An excellent OP! I think we all seek the good. We either adopt what is socio-culturally set before us, or we embark on a dialectical search for what is good. It concerns us all since we are all, to at least some extent, or at least potentially, self-reflective beings, and to the degree that we take our lives seriously, we wish to live the best way we can.

There can be no empirical evidence for the "truths" of philosophy. Philosophical truths are accepted on faith, and our faiths are determined by what seems most plausible to each of us. The only alternative to that would be to remain or become slaves to tradition and authority—and I think philosophy, with its open-ended questioning and uncertainty can be an antidote, along with science, the arts and literature, to that curtailing of human potential.

For that reason, I reject (for myself) organized religion in any form, although I acknowledge that it may be needed by those who cannot free themselves from the bonds of tradition and authority, bonds which Hegel refers to as "the aegis of tutelage".

This kind of response leaves me only with the hope that you might grow up. Your argumentation, and what seems to motivate it, is of such a low quality that I am amazed that you haven't been banned.

:roll: Weasel words!

But then, it was also constantly informed by the presence of actual teachers and exemplars of the faith, who provided a living dimension to the tradition which is generally absent in modern academic philosophy. — Wayfarer

I think it is still possible to have teachers in a secular context, because what they would be teaching are psychological and physical techniques for gaining self-knowledge and altering consciousness. That said I also believe that not everyone needs a teacher, a tradition or a "sangha".

But I still think there's a very sound case for the universality of some forms of mystical insight. — Wayfarer

Insight or experience? There seems to be no doubt that mystical experiences are universal inasmuch as they occur in every culture. Are the attendant insights ever context-independent though?

Are Katz and Forman disagreeing about the same things?

The perennialist search for commonalities isn't necessarily misguided, because there are commonalities. However, it becomes misguided when it tries to flatten everything out, and one of the ways it does this is to try to look solely at "ineffable experience," and then to ignore the surrounding religious context as mere "interpretation" of that experience. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Are there other ways in which perennialist thinking tries to "flatten everything out"? As to the focus on "ineffable experience", I think it is necessary to keep in mind that, while what is subsequently said about experiences which are ineffable, is essentially interpretive, to cast these utterances as "mere" interpretations misses the fact that experiences, however ecstatic they may be, can only be of further help to us insofar as we are able to make some sense of them.

And this making sense necessitates, not objectivist or literalist language, but metaphorical or mythological language. What people say about their ecstatic experiences is usually couched in the terms. the metaphors, of the cultural context in which they have grown up. It is when these culturally mediated interpretive statements about ecstatic experiences are taken literally and understood literally in objectivist terms that fundamentalism takes hold.

Right, if I made a promise, I made a promise regardless of documentation. Even if I fail to remember making the promise, that doesn't change the fact that it was made.

Supposing two people drive under the speed limit, it does not follow that each of them are applying equal effort to obeying the law. — Leontiskos

One may have to apply more effort because they are less talented. That has no bearing on the argument. If we all drive as best we can within the limits of our abilities both physical and intellectual, such as not to speed or have accidents, what could doing better than that look like? Surely not neurotically straining to be even more attentive than the actual situation requires—that could actually be a negative, it could cause us to become stressed and lose attention.

Of course, sometimes when we are stressed out we are not at our best, and then we might inadvertently speed and or have an accident. But we are not always the same, and when I talk about doing our best i mean our best at any given moment in any given situation. I say that if we fail at that it is on account of not being capable of adequately caring, understanding or physically functioning. and it can still rightly be said that we are doing our best at those times— not our best according to what we are, at optimum, capable of, but our best according to what we are in that moment capable of.

I Googled a paper that might be helpful to you in this regard: "The Moral Neglect of Negligence." Again, an introduction to moral philosophy would probably be even better. — Leontiskos

When someone is apparently incapable of presenting their own arguments and condescendingly advises me to read a paper or educate myself I rapidly lose interest in further engagement with them.

