When I studied comparative religion, one of the possible derivations, from religare, was to bind or join - as you said.

However the other possible derivation is more straightforward - the Latin 'religio' 'respect for what is sacred, reverence for the gods; conscientiousness, sense of right, moral obligation; fear of the gods; divine service, religious observance; a religion, a faith, a mode of worship, cult; sanctity, holiness' from here https://www.etymonline.com/word/religion — Wayfarer

:up:

Perhaps just your average teacher of philosophy doesn't dare to say the above. because everything "Western" should be bad as we ought to be "critical", right? — ssu

I don't think being critical means black and white thinking. Nuances and subtleties are what make up the heart of philosophy.

Projecting our (generally ignorant?) ideas of perfection onto individuals even before they are born, I fear it will be destructive beyond imagination. — Tzeentch

You have a point. Evolutionary fitness is not exactly being the fastest, strongest, brainiest.

Think of the encouraging aspect of the poll. Nobody has answered "Don't care". — ssu

Indeed, at least people have figured out it's a do-or-die scenario. :up:

@Wayfarer

The New Atlantis - Atlantis, a civilization that destroyed itself with its own highly advanced technology or so the story goes. Interesting!

A few salient points:

1. Gene therapy failed to live up to the hype. Scientists found out that treatments based on gene editing wasn't, after all, that simple.

2. Gene-based diagnosis turned out to be mixed blessing. They could diagnose the condition but couldn't treat it (the therapeutic-diagnostic gap). The classic case being Huntington's disease.

3. Designer babies - perfect humans, even mentally and physically "enhanced" - become a possibility but what are the costs?

4. Will clones be happy?

An aside:

The most tempting reason to engage in genetic engineering is to assert new kinds of control over our offspring, and to design children with certain desirable human attributes: children with high IQs, perfect pitch, beautiful appearance, remarkable strength, amazing speed, and photographic memories. Some might even seek to design human offspring with better-than-human attributes. — Eric Cohen (The New Atlantis)

Is the mind the brain? Can our minds be altered by modifying genes (physical stuff)?

I get it now. People are worried about genetic engineering of the kind involved in hybridization of living and dead animals because it's a back door that eventually leads to human experimentation and that's opening a Pandora's box of what the perfect human is - is s/he white, black, with blue eyes, curly haired, and so on?

I suppose such experiments allow scientists to skirt around regulations and bans, allowing them to practice and perfect techniques which then, at some point, once fully mastered, could be used on people. There really is no difference between a space rocket and a nuclear-tipped ICBM, is there?

Thanks for your comment @GraveItty

Update

I haven't the slightest clue about musical theory but Pythagoras around 2 millennia ago deduced that for harmony of notes, they lengths of the string had to be in whole number ratios.

1. Physical constants are irrational. The universe is, in that sense, discordant. Something's off. No wonder Hippasus of Metapontum was killed - he upended the Pythagorean theory that the universe was harmonious.

However,

2. If we use the rational approximations for physical constants, e.g. $\pi = \frac{22}{7}$ and fine-structure constant $= \frac{1}{137}$, the universe might turn out to be one grand, melodious composition.

---

3. Is there something geometric about the universe? I'll leave the reader to interpret this question as s/he pleases.

Yeah but why does it matter, as long as, assuming it's the same pain, things work? — Olivier5

The problem is we would be simply manipulating symbols like machines (computers/AI) - getting the syntax right - but with zero comprehension - getting the semantics wrong.

Searle's Chinese Room Argument comes to mind.

The doctor doesn't need to have a pain in the neck in order to inspect necks of people having a pain in the neck. — Olivier5

No, not simultaneously, no. However, the doctor must have an idea of what pain is. How else would he (erroneously/correctly) diagnose the condition of his patient in pain? However, is the doctor's pain the same as the patient's? That's impossible to divine.

The poll results are not very encouraging. Countries will have to come up with plans for climate change mitigation/reversal and give assurances that these will be implemented complete with deadlines on certain agreed-upon targets. That the global economy is almost entirely carbon-based (oil, coal, gas) is going to be a major stumbling block.

That said, nothing motivates like a do-or-die situation. Climate change is a global emergency and we've all got a taste of what horrors lie in wait for us just 2 or so decades down the line if we fail to act and act now. Well, I'm feeling quite optimistic now.

the semantics (the beetle, the pain) "drops out of consideration".
— TheMadFool

I don't see how it does. If you go and see a doctor about your pain in the neck, he will inspect your neck and maybe find something objectively wrong with it. — Olivier5

How would I know if my pain is the same as the doctor's pain? It's kinda like the scenario "is my red the same as your red?"

