I feel that we are in a nihilistic position where we can't can justify any of our actions by reference to rules, objectivity or teleology.

For example it is not wrong for me to eat a chocolate bar and it is not wrong for me not to eat one. There are no innate rules for behaviour and any value judgements and ought's are completely fabricated. — Andrew4Handel

Animals know what to do to live without some outside force motivating them. People are animals. What we need to live, to make decisions and to act, is built in to us, some of it from birth and some of it developed later through education and socialization. Of course, people are also different from other animals, so I'm sure our motivations are more complicated. Some of it is fear, some more positive factors. I've tried to pay attention to my own motivation for the things I do. In my experience, rules and rational considerations are not my primary motivators.

Stephen Pinker in "The Language Instinct" makes the case that, to a large extent, language acquisition is an instinct - genetically mediated motivation which develops according to a developmental schedule. He quotes Darwin from "Descent of Man":

Human language is an instinctive tendency to acquire an art. It certainly is not a true instinct, for every language has to be learned. It differs, however, widely from all ordinary arts, for man has an instinctive tendency to speak, as we see in the babble of our young children; while no child has an instinctive tendency to brew, bake, or write.

He also quotes William James from "What is an Instinct":

Nothing is commoner than the remark that Man differs from lower creatures by the almost total absence of instincts, and the assumption of their work in him by “reason.”...[But] the facts of the case are really tolerably plain! Man has a far greater variety of impulses than any lower animal; and any one of these impulses, taken in itself, is as “blind” as the lowest instinct can be; but, owing to man’s memory, power of reflection, and power of inference, they come each one to be felt by him, after he has once yielded to them and experienced their results, in connection with a foresight of those results…

…It is plain then that, no matter how well endowed an animal may originally be in the way of instincts, his resultant actions will be much modified if the instincts combine with experience, if in addition to impulses he have memories, associations, inferences, and expectations, on any considerable scale…

…there is no material antagonism between instinct and reason…

To me, this suggests that human behavior beyond just acquisition of language is motivated by instinct modified and expanded by learning and experience.

For example it is not wrong for me to eat a chocolate bar and it is not wrong for me not to eat one. There are no innate rules for behaviour and any value judgements and ought's are completely fabricated.

Every decision we make we don't know if we are doing the right thing and what the consequences are going to be. — Andrew4Handel

Sounds like freedom to me. And choice. What a luxury! Celebrate it. Humans have to make choices in life. You do the best you can with what you have, or in worrying unduly about putative outcomes, you might succumb to analysis paralysis.

It is something that can lead to an existential crisis. — Andrew4Handel

And wishing to avoid that unnecessary anxiety, realize that we only have control of ourselves… more or less. See: stoicism.

Nice.

, trouble is, you must act. You don't get not to choose. And even if you are motivated by 's instinct, or avoiding 's anxiety, that's entirely your choice; you might do otherwise.

Perhaps the problem is much deeper than you had supposed.

The rules are not found, nor innate, but chosen, by you, and you have to choose.

Welcome to existentialism.

Animals know what to do to live without some outside force motivating them. — T Clark

I am no expert on animal behaviour but it seems to me humans can never exist (spontaneously?)like an animal in the wild without language communities and complex learning.

It would be great if we could just go out and exist at one with nature as animals appear to do although we can't really comment on how any other animal experiences reality. They do not appear to have the capacity to experience reality by dividing it up through language to reflect on their experiences.

Thinking about animal minds and other peoples mind and our own is always going to be speculative. However we do have a transparent language where can ask clear, rational and lucid questions about reality that don't have answers.

The existential crisis or nihilism occurs because of this capacity. This is the crux of the issue, animals never seem to have this situation arising and if they do have a "no win" situation" that does appear to cause helplessness in animals as well in that they have been seen to develop apathy after trauma,

I would agree that some instincts (if this is what you are alluding to) can help us stay motivated , living instinctively based on brute desires. And indeed it sound good to have naturally strong passions and drives. But these drives do seem to override the questioning side rather like supressing doubts with pleasurable hormones or something biochemical.

I was thinking to day after reading about someone committing suicide how extremely horrible it is to get to that mental state where you see no way out and existence becomes unbearable. That probably relates to this and differentiates us from other animals.

