I'm not sure what is meant by something moving from one level to another. but I think I agree that emergence implies a viewer, because it seems like it's a consequence of limits of our cognition. — ChatteringMonkey

No. Our limits of cognition are irrelevant to the world of emergence.
Levels are there whether we exist or not. There were no atoms before we discovered them? Before Kant there was no universe outside the Milky Way?

@schopenhauer1
... and why would levels necessitate a viewer?

I think the problem with knowing that is the narrow range of what can be known due to the wide range of possible objections that can be raised. Knowing how on the other hand needs demonstration rather than a logos. I can walk, bicycle, drive without being able to adequately explain. I know chess, a little. I know every tune I have ever heard in my life. We know how to fly to the Moon. We know we have the capacity to save humanity.

Materialistic Science — Gnomon

You're awfully certain that there is such a thing. I always thought materialism is something practiced with balls and sticks or by kicking big rocks. Or by babies gnawing on their big toes. It's the science part that I don't get.
Physicists are physicalists which is quite different than materialism in spite of what people pretend to. Physics is a mathematical symbolic science. What's the symbol for a material?

what do you think Freud had to say that is worth our consideration today? — Athena

Freud's popularized emphasis on the subconscious arising from demonstrations of hypnosis is lastingly significant.

Metaphysical issues move unavoidably in both directions between philosophy and scientific theorizing and explication. In philosophy, scientific facts are fundamental in keeping things grounded, and scientific theorizing is focused philosophical inquiry with hopes of empirical support. The math may be different but that's to be expected, as scientific logic is much broader than the philosophical classicism still in practice.

"Classical" model of physics ... a reliable reflection of "Activity" within the larger "Reality" we all inhabit AND a faithful guide to understanding and problem solving "change" in the "real" world.

Classical physics works well to solve problems in the world of physical reality of space and motion created just for that purpose. But how can that be extended into our daily lives?

does that call for another assumption? — Paul Edwards

Precisely. You can eliminate many objections by defining your terms and making more assumptions explicit. For example, you would want to rule out Russia, with elected leadership, making war against Australia on ideological grounds.

Thanks for that, I don't think you're far off at all. From where I'm sitting, watching the rain fall on streets with much reduced traffic, the economy seems to have tanked.

Stagflation, noun (economics), persistent high inflation combined with high unemployment and stagnant demand in a country's economy.

The corporations live to serve their masters, the shareholders. To maintain rosy appearances in the markets, they are cutting expenses to the bone, which immediately impacts their suppliers of services. The suppliers cut working hours or just lay off workers and go out of business. Shops are closing, stores have limited inventories with rising prices, and many people just stay home watching the rain fall. But thank God, the stocks are doing so well.

let the winners of democratic elections kill people who take up arms against the democratic government

Isn't this the policy of all countries already?

any acceptable version would have to be so radically unlike the ill-formed notions that are commonly appealed to that it would be tactically obtuse--not to say Pickwickian — Dennett

So, Dennett is not saying that metaphysical objects somewhat like qualia are impossible, but that the terminology used would need to be something unfamiliar. Not even necessarily novel, just unusual.

The cauliflower case is directly out of Heraclitus, label it 'relational' if you like. The problem is old, the solution is nowhere in sight.

Qualia are a valiant attempt to bridge the gap between subjective phenomenal experience and objective philosophy. If qualia cannot be fixed objects, then how can we communicate thought, feelings, and sensations in the language of philosophy?

To deny resolutely the existence or importance of something real or significant

But to deny the existence of qualia wouldn't there first have to be someone foolish enough to insist that qualia as mental processes actually 'exist' in a philosophical sense of having identity?

I take Quining to be the gross error that subjective processes can somehow be made objective and distinct for the purpose of quantization?

Qualia are bundles of properties without a distinct object.
The issue is that since the PNC is inapplicable saying things about qualia becomes difficult but not impossible.

I am missing something.
Are we talking about my own personal belief or something that is believed by everyone because all humans by necessity believe or perhaps because science believes ? Inductive belief can be either one and personal justification is quite different from what is innate or a law of physics.

My own thinking has evolved, ... due to learning and a willingness to learn, and humility got the hard way. That is, school, experience, hard knocks, time. Wisdom, imo, something else and also not the subject of this thread, ... does our several thinking evolve, and more-or-less in the same way? Is any of it a function of age and appreciation of mortality, of what is important in the face of no-longer-being? — tim wood

Let's think about death later, much later.
According to people in the know the brain evolves from infancy to old age in quantity and quality. Others say that the mind also evolves in style in stages suggesting periodic reorganization of whatever resources it has to work with. Most of this reorganization goes on unnoticed except that others can see it. For example, some topics, like philosophy and physics need to be taught in gradually more sophisticated versions several times years apart because most abstract conceptual and logical facilities require an adult mind. The historically annoyingly noticeable distinction between knowledge and wisdom breaks down to a gradual decline in ability to learn and know and to a corresponding increasing ability to judge. But not always.

