Motivation, as in why you continue to do something you might not otherwise want to do. The thing is, you are going to claim you have never done something you never wanted to do. Is that right? — schopenhauer1

Of course I've done things I didn't want to do. Jobs that need to be done are not necessarily enjoyable. All worthwhile activities include aspects that are unpleasant. I don't see that as unfair or unreasonable. It's just how the world works.

We've been through this before. You tend to conflate what animals do and what humans do, and I don't even want to bother pointing out the difference in an animal that can use recursive linguistics to tell stories about itself and then buy into those stories, versus what animals do. — schopenhauer1

I think we probably agree it won't be very fruitful for you and me to spend a lot of time bashing things we already know we disagree on back and forth.

I just don't find this Taoist stuff compelling. In fact, if it was natural, we wouldn't need Toaism or anything related. We would simply BE. But we aren't. And so there in fact IS something in the way of that. I am saying that contrary to what dichotomy fiction you are purporting on me, the animals are living Tao. Humans are never doing so, and are always trying to get there. Hence TaoISM. — schopenhauer1

Yes, I thought it might not be a good idea to bring Taoism into this, knowing it is not a well understood or accepted way of knowing things. I was right, although I do think it provides a good reflection of human nature. Again, I think your sour way of seeing human nature and behavior undermines the credibility of your views.

You keep saying that, but here you are using language, having a narrative of being angry and upset. Think about it. — schopenhauer1

I'm not angry or upset at all. I went back and reread my post. It was polite, respectful, and responsive. I tried to make sure I left out any provocative language. I've always tried to treat your ideas with respect, even though I strongly disagree with them. It's true, all verbal and written communication is narrative, but communication is not motivation, which was the primary substance of your OP.

I am a liberal Democrat and I think Donald Trump was a very bad president and is a very bad man. I have no doubt he broke the law in important ways. Still, I think this could easily turn into a be careful-what-you-wish-for moment. To me, it's certainly nothing to celebrate.

To me, it would make more sense to just indict him for his actions on and before January 6, 2021 rather than this charge. Yes, I know the crimes are in different jurisdictions.

Friend of mine tried to express the ecstasy of becoming a father. We've lost touch. He's got three now, a hard working man with the picket fence and kids he always wanted, even a wife who stays home.

To me it's more like people find some role (hero myth, ideology) that feels right enough and keep getting out of bed every morning, largely to avoid losing a job, a lover, a home. We cling to what keeps us safe and comfortable. This is to be expected. Moloch demands it ! Those whose source code doesn't have them building a nice little web end up replicating less or not at all. — green flag

This is startlingly condescending. I think it shows your lack of respect for people who, apparently unlike you, find satisfaction in daily life, family, work, and other aspects of our humanity.

Is "these systems are ultimately fictions" itself a fiction ? Even the most negative ideology may help the species or the tribe as a whole contribute to the heat death. Antinatalism is the hand of god. It is the thought of genocidal violence taken to the last extreme. It is will-to-power. Does it not cry out after all for the coming of heat death ? — green flag

Such pompous arrogance.

However, unlike other animals, humans have the ability to separate our behaviors from our survival needs. We can choose not to work because we don't like it, we can choose to commit suicide, or we can engage in a range of other behaviors that have nothing to do with our basic survival needs. — schopenhauer1

I think this is an artificial distinction. Animals can also behave in ways that don't directly impact basic survival needs. They play, wander around exploring, and spend a lot of time napping. They hang out with their families. I'm not saying animals are the same as humans, but you are exaggerating the differences.

Despite our general fear of pain and seeking of pleasure, we still must write narratives of motivation. Our behaviors are not fixed for these end goals but are tied to the conceptualizing-human mind in social relations to others. Every single day, every minute even, we have to "buy into" motivating ourselves with narratives...

