I don't think there is much flesh connecting any philosophical outlook to an explanation for consciousness because there presently is no explanation for it. All we do is speculate. — frank

What matters isn’t whether you call it an explanation, the god’s eye truth or mere speculation, but what you can do with it. Today’s iron -clad scientific truth will be tomorrow’s superstition anyway, so what counts is how a perspective aids in guiding the understanding of oneself and others in real-life situations. There are an enormous variety of practical ways in which an activity-based view of affect can do this. Numerous theories of personality and psychotherapy are based on them.

I was referencing the fact that we model the world and react to the model prior to reacting to the world, but more physiologically, the most powerful driver of emotion is dopamine. Activation of dopaminergic pathways starts within the organism, most fundamentally in architecture contained in DNA. — frank

Right. The idea that we only have indirect access to the world through internal representations is a cartesian, reductionist view of emotion, and stands in direct opposition to the enactivist claim that we don’t represent the world via internal schemes but are in direct contact with it by way of our patterns of activity and interaction.

Today’s iron -clad scientific truth will tomorrow’s superstition anyway, — Joshs

This is the lack of flesh I was talking about. My discussion with Pierre-Normand ended up in the same place: a fairly large disconnect between his view and basic biology. Like you, Pierre-Normand said we can take a grain of salt with science, which is fine, just recognize that science is presently very helpful in providing narratives for "an enormous variety of practical" avenues.

Numerous theories of personality and psychotherapy are based on them. — Joshs

That's cool, and you very well may be right, that enactivism is the way forward, but our present biological understanding of organisms actually saves lives on a daily basis. I'm not casting shade on enactivism at all. I'm just saying it's got a ways to go to supplant the scientifically rooted view that presently prevails.

Right. The idea that we only have indirect access to the world through internal representations is a cartesian, reductionist view of emotion, and stands in direct opposition to the enactivist claim that we don’t represent the world via internal schemes but are in direct contact with it by way of our patterns of activity and interaction. — Joshs

I get it, but I think there's a strawman in calling the opposing view Cartesian. I think Robert Rosen is right that biology in its present state is founded on a set of expectations, some of which are apriori. In other words, a little Kant is helpful in understanding what we mean by life. It really isn't Cartesian though. If anything, contemporary biology is a subset of physics.

The better question to ask is, “How do we come to agree to disagree?” I want to say that if two people are to agree to disagree, then there must first be earnest dialogue, there must be honest irreconcilability, and each party must understand at least in part the reasons which prevent the other from agreeing. It is easy enough to see why such a thing is not possible where dialogue at all, much less earnest dialogue, is refused. — Leontiskos

Let’s say that two parties who embrace sharply opposing philosophical, political or religious positions are bought together to engage in earnest dialogue. Wouldn’t it be predicable that if each fails to be persuaded to cross over to the other’s stance, they will also have a great deal of difficulty in accepting the logic behind the opposing view? If I tell you that I understand the reasons for your disagreement with me, but in the same breath I find those reasons to be irrational and logically faulty, am I really understanding those reasons?

Let’s say that two parties who embrace sharply opposing philosophical, political or religious positions are bought together to engage in earnest dialogue. Wouldn’t it be predicable that if each fails to be persuaded to cross over to the other’s stance, they will also have a great deal of difficulty in accepting the logic behind the opposing view? If I tell you that I understand the reasons for your disagreement with me, but in the same breath I find those reasons to be irrational and logically faulty, am I really understanding those reasons? — Joshs

When I say, "each party must understand at least in part the reasons which prevent the other from agreeing," I am not saying that they are able to mouth back the words the other person is using. I am saying that must be able to understand, at least in part, the reasons.

Wouldn’t it be predicable that if each fails to be persuaded to cross over to the other’s stance, they will also have a great deal of difficulty in accepting the logic behind the opposing view? — Joshs

Only if they cannot rise above post hoc rationalization, where reasoning is irrelevant and it's only assertions that matter. Anyone who understands what valid reasoning is should be able to see how a position possesses validity, coherence, and rationale, even if they do not agree with the conclusions. Anyone who cannot do that is more interested in ideology and "material positions," rather than true reasoning.

