btw how many times you happen deal with some problems, you manage to solve them but there is still there something bugging you. When you remember what it is ...its when you are able to apply a accurate"label' on that "bugginess". So that is how we know emotions need a narrative, a theory to become and be understood as feelings.

-"Predictive processing approaches are quite popular these days. What I think is most valuable in them is their understanding of feeling in terms of prediction of events."
-I don't really understand what that means. Are you talking from a Psychiatric perspective?

-"Howver, I don’t think the claim to distinguish between emotion, affect and feeling in terms of distinct functional systems will hold up."
-Well that a scientific description that describes the evolution of an organic stimuli from an affect to a full blown concept that offers meaning to a thinking agent who acts on meaning.
So not only it hold ups its an essential framework in the role of emotions in the content of our conscious states.

-"They are all instead inseparably interconnected. "
I never said they weren't connected under the same system.
Interconnection says nothing about those three evolutionary phases of a stimuli "inflicting" an affect, producing an emotion, where our symbolic thinking reasons it in to feelings.
You must know numerous cases where people realize a "feeling". " I realized I don't really hate you", " I am more disappointed than mad". In order to distinguish those really thin lines that separate every fuzzy and undefined emotion....we NEED to introduce "theory"...to reason in order to find meaning in what we feel and inform our mental model and then our actions.

i.e. "social rejection" or "insecurity" are complex feelings that includes many emotions. Only through our "theory" we can produce this final concept of a feeling.

Sure! I never thought that it was not clear. The problem I see resides with the definition it self ."chaos=not conforming to the laws of nature".
We know from science that such a state(with that definition) is NOT an observe state within the reality.
What we have found is that chaotic systems are the product of laws of nature, but our inability to identify a pattern or to make any predictions is based solely on our inability to have access to the early conditions and the complexity of the system.
-"Do laws of nature conform to some other (more general ... ad infinitum) laws of nature?"
-Under a scientific scope, I can not really understand what that might mean.
As I already explained what a law is..is just a description of the rules that are observable between different elements interacting through their different properties. A specific property of an element (i.e. positive charged) allows a specific interaction with an other property of an element with different characteristics(i.e. negative charged). This doesn't only apply at a quantum level of reality where the properties are based on charges and kinetic attributes, but they apply to chemical properties in larger scales(molecular biological).
So our laws are descriptions that conform to rules displayed by those interactions. There is no reason to assume anything beyond that basic observation, since this mechanism is necessary and sufficient to explain the emergence of those "rules" that we describe in our laws.

-" If they don't, then the laws of nature are, in these terms, chaotic. "
-Again I don't really understand what that statement means.
Those properties of matter by definition create "rules" followed by different interactions. Even when a process of many interactions appears chaotic to us, its caused by numerous individual interactions "obeying" the same rules(physical laws) with to us, unknown initial conditions!

From what I understand, most people in here use an idealistic version of the idea of Chaos and that doesn't really help their philosophical conclusions.
In order for a philosophical conclusion to be "wise"(ultimate goal of philosophy) it needs to be based on knowledge, not on idealistic artifacts.

-"And "the laws of nature" – they came to be without "conforming to laws of nature", they continue to be "without conforming to laws of nature" and when they cease to be they will do so without "conforming to laws of nature". That's how fundamental chaos is: just as 'north of the north pole' doesn't make sense, 'order to which order conforms' is nonsense – doesn't say anything. "
-Again I am not sure that you use the term "laws of nature" under the accepted scientific definition.
The laws of nature are human descriptive law like generalizations of the emerging "rules" being observed in the interactions of the properties displayed by fundamental elements and their processes.
i.e. we through two magnets randomly and specific poles attract each other producing a predictable result. In short this is what our laws work....how properties "force" specific "behavior" in a system.

The current scientific paradigm doesn't validate the change of those properties hence it isn't reasonable to expect change in the emergent rules (described by our laws).
Now even if that was possible, that doesn't mean that this "Chaos" will prevail. No properties means no dynamic interactions, no dynamic interactions means no Chaos or order. As long as you have some kind of properties of matter those will always "force" the emergence of patterns and rules.
In short, the term chaos doesn't describe an opposite intrinsic state of a system, but our inability to have a complete observation of the process, its initial conditions included.

I think you are using the concept of Chaos in a colloquial every day sense.

I am not sure you use " Chaos" under the scientific usage of the term. Chaos is not a "container". Its a property we observe in dynamic systems " whose apparently random states of disorder and irregularities are actually governed by underlying patterns and deterministic laws that are highly sensitive to initial conditions."
So it doesn't mean that those systems are "outiside" or immune to physical laws. Our inability to know initial conditions and variables is what makes them appear to our eyes "Chaotic".
It Observer dependent "fussiness" or known as "Observer Objectivity Collapse".