Exactly. I think the Golden Rule - do unto others as you would like others to do unto you - or it's negative formulation - do not do unto others what you wouldn't want others to do unto you - is key/germane to the morality of bug squishing.
— TheMadFool
I agree it seems relevant in the present context. — Cabbage Farmer

:ok:

The reason why we don't apply the Golden rule to bug stomping is because they seem incapable of using the tit-for-tat strategy that has a major role vis-à-vis the golden rule but the winds of change do blow and with odd results
— TheMadFool
I wouldn't say application of the golden rule requires the agent to believe that others are capable of reciprocating. It may be sufficient for the agent to be capable of imagining themself in the other's place, even if the other can't perform the same feat.

For instance, it may be enough for the agent to consider questions like, how would I want to be treated if I were a bug; or, what would it be like for me to be treated thus if I were a bug? To extend the reasoning I offered above: If you happen to suppose bugs aren't sentient, then you might conclude it wouldn't "be like" anything for you to be treated any way whatsoever if you were a bug; or if you suppose bugs are only "marginally sentient", there may be room for you to infer or expect that if you were a bug you wouldn't be capable of having a significant objection to having the life swiftly crushed out of you. — Cabbage Farmer

You're referring to empathy aren't you? Notice however, that when you put yourself in the other person's shoes, you're simulating tit for tat? How would I feel if the other person treated me the same way I'm treating him (the golden rule) is just another way of saying what if the other person could pay me back in the same coin?

Premise 1: somethings are pious while others are sin.
Premise 2: God decides which is pious or not because he is all knowing. — Vanbrainstorm

:ok:

Deduction: if God decides somethings as pious and somethings as sin, he, before hand, was endowed with knowledge. — Vanbrainstorm

Being able to decide piety and impiety, God's knowledge of morality is irrelevant. Whatever he feels/thinks is good is good and whatever he feels/thinks is bad is bad - his knowledge of morality doesn't matter in the least.

He was programmed to be this God that labels some actions as pious and others as sin. — Vanbrainstorm

How can he be programmed when good and bad are whatever he fancies them to be?

Also, that God is good implies God has free will. Nothing that lacks free will can be good (or bad).

Here's something I found out just now.

Theism: God, omniscient, omnibenevolent, omnipotent.

The philosopher's ultimus meta, the be all and end all of philosophy, philosophy's holy grail, wisdom has been defined as knowledge of what is true & good i.e. (omni)science & (omni)benevolence. Thus it's not too much of a stretch that philosophers are seeking god (in themselves).

There was a time I believe when western philosophy declared truth (verum), good (bonum), beauty (pulchrum) as the primary objectives of (doing) philosophy.

Satyam shivam sundaram: Truth, Go(o)d(li)ness, Beauty.

Are there non-truly conscious people (apart from my wife)? — GraveItty

:lol: Don't say that I laughed at your joke. I really don't want to be in her bad books. :smile:

You seem to overlook here that the constant is no rational number. — GraveItty

No, I didn't. That's why I used the approximately equal sign: "$\approx$"

Thanks anyway.

Also, what if we study the rational approximation for all physical constants which as you seem to be aware are all irrational numbers. Does an interesting pattern emerge?

Bluntly, the desire to have something certain (the referent) blinds us to the actual workings of our personal, individual, secret, expressed/repressed, rejected/accepted experiences and sensations. If I am alone on the edge of the grand canyon watching the sun set, I am not being truthful if I say "it is impossible to talk about my exclusive private experience". I have things I can say, and can continue to, and to answer questions, and clarify distinctions, etc. for as long as we want to have a meaningful discussion about my purely private experience. Now if I claim there is something more to my experience that I can't tell you, I am keeping that secret (as if for myself), refusing to be known, and that desire to be unknowable is the flip-side of the desire that my experience is a certain object to which I specifically refer to when I say something (that I am thus fully expressed; that I do not have to play a part in saying something meaningful). — Antony Nickles

:up: At least you're trying. Kudos to you.

I was thinking exactly the same! — GraveItty

Soulmate!

Beetle In The Box

It's possible that there's no beetle.

Truly conscious people have something that they call "beetle" but p-zombies have nothing in their boxes but they still call it "beetle". In essence p-zombies are using words (meaning is use) and if Wittgenstein in right, we're also doing the same. :chin:

Kant — T Clark

Sapere aude!. Dare to be wise!