That's cool, and you very well may be right, that enactivism is the way forward, but our present biological understanding of organisms actually saves lives on a daily basis. I'm not casting shade on enactivism at all. I'm just saying it's got a ways to go to supplant the scientifically rooted view that presently prevails — frank

What exactly is this scientifically rooted view of biology you claim prevails?

Let me characterize the most recent thinking in biology as I understand it. The endosymbiotic theory of Lynn Margulis showed that eukaryotic cells arose through bacterial symbiosis, challenging the traditional gene-centric view of evolution and emphasizing cooperation over competition as a driving evolutionary force. This connects to several broader shifts in biology that overlap significantly with enactivism, post-Cartesian thought, and free energy principles:

Modern biology increasingly views organisms not as discrete individuals but as ‘holobionts’ - integrated communities of host organisms plus their microbiomes. This dissolves the classical boundary between self and environment, much like enactivism rejects the subject/object distinction. Your gut bacteria aren't just "in" you - they're part of your extended phenotype, affecting everything from mood to immune function.

Researchers now emphasize that biological properties emerge from dynamic interactions rather than being reducible to component parts. This mirrors enactivism's emphasis on cognition as enacted through organism-environment coupling rather than internal representation.

Biology has moved beyond genetic determinism toward understanding development as emerging from gene-environment interactions across multiple timescales. This aligns with enactivism's rejection of pre-given structures in favor of enacted meaning-making.

Karl Friston's free energy principle suggests all biological systems minimize surprise by maintaining their structural integrity through active inference. This provides a mathematical framework for understanding how organisms maintain their organization while coupling with environments - a core enactivist insight. The organism doesn't just adapt to a pre-given environment but actively shapes its niche while being shaped by it.

All these developments dissolve classical Cartesian dualities: mind/body, organism/environment, gene/culture, self/other. They point toward understanding life as fundamentally relational and processual rather than consisting of discrete, bounded entities.

The convergence suggests biology is moving toward what some call a "process ontology" where identity emerges from patterns of relationship rather than essential properties - a view that resonates across these philosophical and scientific frameworks.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Yes, I think that's a good point. One of the deficits of the empiricist program is that it tended towards (although not always) making all emotion, goodness, and beauty and entirely internal affair, ignoring its directedness and interactivity. The issue with the subject/object accounting structure is that everything always has to be placed on one side of the ledger. Something similar happens with perception and knowledge in representationalist assumptions.

Perhaps when we now talk about "history" we are talking about "knowing what happened in the past." Is that the thing that Maritain is considering, or is he considering history in some other manner? And do you happen to know the text where he talks about this?

It's just called On the Philosophy of History. Like a lot of his stuff, it's free online. He is pretty opposed to the Hegelian project. I am not so much, because I think it has some truth to it and that Solovyov offers solutions to some of Hegel's problems.

He does have laws, but they are more observational.

So the issue here is apparently prediction of future events, or a determination of the principles that led from one point to another?

More looking for principles. The problems posed by internal contradictions is a good one. I think Hegel's theory does explain the history of liberalism in the 19th and 20th century quite well. There, it faced challenges from nationalism and socialism, and it sublated both to varying degrees. Key planks of socialist platforms became universal in developed liberal states (e.g. the welfare state), and this helped address the internal contradiction between the idea of democracy and self-rule versus the tendency of capitalism to concentrate wealth such that elites become able to manipulate the system and lock out economic and political competition (which is essentially the system destroying itself, corrupting its own principles).


Likewise, nationalism was absorbed into liberalism such that "Algeria for the Algerians," and "Iraq for the Iraqis," are phrases even leftists endorse. The idea that all France had to do was give Algerians liberal rights was fully dead by the time of decolonization, but liberalism actually began by being quite as universalist as Marxism (e.g. France forcing "sister republics" on foreign states as if conquered much of Europe).

And now we see liberalism eroding national identity and so undermining public support for the socialist policies it absorbed. The contradictions are apparent and informative, but it would be foolish to think this gives one predictive insight on the exact shape of their resolution. Man is free and he can respond to this sort of contradiction in many ways. That's how Solovyov resolved Hegel's oppressive focus on the universal and Providential. He sees a telos to history, an end, but not necessarily its attainment; just as an organisms has ends but might grow ill instead. History becomes the meeting ground of truth and falsity, the dramatic encounter in which the wheat is winnowed from the chaff, the blazing fire that reveals what man has built his work from (I Corinthians 3:15). It's end is man's communication of goodness to man, through the Church and state as well as the union, family, etc., man lifting each other up towards the goal revealed in Christ of "godmanhood."