-"What is meant by 'Chaos' ?"
-Chaos is a observable phenomenon in nature.
Is a property displayed by physical systems that appear highly disordered and irregular.
The chaos theory has nothing to do with "comforting mathematical formulations" (at least comforting).
As the definition explains, its the study of "dynamical systems whose apparently random states of disorder and irregularities are actually governed by underlying patterns and deterministic laws that are highly sensitive to initial conditions."
So we deal with systems that appear chaotic to the observer due to the lack of initial data.

-"I believe at root, consciously or unconsciously, the naturalists believe order comes from chaos."
- I am a Methodological Naturalist and I don't believe that there is a contingency there or a relation between two human made abstract concepts . It might be a feature of the "picture"...like "fuzziness" is visible in any painting IF you decide to stand really close.
Or maybe it can be an inability of our methods to see the patterns in a chaotic system due to its inherent complexity.
What I don't understand is why people who subscribe to different Worldviews feel the need to include observations of reality as "explanations" for their beliefs beyond reality!!!

-" I know that is what I think when I try to think from a naturalist point of view. Opposite for divine origin theory."
-Or you can think that the noise that we see and describe in chaos theory is just a "by product" of the self organizing process caused by really simple "rules" between properties of fundamental particles.

-" Reason creates the appearance of chaos for the sake of amusing itself, being bored of a perfectly reasonable (thus predictable) reality.""
-Not really. Direct observations guide reason to identify chaotic systems.

-"'meaningful coincidences.'"
-Well that is observer depended term. We as observers "connect" connect different events in a narrative and as thinking agents we project purpose and intention on blind physical processes.
Teleology needs to be demonstrated, not assumed. This assumption is a pseudo philosophical approach on explaining natural events.

So "synchronicity" as an abstract concept has value as a narrative and what it means for our existence. ITs an observer relative term not an intrinsic feature of the phenomenon it describes.

Now the experiences that you are referring to (thinking a person and receiving a phone from him) are known weaknesses in our reasoning. Pattern recognition in animals (and humans) is a very strong urge and bias. We tend to identify the hits and completely ignore the misses. The numerous times we have thought of people and the phone didn't ring just don't register. When a coincidence occurs we tent do see "agency" and purpose behind it.
Richard Feynman used to go up to people all the time and he'd say "You won't believe what happened to me today... you won't believe what happened to me" and people would say "What?" and he'd say "Absolutely nothing". How is it possible in such a huge universe where weird and inexplicable coincidences happen every second, to happen nothing to me?

I will agree with Jung's statement that the connections we make are the result of our practice to project our meanings, I will ignore Chopra's intellectual artifacts since his philosophy isn't based on Naturalistic principles,its are unfalsifiable and indistinguishable for blind synchronization(unparsimonious) and I will address the introduction of a quantum phenomenon in the classical scale (uncertainty principle of Heisenberg).

-"Within physics there is the notion of the uncertainty principle of Heisenberg, which makes causality more complex than we realise. "
-That is a factually wrong statements. First of all this principle doesn't apply to "Physics", but a specific sub-field of quantum physics.
This, again is not an intrinsic feature of causality in nature but as the original German word suggests we are unable to take sharp values from our measurments. Its more like "We are uncertain of the definition our measurements provide" than "we are sure the nature of the quantum world is uncertain".
After all QM is the only framework that can offer predictions up to 99,99(up to 14decimal places) accurate!
So causality is not under threat in the quantum scale and we should point out that Classical and quantum world don't have that much similarities. Energetically and structurally they differ in a huge degree. So its not right to generalize our findings to both scales

Now conceptual artifacts like the notion of karma or any other spiritual construction have their roots on our inability to register all the miss/ lose events during large periods.

Consciousness is the quality of a specific brain state that enable us to be aware of events and the world. Consciousness alone as a mind property is useless if your Central Lateral Thalamus can connected the other brain areas responsible for symbolic language, pattern recognition, reasoning, memory etc and introduce content (thoughts) in our conscious states.
So all those patterns we identify in nature is based on what we are aware, how we reason, what we remember and what we ignore.
The role of consciousness stops with our ability to be conscious of an even, how we reasoning it and what is the produced thought...consciousness is an "observer."

Chaos theory is also a scientific framework , descriptive of an observable fact. The smaller the scale of nature we try to quantify, the bigger the "noise" in our observations and measurements. So I find that specific "quote" really nonsensical and scientifically ignorant and of course it has nothing to do with the indefensible worldview of materialism.

