A "cause", is by your definition, outside of any stakeholders in how claims of right happen. That puts the Magna Carta and the American Civil Rights outside of whatever you have in mind.

The exclusion makes it hard to engage with your proposition.

There are many ways to hurt oneself and the compulsion to do so can take on a life of its own. But I don't want to compare your shadow with a darker one. Dostoevsky and Kafka can teach you enough about that.

I would rather ask you about what you enjoy. Does your work life completely bum you out or is there some portion that which is your art? And if you have that small portion, can you make it larger? Are you curious about what you do not know? Are you in love with anybody? If so, is it reciprocal?

These questions have kicked the ass of generations of mankind for time out of mind. I expect straight A's on those before considering your fascination with self-destruction.

I am disappointed by this remark.

It is one thing to challenge a point of view and another to ask for shared judgement in your register.

Isaac has repeatedly argued that Ukrainians are not enough of a self-identified group to say they are making a decision to act in self-defense together toward a common enemy. So anything you might refer to as "moral" on those grounds witl have to be excluded in order to be considered.

Best of luck.

I wanted to point out that Bateson's statement goes beyond your observation regarding us being social animals. If the image of a Cartesian self is a mind stuck in a particular body is at one end of the scale, Bateson is looking at mind at the opposite end that excludes anthropomorphic models of an activity.

A certain stripe of 'physicalist' and 'meta-physicalist' needs the Cartesian end in order to claim title to a contested real estate. That fades away pretty quickly when one leaves the pool of Narcissus. That is why I responded to your post about Nietzsche to wonder about the uses of 'laws of nature'. They require a formal introduction to any party they are invited to.

Humans evolved as cooperative social creatures. Like many other mammals, we are born with certain moral emotions , such as the protection of our young and the ability to experience pain at the suffering of others in our group. Sacrificing oneself for the protection of others is seen in other animals. Anthropologists hypothesize that conscience evolved in order to protect tribes from the violence of alpha males. Even behaviors which on the surface appear unadaptive, such as suicide or homicide, are driven by a combination of such moral emotions.

It is not the self strictly defined as a body, that our biologically evolved motivational processes are designed to preserve. Rather, it is social systems ( friendship, marriage, family, clan) that sustain us and that we are primed to defend. — Joshs

In regards to the boundaries of 'self', it is interesting to consider Bateson's view on the 'unit of evolutionary' change:

Let us start from the evolutionary side. It is now empirically clear that Darwinian evolutionary theory contained a very great error in its identification of the unit of survival under natural selection. The unit which was believed to be crucial and around which the theory was set up was either the breeding individual or the family line or the subspecies or some similar homogeneous set of conspecifics. Now I suggest that the last hundred years have demonstrated empirically that if an organism or aggregate of organisms sets to work with a focus on its own survival and thinks that is the way to select its adaptive moves, its "progress" ends up with a destroyed environment. If the organism ends up destroying its environment, it has in fact destroyed itself. And we may very easily see this process carried to its ultimate reductio ad absurdum in the next twenty years. The unit of survival is not the breeding organism, or the family line, or the society.

The old unit has already been partly corrected by the population geneticists. They have insisted that the evolutionary unit is, in fact, not homogeneous. A wild population of any species consists always of individuals whose genetic constitution varies widely. In other words, potentiality and readiness for change is already built into the survival unit. The heterogeneity of the wild population is already one-half of that trial-and-error system which is necessary for dealing with environment.

The artificially homogenized populations of man's domestic animals and plants are scarcely fit for survival.

And today a further correction of the unit is necessary. The flexible environment must also be included along with the flexible organism because, as I have already said, the organism which destroys its environment destroys itself. The unit of survival is a flexible organism-in-its-environment. — Gregory Bateson, Form, Substance, Difference

While this is not the same as Nietzsche's view of nature, perhaps it touches upon Nietzsche's dislike of the 'survival of the fittest' model because it did not express the superfluity or over-abundance of life.

Isn't this 'actively cultivating suffering' a fetish indistinguishable from other possible fascinations?

Why does the human want to live a happy life instead of a miserable one if they lead to the same end? — MojaveMan

Because it is more fun.