Philosophy needs to be logical but it need not be a single logical system. Quite likely, anything classified as philosophy will not match other, or even any other philosophy. Chances are that even the terminology employed is inconsistent.

Like many other games and puzzles, jigsaw puzzles have the peculiarity that a unique solution only comes easily when the pieces are few and large with obvious clues of fit neighboring pieces and the overall structure of the completed image.

Growing complexity requires a second, higher type of meta-reasoning called strategy. Developing a strategy in solving puzzles becomes gradually more and more salient as complexity grows. As noted in a previous topic, chess is one of the best examples of this characteristic of puzzles.

consciousness cannot be understood except by studying it, and this is not what Penrose does. He just thinks about it. . . . — FrancisRay

Can't do one without the other. To study the unknown, some bounds and rules, definitions for discourse, must be hypothesized first then see how it goes. Usually it won't.

If Penrose thinks consciousness is emergent from the physical that isn't saying much. Even if quantum mechanisms and logic are invoked. It's only a fancier version of older suggestions. But he wants say it now to be ahead of the wave, just in case it turns out to be correct.

Garber said --

Descartes’ thought must be understood in the context of the attempt to reject Aristotelian physics, and replace it with a different kind of physics, one grounded in a mechanistic conception of nature.
For an Aristotelian physicist, ... bodies have to behave one way or another, as embodied in their substantial forms. Some bodies naturally fall, and others naturally rise; some are naturally cold, and others are naturally hot; some are naturally dry, and others are naturally wet.
For the mechanist ... the world is a machine, all the way down.

But the foundations of Aristotelian philosophy, ontology, epistemology, ethics, and theology are another matter.

Thank you for raising facts for attention. Are facts rational? Do we use facts to rationalize or are we better off appealing to emotional leanings? What facts could possibly have lead people to decide to buy the endless variety of models and colors of automobiles that we see on the roads, why not just a few well chosen models in practical brownish shades of grey?

Although most people think of facts as certain or true statements, I prefer to limit fact to established past events and to scientific propositions as reported by reputable sources. Perhaps simply just scientifically objective facts as opposed to subjective personal opinions.

What is clear is that although price, safety, and maintenance history may have had a role in deciding which automobile people buy, personal preferences are likely to have weighed more. How much more? I suppose that depends on the buyer. I know I have been looking for something to buy in just the right shade of green for a few years now without success.

if we have, let's say 70% of the right information decision making becomes easier. — Konkai

Perhaps. But most decisions are based on gut feelings, necessity, sentiment, or habit, and then the facts are carefully marshaled afterwards to rationalize the decision to ourselves and for others.

Hume himself admits that his theory would be as sceptical as Pyrrho of Elis, the model of all scepticism, if it were not for the fact that nature comes to the rescue of knowledge. How?
Because when you have a rational and universally shared belief it would be absurd to do without it. This is a very simple principle, but it seems to be quite solid. At heart, all science is based on it. — David Mo

But not Hume. Hume's philosophy is an understanding and lack of appreciation for Galilean-Newtonian science. Instead, he starts with modern Aristotle and winds up with Platonic skepticism even of well-justified opinion.

if a predator is so strong a hunter it proliferates and the prey population declines — kudos

As @Olivier5 pointed out, strong hunters do not proliferate at the expense of their prey in nature, rather, there is a dynamic balance between the two groups that ebbs and flows. Where strength does become important is on a Darwinian stage of eliminating weaker rivals that would otherwise claim the same territory in the food chain. I am thinking of foxes, coyotes, and wolves that cannot survive in the same terrain and territory together. But this competition among peers is just as intense and at times just as deadly in human affairs, especially at the international level of the hierarchy.

If we were to formalize this relationship by setting up a dichotomy of strong/weak predator/prey, we would need to look at something that takes the dynamical aspects of either experiential or real-world relationships into account. Which is why I attempted a Heraclitean peer-to-peer and another one-to-many parent-to-children model for your first phrase. I think these relationships would stay static for a time but not forever, not as would be expected for any dialectic originating with Plato.

natural predator-prey relationships — kudos

In nature, the predator is also prey, and the prey predator. And if nature sneezes they're all dead.

5. You can't get knowledge of things that are empirical unobserved — Humelover

I wonder how much Plato's Theaetetus had to do with this powerful argument. The key to understanding seems to be recognize equivocation in both arguments on which kind of knowledge we are talking about.

deterministic machines without human free will cannot cope with semantic indeterminism. — RussellA

Human free will is from a different unrelated language. In theory, machines can be made at least as semantically intelligent as a standard dumb human. Semantic indeterminacy, as vagueness and ambiguity unresolved, is a necessary feature of natural languages to allow specific in-context applicability of a limited formal vocabulary to a boundlessly unpredictable real world.

I recommend that you take a look at the entry on "Relativism" at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP) and especially at the three related articles by Westacott,
Moral, Cognitive, and Aesthetic relativism.

Edit - You're in a foreign land, the sights and sounds are bewildering. Learn the language of the natives.

Probability arose from gambling — ReluctantMathematician

So probabilities would be meaningful as applied to gambling, for example, or are they meaningful just as numbers?

there should be a boundary probability number that is " meaningfulness " just for that specified case and out of that boundary is not meaningful — boby

I'm not sure what meaningful means in a probabilities context. I think of probabilities as arising from the analysis of purely hypothetical mathematical possibilities.

When I think of meaningfulness I look at the application of the numbers to experience in an ordinarily setting. Perhaps a personal or social phenomenon is looked at to see if numbers can be fitted to repeated occurrences or chain of events. Then meaningfulness can be thought of as a measurable degree of fitness of the two models, one for the world and one from math.

I could come up with a strong argument that the greatest problems in the world are a consequence of having sex and children. The entire environmental crisis and the dying of Earth's ecosystems can be strongly attributed to unregulated human over-population.

I don't believe that old age is the age of wisdom, but a progressive advance towards stupidity. This is was Socrates' feeling -despite Plato's version- according Xenophon. This is why he provoked is own death in his famous trial. It is an heterodox consistent version. — David Mo

On what basis can you accept Xenophon's word over Plato's? Most likely they were both just stories to create opposing Socrates portraits that suited each writer, pro and ad hominem. Think a bit, if Soc was a decrepit old buzzard, then what was the attraction that he had for the majority of philosophers of his time and at least for some of the common citizens of Athens? He was convicted for crimes against the state not for being old.

Oh, I think the Russians or the Chinese will have a say about that. It's only reasonable that they should hop aboard that train.

That's one problem with a dialog. Two points of view may each be true, but neither need be right, either singly or in any combination.

The ability exists irrespective of actual truth or fact, that is to say the person can argue a lie or untruth as incontrovertible fact and thus convince people to adopt their views /perspectives with relative ease. — Benj96

Although we live in a physical world that is chaotic, that is a combination of lawful, random, and willful events, we have a genetic psychological imperative to imagine and then to believe that we are in fact living in an orderly, predictable world. The womb, so to speak. Towards this goal we imagine our social leaders to be godlike superior beings, or at least loco parentis, to see and foresee the good for us. We are thus natural marks for brazen loud gurus to play a confidence game on us, to tell us how things really are. Today, we hear jarring examples of its use in each morning's news.

Should philosophy be telling people how to live or what the ideals of life lived to the fullest should be? Is philosophy capable of doing that?

You is not just a Mind, but it is purely a SELECTION or DETERMINATION of a point of view or frame of reference. While there can be many Minds, the point of view is single. It makes no sense to talk about multiple selections, because when the world is observed, it exists from a single frame of reference. If there are many frames of reference, then what tells you which one You are seeing right now? — bizso09

You are squeezing three relevant philosophies into two buckets. The consequence is platonic nonsense.

There is the philosophy of the subjective private One called I, and of the subjective public others with many of you. Third, we have the many but countable scientifically public arbitrary observer~observation complexes, called sciences, with designated scientific objects and scientific relations that have nothing whatsoever to do with experience.

As for his little ride and wave, I just do not possess the same anxiety towards his actions, and I actually liked what he did. The response sounds like grasping at straws to me. I could care less if they translate to votes. — NOS4A2

He was pumped up with oxygen until erect. It appears that this campaign stunt against all medical advice may have finally backfired. The polls now give Biden a 14-16 point lead.

Trump's aggressive course of treatment included the steroid dexamethasone and the single dose he was given Friday of an experimental drug from Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. that supplies antibodies to help the immune system fight the virus. Trump on Friday also began a five-day course of remdesivir, a Gilead Sciences drug currently used for moderately and severely ill patients. The drugs work in different ways - the antibodies help the immune system rid the body of virus, and remdesivir curbs the virus' ability to multiply

-- AP via abc7ny

it's another stunt to distract us — Echarmion

A giant paper machet Trump will be waving to adoring crowds from the roof of the White House