I think existentialism and nihilism probably require a response and a solution.

In a sense I am just filled with a sense of fearful wonder at the situation we find our self in which is why I don't view humans as just another mundane product of nature.

But how to do deal with this anxiety?

you might succumb to analysis paralysis — Tom Storm

I did that long ago.

But I think that maybe partly due to society/socialisation.

Society limits us despite the appearance of great choice. I in particular has a very strict authoritarian religious upbringing. But some people thrive with boundaries and certainties.

And wishing to avoid that unnecessary anxiety, realize that we only have control of ourselves… more or less. See: stoicism. — praxis

How does Robotics deal with this issue?

There is The Paradox of Buridan's ass and the halting problem in computer theory.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buridan%27s_ass

We cannot always make decisions by reason or emotion such as choosing between to equally desirable things o ending up with some form of insoluble choice or conundrum.

I know little about computing if someone does and how they deal with these issues I would be interested.

I want to do the best and most ethical thing for me an others or just do something worthwhile/meaningful. (If I have not already done so.)

I am no expert on animal behaviour but it seems to me humans can never exist (spontaneously?)like an animal in the wild without language communities and complex learning. — Andrew4Handel

Homo Sapiens have been around for 200,000 years. They were genetically equivalent to people today. Do you think evolution didn't provide them with the ability to make decisions and act on those decisions? Do you think people 100,000 years ago couldn't act without application of rules, objectivity or teleology? I'm sure they didn't have existential crises or nihilistic feelings. The problems you've identified are overlays on basic human behavior associated, I guess, with modern civilization.

It is at the heart of some eastern philosophies and meditative practices that people can think and act spontaneously, e.g. Taoism. This from The Tao Te Ching, Verse 38, Ellen Marie Chen translation with some butchering from me:

When spontaneity [Tao] is lost, then there is virtue.
When virtue is lost, then there is humanity.
When humanity is lost, then there is righteousness.
When righteousness is lost, then there is propriety.
Propriety is the thin edge of loyalty and faithfulness,
And the beginning of disorder.

There are no innate rules for behaviour and any value judgements and ought's are completely fabricated. — Andrew4Handel

There are studies that show babies as young as three months old, long before they have language, are already judging other people's behavior and making value judgements. Karen Wynn, who conducted the studies, suggests this does show there are innate rules for behavior.

The topic would better be called 'Deciding what to be'. What to do follows from what one is. If one is Buridan's ass, one dithers and cannot decide. If one is a football fan, one cheers on the team, and boos the other team. It is connection, identification with the other that motivates something bigger that mere self-interest. Hurrah for philosophers, I say, and boo to soldiers. Hurrah for truth and boo to lies. Hurrah for peace and boo to war.

If one is a modern individual with no loyalty and no connection to others, one does what one likes, which is probably nothing much, and one is always anxious about the other who is nothing but a rival and competitor, liable to steal one's dinner.

babies as young as three months old, long before they have language, are already judging other people's behavior and making value judgements. — T Clark

Babies are dependent on (M)others, and therefore make connections and loyalties very quickly, because their lives depend on it. It is only a very recent possibility to live without direct connection to humans or the living environment. We have created the mechanical life (and hence the amoral governance) of which we now complain.

Therefore choose solidarity with humans, with bees, with tigers and with the forest. Choose 'Team Life'.

Homo Sapiens have been around for 200,000 years. They were genetically equivalent to people today. Do you think evolution didn't provide them with the ability to make decisions and act on those decisions? Do you think people 100,000 years ago couldn't act without application of rules, objectivity or teleology? I'm sure they didn't have existential crises or nihilistic feelings. The problems you've identified are overlays on basic human behavior associated, I guess, with modern civilization. — T Clark

As someone philosophically inclined I like Taoism, probably the most philosophical religion of them all in that it is inspired by the same anti-tradition sentiments you typically find in philosophy. Western philosophy too, with Socrates, started of questioning the Gods, the customs of his time. And then Plato made a big deal out of breaking with the Homeric tradition that came before. Reason was the thing to replace it... and the rest is history as they say.