I sometimes think it might be that the ancients simply assumed there was a reason for existence and that the universe was animated by purpose. The meaning of ‘cosmos’ was ‘a unified whole’ and was presumed to be ordered by reason, which is why reason could get a purchase on it in the first place; it was the task of the philosopher to discern that purpose. — Wayfarer

I think that's right—the cosmos was understood to be centred on humans and was thus understood in anthropomorphic terms just as it was understood in anthropocentric terms,

With the Copernican revolution came the realization that humans are not at the centre of the cosmos. Then came Kant's second "Copernican" revolution which, ironically, in a way placed humans back at the centre. But this can be understood in the sense that, for us, experientially and phenomenologically speaking, we do find ourselves at the centre of things. I think it pays to remember that this is just a perspective, not an absolute.

But I would hope that as we’re a part of that unfolding process, that insofar as we capable of living meaningfully, then we’re playing a part in it, and it is purposeful - which is the overall orientation of the talks he’s giving. — Wayfarer

I agree that it is important for humans to "live meaningfully", and I think they in fact mostly do live meaningfully in the ways and to the degrees their individual capacities allow. As Karl Jaspers stresses, we are potentially capable of self-transcendence through reason, which means we are potentially capable via reflection, self-analysis and critique, of seeing where we are being ruled by instinctive appetites or unexamined inadequate or negative socially /culturally introjected notions and understandings.

This idea is also reflected in the Nietszchean/ Heideggerian/ Kierkegaardian/ existentialist notion of 'living authentically" as opposed to living according to Heidegger's "das Mann". Where I think we diverge is that I don't think it is necessary to project this sense of purposeful life and potential self-transcendence beyond the human. Animals have their purposes, but as far as we can tell they cannot transcend their instinctive natures, and when it comes to plants and the rest of the mineral universe, even the idea of purpose seems inapt.

Thanks, but nothing there is unfamiliar or controversial to my way of thinking. I amend my statement to make it clearer:

For me, nature as a whole would not count as intentional unless it were either a cognitive agent or created and directed by a cognitive agent. — Janus

Of course, I don't deny that some organisms and humans are purposeful, I just don't believe that the universe as a whole has any purpose in mind or was created with some purpose in mind. So, it's still not really clear just what you are arguing for.

And there is no reason to strive to do our best when the circumstances don't require it. If we can do better then we are not doing our best, and we both know that on your definition of "best" we can do better. Therefore your definition fails. — Leontiskos

No, how can you do better than paying attention, driving within the speed limit and so on, which I outlined? Explain to me how you could do better than that, what doing better than that would consist in in that context.

We are punished for neglect similar to the way we are punished for direct intention, and therefore neglect involves volition. — Leontiskos

You believe that it follows from the fact we are punished for neglect that volition must be involved? I don't see that, and in any case, you are changing the terms—I spoke in terms of failure of attention (a failure which is not deliberate) and failure of understanding the situation (which obviously also would not be deliberate). You could try to explain to me just what you mean by volition—is volition always deliberate according to you, for example, and then lay out your argument as to why volition would be entailed on the grounds that we are punished for neglect?

Nevertheless, I would not try such a thing before you understand the perennial understanding of justice, including what words like "negligence" actually mean. — Leontiskos

What is the perennial understanding of justice according to you? The meaning of words is determined by their common usage(s)—what else could they be determined by?

If you could do better are you doing your best? Is someone who is doing an adequate job doing the best job? — Leontiskos

You're ignoring context. There is no reason to strive to do better in a task when the circumstances don't require it. How are you going to do better than attending as best you can in the moment to a degree sufficient to avoid speeding, attending as best you can in the moment such as to avoid colliding with other vehicles, pedestrians, trees, telegraph poles, safety fences and so on?

How often do you fail to do your best when you are driving? How often do you inadvertently speed, drive recklessly, have accidents and so on?