Agreed. I read De Anima as a continuation of that thought. Our life is this life too.

This provides nothing to the discussion. Only contempt.
I bet you are capable of more than that.

I figure what Sachs is asking is whether you can have your cake and eat it too in the matter of life "being wholes" or the result of a fundamental process that was set up to permit those beings. In that regard, Aristotle is starting with a connection rather than having to presuppose one.

One of the topics constantly haggled over in the Groundhog Day cycle of arguments that has been this OP for a year concerns the credibility of evidence. You clearly favor one side of the arguments.

Characterizing all challenges to that view as coming from unquestioning slaves to a narrative is a well-honed rhetorical device. Pardon me if I lapse into a coma when it is used yet again.

Skinner did not deny it existed, he said it did not cause change.

I only brought it up because you mentioned it. The theory is as dumb as a bag of rocks.

Nietzsche suggested we could understand the “mechanistic world as a kind of life of the drives”. — Joshs

I was thinking about that while reading the essay offered upthread by Fooloso4: The Battle of the Gods and the Giants by Joe Sachs. Nietzsche's objection to laws of nature was not a rejection of natural causes but a protest against how they are imagined. It is interesting to hear Sachs make a parallel observation regarding Aristotle's understanding of nature:

When Aristotle says that nature acts for ends, he explains this by saying that the end is the form. Things have natures because they are formed into wholes. The claim is not that these natural wholes have purposes but that they are purposes. Every being is an end in itself, and the word telos, that we translate as end, means completion. When we try to judge Aristotle's claim that nature acts for ends, we tend to confuse ourselves in two ways. First, we imagine that it must mean something deliberates and has
purposes. Second and worse, we begin with our mathematically conceived universe, and can't find anything in it that looks like a directedness toward ends. But Aristotle indicates that it is just because ends are present in nature that a physicist cannot be a mathematician. We have seen that even change of place becomes impossible in mathematical space. But there are three other kinds of motion, from which the mathematician is even more hopelessly cut off, without which activity for the sake of ends would be impossible. Things in the world are born, develop, and grow. Genuine wholes, which are not random heaps, must be able to come into being, take on the qualities appropriate to their natures, and
achieve a size at which they are complete. But mathematical objects can at most be combined, separated, and rearranged. If we have first committed ourselves to a view of the world as being extended lumps in a void, there is no way to get wholes or ends back into the world. That means in turn that the question of ends has to come first, before one permits any choice to be made that empties the world of possibilities. — Joe Sachs

This is not what Nietzsche is saying exactly in his objection to metaphysics nor is he rejecting modern methods, but it is another way to ask what laws of nature refer to in our picture of a caused world.

One year into a war instigated and prolonged by the United States. — Mikie

Sounds pretty certain.

I think it shows how reading a lot of philosophy books is probably a complete waste of time for most people. — Mikie

Is very contemptuous.

It can be taken away from you at a moment's notice.

Preparation for death makes sense if you believe what you do now will change a future outcome. But that cannot be a certainty but only a belief. If you do not believe that is the case, there is nothing to prepare for.

We do not prepare for what is certain, we prepare for what we anticipate, a meal this evening, a hot date tomorrow, the stone wall I will build next week, the writing I hope to understand in a year's time. Etcetera.

To accept it will happen is to stop being preoccupied with it. The clock is ticking. This is the part of the show where you are alive. Don't waste it on fear.

Anyway— how disappointing it is that the majority in this thread refuse to question the Western narrative, even if it appears to them 99.9% obvious and certain. Given this is a philosophy forum and all. — Mikie

The issue is 99.9% obvious and certain for you. Any disagreement could only be ventured upon by complete morons.

It is rare to see a point of view so convincingly presented.

Skinner certainly "underplayed the role of inner experience." He denied that it caused any outcomes. But it is not a 'determinism' because it is possible to change the environment that produces behavior.

Vygotsky saw the development of the individual as dialogical process. The capability is a cause that is interwoven with experience but not an agent that exists independently as a Cartesian ego before experience occurs.

It is interesting how there are no Europeans in your summary.