...Additionally, humans generally fear pain, displeasure, and the angst of boredom, while seeking pleasures to distract from this angst. Aesthetic and non-physical pleasures become a built-in mechanism to deal with this fear. However, this also creates a need for fictions to explain why we must do anything, — schopenhauer1

I don't think this is right either. Human motivations include more than just pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain. Calling artistic, recreational, and other non-instrumental activities "built-in mechanism to deal with fear," may be true for you, but they aren't for most of us. You and I have had this discussion before. Your vision of human nature is darker and less hopeful than mine is.

It is possible to act without intervention by narratives. Much of the point of Taoism is learning how to act spontaneously in line with our true natures. It is called "acting without acting." It is understood as the true source of human motivation. Narratives interfere with this rather than supporting it. Narratives don't generally promote action, they are more able to put the brakes on, to stop us from doing what our natural inclinations indicate. A lot of narratives are also post hoc additions put on to explain to ourselves why we did what we already did.

So my theory, along with Zapffe's, is more about our essential "break" with nature. We use narratives/fictions to create reasons which give us motivations. That's how a conceptualizing animal with recursive language capacity parses and synthesizes the world- one in which social arrangements are paramount. — schopenhauer1

I'll say it again. I don't think this is true, or at least not necessarily true. It's "seems to me" psychology/philosophy and I don't think it represents how people actually feel or behave.

Some truth in that, but I am nowhere near as gnarly or arrogant as you — universeness

You are just as arrogant as I am and significantly more gnarly.

You offer your mere opinion, as if there was some kind of authority — universeness

As I noted, I am the official Voice of the Spirit of Philosophy here on the forum. Only one other member has been graced with such a lofty office. That's @Noble Dust, who is the Mayor of the Shoutbox.

I would disagree. In order to do classical mathematics or certain types of logic, one has to view it through the lens of Platonic forms (or some other non-mental, non-physical substance). There is no way to experience absolute infinity, for example. We can define it, but to invoke it as an object/property without constructing it, one would have to postulate or imagine some kind of realm in which it exists merely because it was definable. — Ø implies everything

I think you and I are using the term "idealism" with different meanings. When I say "idealism" I mean philosophies similar to Plato's. From Wikipedia - "In its most basic fundamentals, platonism affirms the existence of abstract objects, which are asserted to exist in a third realm distinct from both the sensible external world and from the internal world of consciousness, and is the opposite of nominalism."

Am I using the word wrong? Anyway, whatever language differences we are having, I think you and I agree that seeing the world through Platonist glasses, as described in Wikipedia, would be useful for mathematicians.

As an aside, there was a movie that took up this issue - The Discovery - with Robert Redford and Jason Segal. In it, a scientist proves there is an afterlife, which leads to a lot of suicides. I haven't watched it. It is on Netflix.

What are some good arguments for ontological idealism? — Ø implies everything

I'm not what anyone would call an idealist in the philosophical sense, but I do see value in using that kind of approach. In order to do math or logic, you would have to be able to see the world through idealist lenses. Also, although I am mostly drawn to pragmatic approaches with a bit of materialism mixed in, I often find myself drawn to more idealist elements - honor, human rights, fairness, kindness.

Your curmudgeon approach to others — universeness

It's an odd thing for you to call me a "curmudgeon." First, I don't think being one is necessarily bad. Every forum should have a few. And then, of course is the whole pot/kettle/black thing. One of the things I like about you is your feisty, argumentative attitude. You're as much a curmudgeon as I am.

I just wish you'd stop disrupting threads with irrelevant comments.

Your ad hominems expose your own "lack intellectual integrity". — 180 Proof

I don't think what I wrote was an ad hominem argument. I always get confused and people misuse the term all the time. I wasn't making an argument at all. I was pointing out your and @universeness's habitual disruptive misbehavior.

Thanks! — Raef Kandil

No need to thank me. It's just part of my job, my duty, my privilege, my calling as the Voice of the Spirit of Philosophy here on the forum.

Stevenson is a hot-button issue. Shouldn't have brought it up, and won't do so again on this forum, as so many people find it upsetting. — Wayfarer

I respect your position and your desire to keep the discussion fruitful.

