That's a good point. How do you think that the first premise could be more clearly stated? — Need Logic Help

X cares about every aspect of objective logic.

I think the problem here is that the statements are being made in everyday English. When I say "I like fruit," it doesn't necessarily mean I like absolutely all fruit. I really like green vegetables - brussel sprouts, cabbage, lettuce, green beans, lime beans, spinach, cauliflower, broccoli. I don't like okra or broccoli rab. Those are both perfectly reasonable statements for me to make.

“P1: X cares about objective logic, P2: X does not care about Y, C: Y is not included in objective logic” — Need Logic Help

How about this

T Clark likes fruit. T Clark does not like apples. Therefore apples are not fruit.

I guess the question is - does the statement "T Clark likes fruit," mean that he has to like all fruit or just fruit in general.

Here's a very philosophical poem, by Wallace Stevens — Ciceronianus the White

I really like that. I've been meaning to read Stevens. I have to be in a special mood to want to read poetry.

I can sit here and explain hundreds of different reasons as to why life is better right now then it has been for thousands of years and how lucky i am to be here right now and yet still be depressed and look at the world and think of the future and be negative and knowing that the problem is just my perspective because i was raised wrong and knowing that i still can't change my perspective almost as if there's "me" the experiencer abd then there's "me" the giver of feelings and the 2 are separated yet held within the same mind abd can some how disagree with each other . It's so odd how the human being is multifaceted — MAYAEL

I understand what you are saying. One of the reasons I think that my unhappiness is at least partially biological is that it is so out of sync with everything I know and feel about the world. Intellectual and emotional resolution, acceptance of that kind of contradiction is required from a mature mind. Sometimes the way things are are just the way things are.

I refer to a process of study not philosophy itself, the "lack of respect" as you put it assumes I dont have any without any mention or proof. — Tiberiusmoon

The title of this discussion - "How do you think we should approach living with mentally lazy/weak people?"

QED.

I am a mentally lazy person myself — James Riley

As am I.

the question will not be set up to prove something. It will be set up to understand. And people will often be amazed at what the process reveals. — James Riley

It has struck me that it is often the clarity with which a question or idea is presented that is most important. More important that the answer. There's a quote that I really like. I can't remember it or who said it, but here's a paraphrase - Clarity is so unfamiliar it is often mistaken for truth.

As a result you can find yourself living with people who are simple in thought who don't give the extra effort to think from a philosophers perspective. — Tiberiusmoon

There are many people who are not "simple in thought" who are not interested in philosophy. The lack of respect you show for others is either 1) not philosophical or 2) a good reason for people to avoid philosophy.

Well “space” means “there is nothing there”. So I’d think what you want to imagine is just a world with all objects taken out of it, plenty of space, but not much else. I don’t see much difficulty in that. — khaled

No. Space does not mean there is nothing. First off, space is something. It's expanding
. Second - physicists believe all of space is permeated by a quantum field.

But I don’t get the point of the second thought experiment at all. Ok, I’m isolated in a classroom and I must have drank way too much because I start saying things about describing the whole world using nothing but the contents of the room. — khaled

I was worried this might be ambiguous. When I said "the world" I meant the essence of reality, the thing philosophers are searching for. Ontology. That's the way Kafka was using the word. I should have been clearer.

Hmmm. But if nothing exists, doesn't that include me (you) as well? — Manuel

Of course, but me not existing is not hard to imagine. The idea that nothing could exist is.

W.S. Merwin tackles some phenomenology: — Valentinus

Are you talking about the Frost poem? I never really knew what that was about. I just like the way it feels in my mouth. The parallelism. The sense that we grow out of the unity of the world. Recently I came across some lines in the Tao Te Ching that reminded me of it strongly. From Derek Lin's translation of Verse 28:

Know the masculine, hold to the feminine
Be the watercourse of the world
Being the watercourse of the world
The eternal virtue does not depart
Return to the state of the infant
Know the white, hold to the black
Be the standard of the world
Being the standard of the world
The eternal virtue does not deviate
Return to the state of the boundless
Know the honor, hold to the dishonor
Be the valley of the world
Being the valley of the world
The eternal virtue shall be sufficient
Return to the state of plain wood
Plain wood splits, then becomes tools
The sages utilize them
And then become leaders
Thus the greater whole is undivided

The idea of returning is important in the Tao Te Ching. I'm not sure whether or not he is thinking of it the same way as Lao Tzu. Probably not. But still ...

