Clever. Obviously everyone could do that to their own eye. That's another loophole answer though - the real answer doesn't involve a loophole — flannel jesus

I’ve given up on being correct. I’m working on being amusing.

If you don't mind a spoiler, read unenlighteneds answer (which is more or less the canonical answer) and join the debate with us and Michael. — flannel jesus

Nope. I’m going to keep trying. Here is some more non-canonical answers.

One guy, I don’t know who, it might be @Baden, takes one of his eyes out, looks at it, and then leaves the island.

The guy who drives the ferry leaves the island every night.

Oops.

They can count, but... so what? What's the logic? From the point of view of any person showing up to the boat, how has he logically deduced the colour of his own eyes? — flannel jesus

You’re right, their ability to count doesn’t matter and I shouldn’t have put it in there but it doesn’t make any difference. The guy running the boat tells each person whether or not they got their eye color correctly. If they did they get on the boat. If they didn’t on their first try, then they know and can get on the boat.

They know they don’t have some color other than blue or brown, because if they did, no one would’ve showed up at the boat

none of these match the canonical answer but I would love to see your justifications anyway — flannel jesus

All the people except the guru have a pretty good idea what color their eyes are. After all they can count. So that night they go to the boat and get on. You haven’t said how they verify whether or not the person knows their eye color. Let’s assume that the guy who is running the boat asks them. They tell him what they figured out. If they’re right, they get on the boat and go. If they’re wrong then they definitely know what color their eyes are so they get on the boat and go.

One possible problem with this is that each person making the decision might be wrong and might have red eyes or some other color. But they know that isn’t true, because everybody showed up at the boat. They wouldn’t have all showed up if one of the people had red eyes. If that happened, they couldn’t be sure they didn’t have red eyes too.

Everybody but the Guru gets off the first night.

I think I can justify all of them, but I think this is probably the best

They all get off the first night.

Guru leaves immediately.

That’s what normative ethics is? Should we not criticise the Russian invasion of Ukraine or the criminalisation of homosexual relationships yes please thank you in Brunei? — Michael

If there’s nothing you can do about it and you’re not affected or responsible, shooting your mouth off is just a way to make you feel good about yourself.

But i did find the FOTC pretty funny. — AmadeusD

Ok, OK. I did too.

Wow. Dude, what the fuck side of hte bed did you wake up on. — AmadeusD

Oops! Sorry. How about this instead? Flight of the Conchords is not funny.

Wow. Dude, what the fuck side of hte bed did you wake up on. — AmadeusD

Now I have to say something mean to you too. How about this…

Fucking Kiwis

This is the topic I would like to talk about, — Samlw

You are welcome to talk about it. I wasn't suggesting your thread not be allowed. It would just make more sense if you would discuss troubles in your own country or in the world in general rather than pontificating about subjects where you have no credibility and where your opinion doesn't matter, no matter how self-satisfied it makes you feel.

Here's a brief summary of what I think you've written. Tell me if I got it wrong.

Rich people and poor people are socially equal because, while rich people have many material advantages, poor people have a better chance of building good character.

I'll just say I think this represents a very naive understanding of social equality.

I am interested in what people think about this. — Samlw

Some thoughts.

It annoys me you feel the need to step into this. As you note, it's a problem in the US, but not in most of Europe. Why do you feel the need to tell us how we should act. I don't get it.

I grew up with guns, mostly shotguns for hunting and a bit of target shooting with BB guns and rifles. I'm comfortable around them and people who use them. I have no particular problem with gun control within limits and I know conservative gun owners who feel the same way. The obsession of some liberals with gun control has forced many gun ownership supporters to more strident resistance to any gun control.

You put off discussion of the Second Amendment so I'll take it up. The first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution were added to the text before it was originally approved by the states. They are known as the Bill of Rights. The one that matters the most to me is the First -

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. — First Amendment

For some people, the Second is the most fundamental.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed. — Second Amendment

Part of their reason is that without access to firearms, none of the other rights can be guaranteed. I have some sympathy with that understanding. There have been all sorts of arguments about what that means, but the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled it applies to individual US citizens. Like it or not, that's the way it is.