So, to bring it back to the Aeneid, Virgil doesn't seem to suggest that Aeneas is a puppet. He could stay with Dido, or kill himself in despair over losing her, but he doesn't. That's why he's the hero, because he sees, if ever so vaguely, the logoi he must follow, and suffers to do so ("agony" in the Greek sense of contest), even though he also fails to wholly actualize.

The problem that comes up in logo-skepticism is that nominalism and the elevation of the individual/particular has made it so that the logos must be embodied in Rome as it is, because culture and institutions are considered to be prior to any determinant logoi, the ground of their being. And so you get bad takes like: Virgil must be simply "writing propaganda," but then "sticking it to Octavian with his subtle skepticism" rather than the idea that Virgil (being exposed to Stoicism, Platonism, and the Peripatetics) simply recognizes that unities struggle to fully attain their form, and often fail, but that this struggle is needed for them to be anything (and anything good).

I would argue that the Orthodox use of "passions" is at least somewhat different than Plato or Aristotle or colloquial usage. I would say that Orthodox "dispassion," very crudely, has to do with a state of self-possession and self-command. It is the idea that "thoughts" (again in a wide, Orthodox Christian sense) do not move you. So there is that connection of being unmoved by passions, and a desire to achieve a state of dispassion, but I don't see the Orthodox view contradicting the idea that passions are primarily things that happen to us in the postlapsarian state. That's why Orthodox on the whole view passions as bad and desire a state of dispassion (although I realize there are a few exceptions, who you have read). So my hunch is that the Orthodox might admit that the deified individual has motive powers similar to the passions, but that they would not generally call those things "passions."

Yup, I think that's quite correct. Saint Isaac the Syrian is a good example:

The world" is the general name for all the passions. When we wish to call the passions by a common name, we call them the world. But when we wish to distinguish them by their special names, we call them passions. The passions are the following: love of riches, desire for possessions, bodily pleasure from which comes sexual passion, love of honor which gives rise to envy, lust for power, arrogance and pride of position, the craving to adorn oneself with luxurious clothes and vain ornaments, the itch for human glory which is a source of rancor and resentment, and physical fear. Where these passions cease to be active, there the world is dead…. Someone has said of the Saints that while alive they were dead; for though living in the flesh, they did not live for the flesh. See for which of these passions you are alive. Then you will know how far you are alive to the world, and how far you are dead to it.

During compline, when we ask for God to strengthen and correct us that we might awaken to "hymn [His] incomparable glory all night long" the goal is not to be free of affect (it is rather to be filled with it) but of inappropriate affect (and presumably for monks and nuns, to not accidently sleep through the midnight service :rofl: ). There is less separation between emotion and thought in general though. The "heart" as the "eye of the nous" has both, there being a sort of intellectual emotion too.

Wouldn’t it be predicable that if each fails to be persuaded to cross over to the other’s stance, they will also have a great deal of difficulty in accepting the logic behind the opposing view?
— Joshs

Only if they cannot rise above post hoc rationalization, where reasoning is irrelevant and it's only assertions that matter. Anyone who understands what valid reasoning is should be able to see how a position possesses validity, coherence, and rationale, even if they do not agree with the conclusions. Anyone who cannot do that is more interested in ideology and "material positions," rather than true reasoning — Leontiskos

Isnt there a danger of relying too heavily on the validity of the other’s reasoning and too little on the possibility that the other is making use of conceptual senses of meaning you are u familiar with? Don’t many situations of breakdown in communication result from a confusion between reasoning that lacks validity, coherence, and rationale, and valid reasoning anchored to unfamiliar concepts?

I would argue against the second claim on similar grounds insofar as we concern ourselves with intellectual ought-judgments, i.e., "You ought to believe that 2+2=4." — Leontiskos

So, since I am a member of the rational community, I must believe that "I ought to believe 2+2=4", and if I deny this I am implicitly contradicting myself? Why is this? It seems to me I can get along fine simply believing that 2+2=4 without concerning myself about whether I "ought" to believe that or not.