I completely understand
I think I have a genetic disposition for it or something because I love life and I have an amazing wife and kid but there are times where I'm not sure if I can make it 5 more years and everything makes me bittersweet sad and then there are times that I'm not effected by anything and im like Thor in life emotionally. Certain time phases in life seem to be correlated to these "dips" in life happiness/ satisfaction — MAYAEL

It's funny. I answered @unenlightened above before I read your post. You said just about exactly what I wrote in my response to him.

The rhetoric of the day demands that this is a single bio-machine that has gone wrong - an imbalance of chemicals in the brain. — unenlightened

There is no doubt in my mind that at least some of the unhappiness I have felt in my life is organic, biological, maybe genetic. Based on temperament, attitudes, beliefs, outlook, feelings, circumstances, I was meant to be happy. I am living the life I was meant to live. I have a great family. I am one of the most fortunate people in the history of the world. I like people. I think the world is a wonderful place.

But I think it is the sensitive among us that manifest the sicknesses of society, like canaries in the coal mine. — unenlightened

That may be true of some people, but I don't think it's true of me.

Isn't this the thought that comes to mind when someone tries to think about how it was before birth for each of us? — Manuel

I don't think they're the same, at least not for me. Mine is less personal. It's not that I don't exist. It's that nothing exists. But...but...but.... Blew my mind again.

Just imagine the clouds formed those shapes by fluke. Are you being talked to? — Bartricks

What does that have to do with whether or not "our faculties of awareness are wholly the product of unguided evolutionary forces?"

Sorry, I got past the point, yeah, human emotions are one of the most significant abilities we have. It's a must for survival : D and other stuffs... But emotions also create the barrier for us to actually understand the real event.. — n1tr0z3n

The mind is an incredibly complex system of interacting processes. Emotions are deeply embedded in that system. They can't be separated out. On the other hand, yes, I do understand what you're saying.

, if that's what you believe, then what would you call the thing that's out there? Something absolute? Something that is only interpreted without any points of view or difference, something that has to be absolutely true, which as a matter of fact, we change, because of our perception. Is it simplistic? Actually? — n1tr0z3n

Let me be clear first - I think the question of whether or not there is an objective reality is a metaphysical question. By that I mean it is not a matter of fact. It's a matter of our assumptions - what Collingwood calls "absolute presuppositions." For many of the things we do in life, assuming objective reality makes sense. In others, it can be misleading.

That's an introduction to my favored understanding of underlying reality - the Tao as discussed by Lao Tzu in the Tao Te Ching. Are you familiar? When I say I favor it, it means I think it is the most useful for me. The Tao is just as much a metaphysical concept as objective reality.

If our faculties of awareness are wholly the product of unguided evolutionary forces, then they do not provide us with any true awareness of anything (including that). As we are aware of some things, we are not wholly the product of unguided evolutionary forces. — Bartricks

I'm not sure I understand your argument. You say:

If our faculties of awareness are wholly the product of unguided evolutionary forces, then they do not give us an awareness of anything — Bartricks

I believe this is not true. I won't justify that, I'll just look at your justification for making your claim:

Here is my argument for the truth of the first premise. Imagine some clouds form into shapes that appear to spell out "there's a pie in your the oven". Are you being told something? No. If unguided - by which I mean, unguided by any agency - natural forces produced those shapes in the sky, then it was not imparting information to you. It was just pure fluke that, to you, the clouds appeared to be trying to tell you something. They were not 'trying' to tell you anything, for they are not agents and so are not in the 'trying' business. — Bartricks

In you premise, you talk about our faculties of awareness being created by "unguided evolutionary forces." In you justification, you talk about events in the world being created "unguided by any agency" without any reference I could find to the creation of our awareness. I don't see how this justifies your premise. I read through the rest of your posts also, but couldn't find clarification. What did I miss?

A different take on the same issue. Is it your position that Darwinian evolution is an "unguided evolutionary force." I think that brings us to the question whether natural selection can be considered a guiding agency. I know that was a controversial question back in the early days of evolutionary theory. I don't know the status of that question today.

Another question - to what extent does your argument hinge on the belief that the physical and functional basis of our faculties of awareness is too complex to have been created by natural selection and other physical and biological phenomena?

A couple.

I'm sure this is a common one. It's blown my mind when I try to get my arms around it since I was a teenager. Still does. Imagine nothing. Really nothing. No one to know it's nothing. No space, not quantum vacuum. Nothing. Not anything anywhere. No things. No where.

I'll start the next one with one of my favorite quotes. If you've read many of my posts you've seen it before. I end up using it every week or so. From Franz Kafka:

It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet.