Intellectual autonomy: You're on your own! Reason and, for god's sake, reason well.

Yes, there is clearly something wrong with her. — Bartricks

Interesting! In what sense, may I ask, is something wrong with the Mona Lisa?

Fate vs. Free will.

It usually works like this: If anything good happens to you then you're the one who brought that about (free will). If something bad happens, it isn't because of you, it's fate [fate + free will].

Other possibilities:

1. Whether good/bad things happen to you, it's because of you [free will only].

2. Whether good/bad things happen to you, it's because of fate [fate only].

3. If good things happen to you, it's fate and if bad things happen to you, it's because of you [free will + fate].

4. Whether good/bad things happen to you, it's not because of fate and it's not because of you [neither free will nor fate].

I need help with 4.

Don't forget that we have bodies! We also chew food, turn steering wheels, scrub cast iron pans. Even our symbols are physical, something our bodies do. We vibrate the air with our lungs and mouth. We smear liquids on solids. We salute, wave, bow. — hanaH

Irrelevant red herring. Computers too have "bodies".

Yes, and it's strange. Is there magic in the meat? Or would something else work? Does something else already work? And we just can't recognize it? Maybe it hasn't been to this planet yet. I don't think we know what "consciousness" means anymore than our ability to use it for practical purposes (or something like that, perhaps an overstatement.) — hanaH

I probably should say exactly. What is consciousness? We're merely manipulating the symbol "consciousness" according to English grammar and the rules of inference (logic) - very much like a computer. In a certain sense then we've regressed...from semantics (our crown jewel) to syntax (mindless computing).

Natality, causality and oblivion. — 180 Proof

So fate has something to do with our birth, determinism is ultimately about cause and effect, our destiny is to wink out of existence?

Yeah, we are fated to "chose our fate". :up: — 180 Proof

What's the difference between fate, determinism, and destiny?

If computers become able to socialize as well as humans, I suspect that the grammar of 'understand' will shift to include them. Given our 'meat chauvinism,' a human-like body as in Ex Machina would accelerate this process. Current AI that's designed to chat is trained on mountains of our own human chatter, scraped from the internet. Unfortunately such programs are only exposed to the relationship of words to other words as opposed to words and the world (for now, last I checked.) Or you can say the world of such a being is nothing but words (which further reduces to integers and floats.) — hanaH

The Linguistic Turn. Just as computers, not even AI, we, with respect to private experiences, are simply manipulating symbols. But that's if meaning is defined in a sign-referent way. Either that or if meaning is use, since computers and AI do use words, it follows that they (computers and AI) understand.

As for words further reducing to "integers and floats", even with humans they reduce to something similar - action potentials in neurons and their synapses.

Update @Antony Nickles & @Olivier5

The Beetle In The Box

Essentially, talking about exclusively private experiences is impossible IF (Antony Nickles) meaning is taken in the sign-referent sense.

My question is this: how could we modify the definition of "meaning" in order that we can have a meaningful conversation/discourse on purely private experiences?

On the word "abracadabra"

This word has no referent and yet here's a syntactically correct expression using that word: "Abracadabra, may Fortuna always smile upon you!"

Now, consider a conversation on pain (ignoring physical correlates, it qualifies as a private, unshareable experience). John says "I have a pain in my neck." The sentence is grammatically correct. Semantically, it's dubious - I don't know if the beetle (pain) in John's box is the same as mine or whether John even has a beetle in his box at all.

What this means is whenver two/more people are discussing private experiences, all that's happening is an exchange of syntactically correct statements, the semantics (the beetle, the pain) "drops out of consideration". Does this not remind you computers and AI? Computers allegedly can't comprehend i.e. they're semantically-challenged but that's in the sign-referent sense. If meaning is use, computers and AI do understand words; they are, after all, using words.

The beetle in the box: The word is same - "beetle" - but what it refers to maybe different. Wittgenstein's aim is not to come up with a solution, it seems impossible, but to do an exposé of the problem.
— TheMadFool

The picture of a word and its object (referent) as the only way anything is meaningful is the exact thing which makes a "solution" impossible. Imagine an example: "I have a pain in my throat" "Hey, me too!" "But mine is congested at the top and scratchy as it goes down." "Mine too! That's funny; we have the same pain." Now does the possibility that our pain might have turned out to be different seem less scary? Say: "Oh well, mine is more just dry and constricted, but sorry you're not feeling well!" which is, nonetheless, my knowledge of the other's pain, in knowledge's sense(use) of my acknowledgment of your pain, as: "I know you are in pain." — Antony Nickles

:up: Good point.