On the other hand, I don't really care if they're upset. Their lack of intellectual integrity really pisses me off. Even that wouldn't bother me if they would just stay off threads where they can't even buy into the basic parameters of the discussion. Not every discussion about religious issues has to be about whether or not God exists or whether or not there is evidence God exists.

Believe it, don't believe, it doesn't bother me, but you can't say 'there's no published evidence'. That is the only point I'm making. — Wayfarer

People like @180 Proof and @universeness are just here to disrupt other people's discussions. They have nothing substantive to add and refuse to play fair by, as in this case, rejecting evidence without looking at it.

I assume that you would accept, that YOU have your own standard, for what you consider valid evidence. — universeness

Yes, I do. I haven't read the information @Wayfarer references. As I said, I'm skeptical, but I can't reject the evidence without looking at it. I must admit reincarnation is not something I have a lot of interest in. You, unless I misunderstood your post, also haven't looked at the evidence. Previously, you wrote:

Scientism is the opinion that science and the scientific method are the best or only way to render truth about the world and reality. You won't be surprised to read that I wear that badge with pride. — universeness

If that were true, you wouldn't reject the evidence Wayfarer describes out of hand without looking at it.

Sure he does. The point I keep making - seems to have slipped by - is that checking what a child says about a remembered previous life is an empirical matter, unlike astrology. I don't expect anyone to believe it, but I do expect that this distinction is intelligible. — Wayfarer

You've said this before - They say there's no valid evidence, you show them some, and they say the evidence can't be valid because it demonstrates something they know is not true. It shows hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty on their part. I am strongly skeptical of reincarnation, but I don't exclude any possibility because of my intellectual prejudices.

Here's something I thought you might be interested in. Someone sent me a link to a very well-written summary of the Tao Te Ching on an interesting Substack website called Superb Owl. The guy who runs it has a very broad set of interests. Here is a link to a literary analysis he did of several novels and plays using Chat GPT.

The Shapes of Stories with Chat GPT—Investigating classic literature with a Large Language Model

Same thing.

A new study examines all robust, available data on how fearful we are of what happens once we shuffle off this mortal coil. They find that atheists are among those least afraid of dying...and, perhaps not surprisingly, the very religious.
— Study into who is least afraid of death — Banno

From the study:

...over half the research showed no link at all between the fear of death and religiosity. — Study into who is least afraid of death

My working hypothesis is that they are more christian than atheist. — Banno

Perhaps more prejudice than hypothesis.

But... it might end at any time, which after 76 years won't be like the lost opportunities of people dying before they have found their way in the world (which takes 20 or 30 years). — BC

Yes. Too late for us to die young.

How deep and transformative is the well documented fear of death? The fact that one’s life must end is understood to invoke in most people a kind of existential terror. While I am not keen to die immediately, I have never shared this terror. Should I die in the night, so be it. I’m ready. I’ve prepared my will and I've set up steps for when the time comes. — Tom Storm

I posted this graph from the web a month or so ago:



Here is the source it came from:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/959347/fear-of-death-in-the-us/

So, no, death does not appear to invoke existential terror in a large portion of the population.

What do others think about the role of death in their lives — Tom Storm

My attitude is similar to yours. I'm having a good time. I'd rather not go right now, but I don't want to live forever either. I'm trying to stay healthy, but I just ate a Milky Way bar.

I hope we are clear I am not here to learn English and if you can decipher the meanings, there is no need to pick up on these non-native speakers' grammatical errors. Unless, this forum is for only members who can speak English as their first language in which case I should be told so. — Raef Kandil

Good response to @180 Proof's snotty comment.

Thanks.

I'm not sure but, as a teen I had read Heisenberg's intellectual autobiography "Der Teil und das Ganze," — Pierre-Normand

The English translation is called "Physics and Beyond." I requested a copy from my library. Thanks for the reference.

Yes, that was quite enlightening. — Pierre-Normand

Isn't this fun.

