more robust consciousness:

• Constraint 4: Covolved Holism - i.e. "nested" structures-within-structures (pace Salthe)
• Constraint 5: Dynamicity - change and duration, existing within the background of presence (constraint 2)
• Constraint 6: Perspectivalness, or the relationship between a stable "self" and a stable "environment"

There are more constraints and much more detail in the link above. It's a great example of modern neuro-phenomenology.

I agree, emotion (or passion) is a crucial aspect of inquiry. We wouldn't inquire if we weren't at least curious, after all.

Furthermore, many philosophical positions are directly related to emotions. Something tells me existentialism wouldn't have taken off if we didn't have some need for ego-validation, or if we didn't feel fear or pain or even pleasure. It just wouldn't matter. In fact I doubt any inquiry of any kind would have taken off had we not needed something. Science in particular seems to manifest as practical knowledge, philosophy therapeutic. But both stem from some degree of curiosity. And of course we can't have this strict demarcation either.

There are ideas that make rational sense but are too emotionally upsetting to be entertained. — Bitter Crank

"But one thing is the thought, another thing is the deed, and another thing is the idea of the deed. The wheel of causality does not roll between them" - Nietzsche.

Whether the future looks bright and interesting or bleak and dull—and what we should then do about it—is determined by emotions over which we do not have much control. For instance, the inextinguishably cheerful, happy person will probably not settle on anti-natalism as their philosophical stance. They may see the point of the antinatalist, but life seems to them too good to deny.

As Freud said, “we are not masters of our own houses” and that includes what we think. — Bitter Crank

Honestly this is why I think trying to convince other people of certain positions can be an exercise in futility. Like attempting to convince a creationist of evolutionary theory. It just ain't gonna happen. People quite literally see the world in different incompatible ways (again, Nietzsche).

Sounds like you're world-weary. Weltschmerz. The feeling of experience as "heavy", or "syrupy". I wouldn't even call it listlessness or ennui. You're just kinda "there", existing, somehow. Life flows but incredibly slowly, one heartbeat after another. As if your life is an exile from non-existence and you just want to retire already. Responsibilities are tedious and annoying, things you used to find enjoyable are now sort of empty and lackluster.

You said you used to be an engineer. That's cool, I'm currently pursuing an electrical/computer engineering degree with a minor in philosophy. You'd never guess what my private life is like if you saw me in public - I'm a pretty chill guy, albeit melancholic, and like making people laugh. Yet when I'm by myself I'm troubled deeply by many rather scary or dark thoughts, existential and/or intrusive in nature. It's like I become a different person, and the void begins to open. I want to be upbeat but it's hard to find any genuine or authentic reason to, especially when I have these thoughts nagging me. I'm not suicidal (or at least I don't think I am), but neither am I that attached to my future, whatever the hell that ends up being.

I don't know, if you're on medication I'd keep taking it and make sure you're taking care of yourself. I find some consolation in philosophy; lately I've been reading Nietzsche a lot and do enjoy his almost mythological aphorisms. Sometimes they spark something on fire in me and it's like I'm reinvigorated. A lot of people misunderstand and/or mischaracterize Nietzsche, though, which is unfortunate. Maybe you'll find something of interest in his writings. Or maybe not.

Good luck.

Ugh, no, if we did that, then we would all see who each other really are and would have to actually be considerate and respectful. This is the internet, goddammit, I didn't come here for manners and pleasantries! On with the anonymous ego-trips!

Right, for the sake of argument, let's assume that reasons are "static preferences". Being static, they cannot act as a cause. It is the reasoning mind, which uses static preferences, in the process of reasoning, which causes the decision. It cannot be a preference which is the cause of a decision because the preferences are not active, they are passive. The mind is active in the process of reasoning, and it is the mind which causes the decision, not the preference. — Metaphysician Undercover

You misunderstand what I meant by static. By static, I merely meant unchanging, I didn't mean causally inert. The existence of a opportunity-preference, paired with a principled, character-building preference, leads to action.

