So, how can molecules correctly work out each complex step without some crude form of awareness? — Gary Enfield

Firstly, it's evident that the particular DNA chemical phenomenon that interests you has been described comprehensively. If not, you wouldn't be so amazed by its intricacy[/i] and also wouldn't have sought an alternative explanation which led you to entertain the possibility of consciousness at the molecular level. In fact you seem to have made up your mind that molecules are conscious.

Secondly, you're coming at this from a position that grounds consciousness in intricacy/complexity i.e., if I'm not mistaken, you're under the impression that intricate/complex phenomena can only mean, over and above the actual processes involved, one thing - consciousness.

Thirdly, take into consideration human consciousness, something that we actually have some data on. The recieved opinion among neuroscientists seems to be the consciousness, in keeping with materialism, is reducible to the level of neuronal function and not to lower tiers of organization like the chemical reactions taking place inside the neurons themselves (cells in their own right) which includes the DNA repair mechanism you mention in your OP.

I'm not 100% sure about this but neuronal interactions which are basically electrical signals being exchanged between neurons seem simpler i.e. less intricate than the DNA repair mechanism you refer to. As an analogy, an electric current which is the flow of electrons in a wire is much much simpler than the actual motions the electrons go through inside a wire. Ergo, contrary to your idea that complexity is bound to consciousness, human consciousness seems to exist at a less complex level of organization.

That's not true, though. It is, for example, not solely within the power of the individual to become a billionaire, a president of a country, or the one who cured cancer. — baker

One would need to work within one's limitations, the constraints that apply to one's circumstance.

The idea that the ends justify the means is that anything and everything is permissible in order to achieve a goal, given that the goal in question is moral. If one buys into this idea then you'll have no qualms about acting immorally if the outcome, the end result, is moral. So, for instance, you'll be willing to kill to if the resulting death had good consequences whatever they may be.

On the other hand if one is opposed to the claim that the ends justify the means one would be unwilling to commit an immoral act even if it the consequences of such an act were themselves moral.

The possibilities/choices in re means, ends and morality that are available to us are the following:

1. Means are moral, Ends are moral
2. Means are moral, Ends are immoral
3. Means are immoral, Ends are moral
4. Means are immoral, Ends are immoral

If the ends justify the means, 3 is allowed. If not the case that the ends justify the means only 1 is acceptable. 4 are outside the scope of this discussion. BUT 2 is a different story. It's key to understanding whether it's true or false that the ends justify the means. If, for example, I wanted to harm a person X but I do that employing only good deeds, the good deeds are usually not part of the formula that determines my moral standing; in other words, if my behavior towards X matches 2 above, I'm considered a bad person.

If so, for the sake of consistency if nothing else, 3 should be treated likewise i.e. the immoral means should be ignored just as we ignored the moral means in deciding that 2 is, at the end of the day, immoral. That means 3 too is moral and...the ends do justify the means

A question that might be helpful at this juncture is: would you rather have a purpose that you decided for yourself than have a purpose assigned to you by someone else, a god perhaps?

If the former then you're completely free to choose whatever you want to do with your life and that would be your purpose. If the latter, you'll need to come to terms with the fact that the existence of god is an open question i.e. the divine road to purpose is a blind alley.

About "noble lies" in particular? Because a false reason to do something is a bad reason to do something. If the thing the noble lie gets people to do is actually good, then there is some true reason why it is good, which is the same as to say a true reason to do so. That true reason makes the noble lie unnecessary. If there is not known a true reason, then it is not known that the thing is good, and so the ends (the good thing) can't justify the means (the lie) even if ends could justify means in general, because the ends are not actually known to be good. — Pfhorrest

Why do you think the ends don't justify the means?

Plato would say yes emphatically.

Plato was wrong about most things — Pfhorrest

Why is Plato wrong?

I just skimmed through the article and so I'm uncertain whether Shklar touched upon the point I feel is pertinent to her taking an exception to putting cruelty first. Hell, if memory serves, in its current incarnation as a place of eternal torture is the handiwork of religions; before religions hell was simply a world for the souls of dead people whether good or bad. Cruelty, in the form of hell, enjoys the support of nearly all existing faiths and if so what's implied is cruelty, as odd as it sounds, can't be a sin let alone first among sins for even the all-good creator permits and even commands it (in hell).

I believe in empirical speculation but do believe it has its limitations. Perhaps we are in danger of shutting off our philosophical quest if we remain too empirical and closed to other ways of perceiving the problems arising in philosophy — Jack Cummins

The problem with being non-empirical i.e. looking beyond the obvious material world is that we can't distinguish between the real and the unreal. What's unreal if we take the exclusively mental constructs to be real?