In moral philosophy neglect is a failure involving intention or volition. "Attention" comes under our intention and volition, after all, and that is why it is not unjust to ticket speeders. — Leontiskos

In moral philosophy neglect is a failure of being able to care or a failure of understanding the situation. No one deliberately fails to care or attend to what they understand should be attended to, but no one is perfect and may be distracted or fail to understand what is required or simply not be capable of good judgement.

Ticketing speeders is not a matter of justice but a matter of deterrence. In Australia the resources are there to stop people from speeding. We have speed cameras at select locations, but we are always notified by signs as to where they are located. If they installed many more speed cameras and did not place signs to notify motorists as to the locations, they would soon stop motorists speeding due to the motorists unfailingly being fined when they did speed. But it seems the government doesn't really want to "stop speeding to save lives" as first priority—it seems first priority is revenue, a great deal of which they will lose if everyone stops speeding.

To anticipate an objection, you might say that those who exceed the speed limit are not doing their best, but I would counter that when they speed they must, rightly or wrongly, believe they are driving safely, which would mean it is a failure of judgement. Either that or they are insane or uncaring. People can only care as much, and judge as well as their capacities allow.

Again, when I am driving a car I am usually not trying my best. — Leontiskos

How do you define "doing your best"? I would define it as doing what the situation or task at hand requires so as to avoid negative outcomes. If you are paying adequate attention to the conditions—the road. traffic signals, other drivers and so on, such as to avoid an accident, or getting booked, then I would count that as "doing your best".

You might say that if you failed to do your best then you might, for example, have an accident or be booked for speeding, but could that failure ever be counted as intentional? If you drive too fast, is it not on account of a failure of attention or an incorrect assessment of the likelihood of being booked or having an accident?

Surely you would not intentionally lose attention or make a botched assessment? If not then I think it could be fairly said that you were doing your best, and your best was just not good enough in the particular situation (which should not be surprising since you are not required to be perfect in order to be said to be doing your best).

:up:

Does it have to be a awareness of "God"? — ENOAH

I'd say "awareness of God" is the (or a possible) interpretation of the experience, not the experience itself.

You may be right—that is it may be possible to bridge the gap between explanations in the conceptual paradigm of physical causes and conditions, and explanations in the conceptual paradigm of cognitions, reasons, aspirations, inspirations, insights and desires.

Unfortunately, I lack the background in the kinds of disciplines you mentioned that would enable me to assess whether there has been or is likely to be any success in this enterprise.

So, I look to a simpler way of dissolving a conundrum which I see as arising our of what is for anyone lacking the fluency in the afore-mentioned disciples, an insoluble conceptual incompatibility.

So. I am not arguing that the physical is nothing but the mental or that the mental is nothing but the physical, but that these are two paradigmatic ways of describing and explaining the one thing, and that they are conceptually incommensurable (for most of us if not all of us).

but it doesn't explain how this interaction occurs. — Count Timothy von Icarus

a solution to the explanatory gap? — Joshs

If neural activity just is mental activity, if the two are one thing seen from two different (and conceptually incompatible) perspectives, then there is no interaction between them, and thus no explanatory gap.

For Plato, this is a reductio because, clearly, we sometimes do things because we choose to do them, because we find them pleasant, etc. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That would be the explanation from within experience. On the other hand, choosing to do things, finding them pleasant etc., are also neural activity. So, there is no ontological difference, but merely a descriptive and explanatory difference.

There have been a few great paradigmatic changes in science, but that does not guarantee that there will be such great changes in the future. I think most of the evolution of scientific understanding consists in incremental changes.

The basic phase of science is really just an augmentation of the ordinary process of unbiased empirical observation, of just observing what is there to be observed. Then there is the phase of abductive reasoning—developing hypotheses to causally explain how what is observed might have come about. Testing hypotheses consists in making predictions that would seem to follow from them and then performing experiments and further observation to determine if these predictions obtain. That is the basic method of empirical science, and I don't believe that has changed,

I imagine there may be unknown factors in play that we may later come to know about. Will there always be more unknown factors to discover? It seems plausible to think that there will be, and in any case how could we ever know if we have discovered all the factors in play or not? Is there any reason to believe that nature should be 100% intelligible to us?