I inquired with GPT4 regarding your interaction with (I presumed) GPT-3.5. Here is the result. — Pierre-Normand

Your conversation with Chat GPT about my conversation with it's less advanced alter-ego was really interesting. I think it's description of Heisenberg's explanation of uncertainty is correct. It is really a classical rather than a quantum mechanical explanation. I'm still left missing something. If Heisenberg proposed the wrong mechanism, why was his answer right and why is he credited with the discovery. I guess I could take this back to Chat GPT, but that seems pretty pointless.

The explanation of the real mechanism of the uncertainty principle you got is similar to ones I've gotten from other sources, e.g. Wikipedia. All the explanations I've gotten are pretty vague. I don't know if that's because you need to understand the math to get it or if people are just waving their arms.

You haven't tried GPT4 yet, have you? — Pierre-Normand

I asked the program what version it was and it said

I am a version of GPT called "GPT-3" (Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3), which is currently the largest and most advanced version of GPT developed by OpenAI. — Chat GPT

You have to work cooperatively to supply it with rich contextual information, which can include articles excerpts in which the scientific topic at issue is expounded rigorously, in order for the bot to harness to the fullest extend the expert knowledge and wisdom about it that is present in its vast knowledge base. — Pierre-Normand

I don't know if you saw my first post in this thread where I discussed a quote that might or might not be from Leon Trotsky. I had to ask additional questions and prompt it with my own understanding. It's on this page.

My major observations — Baden

I think my biggest criticism is how often it is wrong. I tried asking it some physics questions about issues I had been confused about. I found myself disagreeing with it's answers several times after only trying it out for about eight questions. An example - I've read Heisenberg's original paper about the uncertainty principle. From what I'd read previously, it seemed his explanation is different from the one generally given. When I asked Chat GPT about it, it acknowledged that Heisenberg's original reasoning was incomplete and claimed that the effect was related to entanglement. That seemed wrong to me, so the next day I asked what the connection between the uncertainty principle and entanglement is. In it's response it said there is no connection.

But, on the other hand, it does write poetry that's worse than mine.

I haven't been paying attention to this thread, so I apologize is this is a distraction. The following exchange represents something that has happened to me several times. I would ask question, ChatGPT would answer, then I would push back on the answer and ChatGPT would change it's mind.

T Clark - Who said "You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you."

Chat GPT - The quote "You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you" is often attributed to Leon Trotsky, a Russian revolutionary and Marxist theorist. He is believed to have used this phrase in a speech he delivered at a meeting of the Communist Party in 1925. The quote has since been widely used to suggest that individuals cannot simply ignore the reality of war, as its impact can be far-reaching and affect everyone, regardless of their personal interest or involvement in it.

T Clark - I had heard it is a quote made up by Alan Furst

Chat GPT - While Alan Furst, a popular historical spy novelist, did use a similar quote in his book "Night Soldiers," it is generally believed that the quote "You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you" was originally spoken by Leon Trotsky.

It is possible that Furst's use of the quote has helped to popularize it in modern times, but the origins of the quote can be traced back to Trotsky and his speeches in the early 20th century.

T Clark - Which speech are you referring to?

Chat GPT - I apologize for any confusion earlier. Upon further research, it appears that the quote "You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you" cannot be definitively traced back to any specific speech or writing by Leon Trotsky.

While Trotsky was known for his writings and speeches on the subject of war, there is no record of him using this specific quote. It's possible that the quote was popularized later on by writers and scholars who were inspired by Trotsky's ideas and writings on war.

The quote has since taken on a life of its own, becoming a popular expression that highlights the idea that war can have a profound impact on individuals, whether they choose to engage with it or not.

I have two conclusions 1) Alan Furst is a great writer and 2) Chat GPT is a weasel.

Emergence is not well understood in all its varieties.

In Wikipedia Mark A. Bedau observes:

Although strong emergence is logically possible, it is uncomfortably like magic. How does an irreducible but supervenient downward causal power arise, since by definition it cannot be due to the aggregation of the micro-level potentialities?