It's all got to do with how we define the word "definition".

My guesstimate is that if our aim is to understand reality, the definition of "definition" will have to be tailored to that end. That's the reason why we've defined "definition" as about essential features (essences).

However, just like Bolyai & Lobachevsky (mathematicians) ushered in the era of non-Euclidean geometry simply by tinkering with the parallel postulate, we could to alter the definition of "definition", make it about something other than essences or play around with its logical structure (e.g. replace AND with OR) and see what happens, let the chips fall where they may in a manner of speaking.

Maybe, just maybe, something amazing might happen as it did with non-Euclidean geometry (theory of relativity). — TheMadFool

It just means there's no eternal dictionary somewhere. It's really not complicated or controversial.

Some words are so old their roots are prehistoric. For us, those words seem eternal: — frank

There doesn't have to be an "eternal dictionary" for words to draw their meaning in the sign-referent sense.

In crossword puzzles, we must discover words based on the number of letters and non-canonical definitions invented by the crossword composer. These definitions can be ambiguous and there lies one of the tricks played by composers to solvers: the definition may not mean what it seems to mean, prima facie; IOW there's an obvious meaning to the definition, but it often hides another one, occult in a way, which offers the key to the solution.

An example that comes to mind, not a great one: "a third person" in 3 letters --> she. Third person is to be understood grammatically, not literally. — Olivier5

Grammar, as I understand it, are rules on how to use words in order to achieve semantic disambiguation and also, if I may hazard a guess, because certain permuations of grammatical elements are easier on tongue and mind (they feel natural as if they were meant to be read/spoken/written in a particular way).

So are you saying the word "she", in your example above, is a rule (in grammar). What is that rule? Can you kindly explicate it for me? Thanks.

The case of poetry is different, of course, and more noble and all that. I can't even try to deal with it here, except for stressing that a great deal of its beauty lies in euphonia, i.e. words used as music, as sounds. There we do have a use of words that is not (only) referential but also aesthetic. — Olivier5

Poetry is, to me, language + music. Notice here that language retains its identity as a mode of communication (meaning) separate from its musical aspect (rhythm, pitch, tone, etc.).

Magic is again about the power of the verb, a power that is thought of as physical: if I say "abracadabra" a flower will bloom or a rabbit will vanish or or a person will get sick. It is therefore a use of words beyond reference as well, and in fact those magic words like "abracadabra" often have no meaning at all other than as a spell. You can't buy an abracadabra on the market. — Olivier5

Remember "abracadabra" is classified as a nonsensicsal word. We have to be careful here: Is 0 dogs a dog?

:smile:

I chose my fate. :cool:

Update

Meaning is use doesn't stand up to closer examination.

Wittgenstein is of the view that, uses the word "game", people use words correctly despite not being able to define them. This is problematic because of the following reasons:

1. When Wittgenstein claims that people can't define words, he uses the standard definition of "meaning" with the logical AND operator, the meaning of a word being the conjunction of essential features.

2. When Wittgenstein then claims that words are being used correctly it can only mean that definition amounts to a disjunction, the logical operator is OR, of essential feautures.

Think about this: To bugs, DDT was a WMD that was used to commit genocide on helpless insect-folk.

Sorry but I did not disagree with anything, was just answering your question about alternative use of words. But I can try again, with more disagreement. :-) — Olivier5

Oh! My bad. So, explain your answer then please. :smile:

Food For Thought

There's a way for negative utilitarians to get the best of both worlds so to speak i.e. it isn't necessary for them to end all life for net zero suffering. I think I deserve a Nobel for this insight ( :cool: ). Negative utilitarianism (seems to) imply that we should all become plants (alive but, get this, no suffering at all because plants can't feel pain).

So who was it that said having a brain is a good thing?

Define: "the sign-referent sense of meaning". — Olivier5

How did you come to disagree with me without having understood me? There must be a sense in which you grasped the sign-referent concept of meaning. Use that!

Try not to be evasive...please (there's the magic word).

You are rude, not regal. — Olivier5

Did someone die and name you king of TPF? — Olivier5

So, kings are rude! Copy that!

My claim was that people use words in a variety of activities including solving crossword puzzles, writing poetry, and casting magic spells. What part do you want evidence of? — Olivier5

Oh! We're back on track. Good. How are the various uses you mention above divorced from the sign-referent sense of meaning?