What does it mean to have a "spiritual notion" in the first place? Does it mean that we are allowed to use unnecessary entities in our interpretations(because I spotted some) or to be poetic about facts of reality? Is there an other practical value of this notion(to avoid a possible false dichotomy)

I think we need to distinguish affections and emotions from feelings.
Affections and emotions, according to Neuroscience and the latest Theory on Consciousness by the founder of Neuropsychoanalysis Mark Solms, are the "driving force" behind the content of our conscious states. They are what force our conscious attention to focus on specific stimuli and how "meaning" is induced in our emergent interpretations of them, known as "feelings".
Feelings are the result we get when we try to reason and understand our emotions.
So in my opinion, the opening statement should ask whether feelings are unnecessary and the obvious answer is of course they are.
Now we should also distinguish the practice of managing our feelings(a valuable practice) from rejecting them completely. That would be like trying to ignore our attempt to understand our emotions thus remove "meaning" from our thoughts and behavior.
Since this is my first post in this platform, I don't know if references are allowed as links.

I arrived late at this party but let me share some info important for this set of questions.

1. Is philosophy as a science having some basic principles or some undeniable truth about the things that it examines?
-Philosophy is just the label we put on an intellectual endeavor with a specific goal (come up with wise claims or questions about our world that can help us expand our understanding and knowledge). Sure philosophy does have principles but unfortunately they are ignored by the majorly of those who practice "philosophy". We can expand on that if you are interested.

2. Is there a discussion among other people in the methodology of philosophy?
-That is not something that I can confirm. Most of people are not aware of the basic Methodology of Philosophy(Aristotle's basic steps) and I have not heard about a position arguing against it.


3. Are there strict rules in philosophy such as in mathematics, or can anyone create his own philosophy and worldview?
-It depends on the aspect of the word you are referring to.
1. Philosophy as an Academic Establishment? No
2. Philosophy as a general filed of study under the doctrine of "free inquiry"? No
3. Philosophy as a defined Methodology and in relation to its goal(wisdom and knowledge) defined by its etymology ? Yes.

No they are not. In order for a statement to be wise, it needs to be founded on knowledge. A wise claim can produce further knowledge but that is only possible when the initial wise claim is based on verified knowledge.

First of all I think this thread should be the most important for everyone who is interested in Philosophy. Unfortunately the last input is 4 years ago!

So here is the descriptive definition of what Philosophy is .
Philosophy is the intellectual endeavor by which we construct Wise statements about the world that can be used to expand our understanding and knowledge.
The way is done is through Theoretical frameworks.

Being a Greek I can inform this thread that "sophia"(σοφία) is the "ability/mastery" to combine acquired knowledge with experience, reasoning and innate understanding.
It is the sagacious and logical application of knowledge in Theoretical frameworks.

Aristotle was the first one who understood that and the one who defined the basic steps of the Philosophical Method which are the following.
We start by studying:
1. Epistemology (understand the Accepted Knowledge, what we know and how we know it).
2. Physika (Science. Evaluate our current knowledge and produce new one)
3. Metaphysics( Philosophical reflection on what this new knowledge means for our frameworks)
4. Aesthetics ( Applications of our freshly informed frameworks on real life questions and problems)
5. Ethics -//-
6.Politics -//-
The produced frameworks inform our Epistemology and the process restarts again.

I will stop bothering you by saying this last thing. I just finished reading the guidelines and I find them more than reasonable! I understand that theory and application may vary and there are "real-life" difficulties, but a quick eye drop in threads of personal interest gave me the impression that everything appears to be healthy...on the surface at least :up:

Sure and I can see the value of that since we are human beings with all our flaws, temper and biases. I find useful any set of rules designed to limit certain behavior and sophistries but not rules designed i.e. to intentionally separate philosophical positions from verified epistemology, so that any idea can be presented as if it shares the same philosophical value.
I really thank you for providing the "guidelines" link, something that I was looking for.

Sorry but I didn't find an other link to contact you, so I chose this opening statement of yours.
I have to comment you for the free nature of this platform (and I don't mean ad free or free to use). I come from other philosophical forums where admins enforce jaw-dropping policies and forget that they live in a democratic society where people are allowed to have personal opinions, support them with complementary material, as long as they are respectful.
I am also happy to see the link for a "Learning center" and embracing the relation between Knowledge and Philosophy.

This is an interesting statement since a couple of months ago, Neuroscience as a field has officially rejected this worldview, to quote the title of the paper "Giving Up on Consciousness as the Ghost in the Machine".
Emergence and Complexity Science has provided eye opening insights on how a functioning brain is Necessary and Sufficient on explaining, describing, predicting the emergence of states of mind and their content.

I guess the correct way to describe reality is that, Reality is an abstract concept descriptive of the result produced by many emergent properties of different physical processes. Life is just one of them.
We as observers identify as reality the world and its functions produced by the emergent properties of matter.
Now our observations can focus on different scales of this world. That usually confuses us and make us think that only one scale can be the real or absolute reality. I think that it is an unwise approach. Our job as observers should be to understand the structure of reality, identify the causal relations between low level mechanism and high level features and understand how reality emerges in all scales and how it affects our existence.