But too few of us do. — Fire Ologist

Yes, that is the problem. What if the ideology of modern consumerism has a lot to do with that? A change of paradigm might help.

Under most definitions of causal closure, the phenomenal/mental never, ever, on pain of violation of the principle, has any causal effect on behavior. So if something never affects behavior, how can it possibly selected for? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Are you familiar with Spinoza? He solved this conundrum, Descartes "interaction problem" centuries ago. As I have no doubt you know Descartes proposed two substances res extensa (matter) and res cogitans (mind) with the problem being how two totally different kinds of substance could interact. Spinoza proposed that there was just one substance—God or Nature—and that mind and matter were just different attributes of the one substance.

So, the one substance acts, and we can see that action as a manifestation of mind, or of matter. In modern terms consciousness is understood as non-physical form one perspective (the experience of being conscious) and physical from another (the neural activity that is consciousness). From the neurological point of view, of course consciousness has a causal effect on behavior, just as all neural activity does. Consciousness as experienced is also neural activity, but we are, in vivo, blind to that activity, and so we find it difficult to understand how consciousness could be that activity.

In modern terms you could call this "neutral monism".

We care about those we naturally care about in a "visceral" way, but we can also learn to care for those we are not familiar with in an intellectual way.

The thing is, if intentions have no causal efficacy, if everything is determined by mechanism—by statistical mechanics, etc.—then the contents of phenomenal experience can never, ever, be selected for by natural selection. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Can you fill out your argument here? I'm not sure what you mean by "mechanism". As far as I know modern understanding in biology is organistic, not mechanistic. Also I wonder what you mean by "intentions"—do bacteria or plants have intentions in your understanding?

Why would consciousness, the ability to reflect, plan, care and have purposes, not be advantageous to survival?

The first is epistemic. If how we experience the world and what we think of it has no causal effect on behavior, then there is no reason to think science is telling us anything about the way the actually world is. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Who would be silly enough to claim that how we experience and what we think has no effect on behavior? We have every reason to think science is telling us something about the world on account of its enormous and internally coherent complexity and its predictive success.

Natural selection would never ensure that phenomenal experiences don't drift arbitrarily far from whatever the world is actually like because the contents of awareness have absolutely no bearing on reproduction if they don't affect behavior. It's self refuting. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't see your reasoning here. If phenomenal experiences "drifted arbitrarily far from whatever the world is actually like" then we could not survive. It seems obvious that the contents of awareness do have bearings on reproduction and on behavior in general. Who are you arguing against here?

it would mean there is no reduction such that the goodness of practical reason can be explicable purely in terms statistical mechanics. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Again, I'm not seeing who you are arguing against. How could practical reasoning ever be explicable in terms of statistical mechanics and who would be foolish enough to claim that it could? You are responding to @Apokrisis, and I'm not reading him as claiming anything like that.

Try to forget all about "the world was created by a creator" and, in modified general metaphysical keeping, that the universe resulted from either a first cause or else somehow emerged ex nihilo (as though indefinite nothingness of itself brought about the effect of a primordial universe as thought indefinite nothingness were of itself a cause). — javra

I don't think that will help, because I can't see how saying the Universe has an overarching purpose makes any sense at all without positing a purposer. I will go further; I think saying that anything has a purpose presupposes either that it has been designed for some purpose or that it is in some sense and to some degree a self-governing agent.

In the life sciences there is talk of organs and such things as leaves, claws, teeth, stomachs, hearts and so on as having purposes, but this is really metaphor—such things have functions, they were not designed "on purpose", even if it is possible, as per epigenetics, that there can be feedback from the environment to DNA. In a sense we can look at the whole Earth as being self-organizing, but it doesn't follow that it has purposes, and even less does it follow that this self-organizing capacity constitutes an overarching purpose, a purpose from beyond the phenomenal realm, a purpose with some end in "mind".

