Continuing along the same line of thinking viz. that panpsychism commits the fallacy of composition/division, consider a 4 meter wooden plank. In accordance with panpsychism it has a (one) soul/mind. Break it into two, each piece 2 meter long, and there must now be two souls. Break each 2 meter long piece into 1 meter lengths and now we have four souls. You can keep halving the pieces so obtained and the number of souls will double with each halving. The question is, does a 4 meter long wooden plank have one soul or an infinite number of souls (assuming halving ad infinitum)? If you say, the 4 meter long wooden plank has one soul then what of the infinite souls necessarily contained therein and if you say it has an infinite souls then what's the plank, as a whole, in soul terms? You can't say that both the plank has infinite souls and also one soul because that would be a contradiction.

Now that you mention it, I recall someone saying, "it's society's fault" and I'm not sure whether fae meant it in a way that you seem to be implying to wit that society is some kind of an individual entity like a person is, capable of causally potent intentions and actions independent of, and sometimes contrary to, its individual members, viz. us.

I think there's a grain of truth in that claim for the simple reason that, as some of us have realized, there's, like it or not, for better or worse, a difference in terms of interests between individuals and the group that they're part of. What's good/bad for a single member of a group isn't necessarily good/bad for the group itself and vice versa. A conflict of interests (me or we) presents itself at every turn, on a daily basis, and from moment to moment, to organisms that have adopted a social lifestyle so to speak.

An interesting fact that's germane to the issue herein is that societies and groups in general appear to be more rational than individuals and by that I mean to point out a truth that's hard to miss viz. unity is a better choice than division under almost all circumstances our world has to offer. At the individual level passions hold as much sway as reason and that's probably been the easiest, shortest, route to death/extinction, not to say that all passions are, in that way, a liability. There are good i.e. survival-wise advantageous passions and societies, either by sheer chance in those absent a human-level intelligence or by deliberate means as in human socieities, birth, sustain and perpetuate them. The takeaway is a simple truth: societies - we as part of them - are in the business of providing selection pressure (positive/negative) in an evolutionary sense to those passions that are a plus and those passions that are a minus, plus/minus in terms of asset/liability with respect to living/dying. All in all, forming societies is a rational thing to do in a Darwinian sense and there will be costs, costs in terms of giving up, modifying, or offsetting, certain traits that were of use before a social mode of living was adopted. This is the point of origin for the tension between societies and individuals.

Framed in this context, it's easy to see that a claim like "it's society's fault" makes sense only in the case of society applying a negative selection pressure on certain individual predelictions and that in turn causing negative pyschological effects down the line that manifests in myriad ways at the individual level.

At the heart of the relationship between individuals and the societies is the push and pull between rationality and our passions. The former analyzes the passions, selects and nurtures those that benefit everyone and the latter simply does what it does and, most importantly, sometimes puts individuals in a position to reject, defy, go against, the interests of society and that lays the the foundation for attitudes and realities captured by the statement "it's society's fault". Intriiguingly and ironically, there seem to be occasions (played out in courts, committees, tribunals, etc.) on which the reverse accusation, "it's the individual's fault", is made by society.

The issue of the part/whole relationship which is more relevant here, is the question of whether parts can be said to be things, in the same context in which the whole is a thing. The nature of a "part" is that it necessarily exists in specific relations to other parts which collectively make up the whole. In this context, the whole is the thing, and the part is a part of that thing. Notice the necessity in the part's relationship with others, as essential to the word "part". There is no such necessary relationship in the concept of "thing", or "object". An object is an independent entity having relations with others, but not having any specific necessary relations. — Metaphysician Undercover

A part has a necessary relationship with other parts that all together go into constituting the whole. A thing is just a thing, anything, and there are no necessary relationships in being a thing. Ergo, a part is just as much a thing as a whole is a thing. I agree with you so far.

Therefore it is inherently contradictory to say that a part is itself an object, or thing, in the same context in which it is a part. The "part" is constrained by the necessity which makes it a part, and an object has no such constraint. Therefore to be both is contradiction. This logic of part/whole relations reflects the fact that in order to make a part into a proper object, the whole needs to be divided. When the whole is divided, it is annihilated. So it is impossible that the part exists as an individual object at the same time while it is a part. And we should never apprehend a part as an object because this is a logical incoherency. — Metaphysician Undercover

This seems to be a repetition of the first paragraph with some additional information of course. I'll agree to this too.

If the assertion is that everything has a soul/mind, then not only do the parts of the car, (if each can exist as an individual thing), have a soul/mind, but also the car itself, as a thing has a soul/mind. There is no fallacy of composition here. — Metaphysician Undercover

So, once I talk about things I can't talk about parts. How come then that you talk about the car having a soul then? After all, the car is, essentially, the whole consisting of parts and you said, in your own words, "....to make a part into a proper object, the whole needs to be divided. When the whole is divided, it is annihilated" (in the second paragraph of your post) and this is exactly what you've done when you made the claim that "...not only do the parts of the car (if each can exist as an individual), have a soul/mind..."

To make things easier, let's continue with the example of a car. At one point, you're saying that the parts of a car are things and ergo have souls/minds (accepted) and that you can't view them as parts to do that (accepted). Then you go on to say the car is also a thing and so has a soul/mind but the problem is you can't talk of a car anymore because when you took the parts of the car as individual things, you, by your own admission, believe that"...the whole (the car) needs to be divided. When the whole (the car) is divided, it (the car) is annihilated". :chin:

I imagine that Kant would have agreed with that. But isn't open, inductive scientific knowledge very different in kind from deductive knowledge deduced from closed, purely logical systems? — magritte

As far as I can tell, Hamza Tzortzis in his debate with Lawrence Krauss brings to the fore science's most embarrassing character flaw in a manner of speaking viz. that it's inductive logic through and through, extrapolating from particulars to generalizations if I recall correctly.

It's not the case that scientists aren't aware of this fact though; they constantly remind themselves and the public that scientific theories are not written in stone - fixed, unchangeable - but, au contraire, can be, should be, modified/thrown out the window, as new evidence comes to light.

Science, the bottom line is, deals with tentative truths - truths that can be false.