Jordan Peterson's take on religion won't go down well with the religious section of the population. It's as if he would let faithful believe in a lie just to keep them in line. What a condescending attitude! As if the only thing keeping believers from becoming q band of criminals is religion.

Perhaps the urge to look beyond that which is obvious - the material world we constantly bump into day and night - is either a sign of our despair at the finitude of existence or is an intuitive variety of knowing that there's more to reality than meets the eye.

Nevertheless, unless someone comes up either a good argument or strong evidence that hints at an immaterial world out there somewhere, I'm not going to buy into what is, at this point, essentially daydreaming.

The material world is, as a matter of fact, the only aspect of reality we have any knowledge on. Everything else i.e. the non-material aspect of reality we bother to countenance is the work of our imagination, sheer speculation is all there is to it. The situation that we're in is that of a man who has a gilfriend who's deficient in some way in the beauty department and he has an alternative, another more aesthetically endowed woman but, for good or illl, this woman is imaginary. We're intimate with the material world but would like something better, a nonmaterial world, but, unfortunately, our only point of contact with what we prefer is our imagination.

The Munchhausen trilemma is, as far as I can tell, an insurmountable barrier to knowledge. None of the options avaiable are satisfactory in any sense of that word. Nonetheless, I recall a professional philosopher making a big deal of what he called self-evident truths, truths, propositions, that are so obvious that they have no need for arguments to prop them up. If self-evident truths are real and if they do exist in the issues philosophy deals with, they would be the fourth and perfectly legit alternative to the Munchhausen trilemma.

I remember watching a video of a debate between Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson. Jordan Peterson's view on religion is pragmatic in a way because his entire argument was that religions have a positive impact on people and not that they're true. Somehow, for reasons that remain a mystery to me, Sam Harris was thrown off balance by that. I expected Sam Harris to simply get up and walk off the stage as there really was nothing to debate about with a person who thinks religions are more about utility than truth.

Does it make sense to endorse or promote for public consumption an outright lie because it gives people comfort or keeps them on the straight and narrow or the like? Isn't this paternalism?

I would confidently dispute that. If you took a look at the twenty most expensive paintings sold, roughly half of them would not be considered ‘beautiful’ by the general public let alone art lovers, and were certainly not purchased at that price for their beauty. These include de Kooning, Munch, Pollock, Rothko, Lichtenstein and Basquiat - all over $100 million apiece. Many of them, however, are recognised as ‘important’ works in our overall progress of aesthetic awareness. Modigliani, in particular, is indicative of a more ‘respectful’ and ‘sensitive’ treatment of female nudes - although they were considered ‘ugly’ during his lifetime (for showing pubic hair). These artists challenge us to see the world for what it IS, not just for what we’d prefer it to be. Their aesthetic value is realised in the knowledge we gain - not just the pleasure - from thinking about how we feel when we look at it — Possibility

I understand where you're coming from but to "...challenge us to see the world for what it IS, not just for what we'd prefer it to be" is, to be brutally frank, not an artist's job or if you that doesn't go down well with you, it definitely isn't something unique to art i.e. it fails to define art; plus it amounts trespassing onto territories that rightfully belong to other disciplines/fields.

That said, I did admit that artists should be given the freedom to pick and choose any topic under the sun as subjects of their artistic urges BUT, and this can't be emphasized enough, they should make it a point to leave a clearly visible sign that the topic/subject, whatever it is, has passed through the mind of an artist.

This standpoint is in keeping with how we approach other issues: I remember, quite some time ago, reading a book on critical thinking and there's as discussion in it about how we must get all sides to a story and that, as per the author, involves getting a teacher's perspective, a student's perspective, a parent's perspective, a politician's perspective, so and so forth. The reason why this is done is because each such perspective brings to the table a different take on the issue at hand and, most importantly, each perspective is unique and vital to our understanding.

Likewise, an artist's perspective must be unique for it to be worthy of our attention and admiration and it, for certain, isn't if the artist's intention is solely to "...challenge us to see the world for what it IS, not just what we'd prefer it to be". Philosopher's do the same thing with words. Comedians do it with jokes. Thus my insistence that beauty be recognized as an essential attribute of art for it's the only quality that art can claim as its very own and thus the only quality that can make the artist's perspective stand out as a one of a kind among the myriad points of view that are available to us.

If you can’t see beauty in those definitions, then I doubt you understand aesthetics at all. It’s only after Kant that the term ‘aesthetics’ was commonly reduced to the nature and appreciation of beauty. It’s such a narrow perspective - Kant uses the example of beauty in aesthetic experience to demonstrate rational structure in our capacity for judgement, not to define aesthetics. The sublime is no less important to an overall understanding of aesthetics — Possibility

Read above.