But what I think is getting more and more clear, is that we are in fact predominately 'cultural beings'. We need a culture, language, rules etc etc to prosper, because that is what gave us an edge in evolutionary terms and what was selected for. What this also means, is that because we evolved this set of abilities for cultural learning that is more flexible, we didn't need all these hard-wired traits and instincts anymore unlike other animals... and so we presumably eventually lost a lot of those traits, as tends to happen in evolution with traits that aren't useful anymore.

If true, this is probably still a bit speculative scientifically, then as humans we do in fact need and rely on this cultural superstructure because unlike other animals we lack all of these instinctive algorithmic behaviors. And presumably Homo Sapiens 200.000 years did have those structures, but they weren't really preserved because they were oral traditions for the most part. This would be a modern problem insofar as our superstructure has slowly been dissolved over the past centuries with Protestantism, liberalism, and the scientific revolution/dialectics. That was what Nietzsche was getting at with the dead of God, and the fact that we hadn't understood the real significance of it yet.... nihilism.

But my general point is that every choice we make is done in a situation of infinite possibilities and without anyway to know we have done the best or correct thing. — Andrew4Handel

Your approach to 'what should I do?' is far too complex and convoluted. You are asking, after I've done what I choose, how will I know whether I've done the best thing. Give this up, only an omniscient being, like some assume God to be, could ever answer that, and we are only human. Furthermore, being human we also know that we could always make mistakes. Therefore it doesn't even make sense to even try to do the best thing, because doing the best thing, even if you could know what that is, is often beyond your capacity as well. So forget all that nonsense, it's a very poor approach to decision making which will paralyze you in fear of not doing your best.

So, I suggest that you start with a simple trial and error type of approach. Choose a random thing to do. After you've done it, take note of some coherent observations of the act itself, and of the consequences. Then, see if you can judge whether it was a good thing or a bad thing. Do this a few times, and see if you can start to produce some sort of scale, definitely bad, could have been better, definitely good. After a while you'll be able to start to understand what sort of consequences you prefer (good), and which you dislike (bad). Assuming you are not in jail by this time, you can proceed toward judging the observations you've made in your trial and error process. You'll be able to see what type of actions produce a favourable result and which produce a bad result. This ought to help you in the future, to decide what to do.

Trial and error is how we learn, yes, but not necessarily as individuals, that is to convoluted. We get most passed on by our parents, society at large, by tradition.... and then we can work with that and try out some things, sure. But almost nobody has the time, energy and the genius to make that sort of strategy work purely as an individual.



Current society is a bit of a mess, and what you feel is probably quite a "sane" reaction to all of this, you are not alone in any case. There's not a whole lot one can do about it as an individual. Realizing that we're in a bit of a shitty situation regardless of what one does, probably can help to not pile on more self-inflicted guilt on top of that. And then finding like-minded people to hang out with can help as some kind of replacement for that social/cultural structure that has eroded in modern societies.

There are studies that show babies as young as three months old, long before they have language, are already judging other people's behavior and making value judgements. Karen Wynn, who conducted the studies, suggests this does show there are innate rules for behavior. — T Clark

I would say there is reason here to suggest a human preference/desire for rules, but not necessarily that any innate ‘rules for behaviour’ exist as such.

I would argue that our preference relates to innate qualitative structures that are inherently unquantifiable. These are not ‘rules for behaviour’, but rather underlying logical relation (Tao), from our limited understanding of which behaviour, language and then ‘rules’ are formed, re-formed and refined as reductionist and scientific methodologies, tested back through our conceptual systems (mathematics, language, culture, values, etc) to our behaviour. I wouldn’t say the ‘rules’ themselves are innate.

There are no innate rules for behaviour and any value judgements and ought's are completely fabricated.

Every decision we make we don't know if we are doing the right thing and what the consequences are going to be. — Andrew4Handel

Sure - we can’t be certain we are doing the ‘right’ thing in perpetuity. We can’t be certain what all the consequences are going to be. There is always room for improvement in the accuracy of our judgements and behaviour. That only amounts to an ‘existential crisis’ if we equate existence with certainty and accuracy. I could be wrong, but it seems to me there’s no life, no consciousness, no relation to the world, in that kind of existence.

Trial and error is induction basically, or maybe abduction more precisely.... we form theories about what we experience, and then refine them with new experiences as we go.

This process relies in part on our ability for pattern recognition, which is probably not that unlike how self-learning AI learn via neural networks. Those have existed for a long time, from the seventies or sixties, but only recently they became something that was useful, because only recently we could feed them big data gathered via the world wide web. Without big data they wouldn't get all that far in training their neural networks.

As an individual one can only experience that much in a given lifetime.... culture is our proxy for big data.

What this also means, is that because we evolved this set of abilities for cultural learning that is more flexible, we didn't need all these hard-wired traits and instincts anymore unlike other animals... and so we presumably eventually lost a lot of those traits, as tends to happen in evolution with traits that aren't useful anymore. — ChatteringMonkey

we lack all of these instinctive algorithmic behaviors. — ChatteringMonkey

It would be a good explanation, I guess, if it were true.

I would say there is reason here to suggest a human preference/desire for rules, but not necessarily that any innate ‘rules for behaviour’ exist as such. — Possibility

I don't think it's necessarily a preference for rules as such as much as it is a natural tendency to judge others.

Immanuel Kant: What can I know? What should I do? What may I hope?

Just thought I'd throw that in; I don't know if Kant came up with a satisfactory answer.

I am no expert on animal behaviour but it seems to me humans can never exist (spontaneously?)like an animal in the wild without language communities and complex learning. — Andrew4Handel

Actually, humans do live in the wild -- a wild country of languages, complex meaning, communities, cultures, elaborate knowledge, etc. We exist in it spontaneously because this wild land of "civilization" is our natural world. It is everything from wonderful to god-awful.

Every decision we make we don't know if we are doing the right thing and what the consequences are going to be. — Andrew4Handel

Maybe the first time you encounter strong drink (alcohol) you will not know what the consequences are of guzzling the whole bottle of wine, You will soon find out, and you won't forget the lesson. Eat a pound of chocolate in one go and you will be aware that too much of a good thing is not all that wonderful.

existential crisis — Andrew4Handel

Given our large brains with our capacity to dig ourselves in pretty deeply, the occasional existential crisis is a given. Almost all the time, we dig ourselves out of the hole and move on.

Babies are dependent on (M)others, and therefore make connections and loyalties very quickly, — unenlightened

I stole this from one of my posts in an earlier discussion:

The early emergence of the evaluation of social actions—present already by 3 months of age—suggests that this capacity cannot result entirely from experi­ence in particular cultural environments or exposure to specific linguistic practices, and it suggests that there are innate bases that ground some components of our moral cognition. — Karen Wynn

I see this as a very moderate expression of an argument for a genetic component to moral behavior. She doesn't make any definitive statement. She says her results suggest a genetic component. She says "...there are innate bases that ground some components of our moral cognition." That doesn't seem like any great leap to take from her studies. You, on the other hand, seem to reject even that moderate claim out of hand. You point out some hypothetical reasons why it might not be true, but don't provide any substantive refutation. I find that an unconvincing argument.

I've linked to this video many times on the forum:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRvVFW85IcU

It would make sense, given what we know I think... but sure, hard to tell if it is true with any certainty.

EDIT: To be clear I don't want to imply that we lost "all" of those traits (as that was in the part you quoted), but that we lost at least some so that we are not 'complete' without the cultural part. Clearly we do have some instincts too.

It would make sense, given what we know I think — ChatteringMonkey

Do you have a source for your understanding?

Do you have a source for your understanding? — T Clark

Not a single source, I've read a bunch of stuff about evolution over the years.

There was one guy in particular who gave me the idea of genetic evolution having 'offloaded' a bunch of it's "work" to cultural evolution (culture is more flexible and therefor adaptive than genes), but I don't remember his name at this moment.

The idea that organisms lose traits that become obsolete is rather commonplace and well established I think (like snakes having had feet at one time).

And then there's a lot of research on our sociality being one of our most important traits for our success.

https://www.amazon.nl/Secret-Our-Success-Evolution-Domesticating/dp/0691166854

https://darwinianbusiness.com/2016/02/29/cumulative-cultural-evolution-an-overview-of-joseph-henrichs-the-secret-of-our-success/

I don't think what I'm saying is that outlandish, but you know, I'm not a professional so I very well could be somewhat off the mark.