The endosymbiotic theory of Lynn Margulis showed that eukaryotic cells arose through bacterial symbiosis, challenging the traditional gene-centric view of evolution and emphasizing cooperation over competition as a driving evolutionary force. — Joshs

It's fascinating, yes. Animal cells probably resulted from archaeal cells that swallowed mitochondria. The theory has been around for a long time that the first complex organisms developed in tidal pools as communities of differentiated cells. I don't think it establishes a priority for cooperation, but yes, it was a turning point in biology when cooperation was highlighted.

Modern biology increasingly views organisms not as discrete individuals but as ‘holobionts’ - integrated communities of host organisms plus their microbiomes. This dissolves the classical boundary between self and environment, — Joshs

This view has been around for decades, but it does not "dissolve the classical boundary between self and environment." It just says that understanding life involves recognizing the concept of a biosphere: a complex set of interdependencies between animals, plants, bacteria, and fungi. You could hardly understand the interactions if you dissolved the boundaries between creatures.

Biology has moved beyond genetic determinism toward understanding development as emerging from gene-environment interactions across multiple timescales. — Joshs

It goes both ways, yes. Life transforms its environment to meet its needs. The environment in turn, transforms genes. The two definitely need to be understood together. Remember that in this, we're looking at the behavior of populations, not individuals. For instance, if we take the wolves out of Yellowstone, the whole environment will change because the wolves' former prey will over consume the vegetation, causing erosion around the creeks, and a loss of habitat for insects, fish, and birds. Just one animal population missing causes the whole scene to change.

But you can take one wolf out of Yellowstone and keep it in a cage. It will be fine. I suspect that what you're doing is trying to take principles about populations and apply them to individuals. It doesn't work that way.

The convergence suggests biology is moving toward what some call a "process ontology" where identity emerges from patterns of relationship rather than essential properties - a view that resonates across these philosophical and scientific frameworks.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ — Joshs

I was driving along one day when all at once, the whole functioning of the circulatory system appeared in my mind at the same time (I'd been studying the heart for a while). It was a stunning vision. It's true that sometimes we get lost in details and can even stray into error from failing to see the bigger picture. This bigger picture is not a philosophical renaissance for biology, though. It's always been there.

Isnt there a danger of relying too heavily on the validity of the other’s reasoning and too little on the possibility that the other is making use of conceptual senses of meaning you are u familiar with? Don’t many situations of breakdown in communication result from a confusion between reasoning that lacks validity, coherence, and rationale, and valid reasoning anchored to unfamiliar concepts? — Joshs

The thing is, my point holds in an even broader sense than you are interpreting it. As long as one separates the reasoning process from the conclusions/beliefs that are held, and also recognizes correctness and incorrectness with respect to reasoning processes, then what I say holds. Thus to, "Understand the other's reasons," is to understand the reasoning process being used, and to deem it at least partially correct. Whether or not we define validity as, "a quasi-correct reasoning process," or as something more strict, makes no difference to this broader point.

(Note too that one could understand another's reasons in a way that involves no judgment of correctness, but that this will not lead to an agreement to disagree, which is our topic.)

Wouldn’t it be predicable that if each fails to be persuaded to cross over to the other’s stance, they will also have a great deal of difficulty in accepting the logic behind the opposing view? — Joshs

Your posit here is, "If your conclusion is false, then your reasoning is invalid." Or, "If your belief is false, then the reasoning process which led to this belief lacks all forms of correctness."

None of that follows, and I think the whole idea is bound up with a preference for post hoc rationalization, or in this case a non-discrimination between the process of reasoning and the beliefs that are thereby generated.

I said "you," not "I." I am thinking of non-hypothetical ought-judgments with respect to others. So if you are tutoring struggling first graders, and you inevitably base the various lessons and interventions on the belief that the child ought to believe that 2+2=4, then you are thereby a member of the rational community. Note well, for example, that every teacher and tutor is thereby a part of the "rational community."*

* Everyone is, but teachers are even in virtue of their teaching.

So if you are tutoring struggling first graders, and you inevitably base the various lessons and interventions on the belief that the child ought to believe that 2+2=4, then you are thereby a member of the rational community. — Leontiskos

That seems unnecessary to me. All I have to do is explain have math involved, and the child will understand if able. What essential role does the obligation to believe a particular claim play for either the teacher or the student?

That seems unnecessary to me. All I have to do is explain have math involved, and the child will understand if able. What essential role does the obligation to believe a particular claim play for either the teacher or the student? — goremand

To believe that someone ought to do something is not the same as believing that someone has an obligation to do something. This equivocation between "ought" and "obligation" is extremely common on TPF.

But note that our touchstone for this conversation is the notion of "non-hypothetical ought-judgments," that this is taken from the thread, "The Breadth of the Moral Sphere," and that that thread is extremely clear about what such a thing is. The only difference is that we are focusing on intellectual matters rather than moral matters. So if you mistakenly believe me to be talking about obligations, then I would suggest revisiting that thread.

The convergence suggests biology is moving toward what some call a "process ontology" where identity emerges from patterns of relationship rather than essential properties - a view that resonates across these philosophical and scientific frameworks.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Ideally, there is a via media between dispatching with individual organisms and dissolving them into a universal process (and thus making all predication accidental), and a static view that fails to take account of the fact that physical (i.e. changing) beings are inherently processes. That is, organisms are organic wholes and measures (form), and are also always subject to change. The goal-oriented effort to sustain form, entelechia, demarcates the whole. Gut microbiota are accidental though. One doesn't become a different person or species when one has a course of antibiotics.

This dissolves the classical boundary between self and environment, much like enactivism rejects the subject/object distinction. Your gut bacteria aren't just "in" you - they're part of your extended phenotype, affecting everything from mood to immune function.

Yeah, but this would apply to food that is consumed too.

At any rate, the Cartesian cleavage is based on the unity of mental life, not the physical boundaries of organisms. Descartes philosophy of extended bodies and corpuscles arguably has already dissolved the individual body, erring in precisely the opposite direction.

To believe that someone ought to do something is not the same as believing that someone has an obligation to do something. — Leontiskos

Obligation sounds very "heavy" so maybe that was a poor choice of words, but I don't see how this distinction is made strictly speaking.

But note that our touchstone for this conversation is the notion of "non-hypothetical ought-judgments," that this is taken from the thread, "The Breadth of the Moral Sphere," and that that thread is extremely clear about what such a thing is. — Leontiskos

I have read the OP, but I can't promise I've absorbed it completely. What stood out to me is that you allow for acts to be judged as moral (or as you say now, rational) even if moral judgement doesn't feature in the decision of the act, which I think is true. The way I see it, we can judge whether an act is moral/rational/whatever simply by checking it against the appropriate framework, but strictly speaking there is no need for the agent of the act to be aware of that framework.

The thing is, my point holds in an even broader sense than you are interpreting it. As long as one separates the reasoning process from the conclusions/beliefs that are held, and also recognizes correctness and incorrectness with respect to reasoning processes, then what I say holds. Thus to, "Understand the other's reasons," is to understand the reasoning process being used, and to deem it at least partially correct — Leontiskos

I don’t have any disagreement with this. What I have in mind are situations where the other is ‘not even wrong’, where the opponents are talking past one another, where it appears as though the other has ‘changed the subject’. This may seem like an inconsequential circumstance, easily remedied by a careful clarification of the substance of the topic. But I suggest that such gaps between parties in construal of the nature of the topic are responsible for the lions share of social conflict, because they are difficult to detect. Before we can separate the reasoning process from the beliefs that are held, we first have to be able to recognize the underlying perspective on the basis of which those beliefs get their sense. If we mistakenly assume we both are interpreting the meaning of the concepts seeding the reasoning process the same way, we will pre-emptively move to looking for faulty reasoning in the other rather than making sure we are actually talking about the same thing.

I don’t have any disagreement with this. What I have in mind are situations where the other is ‘not even wrong’, where the opponents are talking past one another, where it appears as though the other has ‘changed the subject’. This may seem like an inconsequential circumstance, easily remedied by a careful clarification of the substance of the topic. — Joshs

Well let's clarify the substance of the topic. :razz: I have been explicitly talking about what is needed in order to agree to disagree. Do you want to talk about a different topic?