Here's my main reason for my lukewarm support for gun control. The Democratic Party, of which I am a member, and liberals in general have put gun control hear the top of their political priority list. That has cost them dearly with the more conservative, Southern, rural, and male population. It has also drawn energy away from what I consider more important issues - things that will make for better lives for people in general and working class and poor people in particular. Examples include health care, taxation, education, jobs, and economic fairness. It has hurt the party badly, has very few positive results, and is unlikely to have positive results any time soon. Right now, support for strong gun control is just a feel-good, symbolic, self-destructive fantasy. Time to move it way down the list.

I’m a white, liberal, registered Democrat, but I recognize what you’re calling “woke” for what it really is. It’s a way for “progressives” to show their contempt for working class, white men without suffering the consequences of saying it directly. We liberals are now paying for that.

Senryū. :smile:

These do not generally include a season word and they are often cynical — javi2541997

I knew I could count on you. Thanks.

it's just such a tidy koan. — Banno

It also makes a good first line for a haiku, or whatever those haikus that aren’t really haikus are called. Hey, Javi [@javi2541997], what’s the right word?

Ok. — Banno

Oh, Banno… you’re so cute.

Taoism seems to assert that there is an ultimate reality that transcends conceptual categories. — boundless

Yes, that’s how I see it.

BTW, as an aside I don't know if you are familiar with David Bohm's philosophical views — boundless

Not really. I’ve heard his name here and there on the forum, but I don’t really know what his beliefs were.

I quoted Feynman because he says that the conservation of energy is an 'abstract idea', which IMO implies that he also viewed that energy itself is an 'abstract idea', i.e. a concept that is useful to us but not necessarily something that 'represents' something external. — boundless

Are speed, distance, time, and force abstract ideas? Do they exist? How about goals, purposes, and intentions?

In any case, I believe that the precise ontological status of physical quantities like 'mass', 'energy', 'momentum', 'electric charge' etc is still a matter of debate among scientists and philosophers. — boundless

I don’t think there’s any serious debate among scientists. Philosophers? Among philosophers everything is always a matter of debate.

It is not so easy. — Wayfarer

It is exactly that easy

Leaving aside kicking the ball into the long grass by declaring it ‘metaphysical — Wayfarer

I declare it metaphysical for two reasons. First, because it is. Second, because if I treated it as if it were supposed to be some sort of actual description of the real world, it would be impossible for me to take it seriously.

Hah. I'm usually arguing a case a step more sophisticated. And this is indeed an issue I am wrestling with right now in its most general physicalist sense. — apokrisis

This is a great response. @Wayfarer, @Metaphysician Undercover, @boundless, and I will all be able to say "See, Apokrisis agrees with me."

In short, I argue from the point of view of systems science with its basically Aristotelean understanding of hierarchical order and causality. The key thing is how a new state of global order can only emerge by simplifying the local degrees of freedom as the "stuff" from which the new state of global order is being constructed from...

...You need global constraints to shape the raw material into the functional units which now come together in a natural way to express that global purpose driving the whole show. It is necessary to form or shape the local degrees of freedom to ensure you already start with the "right stuff". — apokrisis

A lot of the things you write about are either over my head or come from a really different direction than my way of seeing things. We've talked about emergence a few times before and one thing that has stuck with me most is the idea of constraints. I was reading about early criticisms of the idea of emergence and it was claimed that it requires backward causation. It struck me how wrong-headed that is. Constraint isn't causation. When I stop my car so I won't run into the car stopped ahead of me, that car doesn't cause me to stop, it keeps me from going.

Life and mind then lucked into codes – genes and neurons – that could act as internal memories for the kind of constraints that would organise them into organismic selves. They could represent physical constraints – which have to exist concretely in space and time – as information that could now be deployed at any place or moment of the organism's own choosing. — apokrisis

You wrote "Life and mind then lucked into codes." That makes sense to me, but I have been confused by some things you wrote in the past. When you wrote about biosemiosis in the context of coding in DNA, I always got the feeling you were talking about the kind of teleosis that Wayfarer et. al. are.

Nevertheless, it has been an interesting discussion for me. — boundless

For me also. There's no better way to understand what you believe than to bump up against something you don't believe.