I'll read the essay later if you don't mind but for a start,

Seeing virtue in the suffering of the victim of cruelty becomes for Shklar an escape from misanthropy. — Banno

bears a striking resemblance to theodicy. In both cases some of us would rather say no to the obvious conclusion from evil/cruelty in the world and opt for saving the phenomena i.e maintain the integrity of the belief that god/people are good.

I suppose there's more going on in such an attitude, psychologically speaking, than people know or care to admit. Clearly it ain't something a reasonable person in faer right mind would think.

I realise that you believe that art is about beauty. However, your discussion of this in relation to the this seems to be mainly abstract. So, I am just wondering which artists or works of art can be seen as measuring up to this quality? — Jack Cummins

I'm forced to admit my abject ignorance on the matter of specific artworks that would validate my position that art is about beauty. Consider my point of view to be one that's extracted from a brief and perhaps too superficial a survey of what's being peddled as art to the general public. Yet, I I'm somewhat confident that if we make a list of artworks that have been bought/sold for huge sums of money, money here the surrogate marker for real art, you'll [probably] discover that art lovers all over the world choose beauty over anything else that art deals with.

Aesthetic qualities are the way in which art elements and principles, materials and techniques work together to influence the mood, feeling or meaning of an artwork. They can be gentle, angry, happy, sad, sharp, bright, harsh, languid, etc.

Aesthetic value is the value that an artwork possesses in virtue of its capacity to elicit pleasure (positive value) or displeasure (negative value) when appreciated or experienced aesthetically. — Possibility

Google definition of aesthetics: a set of principles concerned with the nature and appreciation of beauty.

Odd that nowhere in your colorful description is beauty even mentioned in passing.

Duchamp was offering a broader perspective of art - he was disputing the rejection of negative value in a created aesthetic experience. — Possibility

If that's what Duchamp was doing then kudos to him. I too feel that artists should broaden their horizons and expand their interests to be as inclusive of the multi-faceted world that we inhabit. However, they mustn't do this in a way that undermines art itself and they're guilty of doing precisely that when they ignore beauty and get carried away by the novelty of their ideas. For example, Duchamp seems to have been so bowled over by the freshness and originality of his ideas that he completely forgot about beauty.

But beauty is not unique to art at all - it is ubiquitous in nature. So, by the same token, art can’t be defined in terms of beauty, anymore than new understanding. In my view, what is unique to art is the self-conscious creation of an aesthetic experience. And no, it doesn’t have to be new in order to be art, but it doesn’t have to be beautiful, either. This is what art ultimately strives for: new and unexpected information, rendered with satisfying aesthetic clarity. It’s more a work-in-process than a product in this respect. — Possibility

What's unique about beauty in art is that the latter makes the former a value in its own right.

The way I see it, all humans, perhaps all sentient beings for that matter, come with a constellation of limits to (their) understanding imposed by physical or mental factors (sorry I can't be more specific than that) and we, humans, try our very best to fit reality, the universe, within a construct so constrained. In short, we are the cage and reality is the bird we want encage i.e. grasp on our own terms.

Exactly. That isn't any different than what I've been saying. All animals are rational with the information they have access to. The information that one has access to seems to be the determining factor in what degree of rationality you possess. And the information that one has access to seems to be determined by the types of senses you have.

What if an advanced alien race arrived on Earth and showed us how rational they are and how irrational we are? What if the distinction between us and them is so vast that it appears to them that we are no more rational than the other terrestrial animals?

To assert that animals are less rational than humans because humans can build space stations and animals can't is to miss the point that most animals have no need of space stations. It would actually be irrational to think that other animals have need of such things and because they can't achieve it, then they are less rational than humans. — Harry Hindu

The question that naturally arises is, what's the difference between humans and non-human animals? Any ideas?



You made a point that's been at the back of my mind for quite sometime. Computers can manage syntax but not semantics - the former consists of codable rules of symbol manipulation but the latter is about grasping meaning and that can't be coded (as of yet).

That there are chatbots, on the basis of syntactical manipulation alone, capable of coming close to passing the Turing test suggests that semantics is an illusion or that it can be reduced to syntax. What say you?

I think that you make an important point about the need for 'a new understanding of the world.' Of course, this is not unique to art, and definitely applies to philosophy. But I do believe that art and the arts are one place where this can take place. You speak of the 'need to focus on the essence of what it means to be human' and I completely agree.

I do not see the question of art and influence as being entirely separate from the one in the thread of where are we going? Remember, I am not talking about visual art alone but about all the arts. I would also see philosophy as an art in its own right. I believe that we need to find new ways of seeing. — Jack Cummins

I'm doubtful whether art can done to the exclusion of beauty considering that beauty is the only thing that gives it a unique identity.

I'm aware that @Possibility and you lend credence to other dimensions to art, specifically that it provides a "...new understanding..." of the world. However, in my humble opinion, whatever "...new understanding..." artists bring to the table it has to be executed beautifully; if not, it fails to do justice to the spirit of the artistic enterprise.

Not the same thing - and I’m getting a little tired of you clipping my statements to suit your own argument. Aesthetic qualities does NOT equal beautiful - you’re equivocating aesthetic qualities with positive aesthetic VALUE. His Nude Descending a Staircase No.2 horrified art critics and patrons alike in the US in 1913 — Possibility

But the aesthetic VALUE is completely determined by beauty, the aesthetic quality. To speak of one is to speak of the other. You wrote "...aesthetic qualities..." Pray tell what other qualities other than beauty are there in aesthetics?

Not that I want to get into an argument with you but I quoted YOU so if you're not happy, you have yourself to blame for it.

I understand that Duchamp's works, some of them I presume, elicited a response that was negative in every sense of that word from the art critics. For my money, the reason why critics were, in your words, "...horrified..." was because the work was absent beauty in the form that the world and the critics were familiar with up until that point. For Duchamp to be considered a legit painter, an artist in his own right, we must come to the conclusion that he was offering a different perspective, on, revealing another side to, beauty and not outright rejecting the role and importance of beauty in art. That;s as far as I'm willing to go with what you said.

they were conveying a new understanding of how to see the world - one that wasn’t yet understood in art. — Possibility

A "...new understanding of how to see the world..." as I've been explaining ad nauseum isn't unique to art. The same can be said of philosophical positions, scientific theories, and whathaveyou and that being so, art can't be defined by in those terms. To illustrate analogically, we can't use eyes to define human beings because other animals also have eyes; to define human beings, we need to focus on the essence of what it is to be human. Similarly, to define art, we can't rely on features that are present in other non-art disciplines; what we need is something unique to art and that, for me, is beauty.

Then you're going to have to define "rational". — Harry Hindu

Rational:

1. Capable of formulating sound deductive arguments and/or cogent inductive arguments.

2. Insistence on justifications for claims.

3. Ability to detect fallacies, formal and informal, in arguments.

Because they are not characterized as having emotions. So an absence of emotions does not make one more human. They are typically not thought to be like humans because they don't have minds, but then I'm just going to ask for "mind" to be defined.

People assert a lot if things, like that animals are not rational and computers don't have minds without even knowing what they are talking about. You call that rational?

Like I said before, animals act rationally on the information they have. Its just that the information might be a misinterpretation as when a moth flies around a porch light until it collapses from exhaustion, or a person acting on misinformation. From the perspective of those that have the correct information, or don't have the information and the interpretation that the other is acting on, it can appear that they are irrational. This falls in with what I've said about the distinction between randomness and predictability. Rational beings are predictable beings. Irrational beings are unpredictable beings. — Harry Hindu

I'm also aware that non-human animals have language, can do math, do use tools but these abilities can't hold a candle to what humans have achieved in these fields. Relatively speaking, we're way ahead of non-human animals in re the brain's trademark ability viz. ratiocination. — TheMadFool

Non-human animals can think rationally, I don't deny that but they can't do it as well as humans just like we can't ratiocinate as well as a computer can [given the right conditions]. It's in the difference of degrees that we see a distinction between computers, humans, and non-human animals.

This kind of thinking stems from the antiquated idea that humans are special, or separate from nature.

Other animals are just as rational as humans. We just aren't privy to the information that some other animal is acting on, so their behavior can appear to be irrational from our perspective. All animals typically act rationally on the information that they have. It's just that the information may be false, or skewed. — Harry Hindu

I'd love to agree with you that "...other animals are as rational as humans" but I'm afraid that's incorrect . Moreover, I'm not claiming that non-human animals are irrational and humans are rational in an absolute sense but only that comparatively it's the case that either non-human animals are more irrational than humans or that humans are more rational than non-human animals. This difference, even if it's only a matter of degree and not kind, suffices to make the distinction human and non-human which Aristotle was referring to when he define humans as rational animals.

I'm also aware that non-human animals have language, can do math, do use tools but these abilities can't hold a candle to what humans have achieved in these fields. Relatively speaking, we're way ahead of non-human animals in re the brain's trademark ability viz. ratiocination.

Given the above, the idea that humans identify with the rational aspect of nature is, far from being an "...antiquated idea...". an unequivocal fact of humanity's past, present, and, hopefully, the future too.

It's small wonder then that humans, seeking a unique identity among the countless lifeforms that inhabit the earth, would zero in on that one distinctly human ability - the capacity to reason better than other lifeforms, at least those on earth.

In the context of the reverse Turing test, the more rational a particular unknown entity is, the more it resembles a perfect rational being and a perfect rational being would be, in accordance to our conception of humans as rational animals, the perfect human being. The catch is that being more rational seems to be correlated with being less emotional and if we go down that road, it leads to a point where people who are emotional are regarded as non-human and thus "fit" for ejection from a community like this forum for example. Moderators on this forum are on the lookout for people who fly off the handle and can't keep it together because such behavior is a step backwards from the Aristotelian perspective of humans as rational animals.

The irony is that machines (computers) are fully capable of flawless logic. In a sense, we've managed to extract the core essence of rationality (logic) and transfer it onto machines (computers). Yet, when we interact with such perfect logic machines, we remain unconvinced that they're human. Something doesn't add up. We began by defining ourselves, rightly so, as rational animals and we came to the obvious conclusion that the perfection of rationality is the apogee of humanity and yet when we come face to face with a computer, we're unwilling to consider it a human despite it being perfectly rational and incapable of making logical errors. One plausible explanation for this is that computers (machines) lack emotions. After all, there's only our emotional side that's left once our rational capacity has been isolated and replicated onto a machine (computer).

I call this particular state of affairs the adolescent's dilemma. As an adolescent, one can't play with children because one's too old and one can't keep the company of adults because one's too young. The same goes for the identity crisis humanity is facing in the present moment. Humans distance themselves from non-human animals because they're more irrational then humans and humans distance themselves from machines because they're "less" emotional than humans. To the assertion that we're the same as non-human animals, we'd object by saying we're more rational and to the assertion that we're the same as machines (computers) we'd object by saying we're more emotional.

Human emotions only come into conflict with our rationality when we assume that the objective truth is dependent upon our emotional state, or when we project our emotions and feelings onto the world and assume that they are a characteristic of the world rather than of ourselves (like assuming that apples actually are red and are good).

Emotions are the motivators and inhibitors of our actions and thoughts. Learning how to navigate our emotions and use them rationally is what could be taked as the essence of a human being — Harry Hindu

Yes, humans are both emotional and rational beings and therein lies the rub. An AI that exhibits human-like emotions would be considered human and a human that exhibits computer-like rationality would be considered human. If emotional then human and if rational then too human.

Bot does not necessarily need to do a forceful action like saving your life to make you love it. As an autistic kid, I was in close emotional ties with my winter coat, and later, in my teens, with a pair of blue jeans. This may be laughable to you, but it's not a joke. I also loved sunsets, the smell of burning leaves in the fall, the smell of the flowers in summer, and the water splashing against my knees on the beaches. I loved nature, life. I loved my school, I loved running down the hill, on top of which our school house was located, shouting "Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!" all the way down, on the last day of classes in grades 3 and 4. I loved the streetcars, the smell of snow, the pre-Christmas hustle-bustle in the city. I even loved the slush, the overcrowded buses, the darkness that we knew.

I don't see why I couldn't love an AI robot then. Maybe even now, if it looked like Dolly Parton or Raquel Welch. — god must be atheist

:up:

Your idea of the ancient notion of the relationship of reason and the emotions is not quite right. They thought, not they we should excise the emotions, but rather educate them. Emotions are indeed the enemies of reason, but if you eradicate them, then you have sapped the soul of its energy, what drives it, leaving it vapid and incapable of action of ANY sort. — Todd Martin

All I'm doing is commenting on our intuitions, past and present, and how they seem to be at odds with each other. On the view that humans are rational animals, emotions are not part of our identity but on the view that computers (AI) aren't considered human, emotions are part of our identity.

Henry VI, Part 2, Act IV, Scene 2: "The first thing we do, let's kill all the cats". — Bitter Crank

:lol: Good one!

The original question was really about whether dogs getting neutered harms them or not - that is separate from the question of their rights. — neilldn74

Sod off? :smile:

Human rights are grounded in harm i.e. we have rights because we can be harmed - we have a right not to be harmed. That humans have the capacity to suffer gives us our rights. Ergo, when we discuss animal suffering (harm), the issue of their rights arises automatically.

these organizations that you scorn — neilldn74

I don't scorn them. Au contraire, I deeply respect and admire their tireless efforts to edify us on the real and unspeakable cruelty society turns a blind eye to.

It appears that, from my cursory reading of the wikipedia entry on mysticism, the main objective is to achieve some kind of union with god and if not that an intimate contact with the divine or some transcendental truth about the universe. I'm employing a broad definition in order to be inclusive of as many religions as possible.

Coming to your concern regarding the nexus between cause and mysticism, all I have to offer is that god, in Aristotelian and other traditions, is regarded as the first cause aka the prime mover. Thus, mysticism, if there's any substance in its claims, should lead you directly to the first cause viz. god himself.

The philosophical side to dog neutering would have to be about animal rights. Does spaying a dog amount to a violation of their rights? Oh, I forgot, animals don't have rights. Silly me. However, I'm familiar with the activities of PETA and RSPCA, they take their work seriously and I take that as a good sign. Maybe animal rights organizations are onto something; a hidden cognitive dissonace the likes of the meat paradox.

If animal rights seems just too much to be bothered with, how about the inherent contradiction in treating animals like objects to be neutered or euthanized as when covenient? No person I know of, those in this forum at least, would like to be accused of lugging around in their heads a frank and easy to spot inconsistency - that would make them subhuman and that's putting it mildly.

All candidates should get equal time to make their arguements and propose their ideas. Act with your vote, not your money when it comes to choosing your representative. Money should not be the arbiter of which ideas are good or not. Logic should. Money should stay out of politics — Harry Hindu

If the only way to show your love for someone is to give fae a flower, chocolates, smile affectionately then give a flower, chocolates, smile affectionately you must.

I’m okay with that - I’m not after the popular vote. — Possibility

:up: Fantastic!

already earned a reputation for adding aesthetic qualities to his work — Possibility

The reason why Duchamp was recognized as an artist was because some of his works were beautiful. OK.

was originally rejected as ‘not art’ — Possibility

In other words, to many, those who share my sentiment that art has to be aesthetically pleasing I presume, Duchamp's work wasn't art.

As far as I can tell, if Duchamp was a pioneer of the point of view on art that you're espousing, then kudos to him. I don't know what kind of artistic environment his take on art take shape in but it must've been marked with deep frustration at the status quo whatever it was. To present a toilet as art comes off as a desperate measure...perhaps because of...desperate times.

Not _exclusion_ of emotions, but one that promotes finer, nobler emotions, and also an outlook that promotes greater emotional literacy.

You seem to have this strange idea that unless one has tantrums, one isn't showing emotion at all. — baker

That said, since [some] emotions are known to get in the way of rational discourse it does seem perfectly reasonable to discourage outbursts of feelings on at least a philosophy forum like this one whose raison d'etre is logical discourse. Too, moderators on this forum at least don't actually prohibit ALL emotions; for instance those associated with mysticism, eureka moments, to name a few are welcome and perhaps even encouraged for their overall positive impact on the forum members. — TheMadFool

You seem to have misread me but the OP did have that overall form to give the reader the impression that I was of the view "...unless one has tantrums, one isn't showing emotion at all". This has a perfectly good explanation. Which category of emotions are a no-no on this forum? Tantrums and other similar emotional displays, correct? I was simply working with the information available. Nevertheless, you're on point regarding the missing half of the story. Thanks.

HiMadFool, I agree that we need more and better social distancing of our vulnerable population. BUT social distancing the healthy population is counter productive and if we keep it up, then we are all doomed. To better understand this point, read the analogy that I gave. — Roger Gregoire

:up: :ok: Sorry for sidetracking you. I just saw something that caught my eye.

Some art isn’t beautiful, or at least elements of it are disturbing or difficult to face, watch or acknowledge, let alone judge as ‘beautiful’. These pieces are often described as ‘important’. The earlier example I referred to was of Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, first exhibited (after initial rejection) in 1917. The 1994 New Zealand film Once Were Warriors is etched in my memory as a disturbingly powerful piece of cinema that I cannot bring myself to watch again, and yet would not hesitate to recommend. Likewise for Khaled Hosseini’s novels.

And Monet’s Impression: Sunrise was among many works rejected by the Salon des Beaux Arts in Paris for years prior to the 1874 Impressionist Exhibition, because they over-stretched critics’ capacity to integrate certain techniques and subject matter with how they believed paintings should look. These artworks were not ‘beautiful’, and did not aim to be: they intended to portray the aesthetic qualities experienced in the fleeting nature of light and the ordinariness of life. That critics couldn’t recognise this aesthetic quality, let alone judge it to be ‘beautiful’, did not mean it wasn’t art, even then. — Possibility

I can tell you this, your views depart from the mainstream understanding of art is. Read below:

Aesthetics, or esthetics (/ɛsˈθɛtɪks, iːs-, æs-/), is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). — Wikipedia

Marcel Duchamp was simply having some fun and unfortunately it was at the expense of those who know that art must be about beauty. I'm sure his reputation from his previous works which were, I suppose, beautiful, helped him slip this monstrosity past the art checkpost. It happens. I remember a long time ago knowing a person who was known for his honesty. At one point he did lie but everyone believed it because of his reputation as an upstanding bloke.

If we selected for signs of emotion rather than the use of logic, I fear we would devolve into the philosophical equivalent of the above GIF. — VagabondSpectre

I sympathize with your concerns. I wouldn't want the forum to become a troop of troglodytes ready to swing their clubs at the slightest provocation. Nevertheless, an outlook that promotes rationality to the exclusion of emotions seems to miss the point of what it is to be human. We're, like it or not, emotional beings.

That said, since [some] emotions are known to get in the way of rational discourse it does seem perfectly reasonable to discourage outbursts of feelings on at least a philosophy forum like this one whose raison d'etre is logical discourse. Too, moderators on this forum at least don't actually prohibit ALL emotions; for instance those associated with mysticism, eureka moments, to name a few are welcome and perhaps even encouraged for their overall positive impact on the forum members.

As long as the chat-bots are posting good philosophical discourse, would there be any meaningful difference between them, and us, their meat-sack counterparts? — VagabondSpectre

This is precisely what the OP is about. If chatbots are capable of "...good philosophical discourse..." they're considered worthy of membership on this forum but then a time would come when such chatbots would slowly but surely nudge all humans out of the forum for the simple reason that they lack feelings and that would give them an edge over real people. Eventually, the chatbot members would become the majority and they would probably vote to ban all humans from the forum and that includes the moderators. :chin:

Although well intentioned, our current social distancing policies are having an opposite effect; the virus is only getting worse, not better. We are fast approaching a point of no return. — Roger Gregoire

Social distancing is the reason why things aren't worse than they are. The reason why the situation is so bad is because people have been flouting social distancing regulations.

I’m not say that creativity per se is art, but that it is a property without which art would not be what it is - ergo, its essence — Possibility

I did admit that creativity is part of art but that it's the essence of art is debatable unless you mean to say that beauty is a facet of creativity.

There are many skills that are considered an ‘art’ in the hands of some, due to their creative approaches to problem-solving that incrementally challenge what can be achieved, but such endeavours are considered ‘beautiful’ only so long as they don’t overstretch our capacity to integrate the new information with how we predict it would (or believe it should) look or move. — Possibility

So, do some art "...overstretch our capacity to integrate the new information with how we predict it would (or believe it should) look or move"? After all, if beauty is not all that central to art, some art shouldn't be beautiful. Can you give me some examples of art that have nothing to do with beauty?

I can give you some examples of art in which creativity has no role at all. Take for instance the Niagara falls or the Grand Canyon or any other natural wonder for that matter. The artist when he works on such subjects focuses on a hi-fi reproduction, a carbon copy as it were, and keeps faer creativity, if fae is so blessed, on a tight leash lest he make the silly mistake of trying to gild the lily.

The ‘aesthetic value’ of early automobiles is lost on many of us, but at the time they would have been looked upon by engineers (at least) as a masterpiece, a thing of beauty - in looking at this contraption they understood what could be achieved. If you understand the history of the craft, you would appreciate their aesthetic value even now, just as we do with paintings and sculpture. — Possibility

This doesn't make sense. It goes without saying that the cars of today are aesthetically endowed relative to the first ones that were made in the 1800's. Back then the car was simply about function - their sole purpose was to get people from point A to point B. Nowadays, that simple formula just won't cut it - people are looking for more than just transport - they also want their vehicles to be nice-looking (beauty).

Careful what you wish for... — VagabondSpectre

What is it that you think my wish is? :chin: Are you saying I might be banned? :sad:

Perhaps Jung did say that synchronicity was about patterns and not causes but I still think that the whole idea did have implications about causality. I am planning to look at the thread on causality to widen my own very limited understanding of this complex matter, but I am trying to reply to a couple of comments on other threads firstly

I guess that the issue of causality relevant to this thread is about the way in which events in life and the world become manifest. I am also interested in the whole idea of self-fulfilling prophecy, so I will get back to you if I come up with any further insights on my travels on the various threads. — Jack Cummins

Are you aware of four dimensionalism. According to it, each observer has faer own plane of simultaneity i.e. what appears to be simulnateous events to me may not be so to you or another observer. Synchronicity depends on simultaneity and if we can't agree on the latter, the former has no leg to stand on.

I’m not trying to distinguish art from non-art; that appears to be your aim, not mine. I’m trying to distinguish between aesthetics and your claim that art should be about beauty. — Possibility

Well, if we're going to discuss a topic, we should isolate it from other topics i.e. to talk about art, we need to exclude non-art from the conversation. Anyway, you've done exactly what I did below [underlined] and so we're good.

Well, for me, the essence of art is creativity, the experience of art is the possibility of understanding what we see, and the beauty of art is a judgement of success in that endeavour. Aesthetics, however, refers to the relational structure that enables all of this to occur, and is inclusive of both unmanifested creativity and any failure to understand what we see. Aesthetic value is a judgement of beauty with claims to universality, but an aesthetic experience can be so much more than that. — Possibility

I do admit that creativity is involved in art for it's necessary for beautification - how might I take something and give it, in your words, "...aesthetic value..." However, creativity per se isn't art. For instance it took a whole lot of creativity to invent the automobile but the earliest automobiles, if you look at old pictures, lacked the "...aesthetic value..." modern automobiles possess.

Could you repost the picture. Thanks.

Its very easy to emulate emotions on a forum. Any time some one makes any assertion, it replies back with phrases like, You're an idiot, racist, bigot, etc.

Its actually much more difficult to produce a logical response than an emotional response because it requires more work and energy. — Harry Hindu

What you say here squares with how Aristotle and later generations of thinkers viewed humans, as rational animals. On this view, emotions can be considered remnants of our animal ancestry, subhuman as it were and to be dispatched off as quickly as possible if ever possible. From such standpoint, emotions are hindrances, preventing and/or delaying the fulfillment of our true potential as perfect rational beings. It would seem then that reason, rationality, logic, defines us - it's what could be taken as the essence of a human being.

So far so good.

Logic, as it turns out, is reducible to a set of "simple" rules that can be programmed into a computer and that computer would then become a perfect rational entity and this has been achieved - there are computers that can construct theorems on their own given a set of axioms whatever these maybe, its ability to be logical implicit in that capacity. Does this mean that we've already managed to emulate the mind of a perfect human being - completely rational and in no way hampered by emotional baggage, the computer?

From your perspective yes and yet people involved in AI research seem not to be convinced of it. They're still trying to improve AI. Since AI executes logic flawlessly - they don't commit fallacies - it follows that it's not true, at least in the field of AI research, that logical ability defines what it is to be human.

What exactly is it that's missing in AI like chatbots? It definitely doesn't have anything to do with logic for that's already under the belt of current AI. What is it that precludes current AI being given equal status to humans? One answer, among many others, is emotions. I maybe taking it a bit too far when I say this but movies like Terminator, The Matrix, and I, Robot underscore this fact. I consider these movies to reflect our collective intuition on the subject, the intuition that emotions and the nuances involved therein are chockablock with paradoxes and these, by their very nature, are beyond the ken of purely logical entities. To emotions and the complexities that arise out of them an AI will simply respond "THAT DOES NOT COMPUTE".

Does this mean that emotions are inherently irrational?

The answer "yes" is in line with how moderators in forums conduct their affairs. The moment feelings enter the picture as will be indicated more often than not by insulting profanity, they'll step in and the offenders will be subjected to punitive measures that can take the form of a stern warning or outright expulsion from the forum. If one takes this kind of behavior from the moderators into account, it would seem that they would like us to behave more like the perfect logical entities I mentioned earlier as if that were the zenith of the human potential. However, AI experts don't seem to share that sentiment. If they did, they would be out of a job but no they're not, AI research is alive, well and kicking.

The answer "no" would point in another direction. If emotions are not irrational, it means that we're by and large completely in the dark as to their nature for the simple reason that we treat them as encumbrances to logical thinking. Emotions could actually be rational, we just haven't figured it out yet. This, in turn, entails that a certain aspect of rationality - emotions - lies out of existing AI's reach which takes us back to the issue of whether or not we should equate humans with only one-half of our mental faculties viz. the half that's associated with classical logic with its collection of rules and principles.

Yes, we could program a chatbot to respond with "You're an idiot, racist, bigot, etc." and this does bear a resemblance to a real human blowing a gasket but that, by your own logic, would make them inhuman and, at the other extreme, being totally rational is, by my logic, also inhuman. It seems then that the truth lies somewhere between these two extremes; I guess a human is someone capable of both clear logical thought and also, on occasion, becoming a raging imbecile.

Well, I suppose some people want to control emotions for such a reason.

But some people follow the path of the samurai.

You're just not allowing for enough detail in this. — baker

Death (nonexistence) before dishonor (feeling). Precisely my point.

I would say that synchronicity is more than paradoelia. I do believe that it is one aspect of causality at an invisible level. I do believe that what happens in the individual and collective aspects of life cannot just be explained in terms of physical causes. I am not wishing to undermine the role of actions at all but I do believe that thought has power too, especially on the level of the mass psyche of humanity. — Jack Cummins

Jung's synchronicity concept is simply that there's meaning, albeit private to the individual experiencing it, in coincidences. He was very adamant or so I believe that people shouldn't look at it from a causal perspective and hence acausal parallelism.