But I suggest that such gaps between parties in construal of the nature of the topic are responsible for the lions share of social conflict, because they are difficult to detect. Before we can separate the reasoning process from the beliefs that are held, we first have to be able to recognize the underlying perspective on the basis of which those beliefs get their sense. If we mistakenly assume we both are interpreting the meaning of the concepts seeding the reasoning process the same way, we will pre-emptively move to looking for faulty reasoning in the other rather than making sure we are actually talking about the same thing. — Joshs

I think we have to be careful that equivocation is not occurring between two people, that's true. The deeper problem is something I pointed to here:

Another observation is that “being at cross purposes” seems to play a fairly significant role in dismissal. Some kind of communal short-circuit occurs. For example, if someone tries to exterminate Jews and another tries to stop them, they are not at cross-purposes in the deeper sense, because they are engaged in a common pursuit of practical execution. Similarly, when two football teams face off, they are not at cross-purposes given that they are both engaged in the same genus of activity, even though they are opposed within that genus.

“Writing off” or dismissal seems to occur when the actual genus of activity differs between two people. For example, if someone comes to TPF to advertise their newest invention, they will literally be dismissed by the moderators because they are not engaged in the requisite kind of activity. Or if a musician aims only to make money rather than art, then her fellow musicians will dismiss and ostracize her in a way that they wouldn’t dismiss or ostracize a technically inferior musician who possessed the proper aim. Or if one person is engaged in a practical activity such as anti-racism, and another is engaged in a speculative activity such as studying racial characteristics, they will tend to dismiss and oppose one another. Other examples include the philosopher and the sophist, or the pious and the charlatan. It would seem that in order for moral indignation to fully flower the genus of activity must differ subtly, and in such a way that the second genus could be reasonably mistaken for the first. It may be that moral outrage occurs because someone is seen as an impostor, pretending to be what they are not and in danger of fooling and misleading onlookers. The more intentional, subversive, and potent the imitation or likeness, the stronger the moral outrage. — Leontiskos

The trouble with being at cross purposes is that it can be very hard to sort out that sort of equivocation, and self-knowledge plays a much larger role given that people can deceive themselves about what they are doing.

I wrote about topic-equivocation, for example <here> and especially <here>.

but I don't see how this distinction is made strictly speaking — goremand

That's understandable. But I've not used the word "obligation." That's your word. I'm happy to stick with the words I've used, such as "non-hypothetical ought-judgment."

I have read the OP, but I can't promise I've absorbed it completely. — goremand

That's fair. It's dense.

What stood out to me is that you allow for acts to be judged as moral (or as you say now, rational) even if moral judgement doesn't feature in the decision of the act, which I think is true. The way I see it, we can judge whether an act is moral/rational/whatever simply by checking it against the appropriate framework, but strictly speaking there is no need for the agent of the act to be aware of that framework. — goremand

Yeah, I think that's basically right. That is one of the points I was trying to convey. :up:

↪Moliere complains that Aristotle’s “induction” is not (deductively) valid, but according to Piaget this is a feature, not a bug — Leontiskos

I don't complain about it -- I understand that guessing is a feature, and not a bug. What I noted is that there's a limit to guessing and checking due to our finitude, much in line with Kant's epistemology where science can count ofas knowledge, but not (EDIT: knowledge of the thing-in-itself, and metaphysics cannot count as knowledge, though the mind will continue to pursue it due to how it functions and desires for a complete picture.

The Ideas of Plato, and explicitly God, Freedom, and Immortality are the things beyond reason's ability to justify in from theoretical cognition. We can practically know them, but this is a kind of rational faith rather than a knowledge like we know causation.

I think that Aristotle believed you could make inductions up to that point because the universe is finite, and so even if you're wrong there's going to be a good guess out there to find. Even in metaphysics.

Kant, on the other hand, took the problem of induction seriously -- was it even a problem in Aristotle's time? Is Aristotle's topics anything other than a students guide to thinking about inference rather than a deep philosophical treatise? -- and answered it. The answer, however, cuts off knowledge of the deepest IDeas traditionally associated with philosophy, at least of the theoretical sort.