I don't think what I'm saying is that outlandish, but you know, I'm not a professional so I very well could be somewhat off the mark. — ChatteringMonkey

I don't think it's outlandish, but I provided specific sources for my opinions. The extent to which human behavior is innate has been argued on the forum before. There is scientific evidence on both sides. No one argues that cultural influences don't have a big role to play. If your positions weren't expressed so definitively I wouldn't might not have responded so vigorously.

For example it is not wrong for me to eat a chocolate bar and it is not wrong for me not to eat one. — Andrew4Handel

Iit is not wrong for me to drive a car and it is not wrong for me not to drive a car. Iit is not wrong for me to write this comment and it is not wrong for me not to write this comment What's the issue here?

Yet there are rules ... It would be wrong for you to eat a chocolate if you were a diabetic. And it would wrong for me to drive a car if I suffered from Parkinson or other disability that impedes driving.

Then, what does all that have to do with the title of your topic, "Deciding what to do"[/b?

Really, what's your point?

I suppose that as we age we develop a set of moral principles with which we will live by. We justify our actions according to these principles, and in so doing subject them to a series of trial-and-error tests in various social interactions throughout life, but mostly earlier life.

So where does the crisis come from? My guess is that continuing to justify actions by reference to rules or teleology beyond early adulthood only hamstrings this development, or at least hinders one from moving beyond the stage where one guides his actions in order to avoid censure from social authorities. I wager that this lack of moral testing, so to speak, is especially prevalent in regions of conduct and behavior that are most subject to external moral constraints, such as law. The region where conduct is controlled by law so far encroaches upon the region of free choice that the trial-and-error stage of moral development is incomplete, and one’s conscience doesn’t get a chance to be field-tested. So he is morally adrift without a paddle.

I don't think what I'm saying is that outlandish, but you know, I'm not a professional so I very well could be somewhat off the mark.
— ChatteringMonkey

I don't think it's outlandish, but I provided specific sources for my opinions. The extent to which human behavior is innate has been argued on the forum before. There is scientific evidence on both sides. No one argues that cultural influences don't have a big role to play. If your positions weren't expressed so definitively I wouldn't might not have responded so vehemently. — T Clark

Ok fair enough.

The force of my expression was probably more a reaction to current ideologies like liberal individualism completely missing the mark in my opinion, than anything you said in particular.

Though I do still disagree about Homo Sapiens being just another animal. I would agree we're not special because of reason/consciousness, as was the general idea in the West in philosophy and Christianity... And yes, we do have instincts like other animals, but on top of that we also have cultural evolution, which can I think be considered a real phase shift in evolution on earth... and which does make us qualitatively different.

I see this as a very moderate expression of an argument for a genetic component to moral behavior. — T Clark

No disagreement from me. Social relations are a survival issue. Communication, and therefore truth, is a survival issue. But alas in humans, genetic programs for behaviour can be overridden to a large extent by learned behaviours and identifications. The programmed socialisation becomes socialised antisocial behaviour, by the propaganda of the day. There can only be one winner. There can only be one winner. There can only be one winner.

Though I do still disagree about Homo Sapiens being just another animal. — ChatteringMonkey

I didn't say we are. Anyway, I think you and I are in general agreement.

But how to do deal with this anxiety? — Andrew4Handel

By growing flowers from seed, mostly.

I hope most of the replies here have left you less than satisfied. There's a blindness in the responses of scientism and economics, such that invoking evolution or genetics or instinct simply do not address the question you asked. It's a blindness to the obvious distinction between how things actually are and how we want them to be, between the facts and the values, between the "is" and the "ought".

No explication of how things are can tell you what to do. You still have to decide.

The answer to "How do you decide?" might be "What do you want?"

Is torturing a child for fun wrong?

Yes, obviously.

So, some things are wrong. That is, it is manifest to reason that some ways of behaving are wrong.

Then there are some acts whose moral status is less clear.

But that doesn't imply nihilism. It just reflects the fact that our reason is not infallible and that it is especially exposed to corruption where morality is concerned