In my thought experiment, I'm in a nondescript room. Say 10 feet by 15 feet. Concrete block walls painted beige. Linoleum flooring. Fiber ceiling tiles with low intensity inset lighting. Everything I remember from an elementary room classroom. No windows. A single door I've agreed not to open unless really necessary. There's a comfortable chair, a table, and paper and pencils. The air is comfortably warm. If you're wondering how I'd eat and pee and other science facts, just repeat to yourself "It's just a thought experiment, I should really just relax."

I am me, with all my memories and knowledge. I'm here on my own free will with no coercion. I'm looking forward to this. It's fun. My job while I'm here - create and describe the world just based on what I can observe in the room with no reference to anything outside the room or any understanding I have of the world outside.

Society instructs us that if we peer deep inside our hearts that we will eventually find what makes us happy. It almost seems that a magical inner voice informs us of our desires, hopes, and dreams. Our emotions dictate our lives. Also noted, throughout modern society, depression runs rampant. — Ladybug

As someone on anti-depressants who also has spent more than 50 years learning to be more self-aware and follow my heart, I think depression and spiritual searching are different, separate, but not necessarily unrelated. If that makes sense. I don't know where my depression comes from. Probably something organic, maybe even genetic. On the other hand, I think the world is a wonderful place. I like people. I'm smart and my intellect leads me toward self-awareness and a way of life with openness and without fear. So, is my spiritual search a search for a solution to my depression? No....Wait, yes...

The idea that my fingers begin moving and then I retroactively begin to experience the sensation of choosing seems backwards to me, and given the reaction to the paper, many other people as well. — Count Timothy von Icarus

As I wrote in my previous post, in my personal experience, my volition arises in a part of my mind that is not directly accessible to my self-awareness. When I act on that motivation, it is just as much me acting as it would be if I became aware before I acted. I am just as responsible for my actions as I would be otherwise. Part of what I call "me" is hidden the way the innards of my computer are hidden.

Many people do not experience their minds this way. They see consciousness as the guy driving the bus. I would say that represents a lack of awareness of what is going on inside themselves. They would disagree.

I suppose it's not spooky if you don't go in assuming that you make a decision first, and then act. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes. This is what I was writing about above.

Self awareness could be an accident of evolution, but my strong guess is that it serves a function for long term planning. Certainly it is hard to explain how humans make such long term and complex plans without self reflection and recursive feedback acting to steer things at some level. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think it's reasonable to think that self-awareness could arise through natural selection for the reasons you've described. It may even be likely. On the other hand, it could have evolved as a byproduct of some other structure in an incredibly complex brain and mind. I often skeptical of interpretations where there is a one to one correspondence between a structure or capacity and natural selection.

He's an interesting writer. I bought Life's Solution in a rush of enthusiasm about 8 years ago, but it's a very technical biology text, requires a pretty high degree of bioscience to absorb. But, philosophically congenial to my way of thinking. — Wayfarer

I read Stephen Jay Gould's book about the Burgess Shales, which Morris studied. I enjoyed it, although it is not as easy to read as much of Gould's writing. Apparently Morris disagreed with much of what Gould wrote. A central theme of Gould's evolutionary writing was contingency. As he wrote, if we rewound the tape of evolution and started over, we would get a very different world. Morris, with his interest in convergence, apparently thinks evolutionary outcomes are predictable, at least in a general sense.

Are you familiar with Simon Conway Morris? That's his speciality. — Wayfarer

I just checked Wikipedia for Morris. A lot of good stuff about convergence, including a separate website.

If you drop the assumption that these two aspects are identical things, then the fact that the awareness follows the initiation isn't surprising at all; it would almost be surprising if it weren't true. — InPitzotl

This has always bothered me too. What's the big deal?

Sir Hanover — Hanover

Poet, presidential candidate, goatherd, philosopher. Is there anything he can't do.

I hear you. I don't share the poem's sentiment particularly, it's just one of the more memorable poems about death. — Tom Storm

The closer I get to death, the funnier it seems. There's also that feeling of vertigo you get when you stand close to the edge of a great height.

Changing the subject, this is from "Aunt Celia, 1961" by Carl Dennis:

People will tell you there are many good lives
Waiting for everyone, each fine in its own way.
And maybe they’re right, but in my opinion
One is miles above the others.
Otherwise it wouldn’t have been so clear to me
When I found it. Otherwise those who lack it
Wouldn’t be able to tell so clearly it’s missing
As they go on living as best they can
Without complaining. Noble lives, and beautiful,
And happy as much as doing well can make them.
But as for the happiness that can’t be earned,
The kind it makes no sense for you to look for,
That’s something different.

Pretty bleak. As I've gotten older, I've felt less and less this way, for what that's worth. I think it started changing when my father died in 2001, when I was 49. It brought my family together in a way that had never happened before. That change continues.

Or to summarize, the unconscious is doing a lot more, at a much higher level then we often give it credit for and key aspects of our minds that we generally think of as conscious functions (i.e. most higher level thought) also appear to be able to run in the background, without making it to the recursive system. — Count Timothy von Icarus

To start, it would make sense to make sure you and I are talking about the same thing when we say "consciousness." The word has lots of different meanings. Misunderstandings about those meanings gums up the works on almost all the discussions about consciousness here on the forum. What I mean, and what I think you mean by "consciousness" in this context is awareness of the self experiencing. The experience of experience. Self-awareness. Generally, I think of this being mediated by words - either talking to others or myself or writing.

Given that, I don't have much to offer related to the philosophical and scientific issues you've raised, but I can speak for my personal experience of the workings of my mind. Very little of what I do is mediated by my consciousness. I'm not just talking about the pumping of my heart or even dreaming. I'm talking about complex, cognitively detailed actions taking place over an extended period of time. For example - writing this post. There is nobody in the control booth translating my unconsciousness thoughts and then directing me what to write. What I'm writing comes out whole, complete. It is very common for me to be surprised by what I've written. It's as if it came from nowhere. Consciousness comes into play when I come back and edit what I've written.

Taoists have a phrase "wu wei." Acting without acting. Acting in accordance with one's true self. We wei arises spontaneously without reflection or intention. It is the ideal form of action.

It's a mistake to impose one's modern day values on the past. This game does that by relating fictional game mechanics to real world history: — counterpunch

I agree. To a certain extent, I think it's disrespectful to pretend that European colonization was cleaner than it really was. On the other hand, if I were black or American Indian, I would probably feel differently. Would @BigThoughtDropper be comfortable playing this game with people who's ancestors were slaves? I wouldn't be. Which means I wouldn't be comfortable playing this game at all.

Seems more a question of taste than morality. — Baden

Agree.

Well written, also a bit over-simplistic. It will be much easier to read if you break it down into paragraphs. Many people won't even read a wall of text. You've covered pretty much all of philosophy in one looong paragraph, a commendable feat.

But there should be no doubt about the existence of a fundamental form of the world around us. — n1tr0z3n

But there is doubt, and controversy.

But we are indeed unable to perceive the simplicity, because of the complexity of our mind, of our brain. It’s not the world that’s complex and confusing, it’s our perception making things complex and confusing. — n1tr0z3n

There is truth in this, but it is also misleading. Our minds create reality from whatever it is that's out there, so the structure of reality is intimately related to the structure of our minds. I don't think there's any getting around that. We can't perceive the world unmediated by our minds. Those who have come closest are probably people following spiritual paths - Buddhists, Christian and Islamic mystics...

But the useless complexity of emotions have made it so much difficult to understand. — n1tr0z3n

I think the opposite is true - without emotions, humans have no basis for valuing the world. Psychologists have shown that people with damage to the parts of the brain related to emotion often have disruption in their ability to make decisions.

There’s no such thing as absolute true or false. It’s just the evolution of humanity and the knowledge and law poured down by generations. The birth of different cultures, religions and philosophical beliefs have effected us. Shaped our beliefs and our perception. We gave life a meaning. — n1tr0z3n

I agree. You have interesting perspectives, although, as I said, I think they are too simplistic. Welcome to the forum.

I have often wondered about this and have written here that temperament and aesthetics probably inform people's choices. — Tom Storm

I agree that temperament is a strong determiner of philosophical approach. I'm an engineer - genetically, psychologically, spiritually. Pragmatism, otherwise known as engineering philosophy, works for me.

If true, it raises follow up questions - can this be overcome or dealt with in some way? How is it identified? — Tom Storm

I don't think it's a bad thing. It's inevitable and reasonable. What I believe reflects my heart, my mind, and my soul. Somebody said:

Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost,--and our first thought, is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment.

From my own perspective I am personally struck by this from Nietzsche's The Gay Science — Tom Storm

I like the quote, and it's right. There is not just one correct way of looking at things. Our philosophy has to let us live our lives. One philosophical approach will never supersede all others without coercion. Philosophy isn't about winning a fight, it's about searching for the best path forward.

Coherentism: none of our beliefs are foundational, and the truth of a belief can only be confirmed by its coherence with other beliefs. Thus, knowledge arises from a network of interdependent and mutually reinforcing beliefs. Whether a belief is justified or not depends on whether it agrees with one's other beliefs. — Noisy Calf

This is more in line with my previous thoughts about how people create their worlds as babies. It's also in line with my own personal experience of what it feels like for me to know something. I have a sense, an image, of a great interconnected network of knowledge. I think of it as a truss, but that's because I'm an engineer.



Each of the nodes of the truss are connected to at least two other nodes. A load placed on any node is transmitted along the truss members to other nodes and throughout the rest of the truss. I see this as a metaphor for knowledge. I can't add a new node anywhere I want. The rest of the nodes are significantly constrained in their movement by the interconnected members of the truss. If I want to make any major changes in the network, especially something that isn't consistent with its current design, it will take a lot of effort throughout the network, not just in the location of interest.

So in conclusion, we form immediate, unreflective beliefs about reality based on foundational knowledge, and then, by reflecting on these beliefs, we work them into a coherent system that allows us to know them in a reflective and self-conscious way. So unreflective knowledge is justified according to foundationalism and reflective knowledge is justified according to coherentism. — Noisy Calf

I think very little of our knowledge is reflective until we need to use the knowledge we have. That's consistent with what you've written. I guess the difference is that when you talk about foundational knowledge, I think of knowledge that has been learned, absorbed, and is present as a network in our minds. I guess that means that I don't see the distinction between foundational and coherent knowledge as important.

Imagine an empty digital photo, say with resolution of 900x900 pixels and 900 colours. It potentially can hold a picture of every planet, star and galaxy that ever was and will ever be, at any arbitrary given time, from every possible angle, every possible altitude. — Zelebg

I don't get this. How could a 900x900 pixel image show the entire universe or even a small part of the universe?

Are there moral philosophies which, in your opinion, provide an adequate method to determine the borders of the community? Are perhaps virtue ethics not just relevant, but unavoidable when it comes to this first step? — Echarmion

The most obvious method to determine borders is possession. Is that a moral standard? It certainly has moral elements.

Foundationalism: some of our beliefs are foundational, that is, they are self-evidently true, and they do not require demonstration to be justified and known. According to strict foundationalism, everything we know is either a foundational belief or a conclusion derived from foundational beliefs.

Coherentism: none of our beliefs are foundational, and the truth of a belief can only be confirmed by its coherence with other beliefs. Thus, knowledge arises from a network of interdependent and mutually reinforcing beliefs. Whether a belief is justified or not depends on whether it agrees with one's other beliefs. — Noisy Calf

This is an interesting and well thought out post. My understanding of human nature is that, although we are born with capacities and tendencies, almost everything we know we learn. The first months of a child's life are spent creating a world with raw sensory data, their mind's and body's structure and function, and guidance from other people, primarily their mothers and families. To me, that puts the kibosh on foundationalism from the start.

I have to go now. I'll think some more and come back later.

Fair. We can only really assess these results (and the success or failure of the initiative) when we have sufficient data. — CountVictorClimacusIII

Agreed.

That's an unpleasant comment. I hope I am better than this TC. — Tom Storm

I'm sorry it bothered you. It does not reflect my opinion of your contributions here. In the past I have expressed my appreciation for what you bring to the forum. It surprises me you thought I might be serious. I'll be more careful in the future.

Something worth considering, and I don't think it necessarily contradicts the other ideas presented here - One aspect of evolution and development is that structures and functions developed for one function or capacity may have side effects. These can be rejiggered for use for another purpose or, as long as they don't gum up the works too much, they can just sit around doing what they do with no particular purpose or meaning. Just because they're there, it doesn't mean dreams mean anything or do anything.

I've always thought of dreams as a kind of mental bowel movement. — Tom Storm

I thought that is why you came here to the forum.

It takes too much effort to blow up the local factory or store, wouldn't it be better if you could just stay at home on the sofa, eating your potato chips, and getting paid for it? — CountVictorClimacusIII

I've heard, although I don't know the details, that UBI would not cost any more than current welfare programs but would be more effective and much easier to administer. As a pragmatist, that sounds good to me. Even some Republicans are on board. Your homiletic position is all about virtue. I care about results.

"Homiletic" - preaching moral values. I was going to say "moralistic," but I wanted to soften it because I didn't want to be confrontational. Learned a new word in the process. Homiletic, homiletic, homiletic. Feels good to say. Love thesauruses. Thesauri.

We wouldn't want to give too much away but actually, blowing things up doesn't take all that much effort. — Bitter Crank

Said the man from Minneapolis.