My noting that his induction isn't valid is more or less associated with his metaphysical conclusions rather than everything he ever said. I think once you're talking about God, Freedom, or Immortality theoretical knowledge can't touch it -- mostly due to Kant's influence on my thinking.

I don't complain about it -- I understand that guessing is a feature, and not a bug. — Moliere

The idea is not that guessing is a feature, but rather that a game which involves rule-negotiation is superior to a game which does not. Hence Haidt's claim that, "A video game is really like the junk food of games..."

The idea is not that guessing is a feature, but rather that a game which involves rule-negotiation is superior to a game which does not. Hence Haidt's claim that, "A video game is really like the junk food of games..." — Leontiskos

I think that's an opinion written from ignorance, honestly. I play video games with my family all the time, and negotiations about the meta-rules of play are a part of that. It's not that different from a board game -- it's not like you can hack the laws of physics to make dice roll a different way. So it goes with a video game -- you can't hack the code, but you still play with others and form relationships and negotiate through them and that's what makes the game good.

I think that's an opinion written from ignorance, honestly. — Moliere

Maybe check out the video and try to understand what is being said.

I'm saying that no one is both a Christian and an atheist, straddling that line neutrally. A Christian can become an atheist, but if they do so then they are no longer a Christian. No one truly says, "I am both Christian and atheist in a neutral sense."

We could perhaps imagine someone who is neither and views both objectively and neutrally. I'd be fine with that, especially for the sake of argument. — Leontiskos

But that is nonsensical. It would be like asserting that one is both a bachelor and a married man, so of course no one is both a Christian and an atheist. Not being either would qualify one as agnostic - which I think is a cop-out.

Maybe there are better examples? Can one be a realist and a solipsist? No - same issue. Can one be both a rationalist and an empiricist? Maybe. For me, it is a false dichotomy. I see that we are both using both rationality and observations to support our conclusions.

(But note that Srap Tasmaner was not "neither" when he appealed to the very same framework petitio principii that @J was appealing to less eloquently. In fact Srap is very deeply committed to that framework sort of relativism. Nevertheless, the difference is that Srap is much more capable of questioning his own presuppositions by engaging in dialogue and answering questions.) — Leontiskos

Are you saying that Srap is ignoring the law of identity and excluded middle?

All this talk is useless until we start applying what is being said to real-world situations.

Right. The idea that we only have indirect access to the world through internal representations is a cartesian, reductionist view of emotion, and stands in direct opposition to the enactivist claim that we don’t represent the world via internal schemes but are in direct contact with it by way of our patterns of activity and interaction. — Joshs

Seems like the same thing to me. Direct and indirect realism are false dichotomies. One must be in direct contact with some part of the world and indirectly connected to the rest of it, or else you are the world (solipsism), or you don't exist. Not to mention what and where the "I" is that is connected to the rest of the world. Are you your consciousness, your brain, your body, or what? Most philosophical problems are the result of a misuse, or an overuse, of language.

Yeah, I think that's basically right. That is one of the points I was trying to convey. :up: — Leontiskos

So would you agree with me that there is no need for the members of the rational community to understand or subscribe to rational norms?

So Haidt compared video games to marbles and says that the video game is inferior to marbles because Piaget would play marbles with children and intentionally break the rules to see what the children did, which was to somehow negotiate the rules of the game in order to keep playing.

There is a video game called MineCraft which doesn't exactly have rules to play by. There are rules in the sense that it is a physics engine where different simulations of objects interact within some set of rules which are apparently deterministic. But there's no reason to do one thing over the other. I've watched children play video games in the exact manner that Haidt praises the negotiation of rules for marbles -- the children are in fact still children even with different technology, and they negotiate all kinds of rules all the time.

So would you agree with me that there is no need for the members of the rational community to understand or subscribe to rational norms? — goremand

Which framework are you using to reach such a conclusion?

Does an toddler "subscribe" to the idea of object permanence (realism), or is it simply naturally occurring cognitive development? Would the child ever be able to survive on it's own if it did not reach this cognitive milestone?

Which framework are you using to reach such a conclusion? — Harry Hindu

Which normative framework? Or just which framework in general?

I don't know. Which framework is being used by a toddler when they reach the cognitive milestone of object permanence? Can it even be described as a "framework"?