We judge things according to principles, not goals. We look for objective principles, and we can judge our goals as to whether they are consistent with the principles which we believe are objective. — Metaphysician Undercover

I hesitate to accept this idea of a perfectly rational mind, built upon sturdy, concrete principles and noble truths. For where do these principles come from, and why do we uphold them if not by a preference to uphold them?

Principles become rules in which to follow, given a framework which we adopt based upon certain preferences.

Practical reason is an ability to arbitrate between potentially conflicting goals. Some specific goal may be judged to take precedence over another goal, in a particular practical situation, when there is a good reason for it to do so. Practical reason is the ability to understand such reasons and to be motivated by them to act accordingly. Reasons themselves, unlike raw desires, baby squirrels of meteorites do not come from anywhere. It's a category error to ask where a reason comes from. One can ask where the human ability to reason practically (i.e. to be sensitive to reasons) comes from, but reasons themselves stand on their own. If someone's reason to do, or to believe, something is bad, what is required in order to show this reasons to be bad, and thereby motivate an agent to abandon it, isn't a story about the causal origin of that reason (or the causal origin of the specific goal that it recommends one to act upon), but rather a good counterargument. — Pierre-Normand

I see no reason to distinguish between preferences and reasons, as if they are two completely separate things. Reasons, in my view, are just static preferences. I have a reason to go for a run today, because I want to be in good shape. I may not actually prefer to go for a run (exercise is hard...), but this preference is over-ridden by the reason (preference) to be fit.

Thus we can have a static grouping of preferences (reasons) if we have a static goal - to be fit, to understand the truth, etc. The division between normative reasons and non-normative preferences thus, in my view, cannot be sustained.

The fact is, as I have argued, and Pierre-Normand now agues, that we use reason to judge conflicting preferences, and this is called making a choice. — Metaphysician Undercover

But to what standard do we judge conflicting preferences, if not the goals we have in mind to accomplish?

So you have not addressed the process which judges the preferences to make a choice. You have simply asserted that a "preference" causes the choice, so it is not a choice at all. But this is simplistic nonsense because clearly different preferences are judged, and not a single one of them actually causes itself to be chosen. They are judged as passive possibilities, not active causes. The active cause of the choice comes from that which is judging. — Metaphysician Undercover

We choose an option depending on what our overarching goals are. Do I go to the movie theater, or donate to a charity? In both cases, I have a preference to have fun, and a preference to be moral. And this is where we get into the idea of character, or the static preferences a person has. The character is what ultimately decides between two or more preferences, based on what the person's higher-order goals are and a deliberation as to which of the possible routes of action helps attain this goal the best. But of course none of us decided what our character would be, or who we would fundamentally be as a person.

Why would you say this? It appears as contradiction. How can you say that "it chooses", if whatever it chooses it must choose? How is that a choice at all? — Metaphysician Undercover

Exactly, it's not a choice at all. It's like a compass pointing to north - it is forced to point north, but nevertheless we need the needle to know where north is.

Yes, it absolutely does make sense. This is how we proceed to kick our bad habits. We just face the fact that certain things are not good for us, and force ourselves not to choose those things, even though they are our preferences. — Metaphysician Undercover

But to kick our bad habits requires us to have the preference to be rid of these bad habits. An override.

The choice produced by the rational mind is not one of "preference", but one of reason. Then the will releases the suspended choice, allowing the individual to act according to reason rather than preference. — Metaphysician Undercover

What does reason accomplish if not goals, and where do goals come from if not preferences?

But whatever it chooses, it must choose. It doesn't make sense to have a strong preference yet pick the route of least preference satisfaction, otherwise what exactly would a preference even be? There's nothing free about the will here. The will must choose a certain route of action depending on how strong the various preferences influencing it are.

This is the power to not choose, to decline or deny any preference. Since it can decline any preference whatsoever, it cannot be a preference itself. To say that will power, which is the power to deny any preference, is itself a form of preference, is contradictory. — Metaphysician Undercover

Not necessarily. We can see will-power as a kind of illusion. In any case, what exactly is going on when we choose, if not the process of evaluating our preferences? If our preferences don't causally affect our choices, then what exactly causes us to choose one option rather than another?