Philosophy, although employing the odd inductive argument here and there, is a field whose mainstay is deductive logic and deductive logic is all about absolute truths - truths that can't be false.

What all this means is that if science and philosophy should ever find themselves in opposing camps on an issue, it would be a clash of tentative truths vs absolute truths and by the very meanings of these two kinds of truths we can get an idea of how things will pan out.

Assuming one finds a monster to be dwelling in their sub-/unconscious, wouldn't one want to understand how it works and what it is doing there? — Tzeentch

That means you don't understand what a monster means. :chin:

Self-discovery assumes there's a self and that there's something to be discovered about the self and, most importantly, that it's something one would want to discover. I have no idea about the first two assumptions but, in my own case, the third assumption turns out to be false. Let's face it, we're all just one bad day away from becoming something we, ourselves, wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley. I guess it all depends on the weather. Bright sun, blue skies and everyone's a bundle of joy. Dark ominous clouds, torrential rain, giant, violent waves and it's you or me, us or them, you know how this ends.

Panpsychism holds that mind or a mind-like aspect is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of reality. — wikipedia

What strikes me as odd about panpsychism is that it ignores the whole-part distinction. To be clear, panpsychism is the claim that "everything has a soul/mind." Compare this panpsychist assertion with the logically equivalent "every team member of the Chicago Bulls sweats". Now, if I were to conclude that the basketball team known as the Chicago Bulls sweats that's the fallacy of composition; the property of sweating isn't transferrable from the parts (here members of the Chicago Bulls team) to the whole (the Chicago Bulls team itself).

Now, take the panpsychist assertion that everything has a soul/mind in the context of a car. The car has parts. Every part is a thing and since everything has a soul/mind, every part must have a soul/mind but to draw the conclusion that the car itself, the whole, has a soul/mind is the fallacy of composition.

Coming at it from the opposite direction (a more relatable point of view I'm sure), most people will find it easier to think that a car, as a whole, has a soul. If so, according to the panpsychist, since everything has a soul, each and every part of a car should have a soul. That's the fallacy of division.

Since all matter is organized in a simple-to-complex manner, subscribing to panpsychism involves committing either the fallacy of composition or the fallacy of division at every level of this hierarchy.

To cut to the chase, panpsychists have to prove that their thesis doesn't commit the fallacies of composition and division.

By way of illustrating my point, take a look at the notion of super-organisms - ants and bees are super-organisms in that though they're composed of individuals, an entire colony acts as if it's itself a single living unit and despite this they haven't been accorded the same status as an individual organism like a human being who is, like ant and bee colonies, a colony of various cells. Clearly, in this case, biologists have avoided committing the fallacy of composition in the case of ants and bees (by not treating the colony itself as an independent organism) are and the fallacy of division in the case of human beings (by not treating cells as possessed of minds). Is there a lesson to learn from this for the panpsychist?

"Science is a wholly owned subsidiary of materialism", said someone. This is vindicated by Laplace's famous, "I had no need for that hypothesis" retort to Napoleon's sincere question, "where is god in your theory?"

The relationship between science and philosophy runs into two major problems.

One, as @magritte put it, science makes it a point to keep things simple and adopting that policy is the shortest path to materialism. It's worth noting that making simplicity a supreme, to-die-for virtue has its beginnings in philosophy (last I checked, it has something to do with nominalism, a philosophical matter) - aka Ockham's razor. Since I'm a paradox aficionado and one presents itself here, mirable dictu, Ockham's razor can be thought of as that philosophical principle that led to materialism and subsequently to science [no attitude can possibly be simpler than that of WYSIWYG] and it's Ockham's razor in the dexterous hands of scientists that effectively shaved off philosophy's relevance to the modern man - there's no point in getting, what is in a sense, sucked into parts of philosophy that reject materialism or tries to get a behind-the-curtains look at materialism itself. The story of philosophy and science is Frankensteinian in character - the good dr. Frankenstein (philosophy) meets his end at the hands of the monster (science) he creates.

Two, switching sides on the issue, science is, at its core, wholly based on inductive logic while philosophy tends to be a deductive-logic enterprise. I recall watching a debate between physicist Lawrence Krauss and Hamza Tzortzis on Islam and the latter sets the tone of the discussion by making this distinction in technique explicit from the get go. I suppose in doing so Hamza Tzortzis' point is that no knowledge derived from induction - just another name for science - could refute deduced knowledge, theology in general and Islam in particular insofar as that debate was concerned. By extension, the same logic should apply to other areas in philosophy that rely on deduction rather than induction as a tool of study.

I don't know. Do you remember making an argument, or did you imagine making one? — unenlightened

That proves my point, doesn't it? :lol:

Ok. But since I cannot tell that you said that or presented any argument for it, it's not worth responding. — unenlightened

You (to me): I know the image I have in my mind of an event dated 2/3/2020 actually happened because my cute little hand-held MCD has a record of it.

Question 1. Me: How do you know the MCD record on the event dated 2/3/2020 is correct (in the sense is a true record of an actual past event?

You: Because the event dated 2/3/2020 occurred

Question 2. Me: How do you know that the event dated 2/3/2020 occurred?

You: Because there's a record on the MCD.

Me: Go to Question 1 — TheMadFool

Is this not an argument?

To answer question 1 in your (our) favor means confirmation that the MCD record is correct (in the sense is a true record of an actual past event)

To answer question 2 in your (our) favor is to know for certain that a given event did occur in the past.

To answer question 1 in your favor you need an answer to question 2 in your favor but to answer question 2 in your favor you need an answer to question 1 in your favor. Vicious circle?! The memory is the evidence for a past event having occurred but the past event having occurred is the evidence for the memory. You can't know if it's a memory unless it's an actual past event but you can't know if it's an actual past event unless it's a memory. Something is a memory only if it's an actual past event but something is an actual past event only if it's a memory. You can't know one without knowing the other. Reminds me of yin-yang and the problem of the criterion.

Yeah it's fairly fundamental, the distinction between fact and fiction, and unfortunately, as a matter of psychological fact, it is quite easy to implant false memories.