Yes! I think that reductionist versions of physicalism have serious problems. But this isn't the case for non-reductionist versions. After, 'physicalism' can be a very broad category. — boundless

For what it's worth, I don't call myself a physicalist, although you might. I call myself a pragmatist.

I believe that our concept 'mass-energy' either corresponds or represent a property that physical systems have and which can be measured. I don't think it is a 'thing' or anything substantial. I'm not sure what you are taking issue with.
The points I was making do not rely on a particular ontological position about 'mass-energy', 'momentum' etc. If they are simply 'abstract ideas', as Feynman put it, nothing really changes. — boundless

I doubt Feynman thought "the ontological status 'mass-energy' is a rather controversial topic." That's certainly not what he wrote in that quote you included.

Actually "final cause" was intended to put an end to the infinite regress. Any chain of causation would begin from an intentional act. If it wasn't begun in a freely willed act of a human being, it began as a freely willed act of God. I don't think God can be classified as "sentient". — Metaphysician Undercover

I have no problem with a religious point of view where God is the final cause giving the universe, the world, reality, or whatever you want to call it, meaning and purpose. That's not my way of seeing things, but it's something I understand. My problem is with all this talk about teleology without God.

To say that reality is confined to this human box called "the universe" is an arrogant self-indulgent attitude of certitude. It suggests that we have reality all figured out, and it all fits into this concept, "the universe". But the reality of intention and free will don't fit into this concept, and this demonstrates to us that a significant part of reality actually escapes this determinist concept of "the universe". — Metaphysician Undercover

You can call it the universe, reality, the world, existence, the Tao, or whatever you want. I'm just talking about everything there is even before all those things are things.

So contrary to what you say, the scientific approach is to jam reality into the box of human experience, empiricism, while the teleological approach, which accepts the reality of free will and intention, allows for a vast aspect of reality beyond what we can experience with our senses. — Metaphysician Undercover

As I wrote previously, if you think God is the source of purpose and meaning, there's no need for this discussion to go any further. I recognize and respect a religious argument, even though it's not how I see things.

But is it an analogy at all? Isn’t it pointing to something real — not metaphorical, but actual? — Wayfarer

Umm... No, not as I see it. Isn't that the whole point of this discussion.

Now, if you’re an artillery officer, all you need to know is how to aim — and that’s what Newtonian physics helps with. Your tables and calculations tell you how to fire accurately. That’s one kind of aim — and it’s the kind physics is concerned with. And it made a huge difference!

But there’s also another level of aim: why you’re firing, why you joined the army, what the war is about — and none of that appears in the physics. Yet it’s still part of the aim. Physics models the trajectory, but not the reason. — Wayfarer

The artillery officer, the war planners, and the politicians are all human. I've never claimed human actions can't have purposes and goals.

In the same way, when Aristotle speaks of telos, he’s not always invoking a designer’s intention or a conscious goal. He’s pointing to the formative structure of things — the way they unfold, and what they tend toward in their becoming. The acorn doesn’t “intend” to be an oak tree, but neither is its development just accident and brute cause. — Wayfarer

You and I are just making the same arguments over and over. You say the acorn and the artillery officer are analogous. I know you disagree with me, but by now you must recognize that's an argument I find weak, to put it kindly.

But the question of what all this is for? — Wayfarer

And the obvious answer from where I stand is it's not for anything. It's not that you're wrong. As I've said previously, this is metaphysics. It's not true or false, it's more or less useful. I don't find your way of seeing things as useful and I think it's misleading.

But he also refers to natural things, acorns and foals. Elsewhere the distinction is made between artifacts and organisms, but here the distinction is not that important in this context - only that artifacts have purposes imposed by their designers while organisms have purposes that are intrinsic to them. — Wayfarer

That’s why I said I think it’s a bad analogy. As I said, I don’t really want to reopen this whole argument.

Be that as it may, I wasn’t trying to reopen the argument, I was trying to explain why I reject itso strongly.

I’d agree that when teleology becomes a way of carving up nature to fit our needs or narratives, then it’s missing the point. But if it’s a way of attending to the inner coherence of things then it might be closer to reverence than to imposition. — Wayfarer

I think it’s probably needless to say I don’t agree with this.