At its simplest level it is characterized as an automobile, which involves a pattern or arrangement of parts. Under downward causation in Wikipedia:

Downward causation does not occur by direct causal effects from higher to lower levels of system organisation. Instead, downward causation occurs indirectly because the mechanisms at higher levels of organisation fail to accomplish the tasks dictated by the lower levels of organisation. As a result, inputs from the environment signal to the mechanisms at lower levels of organisation that something is wrong and therefore, to act.

Downward causation might be a key to understanding consciousness, but mathematically it is not well understood. The explorations I have done in infinite compositions of functions might eventually play a minor role, especially inner compositions which relate mathematically to the convergence of continued fractions. Don't worry, I won't get started. :nerd: — jgill

This reminded me of a discussion that @apokrisis participated in. Here is his discussion about downward constraint. It's long:

That’s where the hierarchy of scale comes in. It represents an artificial division of the universe into manageable pieces.
— T Clark

Reductionists and holists mean different things when they talk about hierarchical order.

Reductionists think only in terms of upwards construction. You start with an ultimately simple and stable foundation, then build upwards towards increasing scales of complexity. As high as you like.

But a holist thinks dualistically in terms of upwards construction working in organic interaction with downwards constraint. So you have causality working both ways at once, synergistically, to produce the functioning whole.

The hierarchy thus becomes not a tower of ascending complexity (and arbitrariness or specificity) but it itself reduces to a "basic triadic relation" (as hierarchy theorist, Stan Salthe, dubs it). The holist account reduces all organisation to the interaction between an upward constructionist flow and a downward constraining history or context, plus then the third thing which is the relation that those two causal actions develop in a stable and persistent fashion.

So many key differences to reductionist metaphysics follow from this connected causality.

For example, it makes everything historically or developmentally emergent - the upward construction and the downward constraint. There is no fundamental atomistic grain - a collection of particles - that gets everything started. Instead, that grain is what gets produced by the top-down constraints. The higher order organisation stabilises its own ground of being in bootstrap fashion. It gives shape to the very stuff that composes it.

A simple analogy. If you want an army, you must produce soldiers. You must take average humans with many degrees of freedom (all the random and unstable variety of 18 year olds) and mould them in a boot camp environment which strictly limits those freedoms to the behaviours found to be useful for "an army". You must simplify and standardise a draft of individuals so that they can fit together in a collective and interchangeable fashion that then acts in concert to express the mind and identity of a "military force".

So in the holist view, there is no foundational stability to a functioning system. The stability of the parts comes from the top-down constraints that shape up the kind of parts that are historically best suited to the task of constituting the system as a whole. The parts are emergent and produced by a web of limitation.

When it comes to the metaphysics of science, this is why we see thermodynamics becoming the most general perspective. The broad constraint on all nature is that it must be able to self-organise its way into stable and persistent complexity. And thermodynamics or statistical mechanics offers the basic maths for dealing with systems that develop negentropic organisation by exporting entropy.

From particle physics to neuroscience, thermodynamics explains both simplicity and complexity.

Well, it does if you let it. — apokrisis

Fine. I never discussed reason, except as a proposed component of sorting information. I think I do use reason as part of the process whereby I arrive at conclusions and decisions, and I suspect you do too, but if you don't believe that, you don't. It's not a critical difference between faith, based in little or no evidence, and trust or belief based on empirical experience. — Vera Mont

I already discussed how I think reason is involved in knowledge and decision making. I never claimed it had no role. We've gotten a little off target anyway, the main issue between us is whether or not faith is a valid path to knowledge. I say it can be. You say no. I don't think we're going to get any better than that.

What is that internal model built from, if not experience and learning of real facts, things and events in the real world? At some points during that construction, reason must have been involved in assessing which bits to keep and discard, which bits go where in the model. — Vera Mont

I think "reason" has almost nothing to do with it. Most of it is non-verbal, unconscious. It happens while we're not trying to do anything. Children don't learn language using any kind of reason, certainly not before they start going to school, by which time they are already fluent. Maybe parents tell children to say "please" and not to fight with their siblings, but that's not where they really learn about the rules and skills of social interaction. The same is true of the physical world. We learn about gravity by falling. We learn it with out bodies. People pay attention to what's going on and take it into themselves to build their picture of the world. To me, that's the foundation of knowledge, intuition, and faith, which are all the same thing.