The moral of this is twofold; stay away from psychologists, and make a habit of telling the truth, lest you come to believe your own bullshit (see also confabulation). — unenlightened

To have categories like false memories and confabulation suggests that there are true memories and my aim in this thread is to demonstrate that there can be no such thing at all - memory is indistinguishable from imagination insofar as (an attempt to) distinguishing the two is a purely mental exercise.

What I mean is if a group of people were to gather in a room and discuss their "memories" with no recourse to any other means of confirming them, they wouldn't be able to tell apart memory from imagination - no mental features help to make that distinction.

If so, some other means of confirming that a particular image in a person's mind is actually a memory becomes necessary. Suppose, for the sake of argument, someone claims that fae has a device that'll help determine whether a particular image in a person's mind is a memory and not an imagination - call this method Memory Confirmation Device (MCD). The MCD itself has to be a memory device for the simple reason that the issue at hand is the past and the only way to access the past is with memories, memories stored on an appropriate medium.

Suppose now that you, on 20/11/2020 (today), have an image in your mind that has the date stamp 2/3/2020 and (necessarily that) you don't know if it's a memory or an imagination. You pull out the latest hand-held MCD and check - it has a record, dated 2/3/2020, that matches the image in your mind. You conclude, with much glee, that the image in your mind is a memory and not an imagination.

You forget what now seems to be a minor issue and spend your day having a blast with your friends. As night falls you're exhausted, return home, change into your pyjamas and call it a day. At the stroke of midnight you suddenly get up, all confused now, with a question in your mind, "how the hell do I know that the MCD is correct?"

You realize, deeply distressed at this point, that the fancy hand-held MCD you possess itself needs some other device to confirm the events recorded actually took place. There's no difference between the hand-held MCD you have and your brain insofar as credibility of the events recorded on them are concerned.

The event on 2/3/2020 occurred, the MCD would report because it has a memory of it (the matching record) but then the question, how certain are we that that particular MCD memory (the record) isn't a malfunction artifiact? [In human terms, how do we know that the memory isn't imagination?] The answer will be, has to be, that the event dated 2/3/2020 did occur unlike a malfunction artificact which didn't. But then the only evidence we have that the 2/3/2020 event occured is the MCD memory (record) itself and we don't know if the MCD has malfunctioned or not. We're now caught in a vicious circle.

You (to me): I know the image I have in my mind of an event dated 2/3/2020 actually happened because my cute little hand-held MCD has a record of it.

Question 1. Me: How do you know the MCD record on the event dated 2/3/2020 is a correct (in the sense is a true record of an actual past event?

You: Because the event dated 2/3/2020 occurred

Question 2. Me: How do you know that the event dated 2/3/2020 occurred?

You: Because there's a record on the MCD.

Me: Go to Question 1

:chin:

defining the concept of intelligence in non-mentalistic terms — Ned Block

Isn't this impossible? The essence of thinking is mentalistic if I understand the term correctly. To then attempt to define thinking in a non-mentalistic way would be self-defeating, like trying to define metal non-metalically. Perhaps Ned Block realizes that defining thinking in mentalistic terms is pointless since there's no way to check it directly. Thus, having to rely on indirect evidence, behavior, a non-mentalistic definition is the first order of business. The catch is we've got to deal with the possibility of the features that constitute the non-mentalistic definition being replicable without the, to us, necessary mentalistic phenomena accompanying it. :chin:

I didn't say anything that contradicts you.

Yes, karma can manifest in the present life - one's actions today producing consequences the next day or a month, or years later — TheMadFool

Consciousness is a property — Alvin Capello

Here's the deal. The whole point of Descartes' cogito ergo sum is to prove the existence of a something that's conscious from consciousness. The problem, as far as I can tell, is if we approach the issue from a property point of view then Descartes' argument begs the question for the simple reason that if consciousness is a property then a something that's conscious is baked into this assertion (that consciousness is a property). A property can be either concrete (as an aspect of an individual object) or abstract (as an aspect common to a group of objects). In either case, objects that possess a given property must exist prior to the property itself.

The premise, in my humble opinion, that Descartes relies on to infer a something conscious from conscisouness is: a property ergo something that has that property. This premise can't be derived from the world because Descartes concedes that it could be an illusion - that makes any inferences drawn from the world unreliable. The only option Descartes has is his own personal and private experiences with his own mind but the only relevant experience contained therein is his own consciousness as a property and then to conclude a something that is conscious (an object that has the property of consciousness) is begging the question as that's exactly what needs proving. :chin:

To the extent I'm aware religion is, at its core, a moral system and being so it must function as a source of, sustain, and judge, reward and punish for, whatever system of morality that ensues forth.

You mentioned, quite clearly, that morality is, and I quote, "...likely in the interest of a strong society" which bespeaks that you see, a rationale to it, good reasons for the existence of morality; in short, it makes sense to have it if only to ensure society runs smoothly with minimum disruptions. What this means is you're already well on your way towards the atheistic point of view viz. that religion isn't necessary in order to be good for it can be reasoned to as you must've when you said what you said.

Consider also, for those religions that have a god as the source of morality, the small matter of the Euthyphro dilemma. Is it that whatever god commands is good? If yes, then anything (murder, rape, torture, etc.) would be good if god so commands. That simply won't do. Ergo, no, it's not true that whatever god commands is good. That means good isn't defined by god or, in other words, god can't be the source of morality. So much for religion and its claimed prerogative over our sense of good and bad.


Then there's the problem of religion providing a judgement mechanism (god or karma is the judge of our actions and reward/punishment will be pro rata). This is a problem because, if one takes the noble route toward morality, reward/punishment for one's deeds should be the least of our concerns - good for the sake of good come hell or highwater sentiment. The very essence of morality - that to be truly good, no consideration must be given to benefit/loss - is eroded by the very idea of judgement, reward, and punishment.

Let's do a recap. Religion isn't/can't be the source of morality and the idea of judgement, merit, and sin, another function of religion turns morality into a selfish game of scoring points with god or manipulating karma which sadly reveals, to my reckoning, a complete failure of understanding the nature of goodness.

