The point about zombies is not whether or not you believe in them (nobody except Daniel Dennett does)... — bert1

I'm skeptical of the idea that Daniel Dennett believes anything these days, but anyway, that appears to be gratuitious slander.

From Wikipedia:

Some physicalists, such as Daniel Dennett, argue that philosophical zombies are logically incoherent and thus impossible, or that all humans are philosophical zombies;[4][5]

Are you proposing sociology as a replacement for the moral authority of church and bible? — ucarr

I don't have much use for the notion of a moral authority. I am (quite possibly naively) hopeful that humanity developing better understanding of human nature and thus more accurate understanding of one another, will continue yielding positive results.

The fall of humanity into an inherently sinful nature had been a pretty good myth for checking human deceitfulness. In the wake of its obliteration by rationalist, materialist science and logic, what do we have in its place? — ucarr

An understanding that we have an evolved social primate nature rather than a mythological fallen nature. Though perhaps it's not a widespread understanding, due to the human propensity to cling to simplistic comforting myths.

It is a long story. If science does not and cannot explain knowledge AT ALL, then all of its knowledge claims rest within the claims as claims only. This is just the way it is throughout analytical thinking, isn't it? A person tells me moonlight is reflected sunlight, and I ask what the sun is, and not only is there no answer, but the very possibility of an answer is problematic, then the proposition that moonlight is reflected sunlight light becomes very thrown into doubt while the search for what a "sun" could possiblity be moves forward.

Okay, so we know what the sun is. But consider: A scientist tells me moonlight is reflected sunlight, and I ask, how do you know anything about anything? Not just suns and moons, but anything at all. The scientist brushes this off, but note: she has no answer. I mean, in the language of the science she is so familiar with, there simply IS no answer to this. — Constance

Thanks for the response.

This is a pretty good illustration of my point about myopic philosophizing without being scientifically informed. I'll bow out now.

If determinism is true, aren’t we all, in a sense, always told what to think? — Fire Ologist

I'd think it more accurate to say that we think as it is our nature to think. I'd add that that nature, is to a substantial degree, determined by the environment our thinking developed in.

I certainly don't have a sense of always being told what to think. I'm curious as to why you would think of it as you described above.

Before you get to quantum physics, you have to ask more basic questions, those of philosophy. What is knowledge? What is language? What is aesthetics and ethics? To affirm quantum physics or evolution is, of course, not questioned at all. — Constance

Given that we are granting evolution occurred, (I presume you mean biological evolution) I'm not seeing much reason to privelege philosophical consideration especially. There is a large and growing amount of scientific investigation into matters of great relevance to epistemology, language, aesthetics, and ethics. Can you make a case for why the philosophy to which you are referring is more important to understand than the growing body of scientific understanding?

Surely you understand that is not what I am asking. — I like sushi

I was hasty and misread your "assuming Non-determinism is true" as "assuming determinism is true".

In any case, from my perspective you still seem to be asking about a false dichotomy between libertarian free will and fatalism, and I think it is better to understand that it is a false dichotomy and look beyond it. Thus my "neither".

Is it 'better' to believe in Determinism or Non-determinism assuming Non-determinism is true? Why? Why not? If neither why? — I like sushi

Neither. It is better to become informed about relevant science than to settle for adherence to a simplistic philosophical position.

Just the kind of detailed information I live for! — BC

:up:

Per the eminent anti-ranching Bing Crosby & and the Andrews Sisters... — BC

Per Wikipedia:

Originally written in 1934 for Adios, Argentina, an unproduced 20th Century Fox film musical, "Don't Fence Me In" was based on text by Robert (Bob) Fletcher, a poet and engineer with the Department of Highways in Helena, Montana. Cole Porter, who had been asked to write a cowboy song for the 20th Century Fox musical, bought the poem from Fletcher for $250. Porter reworked Fletcher's poem, and when the song was first published, Porter was credited with sole authorship. Porter had wanted to give Fletcher co-authorship credit, but his publishers did not allow it. The original copyright publication notice dated October 10, 1944 and the copyright card dated and filed on October 12, 1944 in the U.S. Copyright Office solely lists words and music by Cole Porter. After the song became popular, however, Fletcher hired attorneys who negotiated his co-authorship credit in subsequent publications. Although it was one of the most popular songs of its time, Porter claimed it was his least favorite of his compositions.

(I only knew about this because I once ran lights for a local civic theater run of the biographical musical Red Hot and Cole.)

Why do all the deities in the explored galaxy like to be invoked by an open flame? — Vera Mont

I suppose a related question is, "Why do we humans find a deity coming through flames apposite?"

Perhaps a huge amount of human history involved with the day's work being done, and having time at the end of the day to sit around the campfire considering and discussing, "What in the hell is going on here?"