I came to recognize my initial understanding of a problem came from a mostly unconscious processing of the information I have studied, my understanding of my professional body of knowledge, and my general knowledge of life. In short, it was ultimately founded on an empirical but not rational basis.
— T Clark
I don't see this is as a contradiction to
Faith is a belief largely or wholly unsupported by empirical evidence.
— Vera Mont — Vera Mont

I think it is a contradiction. As I've tried to describe it, knowledge, intuition, faith is ultimately founded on direct experience of the world supplemented as we get older by intentional learning and contemplation.

My brother and I have really different tastes in music. Over the years that I've given him music as a gift, the only one he has really liked is Chris Smither. I'd pretty much given up on buying him more music until I started listening to Ray Wylie Hubbard. Now I just sent him a copy of one of his albums for his birthday. This song, "The Messenger" is on the album I got him, but this is a different version, one I like very much:

The individual is naked in the storm, a ruined king, like Lear. What is this 'final' form of heroism ? What is the 'last' that Macbeth tries ? — green flag

Maybe you're making too much out of someone saying "fuck this." It's a guy kind of thing. Don't complain. Don't make excuses. Just fuck it. It's one of the good things and one of the bad things about men. No need to make it mythological.

what you are saying is that they need the support system to trust the world. — Raef Kandil

No, that's not what I'm saying.

This is why, when our intuition, guesstimate or hunch turns out to be wrong, we eat a little crow and keep trucking. When we lose our faith, our whole model of the world and confidence in ourself crumbles. — Vera Mont

You've ignored the substance of my comment and focused on a language disagreement.

An important point that is largely lost in Western cultural discourse is the principle of self-realization in the philosophical or spiritual sense. — Wayfarer

Good post and thanks for the link. I don't think anything you described contradicts what I wrote about in my previous post.

Faith is a belief largely or wholly unsupported by empirical evidence. — Vera Mont

I don't think that's true. I've been spending a lot of time thinking about how we know things recently. I've gotten in several discussions here on the forum where we disagreed on the role of reason and intuition. My claim is that most of what we know and how we make decisions is not based on reason but on the totality of our experience and learning. I guess this is something like the correspondence theory of truth except we don't compare our beliefs with the world but with a model of the world we carry around with us. This is something I experience very directly.

My understanding of knowledge is based on my experience as an engineer for 30 years. In that role I had to pay attention to what I knew and how I knew it. I came to recognize my initial understanding of a problem came from a mostly unconscious processing of the information I have studied, my understanding of my professional body of knowledge, and my general knowledge of life. In short, it was ultimately founded on an empirical but not rational basis. For me, reason comes along afterward, when I have to verify, justify, communicate what I've learned and figure out what to do with and about it. In summary - reason can analyze, but it can't synthesize. Reason doesn't get good ideas, it evaluates ideas that come from somewhere else.

And yes, I think faith is just another name for intuition and religious faith is intuition for people who carry around a different model of the world than we do.

Religion is an act of fear. Faith is act of liberation. Prophets are not following dogmas. They are essentially defying all the society rules to favour their truthfulness to the experience they are having. — Raef Kandil

This is certainly not true. I know a lot of religious people who are not afraid. For many, belief in God in the company of others who feel the same is a way to focus their attention outside of themselves, to give themselves to their community, to surrender their will, and to trust in the world.

Faith is our interpretation of the life experience we are having and it is based on the mind and heart working together. — Raef Kandil

I do agree with this.

You misunderstood. I did not say that worldviews or metaphysics or epistemology are not substantial. I said that we were not having a debate over anything substantial, but merely exchanging worldviews. — Jamal

This looks like a good place to stop.