As for the third function of religion I mentioned - sustaining morality - it's well-known that many people are thoroughly dependent on religion for their sense of right and wrong - all their knowledge on morality comes from religion and let's not forget the white-bearded sky-daddy watching our every move, promising heaven and threatening hell.

Just to make things more interesting I'd like to mKe a mention of those who land up beheading people, going on suicide missions, participating in crusades and jihads, are doing so only because of the belief that their actions are god's command or, if not, they've convinced themselves that's what god would've wanted them to do.

If I understand correclty, the author of the article(?) is claiming that what we identify as cause and effect, both, must exist independently of each other. He reasons thus: Before we can consider the issue of cause, we must identify the effect and, naturally, work backwards to the cause. This, according to him, implies that the effect has an independent existence of its own. Then, as per his logic, the effect can't be a "direct and absolute function" of the cause for the reason that this would obliterate the distinction cause and effect. Being as charitable as possible the author probably wants to say that if an effect is a "direct and absolute function" of a cause, it would be impossible to make a distinction between what's an effect and what's a cause - the two would blend into each other and become inseparable. From this, the author concludes, the cause too must be exist independently. The finishing move is that if both cause and effect exist independently, then the notion of cause and effect doesn't make sense; after all, the received wisdom in re cause and effect is that the effect is dependent for its existence on the cause.

Where's the flaw, if there's one?

The the crux of this argument is that what we identify as cause and effect exist independently of each other and the contradiction derived is that the definition of causality involves the effect being dependent on the cause. At least that's how I interpret it. As far as I can tell, to the extent that I can make sense of it, the author makes the mistake of thinking that causality is about existence, it isn't. For certain that which is identified as a cause and that which is identified as an effect exist independently in the sense both can be documented to occur in reality. Causality, however, isn't the claim that the cause brings the effect into existence; what causality is - at its heart - is a constant relationship between cause and effect, that's all.

To illustrate imagine you have with you red, white, yellow and black balls. The red ball is always associated with the white ball, the yellow ball is always associated with the black ball: this is causality, the association between existent things and that in no way means that the red ball brings the white ball into existence or that the yellow does the same with the black ball. :chin:

Connotation and Denotation are two principal methods of describing the meanings of. words. Connotation refers to the wide array of positive and negative associations that most words naturally carry with them, whereas denotation is the precise, literal definition of a word that might be found in a dictionary. — WWW

There's a lot of freedom that comes with association for it can be and is personalized - the stuff I associate with the word "god" maybe completely different from that of other people. Having said that, these associations aren't totally arbitrary - we're part of a shared universe and so, our experiences, available associations, will be a common denominator, unifying instead of dividing a language community with respect to words and what we associate with them. These shared associations, the common extraneous meanings that words have over and above their comparatively precise denotative meaning are referred to as connotative meaning.

Nevertheless, connotative meanings, even those that are peculiar to a person, pack a punch in the manner of speaking because they're closer to home, more personal, they're more about yourself than about lexical meanings (denotative meanings) of words and thus are, nine out of ten times, emotionally charged and being so have the power to take you down a path or in a direction not intended by an interlocutor or if intended, in a manner that's going to be so filled with feelings that you wouldn't notice if it were wrong. In essence, you're at risk of either misunderstanding someone or being fooled by someone. That's the reason why, in a logic 101 course, it's emphasized, so often that it becomes tedious, that we're to focus our attention on the denotative meanings of words, meanings that are precise, meanings that we've all agreed upon.

I suppose Ned Block wants to say that just because our best thinkers think a certain AI thinks, it doesn't mean that particular AI actually thinks. However, Block goes on to say, that if our best thinkers think that AI thinks, it's reasonable to assume that AI thinks. The difference between these claims rests on actual thinking (by AI) vs inferring thinking (by our best thinkers).

The intriguing aspect of the Turing test is that we employ it daily, you're using it on other people and other people are using it on you and both parties (you and other people) seem not to be bothered about the deep flaw in the Turing test which Ned Block's alluding to - there's a difference between an entity (human/AI/whatever) passing the Turing test and that entity actually capable of thinking.

I suppose Ned Block is talking solipsism, the view that the only certain truth is one's own existence and consciosuness, here for he doesn't accept the Turing test's ability to demonstrate actual thinking just like solipsists maintain that it's unknown that anything but themselves are thinking. Alan Turing, on the other hand, seems to be quite content with the Turing test's adequacy to identify human-level cognition (AI).

The case for karma to me is much simpler than your conceptualization of it. It follows directly from the Principle Of Sufficient Reason:

1. For every entity X, if X exists, then there is a sufficient explanation for why X exists.
2. For every event E, if E occurs, then there is a sufficient explanation for why E occurs.
3. For every proposition P, if P is true, then there is a sufficient explanation for why P is true.

Please take what I say here with a grain of salt. Everyone, in their lives, at one point or another, has asked these questions: "why is this happening to me?", "what did I do to deserve this?" meant in both a negative sense (a calamity has befallen one) and in a positive sense (a fortunate event has occurred). These questions mean only one thing in my humble opinion - you're unable to explain i.e. find a cause for what you're experiencing (a string of bad events or a lucky break). However, as the Principle Of Sufficient Reason states, for every event E, if E occurs, then there's a sufficient explanation for why E occurs, and since nothing in your present life explains some events, good or bad, it follows that the cause must've been in a different life, a past life.

Please note, the familiar western notion of what goes around comes around isn't karma. Yes, karma can manifest in the present life - one's actions today producing consequences the next day or a month, or years later - but karma is usually used to refer to moral causality that carries from one life to another via reincarnation.

Has science become so complete that it explicitly excludes the possibility of a creator? — Julz

I'm under the impression that science doesn't deal with that kinda questions. If the universe had an author, science is in the business of finding out what this author wrote and seems to be not in the least bit troubled about the existence/nonexistence of the author.

Scientists are roving around on a beach in the fading light of a setting sun and there half-buried in the sand they discover a wondrous book. They flip the pages and realize that this book is amazing - the secrets of the universe are within its pages. They gather together around a warm fire and discuss the provenance of this most intriguing and fascinating book. One of them offers a hypothesis, "this book is the handiwork of a supreme intelligence", says fae but then, just as they thought the matter was settled, one of the more skeptically-minded among them says in a low voice "It could also be the work of infinite monkeys randomly banging away at the keys of a typewriter."