It seems plausible that for humanity, having a cultural association between flame and metaphysical thought has deep cultural roots. Also, for the vast majority of human history, flame itself must have been a mysteriously animated thing to behold, and so perhaps symbolic of mysteries beyond our grasp.

Why do you say this? Can it be demonstrated? — Tom Storm

Not sure where you find someone who is unconstrained by ignorance.

I am talking about a species of which they fulfill their nature necessarily at the expense of other species. — Bob Ross

You'd have to go awfully far back in time, to find an ancestor of ours that wasn't a member of such a species.

Very true. Man is the rational animal though and presumably "demon men" would be rational as well, so it's hard to see how they could have entirely different in terms of what springs from rationality and how this orients the person. — Count Timothy von Icarus

There is the issue of what springs from an evolved nature though. In our case, what we find to be good is substantially a matter of our ancestors having evolved as members of a social species.

We might imagine a devil species which evolved from relatively asocial ancestors. (Though I think the plausibility of human level intelligence evolving in an asocial species is pretty low.) Assuming something like human level intelligence evolved in an asocial species. I would think it quite surprising if such a species had a morality very similar to us.

I'm skeptical. I don't think you would go all that long without deliberating about eating or drinking.

Ok, do you think that you are able to maintain a free willed choice to stop deliberating for the rest of your life?

If determinism is true, then there is no good reason to deliberate because such thought will not change how I decide (I must choose, or "act" the same way whether I deliberate or not). — NotAristotle

Do you think that you are able to make a free willed choice to stop deliberating?

First, we need to outline what is meant by these terms.

Determinism frames the premise that our futures are set and unchangeable (human choices are not real), whereas non-determinism frames the premise that humans can change their fate (human choices are real). — I like sushi

I doubt that this is a common view among those who accept determinism. Results of the 2020 Phipapers survey were:

Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will?
Accept or lean towards: compatibilism 59.16% (57.68%)
Accept or lean towards: libertarianism 18.83% (18.20%)
Accept or lean towards: no free will 11.21% (10.58%)
Other 13.54%

Compatibilism, in a nut shell, is the view that free will is compatible with determinism.

What you are describing as determinism I would call fatalism.

Karma is the name given to the displacement of true nature with the illusory constructions and projections of Mind. — ENOAH

I don't know what you mean by "displacement of true nature". However, I think you are right in the sense that notions of karma are intimately tied up with our social primate tendency to project onto the world in terms of deservedness:



It seems to me, that the notion of karma arises from an attempt to rationalize, our instinctive (and substantially emotional) tendency to judge deservedess, as a matter of objective fact about the world.
(As opposed to recognizing the inherent subjectivity of judgements of deservedness.)

Does this fit at all with what you are thinking?

The APS magazine provides a neat summation of the mechanics of making choices. — Banno

Nice succinct overview of important to understand matters. Bookmarked.

Could they not learn from that experience? Perhaps in some cases to go down for a while is the only way to continue on the way up. — Janus

As a resident of MAGA world, I certainly hope so.

Do you mean our knowledge and understanding could just as well degenerate as improve? — Janus

Consider people who get involved in cults?

The following view is ascribed to Nietzsche: — Tarskian

And? Is this meant to be an argument from authority? Nietzche having made predictions about the future based on his limited perspective isn't something I am all that interested in.

In any case, it doesn't seem to respond to the questions I asked you.

Your position seems to mostly amount to an appeal to consequences fallacy. Suppose a substantial portion of our fellow social primates can't cope emotionally with having an atheistic perspective. Do you recognize that that doesn't have any bearing on whether God exists?

...frantically trying to avoid the inevitable final outcome, which is that it will spectacularly commit suicide. — Tarskian

Sounds like fantasizing on your part, to me.

Do you see yourself as someone likely to commit suicide if you came to have an atheist perspective? If so, do you think that might just be a personal issue you have?

:up: :up:

Sounds as if you are arguing for an intellectually impoverished populace, and I wonder why?

Looking into what groups can be found through meetup.com might be worthwhile.

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Morality is rooted in our immediate visceral response to what happens to us or others. My suffering does not begin with the concept of suffering. I do not need to form a concept to know that it is bad. Most of us are capable of empathy and do not first develop or appeal to a concept of empathy in order to be able to empathize. We do not need a concept of care in order to care. We do not need a concept of something mattering in order for something to matter to us. — Fooloso4

100 :up:

E-motions are moving forces which are meant to coordinate with our agency, not to override and destroy our agency. — Leontiskos

"Meant to" by whom?

It looks to me like evolution resulted in us having emotions which act as 'interrupts' to our rational consideration, and which tend to redirect our thinking.