Peirce's characterization of matter as "effete mind" I think should be read more as a metaphor in that matter is being (again anthropocentrically) considered as something that can acquire habits, and in general anything conceived as such suggests a notion of mind. All of this speaks more to our human experience-based presuppositions, and the real litmus test would be as to whether such ideas can command agreement from any unbiased rational agent, as logical, and mathematically self-evident propositions, and testable empirical observations, can.

What you need to understand about my position here is that I do not claim that all questions are capable of scientific answers. Much, even most, of what concerns us as humans cannot be definitively (that is in any intersubjectively testable sense) answered by science or philosophy, and each of us must think philosophically as we are rationally convinced to think, a thinking which is distinct from both scientific and logical justification and purported revelation.

As Karl Jaspers says we have three modes of thinking—religious, that is dogmatic, faith, scientific knowledge and what he calls "philosophical faith" which is an existential and/ or phenomenological matter, a lifelong. open-ended pursuit of thought for each individual. We accept whatever philosophical ideas that we do accept on faith; no proof or empirical evidence of their truth is possible.

We can engage in philosophical discussion, and we may be convinced by the thoughts of others, or not, but there are no definitive answers to philosophical questions that any unbiased rational agent would be compelled to accept. Philosophy is mostly untestable speculation, yet individuals are justified, in the sense of being entitled to entertain or believe whatever they authentically feel, after making every effort to expunge tendencies towards confirmation bias or wishful thinking, is most true for them. That something feels most true for you, however, does not entail that your feeling is a justification for expecting anyone else to agree with you.

Since you didn't understand it, how could you possibly know what is required to understand it? As usual you are treating this discussion in "schoolyard" fashion, instead of taking what your interlocutor says seriously, when you have no actual argument, you respond by casting unwarranted negative aspersions. It's childish behavior and very poor form. If you don't up your game you'll be on my 'ignore' list.

This from a self-described "non-positivist" — Wayfarer

Your lack of nuanced understanding is again in evidence— I guess if you are a black and white thinker then of course everything will appear to you as such.

It happens sometimes. The cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman gets around to arguing for a sort of vaguely Hegelian objective idealism. — Count Timothy von Icarus

As I see it Hoffman's argument is a performative contradiction and hence self-refuting.

And why is it set up for complex life? Presumably because this does more to collapse potential into actuality. But honestly, this one always seemed a bit much for me because it seems unfalsifiable in a particularly extraordinary way. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm always skeptical when probabilities are being assessed from within the system they purport to characterize. Collapsing potential into actuality sounds pretty much the same as @Apokrisis talking about symmetry-breaking and entropy.

I agree with you about such notions, I see them as being merely imaginative or metaphorical, and not subject to falsification, which means they cannot rightly be granted the status of theories. They might have poetical value, though, even in the ancient sense of poesis as 'making'—ideas which cannot be determined as being true or false or even predictively accurate may nonetheless be profoundly transformative.

No. It simply doesn't meet the criticism. All of what you're saying may well be quite accurate from a scientific perspective, without amounting to a metaphysics. — Wayfarer

There cannot be an intersubjectively valid metaphysics worth rational consideration which is not consistent with, and coherent within, the terms of science. That is not to say you are not free to believe whatever seems right to you for living your own life. We all have that prerogative, just don't expect such beliefs to be universally relevant, as science is.

You can be sure the scientists are not looking for any transcendent explanations.

Goodness, as we experience, would be defined in terms of an irreducible intentionality. — Count Timothy von Icarus

As I see it, the only goodness we can know is the goodness of human intentionality. It seems we find it very difficult not to anthropomorphize.