@Wayfarer I was offering a Buddhist perspective on the issue, it being in line with your thoughts that life is suffering and the only way to avoid/eliminate it is to be nonexistent (nirvana=extinguished). The catch is that in Buddhist belief only humans are in a position - being as they are in the mind's Goldilocks Zone - to achieve enlightenment (nirvana) and thus it follows that our duty is to procreate to the hilt just so that more souls get a shot at enlightenment. The end result, if all goes well, would be universal enlightenment, liberation of all souls from samsara - no more births as a consequence of past karma will be necessary. Isn't this right up the antinatalist's alley? The only difference between Buddhism and antinatalism is the modus operandi. The former advises us to have as many children as possible so that souls can escape the samsaric cycle of being born again and again by attaining nirvana but the latter's counsel is one step ahead, at procreation itself.

As you would've have already noticed, to subscribe to Buddhism means you accept some metaphysical claims - souls, karma, birth-rebirth, to name a few - but antinatalism doesn't. This is the reason behind the incongruity between the two doctrines. If one is of the opinion that life is just too painful to be worth it, we have two options on our hands 1) Antinatalism and 2) Buddhism. For a down-to-earth person who reserves belief only for those claims founded on hard evidence, antinatalism is the right choice - don't have children. However, to someone open-minded, willing to consider possibilities no matter how crazy, then, to err on the side of caution (what if we have souls, karma is real, reincarnation is true?), we'd need to embrace Buddhism - have as many children as possible.

@Wayfarer. I've been told that nirvana doesn't actually mean nonexistence but the spirit of Buddhism is to be no longer born in samsara and samsara includes the earth. In a sense then the desire and hope for nirvana is to be nonexistent on earth and that gibes with antinatalism.

despite God is omnipotent, omniscient and has the desire to eliminate evil, he could not create beings with free will that would never choose evil; in other words, God cannot create square circles or take self-contradictory actions. — Isabel Hu

That, in itself, is a contradiction. If god's omnipotent (he can do anything. Contradictions? Bah!), he can very well create beings who never choose evil and also possess free will.

human is inherently good — Isabel Hu

As I said, an omnipotent god can do anything and threin lies the rub. You're trying to prove a point (humans aren't inherently good) and your attempt consists of demonstrating an inconsistency of that proposition (humans are inherently good) with the existence of evil.

Nothing doing!

God is omnipotent! Logical contradictions, inconsistencies, are as easy as ABC for god. Your logic, based on an inconsitency (the existence of evil being inconsistent with humans being inherently good), ergo, fails to, well, come up with the goods. If, but for a moment, I assume myself to be god, my reply to you would be this "Your argument is sound and not sound and also neither. You're right and wrong, and again, also neither. There's an inconsitency but also a consistency, and neither."

what is going on in the mind of a rat? — Nils Loc

This is privileged information - no mind is accessible to another mind. However, that doesn't mean we can't create a high fidelity reconstruction of rat Y's thoughts on the matter from info that's available to us. Doing this is very simple in my humble opinion.

Step 1 is to note what sort of info is available to rat Y and what inference it draws from that. Step 2 is to put what we learned of rat Y in step 1 into a recognizable but, more importantly, plausible logical template that we can analyze.

Step 1: Information received/gathered by rat Y: a sound. The inference made by rat Y is there's a cat (a predator) in the vicinity; that's why it takes cover.

Step 2: We (humans) understand that the following premise is true:

1. If a cat's in the bushes then there's a sound.

The converse (if there's a sound then there's a cat in the bushes) is false because a sound can be made by, say, another rat, a breeze, etc.

This means the only available truth for the rat - a truth that can function as a premise - is premise 1

Rat Y, runs for cover upon hearing a sound and that bespeaks it has come to a conclusion regarding the sound, and that conclusion is that there's a cat lurking in the bushes.

Now, let's go over what rat Y knows (the premises):

1. If there's a cat in the bushes then there's a sound
2. There's a sound

We also know Rat Y's conclusion (from its behavior):
3. There's a cat in the bushes

Rat Y's argument then is:

1. If there's a cat in the bushes then there's a sound
2. There's a sound
Ergo,
3. There's a cat in the bushes ?/! (irrational?/rational!)

No other logical template (argument form) fits the rat Y scenario and it's the fallacy of affirming the consequent.

The title, the analogy of life as a torture - death by a thousand cuts - speaks volumes. An antinatalist, which I presume this thread revolves around, would've made faer case if life is torture but is it? I speak not on the basis of my own life which has been a nightmare of sorts but from the little I've gathered from the lives of others.

What I really want to talk about is a little paradox I've chanced upon and I feel it hits the right keys of antinatalism at the start but ends on the wrong note as it were, leaving the audience with a bad taste in their mouths. A few metaphysical claims are involved but that's alright since what I'm aiming for is to offer a different perspective and that with a belief system that makes suffering its central doctrine.

The belief system I'm referring to is Buddhism; it claims as a key premise for its argument that life is suffering (dukkha). Naturally, Buddhism seems the perfect candidate, primed at the outset, for the antinatalist camp. Who could qualify for antinatalism if Buddhism - a belief that literally equates life with suffering - doesn't make the cut, right? Nirvana, as per Gautama, is an escape from the suffering tied to birth-death-rebirth in samsara - the basic idea being that one who's attained nirvana no longer needs to be born which, if you really give it some thought, is nonexistence, something which will click with the antinatalist crowd. By the way, "nirvana" means extinguish - a meaning so close to nonexistence that anyone with a minimum of common sense won't fail to notice. If nirvana (extinguish existence) is a Buddhist goal then surely antinatalism fits like a glove. Hitting the right keys!

However, it's not as simple as that. Buddhism has one other belief critical to this discussion viz. that only humans are capable of attaining nirvana - those living in lower realms (hell) overwhelmed by intense suffering and those of the higher realms (heaven) hypnotized by the rapturous delight. Ergo, in order to ensure more people have a shot at attaining nirvana, we should have/make more children. In other words, antinatalism doesn't square with Buddhism. Ending on the wrong note! Ouch! My ears! And Eyes! And Mind!