Can it ever be disproven, and is it likely, that some may have discovered memories or signs of previous life? Perhaps there is a collection of dreams, that occurred since time in mother's womb, to the present day, that preserve abstractions of former dimensionality, and self-hood they once experienced. Perhaps there are direct memories in some minds of previous life. There's reason to suggest that could be possible, and nothing to say it's unlikely — Barkon

Well, if one accepts that human memories are encoded in the synaptic weightings of neural networks, then it doesn't make much sense to think that we have memories from before our conception - when our neural networks hadn't begun to develop.

There are lots of reasons to "say it's unlikely", if one is informed about the nature of human minds.

There is a matter of trust here. There is no reason we should trust AI technology and its corporate owners — BC

A just machine to make big decisions
Programmed by fellas with compassion and vision
We'll be clean when their work is done
We'll be eternally free, yes, and eternally young
- Donald Fagan, IGY

:chin:

Then what is it that provides ‘direction’? Aren’t we back to orthogenesis, that being ‘evolution in which variations follow a particular direction and are not merely sporadic and fortuitous’? That is a very different picture to orthodox neo-Darwinism. I asked ChatGPT for a synopsis:

Neo-Darwinian theory, which is essentially the modern synthesis of Darwinian evolution and Mendelian genetics, focuses on natural selection, genetic drift, mutation, and gene flow as the main drivers of evolution. It emphasizes the role of random mutations, which are then acted upon by natural selection, leading to adaptations that increase the fitness of organisms in their environments. — Wayfarer

That there are drivers other than the main drivers doesn't seem like a surprising thing to find, in light of a an up to date view on evolution. It is called the "modern synthesis" not the "ultimate synthesis". Modern technology has given us the ability to look through millions of haystacks for needles, in gathering the data needed to get a better look at the degree of seeming randomness involved. I don't think scientists are on the verge of finding the hand of God at work.

But the times they are a’ changing. — Wayfarer

Always. But that doesn't make Theodosius Dobzhansky's statement any less valid, "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution."

My neighbor only changes my belief if I choose to believe he's on the level. — RogueAI

I'd think it would be much more realistic to say, "My neighbor only changes my belief if my intuitions about my neighbor are such that I trust him in this circumstance." However, those intuitions were themselves likely caused (to some extent) to be as they are by your neighbor.

I think your talk about choosing to believe isn't a realistic description of how such things happen.

You can't change a belief when new evidence is presented? For example, I'm driving to work, thinking my house is fine. My neighbor calls me and tells me it's on fire. I now have a new belief that my house is not fine. I didn't change my belief in that case? What happened then? — RogueAI

Your neighbor changed your belief.

Isn't the process which is random the actual mutations? — Wayfarer

Even the randomness of mutations is questionable, and is being investigated moreso these days, due to the availability of modern technologies.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04269-6

Abstract
Since the first half of the twentieth century, evolutionary theory has been dominated by the idea that mutations occur randomly with respect to their consequences1. Here we test this assumption with large surveys of de novo mutations in the plant Arabidopsis thaliana. In contrast to expectations, we find that mutations occur less often in functionally constrained regions of the genome—mutation frequency is reduced by half inside gene bodies and by two-thirds in essential genes. With independent genomic mutation datasets, including from the largest Arabidopsis mutation accumulation experiment conducted to date, we demonstrate that epigenomic and physical features explain over 90% of variance in the genome-wide pattern of mutation bias surrounding genes. Observed mutation frequencies around genes in turn accurately predict patterns of genetic polymorphisms in natural Arabidopsis accessions (r = 0.96). That mutation bias is the primary force behind patterns of sequence evolution around genes in natural accessions is supported by analyses of allele frequencies. Finally, we find that genes subject to stronger purifying selection have a lower mutation rate. We conclude that epigenome-associated mutation bias2 reduces the occurrence of deleterious mutations in Arabidopsis, challenging the prevailing paradigm that mutation is a directionless force in evolution.

Where did you get that impression?
— wonderer1

Are you saying the random mutation of genes that leads to superior survival and reproduction is intentional in some way?? — Astrophel

Well no. I was asking a question regarding the following claim.

Then I invite you to consider that evolution is in essence entirely "accidental". — Astrophel

Do you understand the role that natural selection plays in evolution, and that natural selection is not random?

Then I invite you to consider that evolution is in essence entirely "accidental". — Astrophel

Where did you get that impression?

As I understand it, the issue with teleology, goal-directedness and purpose is that it was associated with Aristotelian physics... — Wayfarer

It seems to me that it is the association between teleology and the anti-intellectualism of modern day religious creationist, who attempt to keep people in a state of ignorance regarding evolution, moreso than any consideration of Aristotle.