Pardon me. I was contrasting the minimum of what was acknowledged as you described it with the grand scope of possibilities discussed afterwards by Descartes.

I read Descartes' "Cogito" as demonstrating nothing more than this: 'when doubting, one cannot doubt that one is doubting' (i.e. I thnk, therefore thinking exists.) :chin: — 180 Proof

So, more of a closet one is stuck within than a theater with a show.

When considering Behaviorism, I think it is helpful to decouple what Descartes claims from how he proceeds. The mind/body distinction he develops happens because of the conversation he is having with himself. Developmental Psychology diverged in many different directions because of different ideas about personal agency and whether this talking to oneself was central to the events or a byproduct of some kind. That is a different starting point than wondering whether a given self can 'introspect'.

In that regard, the antithesis of Skinner is not given by the likes of William James but from LS Vygotsky. Vygotsky looked at how children talking to themselves changed in relation to being able to talk with others. Vygotsky did call for methods other than introspection to investigate the phenomena. But the limits of 'self-reporting' was a discovery made during the investigation, not information as Skinner assumed was the case before making his claims.

Me too.

I was responding to your summary of the article.

You said:

His article argues that functionality can't be explained by examining the physiology of the CNS. Whether or not this is true has no bearing in whether a theory of consciousness is possible. — frank

You assert this as a self evident fact. It is not self evident to me. Chalmers went to some effort to argue otherwise. Thus my quote from his initial essay.

You are dodging the challenge to your challenge in relation to reduction in regard to you saying, "whether a theory of consciousness is possible."

Why does it have no bearing when the question of what can be reduced to a function is the center of both enquiries?

Yes. How do you see that against the background of the essay presented by DF Polis?

Both, I guess. He has not presented a theory to explain consciousness, but he is saying there could be one.

Isn't that what is being sought after or abandoned as a hopeless cause?

I understand that and have participated in that practice too. Better an ostensive gesture than complete silence. But maybe only a little better.

At this point some are tempted to give up, holding that we will never have a theory of conscious experience. McGinn (1989), for example, argues that the problem is too hard for our limited minds; we are "cognitively closed" with respect to the phenomenon. Others have argued that conscious experience lies outside the domain of scientific theory altogether.

I think this pessimism is premature. This is not the place to give up; it is the place where things get interesting. When simple methods of explanation are ruled out, we need to investigate the alternatives. Given that reductive explanation fails, nonreductive explanation is the natural choice.

Although a remarkable number of phenomena have turned out to be explicable wholly in terms of entities simpler than themselves, this is not universal. In physics, it occasionally happens that an entity has to be taken as fundamental. Fundamental entities are not explained in terms of anything simpler. Instead, one takes them as basic, and gives a theory of how they relate to everything else in the world. For example, in the nineteenth century it turned out that electromagnetic processes could not be explained in terms of the wholly mechanical processes that previous physical theories appealed to, so Maxwell and others introduced electromagnetic charge and electromagnetic forces as new fundamental components of a physical theory. To explain electromagnetism, the ontology of physics had to be expanded. New basic properties and basic laws were needed to give a satisfactory account of the phenomena. — Chalmers, Facing Up to The Problems of Consciousness

The survey is amusing. It is like trying on different shoes at a Target store.

The criteria presume all the different possible opinions can be mapped out in relation to each other. But is that the case? The method may be helpful toward generating encyclopedias but runs the risk of turning everything into a Cliff note version of themselves on the way.

An excellent essay. The contrasts made between Aristotelian and Cartesian points of view are particularly appreciated. I will try responding after mulling it over.

Thank you.
Maybe I will bring it up in another context someday. I withdrew it because I realized that I was not participating in the OP because I did not try to connect the account to my thinking or what I believe.

Edited:Too much information.

That is the method.

In Plato, It is interesting to see how the results vary according to who is being interrogated.

Shrouded in the exhalations from his Gauloise, he is difficult to see. He was not arrogant, however. Ever elusive but not mean spirited. He will be unique amongst the banned, hopefully guided by a friendly Virgil.

I was asking you that since you seemed to suggest the discussion was missing the mark.

So, more of a silence? Talking about logos won't help?