Paradox!

Thanks for the post. It's a mine of information - from heavy metal music to heavy mental work. I couldn't connect as much as I'd like with what you said but I did relate to emo and although I'm not a practising emo, I think I could call it a home of sorts - dressed in all black, with skulls and an inverted cross, tattoos of the grim reaper, vampires and demons, the whole deal. sigh!

Let me now, after that bout of fantasizing, return to the real world. We all know, for instance, that we love our sister (if we have one), our significant other (if we have one), our dog (if we have one), our car (if we have one), our god (if there is one). We see all these various ways of harboring positive emotions for someone/something as love; nevertheless, we also know that love for one's parents is not the same as love for a lover which itself is not the same as love for your dog, and so on.

Now, imagine that you hate your parents, your partner, your dog, and your car. The question is: is your hate for your parents different from your hate for your partner and is that any different from the hate for you dog or your car? Or is your hate indistinguishabe?

This state of affairs - that love having branched out into so many types like a beautiful ornamental tree in a garden with gorgeous blossoms and hate, just a dead seed lying in the ground, its pathetic barrenness only matched by the clear and present danger it harbors - must have an explanation. So long as no one puts an explanation on the table, it's a paradox.

It seems that what you mean by “Law of Identity” is not the same as what I mean by “Law of Identity”. Why I mean by that expression is the law that each thing is the selfsame as itself. For instance, the Sun is identical to itself. This has nothing to do with the meanings of words. What you mean by “Law of Identity” is indeed basically what I mean by “Meaning Constancy Assumption”. — Tristan L

What do you mean by "the sun is identical to itself"? Is there a danger/risk that it won't be identical to itself? Surely, the reason for formulating The Law Of Identity (A = A) is to prevent the possibility that someone will make the mistake that an A is not-A (violating The Law of Identity).

This mistake, in your example of the sun, won't occur at the level of the sun itself - it's not that there's a possibility that sun will suddenly become not-sun.

Where an error can occur is at the level of, the correct word here is, terms which are essentially words that have referents, which as far as I can tell, are individual objects (sun) or entire categories (stars). The problem is a feature of language itself in that the same term, the same word, can have multiple referents (puns??) e.g. a star is a celestial object or, at other times, an actor. Here's where confusion becomes possible, confusion that's detrimental to the soundness of arguments; we're at risk of committing the equivocation fallacy. The Law Of Identity is designed to roadblock this fallacy by mandating the constancy of a term with respect to its referent in a given argument i.e. if a specific referent has been applied to a certain term, this term-referent pair must remain fixed throughout. A referent is just an object specified by the meaning of a term.

This has nothing to do with the meanings of words. — Tristan L

:chin:

:ok: :up: Thanks

The man seems to yearn for this, correct. However, the man appears to wallow in anguish and despair sometimes as a result of having freedom - or choice as some people put it. — The Questioning Bookworm

I discovered, a day ago, that meaning or purpose (seen as a role of cosmic proportions i.e. you [want to] matter to the very existence/functioning/even destruction of the universe itself), is what we're actually aiming for. Freedom (the ability to do anything one wants) is, if anything, a precondition to fulfilling our purpose - we must be free from other fish to fry, so to speak, in order that we're free for our main duty. @Wayfarer.

Give it some thought.

1. What if you can do anything you want (free) but had absolutely no clue about what you should do (no purpose)?

On the flip side,

2. What if you know what you're supposed to do (purpose) but you can't do it (not free)?

This is an unsolvable riddle it seems. We want freedom because we want to do anything we wants i.e. we're completely uncomfortable being restricted in any way but we also want purpose (meaning) which is just another way of saying that we want to be restricted, restricted by a purpose that goes towards giving our lives meaning.

To have purpose is to lose freedom but to have freedom is to lose purpose. It boils down to a choice, a choice between freedom and purpose, freedom in the sense the ability to do anything we want (no purpose) and purpose in the sense there's something we must do (no freedom).

As I see it, we don't want freedom as much as we want a purpose, a meaning to our lives. This follows from the fact that given the current status of our knowledge on the meaning of life - life's meaningless (purposeless) -we're actually free to do anything we want but that doesn't seem to work for us - we remain as sadly dissatisfied as ever. In other words, we'd rather have a purpose (meaning to life) than be free. :chin:

This question is very relevant and interesting. — The Questioning Bookworm

This adds another layer of complexity to the issue of freedom and purpose. As outlined in the paragraph above, freedom and purpose are strange bedfellows, in fact they're incompatible - you can't have them both (or so it seems). If the road named "freedom" ends at omnipotence as a destination then god can have both freedom and purpose; being omnipotent god's not limited by logic and the contradiction therein is utterly insignificant.

As for us, mere humans, the contradiction packs quite a punch.

Where do we define the line of this? — The Questioning Bookworm

From the perspective of Hinduism, specifically Lord Krishna's, at the end of the day, it's all about purpose. We all hope in our hearts that we're good people, that we're not on the wrong side of the line between good and bad, that we've made friends, that we've made people happy, that we've made some contribution, however little, to the betterment of the world. If it so happens that it's exactly the opposite - we're actually bad, we've caused more problems than solve them, we've made matters worse, we've made enemies, we've caused unhappiness - but it turns out that was our purpose - the real reason for our existence - then, Krishna would've probably said something like, "fulfill your purpose". Freedom isn't as important as purpose because we have it and we're yet not happy, not happy at all.

If you asked a pre-modern human 'what is the meaning of it all', they wouldn't have the foggiest notion of what you were on about. If you tried to explain it, they would excuse themselves and go on their way, because time didn't permit such nonsense. 'The meaning of it all' was, for them (or us, back then) to do what had to be done, for all kinds of compelling reasons to do with staying alive and providing, and about which we didn't have the luxury of philosophizing.

But us moderns, having been delivered from subsistence livelihoods and mortal toil, then find ourselves twiddling our thumbs and asking ourselves what it's all about. ( 'what's it all about, Alfie? Is it just for the moment we're here?')