That's because in Western culture, it is construed that way. Buddhist culture, for instance, draws no such conclusions. Same with various schools of philosophy in the ancient world which construed purpose in terms of discerning the logos of the Cosmos, although that term then became appropriated by Christian theology to mean the Word of God. — Wayfarer

I don't think this is right. First because it is a matter of language usage—it simply makes no logical sense to say there is a purpose if there is no purposer, or a design without a designer.

Buddhism, to my knowledge, at least in its seminal forms, simply doesn't talk in terms of overarching or cosmic purpose.

If you want to claim there is an overarching purpose then your claim must at least be consistent with and coherent within, ordinary language usages. @Apokrisis is guilty of anthropomorphizing if he speaks of entropy as being an overarching purpose, rather than simply a global tendency- such talk cannot be anything beyond metaphor

What could "logos of the cosmos" mean beyond simply "the way things work" in a similar sense as the Dao is understood to be the "Way" things work?

Hence the problem! — Wayfarer

What problem?

If you keep asking 'Yes but why?' eventually even scientifically literate people like yourself, will say 'That's just how it is'. That's a mystery. — bert1

Such asking of why is inappropriate in that it presupposes there must be a reason. Such asking generates pseudo-mystery. Real mystery exists when there is an answer which is not known, not when there cannot be a knowable answer.

The fastest route to non-existence is not a teleological explanation, sorry. — Wayfarer

It could be if it was planned, but not otherwise.

I just cited Salthe's tellic hierarchy of tendency/function/purpose a few posts back. — apokrisis

Entropy is perhaps (that is, as far as we can tell) a global tendency, not a purpose. The idea that the Cosmos is governed by some overarching (transcendent) purpose is necessarily a theistic idea, that is there cannot be, logically speaking, an overarching purpose without a transcendent purposer.

In case you misunderstand, I am not proposing that there is a transcendent purposer (designer).

1. There are no moral facts (facts about the goodness of different acts, people, events, etc.)
2. "This is good" is just another way of saying "I prefer that x and I'd prefer it if you would too" (emotivism).
3. Goodness doesn't exist but is rather a mirage enforced by the dominant party in society and is really just a form of power politics. — Count Timothy von Icarus

1. I'd say there are no moral facts as such, because the idea is a kind of category error. On the other hand I'd say there are human facts, facts about humans and human flourishing, which justify the most socially important moral injunctions. I mean, they are justified just because they are socially important.

2. I believe we all have some sense of the good, but that what various individuals believe is actually good is often distorted by inappropriate social conditioning which can only be remedied by determined self-examination.

3. Goodness or the Good doesn't exist as an object which is open to observation in the way phenomena are, obviously, so in that sense there is no objective good. But I believe there are objective facts about what leads to human flourishing and what works against it.

He certainly gives them plenty of ammo. — Wayfarer

By some accounts he is a flawed character. Some reports say he is autistic, on the spectrum and so on. The way I see it we don't rightly judge people but the acts they are known to have committed, and what they, as public figures, stand for. If they are inconsistent, guilty of hypocrisy, then of course that should be exposed. Most of what Assange has been accused of and criticized for seems to be little more than hearsay.

My question is, how the f*** is the judicial system supposed to be able to ascertain the truth or falsity of such allegations beyond reasonable doubt?? — Wayfarer

The answer is that they cannot.

Scrutiny of governments and their cover-ups is not the same as scrutiny of individuals—trying to get dirt on them—a game very familiar in politics. When you have someone like Assange garnering public attention and admiration, you will also always have those who want to discredit the hero and cut him down to size.

Cheers mate, I'll have a read...

I also have read and like Camus' essays. although many years ago. The part I question there is whether there is a definitive and general answer to the question about whether life is worth living—that is I tend to think the answer may be different for different individuals.

OK, I see...and fair enough.

So yours is a kind of 'virtue ethics' argument? I think it comes down to what people care about, though, and addressing an argument that one should put courage first to someone who just doesn't care about such ideals would seem to be futile at best, and arrogant at worst.