Your argument fails to dismiss free choice, because you would need to produce a human inclination which could not be overcome by the power of the will, in order to prove your point. But each and every activity of the human being may be overcome through the power of choice, as is demonstrated by suicide. — Metaphysician Undercover

The power of the will? What is the will, if not the manifestation of the most prominent preference, or the conglomeration of a multitude of compatible and cohesive preferences?

But that's an entirely false dichotomy. Preferences are an expression of the individual. They are not somebody else's preferences, nor are they community 'property'. They are, by definition, what makes me me! No matter how they came to be what they are, their source is always me. They were not transferred to me from any external source. — Barry Etheridge

They characterize you but they aren't the product of your will or anything like that. One morning you woke up and found that you wanted orange juice. You didn't decide that you wanted orange juice.

A lot of the existentialists were all about radical freedom, and anti-essentialists. Like Sartre said, existence precedes essence. Which I find to be entirely incoherent, since to exist is to have certain properties and qualities outside of your control.

So say you wake up one day and want orange juice. You get orange juice and it makes you satisfied. But reflecting upon all this you can come to realize that, since you didn't choose to have this preference, you're merely following the rules the universe programmed into you.

So then perhaps in disgust you throw down my glass of orange juice and decide to rebel. But your life is filled with preferences, and this would require a massive undertaking to resist all these preferences. You didn't choose to make the smell of lavender soothingly calming, dammit! You don't want to be a posh resident of the universe, pampered (insulting to the dignity of the ego), and neither do you want to be a pawn of the universe, thrown around without your consent (also insulting)!

But eventually you will realize that all of these preferences are meant to keep you alive - that's the universe's game, to keep you alive until you can procreate and defend the clan. Therefore, in order to rebel, you must discontinue living.

However you then also immediately realize that the preference to live seems to be more important than being an individual - in fact, you realize later, that the preference to be an individual is itself a preference. You didn't get to decide if you wanted to be an individual, you were thrown into the world from nothing-ness.

This leads me to believe that the self has absolutely no causal relevancy here. And it also leads me to believe that existentialism, with its focus on freedom and rebellion, fundamentally falls short because it doesn't realize that our preferences, who we are, are not a product of ourselves at all. We don't have control. And if we can't have control, then what's the point of being an individual?

Sure, I can agree with that. I think this is why I generally don't like the existentialist slogan of individuality - if there is an individual, then its preferences are an imposition onto itself.

Talk of dispassionate choice reminds me Stoicism. But the attempt to dispassionately choose something is nevertheless motivated by some other preference - the wish to not be enslaved to preferences. No matter where you go, there's always a preference lurking behind the choice.

This is a manifestation of her sensitivity to the reasons that she has to act in this or that way in such or such general range of circumstances. — Pierre-Normand

But what are these reasons, other than preferences (i.e. needs, desires, concerns, etc)?

If we are not free when we have to follow a social contract that we did not agree to, then we are not free when we have to follow preferences that we did not agree to.

For example the pedophile may have an implicit preference for children but may also believe this to be wrong and so thus has a higher-level preference that disables the pedophilic preference. However, this pedophilic preference still has influence, since it has to be repressed.

Even the higher-level preferences we did not ask for. The preference to be loved, the preference to have a good set of friends, the preference to have a stable job, etc - although we may really really enjoy these preferences being satisfied, after reflection we can come to realize that these preferences are inherently limiting in their nature. They limit what we can and cannot do by limiting what we like and dislike. Therefore, we have no control over what we like and dislike, and therefore have no control over what options will be seen as better than others.

This is why I was saying rebellious existentialism is sort of incoherent, since it takes a preference (that of being an individual) and forgets where this preference came from (not from the individual!).

Sometimes people feel pain, hate it and do nothing about it. Indeed, you might have acted that way. You just chose to tend to it. — TheWillowOfDarkness

In which case, I would argue that they have other preferences over-riding others. Accomplishment is the essence of action. We want something to be the case, therefore we do something.

"Rebellious existentialism" isn't interested in freeing anyone from preferences. It's point is one cannot free themselves from their preference-- you must choose, you must have a preference and there is no other state which can define it. Its freedom is defined in our inability to determine our preferences — TheWillowOfDarkness

My point was that the ultimate act of rebellion in the existential sense would be a rebellion against yourself. It's why we see people who go cliff jumping as totally crazy, yet somehow in an endearing way. They are fighting against their own body's preferences which instantiate themselves as fear and anxiety. But cliff jumping would pale to the maximal act of rebellion, which would be suicide. It wouldn't make sense to kill yourself when you are really, really happy - yet for the rebellious this is exactly what they ought to do.

And that's kind of what I was getting at here, we don't have control. We only think we have control. We didn't get to choose what was to be enjoyable and uncomfortable to us. For some reason, synthwave music jives with me - but I had no choice in this matter. I enjoy synthwave music, and I enjoy it without my own consent. I know that sounds edgy but really if we're all about existential rebellion, then this is kind of important. If we're really actually concerned about individuality then we need to recognize that we don't even have control over who we are, and that the greatest act of individuality would be the rebellion against the individual himself.

Despite lacking free will, our brains tend to do what we prefer and avoid what we don't enjoy, thanks to millions of years of programming behind it — Weeknd

On the contrary I think it rather that our mind, our sense of self, is aligned with what the body needs. But what the body does and needs does not always align with the self - see hunger, thirst, aging, etc.

"Actions are initiated by mental states" looks as if it is saying something other than "we initiate actions". — unenlightened

Yes, I meant preferences which would be outside of the self's grasp. I did not choose to hate tomatoes, for example. This preferences against tomatoes guides my action - without any over-riding higher-level preferences, I will not eat tomatoes. So I suppose it does look like a homunculus, but then again I suspect agency is entirely epiphenomenal.

Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms — schopenhauer1

Which is of course true.

For every action there is a preference. The act of choosing one's preferences is an act itself, which requires a preference that was not chosen.

I don't know what you're getting at here. I have a preference to not feel pain - when I feel pain, I tend to the source of the pain. The reason I tend to the source of the pain is because I have a preference to not feel pain. But I did not choose to have this preference to begin with.

Because of this, any attempt at a radical metaphysical rebellious existentialism is going to be shallow as it ignores our inability to free ourselves from our preferences to begin with. The only rebellion worthy of such a name would be one in which the agent performs actions that are entirely against his own preferences - which is impossible to do without having a preference to rebel in the first place.

No, things can be chosen, but the reasons behind these choices (our preferences) are outside of our control. Certainly we don't have the choice to change our preferences.

You have any examples of how anti-realist normative literature compares to realist normative literature? I'm getting conflicting information on this. Some argue as you have that anti-realism eliminates certain normative theories, while other claim it doesn't do anything to the debate.

What worries me with some forms of anti-realism is that we seem to (or at least I do) find many normative beliefs to be true, and true in virtue of something external to our minds, i.e. an objective aspect of reality. But if we come to the conclusion that there nothing external to us is actually moral, or actually valuable, outside of our projections on them, then that seems to dampen our commitment to these beliefs. If there really is no difference between A and B besides how I feel about A and B, and if how I feel about A and B is at least in part dependent on my belief that A and B are objectively valuable, then my belief that A and B are not objectively valuable is incompatible with the belief that A and B are, which in turn threatens the motivational aspect of morality in general.

In moral reflection, one can use logic to work out the best way to satisfy one's moral feelings. — andrewk

I think I can agree to this. Fundamentally the reaction I have to things I consider moral or immoral is some sort of approval or disapproval. From this I can figure out what makes it the case that I feel this way about something.

However what happens if our moral beliefs are illogical? What happens when, upon further analysis, we find that the moral belief does not conform to logic, or is ad hoc, or begs the question? Which takes precedence, the illogical belief or the logic?