So we become 'marooned in the present'. Cut off from any sense of our ancestral heritage, from any visceral connection to the world and to our fellows. — Wayfarer

This reminds me of the Buddha...a man struck by an arrow lying in the Buddha's arms and the Buddha desperately trying to focus on treating the wound and dissuading the victim from asking questions regarding the provenance, intent, characteristics, etc of the arrow itself. Nevertheless, I can picture the Buddha, at some point in this pitiful tale, coming to the realization that treating the wound is pointless unless he has a satisfactory answer to the victim's questions. That, in my humble opinion, is the crux of the issue: To the victim the question is simple: Is there a meaning to life that makes it worth living so that the wound needs to be treated in order that he may live?

That pre-modern humans were preoccupied with just getting by - satisfying their so-called basic needs - is precisely what modern humans believe is pointless because there's no real reason why they should bother in the first place. I'm not denying the fact that pre-modern humans weren't like that. They haven't left behind anything in archaeological terms to indicate that they had different priorities; even rock art, and cave paintings, presumably done when they had time to spare, were about game animals - but the crucial fact here is that what the pre-modern humans didn't notice (it didn't dawn on them) was whatever it was that they were doing - hunting, gathering - is meaningful (has a point to it) only if life, the thing they were trying sustain with their activities, has a meaning.

As for being "marooned in the present", I like to think of life, living, every activity we engage in, including the quest for meaning, as a work in progress; far from being finished, it, in my humble opinion, has just begun. Language is just a few thousand years old, philosophy is younger, science is relatively an infant - there's so much we don't know that it would be a grave mistake to accept that life has no meaning. Perhaps a time will come when we'll find that meaning we all desire and the souls of our pre-modern ancestors can rest in peace knowing that their unthinking actions that makes the modern generation possible had a purpose to it after all.

This has a lot to do with The Enlightenment. The Enlightenment knew what it wanted to be free from - the Church - but not what it wanted to be free for, except Progress, and more of everything. Unfortunately, the apogee of 'progress' seems to be interstellar travel, and it's impossible. And we simply can't consume more and more. We're already consuming more than one planet-year's worth of resources by half-way through each year. — Wayfarer

This is just another manifestation of the real problem on our hands - that of purpose or meaning. For better or for worse, like it or not, everything becomes meaningless without a purpose. The Enlightenment was a reaction to the Church's heavy-handedness, its oppression of free thought as it were. To break free from this - i.e. reclaim freedom that was curtailed by the way the Church functions, itself a derivative of an ideology that didn't tolerate dissent or difference of opinion - itself became a purpose. It seems odd that this happened because the Church did offer a purpose, a divine one at that which, in my book, is a cosmic meaning. Perhaps skepticism, in no small part due to the way the Church was handling affairs, not to mention how implausible religious beliefs are, slowly creeped in, undermining the entire system and divine purpose lost currency. The aim then was to become "free from" a false purpose (divine purpose as claimed by the Church) in order that we may seek and hopefully find our true purpose.

The words in your post "free for" is telling in its meaning for it bespeaks that our aim, our goal, isn't freedom per se but meaning/purpose and it's quite possible that the entirety of human history is nothing more than a documentation of how we've been trying so hard to get "free from" false purpose so that we may be "free for" our true purpose.

'the reason for it all' — Wayfarer

My personal opinion on the matter is that things, all things, have qualities and these qualities maybe shared with other things and some of them may be unique. It's quite obvious that if one is seeking a unique purpose for a thing, it must be based on the qualities that are unique to that thing. For instance, horses have the unique quality of being able to run fast, for long stretches, and they are tamable - their purpose, recognizing these unique qualities, is for riding. Something similar can be said of a cup. A cup is solid, durable enough, has a hollow inside it, a handle to hold on to, and it's impervious to liquids - it's purpose is to hold water and beverages.

What is unique about humans? The only exclusively-human quality I can think of is thinking itself - humans, if not think well, think better than all other animals combined. Surely then, our purpose is to think and think well. Imagine if aliens from another planet were to come over and take over the earth. To what use would these aliens put us? No prizes for guessing that - it's just too obvious to miss. Of course humans have many other talents like music and art missing in the animal world and these too form firm foundations to define our purpose - our alien overlords would enjoy our musical performances, sculptors, paintings, books, poems, etc. - but the takeaway here is that these activities to - music and art - are essentially thinking, thinking at a different level as it were.

The question then is what's the purpose of all this thinking, thinking of so many shapes and sizes?

The answer to the above question is, "to understand the universe itself." We're the brain of the universe and our job (purpose) , like the brain in our body, is to comprehend/understand the universe - work out its laws; explore the possibilities it offers; discover its origins, predict its future; make necessary alterations for a better future; and so on. This is our cosmic meaning. It turns out that life isn't meaningless after all. :chin:

My basic view is that the modern conception of freedom is spiritually barren and so incapable of nourishing any real sense of purpose — Wayfarer

:clap: :up:

This is related to our sense of the place of humans in the Universe. — Wayfarer

A vague suspicion of mine. I like where this is going. :up:

At any rate, it's widely assumed that our existence is fortuitous, a fluke, the 'outcome of the accidental collocation of atoms' as Bertrand Russell once put it. — Wayfarer

You always have the right quote for the right occasion! :up:

It's too easy to equate 'freedom' with 'freedom of choice' which in effect means 'having enough money to do what I want'. But that doesn't necessarily answer the question as to what is worth wanting. — Wayfarer

We see eye to eye on this issue.

Just thought I might bounce this off of you. The notion of purpose as implicit in the question of the meaning of life seems to be above and beyond, greater in significance, so to speak, than, the meaning of life that's available a dime a dozen, meanings such as one's role as part of a family, as part of a community, of a nation, and as a world citizen, etc.and this kind of meaning of life I'll refer to as earthly meaning. In other words the kind of meaning of life that's available fail to satisfy the hunger/thirst for meaning that's in all of us. In essence, when people speak of the meaning of life, their aims are high, they're looking beyond this world and seeking some kind of cosmic significance to their existence and I refer to this kind of meaning as cosmic meaning

Most people who commit suicide aren't killing themselves because they haven't found cosmic meaning (that's everyone and there's no report of mass suicide) but because they feel/believe that their lives are devoid of the kind of meaning I described are available a dime a dozen - earthly meaning.