If we want to understand what something is, it must be understood in terms of that end ...Consider a knife. If you wanted to describe a knife, you would talk about its size, and its shape, and what it is made out of, among other things. But Aristotle believes that you would also, as part of your description, have to say that it is made to cut things. ...The knife’s purpose, or reason for existing, is to cut... — Aristotle, Politics, IEP

A knife is designed and made by humans to cut. I think that is a bad analogy for the kind of goal or purpose you have been talking about. It implies there is a designer and a creator, an idea which, as I understood it, you have rejected.

@Wayfarer @Metaphysician Undercover

It struck me just now why I find the teleological approach to understanding the world so distasteful. It's disrespectful to the universe - to reality, to the Tao - to try to jam it into human boxes. It's arrogant and self-indulgent. I really do hate it.

Sound similar to Logan's Run. Mostly cuz of the 30-year-old cutoff for their society, and that it's also a bad and wonderful scifi flick. (1976) — Moliere

It is also my understanding that Soylent Green is people.

I would even say that mass is an abstract property no more real than energy. — boundless

Mass is energy. Energy is mass. Your conception of what is real and what is not doesn't make much sense to me.

I question if there is a meaningful distinction between strong and weak emergence. — boundless

As I noted, you and I are just too far apart on this.

I would say that we have a similar understanding, — boundless

I strongly disagree.

Another point is that, perhaps, in order to have an acceptable explanation of life and consciousness, physicalism needs at least to be 'expanded' or corrected in some ways. — boundless

We've been through this. The physicalism you seem to be talking about is the reductionism you and I both reject.

Nuff said.

I often think while observing the insect world, that there seems to be an excess of awareness. A vibrant interactivity going on. A kind of bursting with life, which seems to outstrip the basic necessities of finding food and procreating, in their specific evolutionary niche. — Punshhh

This is from Antonio Damasio's "Feeling & Knowing: Making Minds Conscious." Damasio is a well-known cognitive scientist.

Once we are capable of consciousness, what we become conscious of is the contents of our minds. Minds equipped with feeling and with some perspective on the world around them are conscious and are widely present in the animal kingdom, not just in humans. All mammals and birds and fish are minded and conscious, and I suspect that so are social insects. — Antonio Damasio - Feeling and Knowing

the one teleological principle I’m willing to defend — even if it’s heresy in mainstream biology — is orthogenesis: the idea that there has been, over evolutionary time, a real tendency toward greater awareness, self-consciousness, and intelligence. — Wayfarer

Well, of course there has been. When you start at zero complexity, zero consciousness, the only place to go is up.

There are a number of different ways in which intention can be the cause of the movements of things, without intention being within the thing that is moving. Since we observe the activities of things, and notice that many are moved by intention, while the intention which moves them is external to them, (including chains of causation), it makes sense that non-sentient objects could be moving in intentionally designed trajectories without us being aware of the intention which sets them on their way. — Metaphysician Undercover

This seems like the whole infinite regress problem. A rock is moving with intention, but the intention came from outside it. Where did that intention come from? From the other rock that knocked into it? Where did it's intention come from? How far back do we have to go? When is intention actually inside something non-sentient?

Often though, there is an inclination to make intention synonymous with purpose. This would mean that all cases of purpose are intentional. However, I think it is probably more productive in the long run to maintain a conceptual separation. This would mean that not all instances of intention are conscious, and also that not all instances of purpose are intentional. This allows versatility to the concept of "purpose", providing freedom from the restrictions of an end, or goal, which "intention" imposes. Purposeful acts could be carried out without being directed toward any specific end, such as in the case of some forms of trial and error perhaps. — Metaphysician Undercover

This all seems very convoluted to me. A distinction without a difference. I just don't get it. I don't think there's any reason for us to trudge down this path any further.

I think it is the only reasonable way of looking at things. — Metaphysician Undercover

Boy. This is a disappointing response. Puts an end to the conversation.

That is true, in a way, but it was because the thinkers of those times were schooled in, and trying to improve on (or supersede) the metaphysics and philosophy of their day. — Wayfarer

I wasn't trying to use your affection for Burtt as an argument against your position. It just struck me after reading @Metaphysician Undercover's comment that he is right - Galileo et. al. were creating a new mathematical science, but they were keeping in the intention/goal directedness in the picture, even though it wasn't stated explicitly. It was bound up in their religious understanding. I guess the problem for you is that aspect has been lost as the world has become more secular. For me, that isn't a problem. I'm not a theist and I'm comfortable with a metaphysics without intention, at least in the limited realm of science.

modern science gave rise to this split (or ‘bifurcation’) between lived experience and scientific abstraction, which is very much what this thread is concerned with. — Wayfarer

I think that's only true for people who don't recognize that the metaphysics of science does not make sense as an organizing principle for all of reality. No metaphysical position does, including the teleological approach you favor. There is no one size fits all metaphysics, at least not an effective one.

Collingwood: the only modernization of Kant worth a damn. (That I know about)

Absolute presuppositions of the one, are the transcendental principles of the other. — Mww

I clearly haven't read nearly as much philosophy as you, so I can't compare philosophers. I will say I feel very at home with Collingwood, and not just with metaphysics. I also really like his "Principles of Art." I wouldn't have thought of him as following Kant, but my experience with Kant is limited to the "Critique of Pure Reason" and his categorical imperative.

Once we understand that conscious intention is just one form of intention, that opens up an entirely new range of possibility for how we understand and study the nature of "telos", teleology.

Restricting intention to human consciousness, such that only human actions can be understood as teleological, is a foundational, metaphysical mistake, which is common and prevalent in the modern western society. — Metaphysician Undercover

Maybe I’m a bit confused. Are you saying that it makes sense to think of non-sentient objects as capable of having intention? I think that is at the heart of the argument being made in the OP. I agree that some animals at least are capable of having intention.

When we understand the common defining term of "intention" as purpose, — Metaphysician Undercover

If you define “intention” as a synonym for “purpose,” then you’re just restating the position of the OP - a circular argument. If you define it as a mental state, which is one of the primary meanings of the word, then clearly only an entity with a mind can have intention.

Further, releasing intention from the constraints of consciousness allows us a much less confusing approach to the principles of panpsychism. "Consciousness" is generally understood as a property of higher level living beings, dependent on a brain. When panpsychism proposes consciousness as fundamental to the universe, this is commonly apprehended as incoherent, due to the fact that "consciousness" as we generally conceive it, is dependent on a brain. So when we release intention from the constraints of consciousness, and understand how intention relates to temporality in a way not at all understood by human knowledge, because temporality is not at all understood by human knowledge, this allows intention as a "consciousness-like" aspect of reality, to be pervasive in its causal role. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think you’ve restated the argument in the OP, as I understand it, very clearly. Do you find that way of looking at things compelling?

Physics was specifically designed to deal with the mechanical motions of bodies. The early physicists who pioneered the way, did not exclude the reality of the spiritual, or immaterial, they recognized the division, and knew that physics was being designed exclusively to understand that one aspect of reality, the bodily. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think this is right. @Wayfarer and I are both fans of Burtt’s “The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science,” which makes this case strongly. What those early physicists did was metaphysics, not science.

Do you really mean to say that. We shouldn't give a truth value to a metaphysical question for this reason? Or do you mean that they truly can't be true or false. In the sense that i.e. free will exists and doesn't exist and doesn't (exist and not exist) and so on? — Jack2848

I guess I mean it both ways. A question that can’t be answered either truly or falsely is either metaphysical or meaningless. Turning that around, a metaphysical statement has no truth value. It is neither true nor false.

You’re pretty new here, so you likely aren’t familiar with my deep interest in, you might say obsession with, metaphysics. I’ve written about it many times here, and I bring it into many of my posts. As I understand it, metaphysics is the study of what R.G. Collingwood called “absolute presuppositions.” These are the underlying assumptions that we bring, either consciously or non-consciously, into our understanding of how reality works.

As I said, they are neither true nor false. Your example of free will is a good one. We could argue about whether we think that’s correct or not, but let’s not. It’s a very long argument, and I rarely convince anyone of my position. It’s also a bit off subject for this thread.

There was a very, very bad and very, very wonderful movie back in the late 60s or early 70s called “Wild in the Streets”. In it, the voting age was reduced to 12 and anyone over 30 was put in camps where they were given psychedelic drugs to keep them passive.

Don’t say you weren’t warned.