Here's what puzzles me...

Earthly meaning is self-determined in the sense we choose what we want to make of our lives. In short, earthly meaning implies that we're free, ceteris paribus, to take our lives in any direction we wish.

Cosmic meaning, on the other hand, involves a purpose/meaning that, to my reckoning, doesn't necessarily involve freedom (of choice). Just to be part of the grand design of the cosmos will do - it'll do the trick, so to speak, of satisfying the hunger/thirst for meaning. Freedom isn't a priority and that's what the following quote is all about:

"Man is tormented by no greater anxiety than to find someone quickly to whom he can hand over that great gift of freedom with which the ill-fated creature is born." - Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, from The Grand Inquisitor chapter. — The Questioning Bookworm

I was always unsure about the difference between evidence and proof. My current stance on this issue is that proofs are whole arguments that demonstrate the truth of a claim but evidence refers to premises or even the meaningful components of premises that ground proofs. In ordinary discourse the two are interchangeable but that's probably misuse/abuse of these, now, technical terms.

1. Jack's fingerprints were found on the murder weapon
2. Only Jack was there when the victim died
Ergo,
3. Jack is the murderer

The entire chain of reasoning (1, 2, and 3) is a proof.

The premises 1, 2, Jack's fingerprints, the murder weapon, the person who testified that or footage that established premise 2 constitute evidence.

Just being wary of transferring aspects of human experience (reasoning in abstract) to animals. — Nils Loc

Is there a difference, a distinction, between youre behavior (in the jungle) and the rat Y's behavior (in the scenario described in the OP) in terms of information available for deduction (a sound) and the deduction made (defensive behavior)? No! A sound was heard and both you and rat Y ducked for cover. Your reasoning is (also should be) the affirming the consequent fallacy. Purely in logical terms, assuming the rat can reason like us, isn't the rat too committing the fallacy of affirming the consequent? If no, which valid argument form is the rat employing? In other words, can you find a valid argument form that leads you to the conclusion (initiate defensive behavior) from the information available (sound)?

I probably should have remained silent — Jack Cummins

Me too! I should've stopped at "silence is golden" but I kept on writing, essentially contradicting myself but, in my defense, there's not an iota of speculation or imagination in the OP, at least not in the same sense or at the same level as some philosophies e.g. Platonism, Dualism, Theology, etc. It's not that legit questions don't exist in these branches of philosophy but the answers invariably require a theoretical framework and that's when/where philosophers' imagination runs wild.

But yes, is it all imaginary? Everyone has their own individual voice in expressing thoughts on life, death and meaning. Does it is mean it is all a waste of time? — Jack Cummins

That's the problem actually. In philosophy, there's no such thing as an opinion. Come to think of it, the mistake philosophers commit seems to be treating opinions as facts and, now I realize, that's why they argue so much. The arguments aren't an issue in the beginning because then it's just philosophers trying to make sense of a topic - the definitions, the assumptions, etc. - but sooner or later answers need to be given and at that point speculation and imagination enter the picture for the answers need theoretical frameworks.

neither rational or irrational — Nils Loc

I'm deeply intrigued by this claim. Can you edify me on this most fascinating idea of "neither rational nor irrational"?

Freedom, our desire, our yearning, for it, its irresistible allure, its captivating charm, leads us all, if not in actuality then at least in our imagination, down a long, sometimes painful, sometimes exhilarating, road and where that road ends is, you might've already guessed it, omnipotence - the power/ability to do anything one wants. It's part of what I suppose is the god-complex - to desire to be, or feel like, or act like, a god. I'm sure the two other conditions to becoming a god, viz. omniscience and omnibenevolence, will make their own contributions with regard to the rationality and the morality of having that much power. Everyone wants freedom but...are we fit to be gods? Without wisdom and the sense of right and wrong, freedom is just power in disguise and rarely anyone ever says, "I want power" and if there are those who say that, they're usually viewed with great suspicion - they're looked upon, whether true/false, as tyrants in the making. :chin:

Can't we flat out reject this? — Nils Loc

I'm afraid not. Although we can't look inside the minds of cats and rats, we can draw reasonable inferences from their behavior, one being that they behave rationally and, germane to this discussion, irrationally too.

Rational Rats

Causal reasoning requires the ability to use modus ponens, a basic application of which in causal reasoning would look like this:

1. If X is followed by Y then, X causes Y
2. X is followed by Y
Ergo,
3. X causes Y

In the context of this discussion:

4. IF a cat in the bushes is followed by a sound then a cat in the bushes causes a sound
5. A cat in the bushes is followed by a sound
Ergo,
6. A cat in the bushes causes sound

This makes it even more plausible, if not certain, that rats can reason the way I described they do.

If this fails to convince you, the theme of this thread - it's rational to be irrational or it's irrational to be rational (sometimes) - is transferable to humans. What would you do if you were alone, lost in a jungle, and you hear the sound of twigs breaking behind you? Quite naturally, you not only will but actually should (it's highly recommended that you follow this course of action) affirm the consequent and thus assume, without real justification, that there's a predator stalking you.

decide — Mia8178

Having the ability to decide - to choose (freely) - is, in and of itself, power, the most coveted of all powers.

Question then would be how to get it back singing on demand. — Heiko

The problem then would be if it's changed its tune. :lol:

Or just shooting the tweeting bird. Sounds like an idea! — Heiko

A macabre choice to make but it'll do the trick...I guess.

Well, if god is not bound by morality then equally he is not bound by rationality. So if rationality is no longer the arbiter of meaning (because god is) then the universe is reduced to absurdity. — Pantagruel

Not necessarily but definitely a possibility. This leads me to another topic on God, God as a necessary being which I tend to think of as saying that god must exist and this seems to contradict God's omnipotence in that God's being forced to exist. As far as I can see, God has to be not only contingent but the most contingent of all beings, this being nothing more than a sign of God's omnipotence. :chin: