Do you get what I am trying to say with these three inter-related arguments, @plaque flag?

I think in principle, even if the level of mechanisms are different, there is at essence, a reducibility by way of organic chemistry from biological formations to chemical ones. This cannot be said of mental states to its physical components.
— schopenhauer1

I don't see any reason to believe this is true. What makes you think it is? — T Clark

Mental states are things such as feelings, sensations, thoughts, concepts, ideas. There is a "what-it's-likeness" to them. There is a point of view. Interesting enough, the mental states epistemically need to be in place for anything else to be "known". Known, is not a thing unless there is a point of view, something that "knows".

With that being a loose definition of mental states. It seems to me that despite the novelty of biological systems, that they are not different in kind, then their chemical substrates. That is to say, they are still not anything like the loose definition I gave of mental events. They are still physical events, despite being novel, and possibly epistemically non-reducible (meaning, perhaps we simply can't make the connections yet. But I am not caught on the fact that mind is so far "irreducible" and so are some biological systems (at the moment). That wasn't the crux of my case here. Rather it is that biological fits the definition of physical events just like every other reducible/emergent phenomenon (except mind/consciousness). Which brings me to 2 (these are all connected really so I can't really isolate 1 from 2 from 3 without the argument not making sense).

2) Point of view. That is to say, emergence itself has in the background, the fact that there is already an observer of the "emerging". This does get into ideas of "does a tree make a sound if there is no observer", but there is a reason that trope is so well-known. We always take for granted that we have a certain point of view already whereby events are integrated and known.
— schopenhauer1

I don't understand. How is this different in my way of seeing things verses your way?

I am not sure your way of seeing about this, but what I am saying is that it may be the case that "emergence" needs "something" for which to "emerge within" (i.e. a point of view). That is to say, assuming there are these "jumps" (which we call "emergent properties"), whence are these properties taking place? We, as the already-observing observer, have the vantage point of "seeing the emergence" but "where" do these "jumps" take place without a point of view? I guess, as another poster used to say, Where is the epistemic cut?. And also, how would that cut take place without an already-existing observer? What does that new enclosure (of the new emergent property) even look like without a vantage point, or point of view already in the equation?.

As it says, that mental events are such a different type of phenomenon, that it would be an abuse of the concept to equate it with the physical correlates without explanation other than "other things in nature work thusly".
— schopenhauer1

I've acknowledged that mental events are different kinds of things than physical, chemical, biological, and neurological events and processes. I think you're saying that those differences mean that the analogy I am making doesn't work. I don't agree. It's like the old SAT questions - chemistry is to biology as neurology is to [X]. Correct answer is C - psychology.

Yes, and here is the biggest reason. Indeed, going back to what I was saying in 1, these are not just differences in the complexities of chemical structures (thus loosing the a 1-1 reduction analysis to the new property) but of something else entirely. It is something that is a feeling, a point of view, and is necessary to even understand every other phenomenon. So there are quite unique things above and beyond all other natural things that are strictly "physical". Basically I am saying, we must keep in mind the incredible difference and distinction between mental and physical versus physical and other physical events. If we don't understand how incredibly different they are, the problem at hand is not as apparent.

In a discussion of theory of mind, consideration of neuroscience would be going on a tangent? — wonderer1

Not what I was saying. Rather if information processing is strictly a science or something else applied to science...

Do you see yourself as particularly well qualified to judge what is science? — wonderer1

You are getting mighty close to arguing from a place of bad faith. But please do continue...poison well commence I guess.

Why do you want to talk about what is going on in a Chinese Room rather than what goes on in brains? I thought I had already explained that the Chinese Room argument is an argument against computationalism, and not particularly relevant.

I'm getting the impression that you are wanting to beat on a straw man, rather than have an enlightening discussion of the topic. Say it ain't so. — wonderer1

Ok, either you can make an argument or you will continue with the bad faith rhetoric. If so, prepare for me to ignore you. Clearly I don't ignore 99% of posts that are out of good faith if you look at my posts. Meaning, we can disagree but not poison wells whilst we do so..

But to "good faith argue" your "bad faith arguing".. I'll answer your questions, "in good faith" (to demonstrate disagreement without being disagreeable):

Why do you want to talk about what is going on in a Chinese Room rather than what goes on in brains? I thought I had already explained that the Chinese Room argument is an argument against computationalism, and not particularly relevant. — wonderer1

If you don't like the Chinese Room argument because it seems too narrow, then call my version, the "Danish Room Argument". That is to say, my point that I wanted to take away was that processing can miss the "what-it's-like" aspect of consciousness whilst still being valid for processing inputs and outputs, whether that be computationalist models, connectionis models, both, none of them or all of them. I don't think it is model-dependent in the Danish Room argument.

People have to stop with the "does a tree make a sound" line as it doesn't mean what they think it does. — Darkneos

I'm using it by way of "What I am saying sounds like this trope..." which it sort of does. But my focus was not on that particular idea, so you can move beyond that and ignore it if you want.

It's like the old SAT questions - chemistry is to biology as neurology is to [X]. Correct answer is C - psychology. — T Clark

Before I answer, I'm just going to point out, since the SAT isn't interested in metaphysical analysis, the superficial connection of the analogy was good enough to include that question. However, if it said something like, "Neural networks is to neuroscience as the color red is to psychology", I think that would be more apt. It is precisely that jump from "neural networks, et al." to the color red, that is a difference in kind, not degree.

I do recognize the difference in kind between neurological processes and mental experiences. I just don't think it matters. I don't think neurological processes are the same as conscious experience. I think neurological processes express themselves as conscious experiences in the same sense chemical processes express themselves as biological processes. — T Clark

So I'm going to push back on this "mental states 'emerging' from neurological states is the same as biology 'emerging' out of chemistry" in 3 distinct but related ways:

1) Questioning strong emergence in biology from chemistry. I think in principle, even if the level of mechanisms are different, there is at essence, a reducibility by way of organic chemistry from biological formations to chemical ones. This cannot be said of mental states to its physical components. No matter how hard I try, the "sensation of red" or the "perception of an object" or a "sound" does not seem reducible to the realm of neurological activities (that is to say, things like networks, potentiations, neurochemistry, genetics, and the like) the way that organic molecules, and biological systems, reduce to chemical systems.

2) Point of view. That is to say, emergence itself has in the background, the fact that there is already an observer of the "emerging". This does get into ideas of "does a tree make a sound if there is no observer", but there is a reason that trope is so well-known. We always take for granted that we have a certain point of view already whereby events are integrated and known.

3) Taking seriously the difference in kind. As it says, that mental events are such a different type of phenomenon, that it would be an abuse of the concept to equate it with the physical correlates without explanation other than "other things in nature work thusly". But other things in nature don't confer qualities itself! They are the predicates with which the mental events interpret the very world! That is quite a different and unique thing.

Agree. I listened to a Q&A with Bernardo Kastrup where he says one of the common objections to his 'analytic idealism' is actually based on the fact that the questioner can't see the point of the 'hard problem of consciousness' argument. They can't grasp why a precise objective description cannot but omit the ontic dimension of felt experience. There are quite a few worthy contributors to this forum who are dismissive of the argument on those grounds. — Quixodian

Yes, and very close to what I am getting at in the OP. People tend to take the mental "for granted", and thus people mistakenly hold an implicit (hidden) dualism, not in their stated view, but in how they use language surrounding the mental and physical events. They might not even realize they are doing it. Neurons networking becomes some mental event, and it's already committed a category error.

I know you said you didn’t want to digress, but consider the idea that physics is concerned with objects the behavior of which can be minutely described in objective terms. That is the sense in which physics (and so, physicalism) are considered paradigmatic for science generally. But the social sciences are not concerned with objects, but the behaviors of subjects which introduces a dimension that defies physical reductionism. — Quixodian

Agreed. Any further would be going into ideas like, "Is using quantitative methods on human behavior already assuming the stance it wants to present?" and on and on.

An important aspect of neuroscience is developing scientific understanding of the information processing that occurs in brains. Neuroscience involves knowledge of other relevant sciences such as physics, chemistry, biology, and psychology. Yes, technology plays a huge role in humanity's ability to make progress in understanding the information processing which occurs in brains, but that is fairly tangential to the question of what is being learned in neuroscience. — wonderer1

I'd have some quibbles as what is "science" but it would be going on a tangent. Is social science a "science" just because it uses data? Perhaps. But is there some aspects that make it different than say physics? Is engineering "science proper" or more of an applied aspect to the research done in "science proper"? Is mathematics and computational theory a science or is it more that it is its own thing that can be then applied to science? Yes neural networks can be studied, but I don't want to get in the weeds of how to parse out the term "science" (perhaps you can open another thread on that if you want to discuss it further).

Rather, I want to focus on the idea of the difference between what is going on in the Chinese Room experiment and an actual experiencer or interpreter of events that integrates meaning from the computation. Thus, the term we would be parsing would be "meaning" and what that means. What does it mean to truly have a "point of view" versus computing. What is it to have behavior/process only rather than a "what it's like-ness" to it?

I recognize the distinction between mental and physical events and processes in the same sense that I recognize the distinction between chemical and biological events and processes. The fact that you don't is an indicator of how unlikely we are to come to agreement. — T Clark

Definitely in disagreement. It's more that I don't understand where you are coming from because it seems incredulous to me that you don't recognize the difference in kind and not just degree between the sensation of red, or seeing an apple, versus the physiological correlates such as electromagnetic frequencies, optic anatomy, neural anatomy, and the like. We can say that consciousness is natural but it is yet to be determined the nature of experiential-ness and how it is identified with or arises from the physical aspects that correlate with it.

The evidence that there is a hard problem of consciousness is that it consists of mental processes which can't be studied by science because of... the hard problem of consciousness. — T Clark

You seem to be misconstruing something. Issues of correlation between mental processes and physical processes can be studied empirically and are studied, for example.

The hard problem is well, harder, because it’s explaining the nature of mental events as opposed to physical events. This makes it a more complex issue.

But in your case, the first step is recognizing the distinction, even if for semantic or historical reason, if not substantial ones of ontology.

We never see even familiar objects exhaustively. — plaque flag

This reminds me of Harman's "vicarious causation" and the "hiddeness/withdrawal" of objects. See here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_ontology#:~:text=Object%2Doriented%20ontology%20is%20often,of%20this%20correlation%20is%20unknowable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_ontology#Metaphysics_of_Graham_Harman

I don't like labels much either. The real stuff is in the back and forth. Meaning is intensely cumulative and contextual. — plaque flag

:up:

I was t saying that for rhetoric. You were pretty haughty sounding there. Information processing is not necessarily scientific, though it is technical.

Do you see your question as a purely rhetorical question? Or do you want to learn about the answers? To develop some understanding of how far beyond square one (some of) humanity is? — wonderer1

Oh come now, get off the pedestal. I was just pointing out problems with the move to information processing which I know is a popular approach.

However, I only presented information processing as a criteria for ruling out the many physical processes which aren't the sort of physical processes suitable for resulting in mental events. Narrowing things down further is not a problem, depending on how specific we want to get in various ways. — wonderer1

I think his argument stands for any processing really. I don't see the functional difference, because the POV is always out of reach. I see it as a computer monitor. The monitor is outputting, but so what? You need an observer already in the equation for that to have any meaning. There is no there there. There is no point of view, otherwise. There is no view even.

I think the better path is how the world appears. For this is the rat looking at the cheese and not some internal image of the cheese. The problem with subjective experiences is that it slides toward looking only at the image of the cheese. Then one is tempted to say the image of the cheese is made of a special 'nonphysical' stuff. As if there's no other option. — plaque flag

One reason I hate these debates of direct and indirect realism is this notion of "mental representation" and what that really means. It's very vague and becomes a weird sticking point. We are sensing an actual object that is interacting with the organism, yes. So in the sense that I think we are actually perceiving an object and not some intermediary, call me a direct realist then.. However, do brains process the inputs in a way that was shaped by the environment? Yes, so perhaps that is indirect realist. I really don't like the labels either way and think they are not very useful, or were part of a historical context that perhaps doesn't pertain to every argument about philosophy of mind.

I do not at all contest that there are all kinds of causal relationships that can be examined between eyes and objects and brains. No one is denying the biological complexity of seeing. But when I talk about the Eiffel tower, I'm talking about the fucking Eiffel tower and not my idea of it. Language is deeply ego-transcending and social. We intend the worldly object. Even my toothache is a worldly object, despite my special access to it. I can use it to explain being rude. Its cessation might be explained by Novocain.

What you ignored in my first post was the absolute centrality of giving and asking for reasons -- the philosophical situation itself. This is prior to any ontological thesis. We reason about and intend worldly objects. I talk about the rose, our worldly rose. It's not completely insane or absurd to invent a private rose for everyone, but it is insane or absurd to get rid of the worldly rose.

We can just as well talk about brains. Presumably you like indirect realism because the brain is conceived as a mediation machine. But then the brain is an illusion. The brain-in-itself (the one that does the work) is now a wild hypothesis.

It's much easier to believe that we see the familiar brain directly, if never completely and perfectly and exhaustively. Objects have depth and complexity. They are seen from different perspectives, understood with more or less sophistication.

We can be wrong about them. But this does not force indirect dualism on us. A daydream, for instance, doesn't need its own level or plane of reality. We can understand consciousness as the being of the world for this or that subject, instead of its own kind of being. — plaque flag

Well it's all what we mean by mental representation isn't it? Why does a human see certain colors and other animals do not? Are we seeing reality more clearly or simply represent it differently?

Consider this possibility: Consciousness is just the being of the world for various embodied subjects. We don't live in private dreams. Your toothache is part of my reality. It doesn't matter that I access it differently. I can reason about it with you. It lives as concept in the logical space we share. — plaque flag

You'd have to flesh that out...Otherwise it's words coherently put together that don't mean much for me.

Maybe it's dark or I'm sleepy. But my being mistaken need not be explained in terms of some ghostly stuff about which I cannot be mistaken. [Indirect realists tend to misunderstand direct realism, loaded as they are with certain assumptions, used to as they are to incorrigible images.] — plaque flag

I come at it from an evolutionary standpoint. Humans perceive the object because our primate ancestors needed to perceive it that way. Rather, unlike DR, we don't see the apple "as it is in reality" beyond our evolutionary apparatus. How can it be otherwise? Why does a bat and a human have different perceptions of the same object? No one is arguing that there is an object, and that it might have its own properties even, but that the epistemological framework is a "window into the reality" of the object? That seems a bit too far, and hence why it is often called "naive realism".

fails by essentially recreating the Cartesian Homunculus. It's like asking someone to "find the neuron in the brain that speaks English." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Isn't that the point? It is supposed to fail in recreating it. That is to say, the homunculus in this case is all appearance only (to us who do have consciousness), and not actually "there".

But the Chinese Room is not really relevant for that set of problems since we could take the Room apart to see how it works very easily, all you'd need is something to knock the door in. The same hasn't been true for us. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think the main takeaway in the context of "information processing" is that information processing itself doesn't necessitate consciousness. A monitor's outputs means something or is about something (intentional stance) because there is already an observer in the equation, not because the monitor is outputting.

IMO, part of the gordian knot of the Hard Problem is that we have developed a 2,000 year habit of thinking in terms of "objects and substances," instead of patterns. Information theory seems like a prime example where we should be taking the process view, and yet the legacy of Platonism in mathematics seems to keep dragging it back. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes I understand the move to describe it as information processing, but does that really solve anything different for the hard problem? Searle's Chinese Room Argument provides the problem with this sort of "pat" answer. As you walk away self-assured, this beckons back out to you that you haven't solved anything. Where is the "there" in the processing in terms of mental outputs? There is a point of view somewhere, but it's not necessarily simply "processing". — schopenhauer1

As often is the case, you confuse your refusal to engage in discussion with making a coherent argument. — T Clark

It's how you define mental versus process. You can't just say mental is a process. That is the point. That is what is to be explained.

1) My thought of red is a subjective, internal, felt, experience.

2) A wavelength of a certain frequency hitting the rods and cones hitting the optic nerve and transmitted to various cortical and subcortical networks is the physical correlated property.

The example of chemistry and biology are examples of 2 to 2. This is 2 to 1. If you don't see there is a distinction there, then you are playing word games or being purposefully ignorant, which I am not interested in.

the relationship between chemistry and life is analogous to the relationship between neurology and mind. — T Clark

It is superficially so, but not actually, no.

Some physical processes are information processing apt, while most physical processes aren't information processing apt. If what we refer to as mental processes can only supervene on information processing apt physical processes, then we are some distance from square one. — wonderer1

Yes I understand the move to describe it as information processing, but does that really solve anything different for the hard problem? Searle's Chinese Room Argument provides the problem with this sort of "pat" answer. As you walk away self-assured, this beckons back out to you that you haven't solved anything. Where is the "there" in the processing in terms of mental outputs? There is a point of view somewhere, but it's not necessarily simply "processing".

I actually agree with this. Materialists often propose a brain/body dualism that is just as fraught as mind/body dualism, and for the same reasons. — NOS4A2

It's like one is made apparent and the other is assumed (but not acknowledged). It's interesting. Like we know mental has to come out of the equation somehow. We know we observe physical objects and processes. And language can often confuse the two as it weaves in and out of scientific and psychological accounts. Correlation becomes identity etc. but without any explanation of how. And thus the hidden dualism.

I was making an analogy. Higher levels of organization, e.g. mental processes and life processes, are a mixture of higher level processes and processes from lower levels of organization, e.g. chemical processes and neurological processes. That's the way hierarchies and emergence work. — T Clark

Just saying, "that's the way hierarchies and emergence work" doesn't explain how mental comes from physical processes.

I think most materialist/physicalist accounts are that of a form of materialistic monism, or physicalism, that rejects dualism altogether. The claims is that there is only one kind of thing - and that is the physical.

This claim might be right or wrong, but I don't think it is a claim of hidden dualism.

I am unconvinced by this clam as it appears to me that the mental is categorically different to the physical, even if we are able to perfectly map the mental to the physical (individual neurons firing). — PhilosophyRunner

Right, it rejects dualism, but that is precisely why these category errors can trip them up if they are not careful. If you switch (even inadvertently) from physical to mental without explaining how, as if both are the same thing, you have asserted the thing being explained in the explanation.

The resolution to this "hidden dualism" is to recognize that the brain and its functions are also representations and, thusly, the brain-in-itself is not what one ever studies in a lab. E.g., neurons firing is an extrinsic representation (within our perceptions) of whatever the brain-in-itself is doing. — Bob Ross

Yes, this is indeed the proto-panexperientialist view. The map isn't the territory. But that doesn't say much either towards a solution, it just restates the problem. This doesn't then immediately point to anything because there is no explanation why other territories don't seem to have the same properties as this nervous system one.

I personally found it clarifying to think of consciousness in terms of the being of the world grasped from a certain perspective. Direct realism. We all peep at the one and only world. The rest is round squares.

Too many purveyors of the hard problem take indirect realism for granted. They also take a sort of private language thesis for granted, missing that critical rationality is deeply dependent on the publicity or trans-egoic validity of its concepts.

Yet there 'is' sensation and feeling. Right ? Yes? Or at least roses are red and trumpets are blaring. — plaque flag

Direct realism assumes the human animal has a god-like view of the universe. As if we are seeing it for "what it is in reality". There is no mediating factors (contra something like Kant). That seems pretty fantastical that we just happened to have this view. As a squirrel, a fish, a bat, a rat, and a bee all have their own view, and yet, do they have direct access to the world too? If it is different, then certainly there is something that mediates between directly observing the object, and processing it (i.e. indirect realism). Surely something is causing differences upon the objects perceived between species.

Philosophers always already assume the philosophical situation itself, often without noticing it and appreciating the significance of this assumption. — plaque flag

Yep. Hence the hidden dualism problem that does exactly this.

I appeal to toothaches and earthquakes in the one and only inferential-semantic nexus available. All intelligible entities get their intelligibility from this single 'planar' nexus.

The 'logical sin' is bad philosophy is, as Hegel saw, almost always blind or unwitting abstraction. Basically we mistake a reductive map for the whole. We lose ourselves in a usefully simplifying fiction (map) of our situation.

The scientist and philosopher both often forget / ignore the mostly 'transparent' fact of their own project as participants in a discursive normative social enterprise. They think they can paint a picture of reality that doesn't include the painter. In many situations, it's best to not include the painter. But the ontologist can't do that. — plaque flag

But we are back at square one. Some processes are not mental. Why? Or if they are, how do you get past the incredulity of saying that rocks and air molecules, or even a tree has "subjectivity" or "consciousness", or "experience"?

Whitehead had a nifty theory that "occasions of experience" (his atoms) were communities that were either equally distributed (like a rock), or hierarchical (like an animal system). The hierarchical communities are the experiential ones.

I am not sure how much that answers the question either as it begs other questions.

Sorry - what part don’t you agree with? If it’s that you can’t map thought content with neural data, I would have thought that was a clear implication of the rest of the argument. — Quixodian

That thoughts can't be identified with brain processes. It is at least correlated with that physical phenomenon, so it's not like you can completely disconnect it.

How is that different from ADP chemically reacting (chemical process) to create ATP, which releases energy (chemical process) to power the reactions (chemical processes) that create cellular components (life processes) and operate cellular systems (life processes) — T Clark

They're both biological processes, for one. I'm not sure what you would like me to get from that. Do you see a distinction between something that is mental versus a physical process? What you did was just go from process to process and not process to X (mental). This could be making the exact mistake I am describing. That is to say, mental events and processes/behaviors are used interchangeably when they shouldn't be.

so thoughts and the like cannot possibly be identified with brain processes. — Ed Feser

I'd agree with everything except the last part. That is yet to be proven. It is certainly correlated (to some degree), if not "identified with" (I take that to mean is one and the same as).

Maybe; but so what? It's not an inherent defect or entailment of "materialist conceptions". — 180 Proof

I stated the so what in the OP.

Property dualism (i.e. dual-aspect monism), for instance, is not "hidden” — 180 Proof

But it’s more about how it’s being used more than any particular philosophy. Any stance on philosophy of mind can make these category errors, though it’s particularly pervasive in materialist conceptions.

How you might connect this to Zapffe is to reflect on a 'scientism' personality whose existential strategy is the evasion of the embarrassing existential strategies as literature for sissies the tender-minded unworthy of contemplating steel-gray subject-independent Being in laboratories. — plaque flag

Yes I gathered what you were saying and hence why I was saying that human condition comes first, then investigation and post-facto explanation. There could be that moment of "Why am I doing any of this?" when stuck in traffic on your way to the laboratory.

A 'spiritual' being is a cultural or sublimated being. — plaque flag

That does seem to be true. We give reasons for why we do something. What is that, but a story or narrative? We are the creature that has reasons not just causes.

Also, yes, creating a heroic journey or project is one way to redirect (a reason) for why we do anything.

I followed that thread. My own view is that we aren't very free, and I think we 'prove' that we all know that in the way we treat others. No one expects all the homeless drug addicts to suddenly go clean tomorrow morning. Freedom is what a marketing major calls responsibility (being punished or praised for what your body does.) Freedom as autonomy is also an aspiration. I want to be like God, says Sartre, and I think he's right. — plaque flag

I think this is a bit besides the point. The debate was if there are evolutionarily created modules in the brain/human psychology for specific human behavioral features (i.e. one of the main ideas in Evolutionary Psychology). The fact that our brain mechanisms have reward and feedback mechanisms isn't in debate. The ability to be addicted, the capacity for "abnormal" psychological features (OCD, severe depression, eating disorders, PTSD, anxiety, etc.) work on inbuilt features that exist already in much of mammalian brain architecture.

Edit: Though, with the ability for self-awareness/language, this is even more extreme. Think of an OCD sufferer. They do something repeatedly, knowing it's irrational, but the anxiety / delusion of the result of not doing it is too much so they do it anyways (almost like an addict). Although compulsive behavior has been reported in other animals, because of the lack of self-awareness, this "neurotic" aspect of self-awareness is not an issue for them.

I like this. I looked up Peter Zapffe. His ideas are interesting. I'll take a look. — T Clark

He seems to mostly get it right with this:

Zapffe's view is that humans are born with an overdeveloped skill (understanding, self-knowledge) which does not fit into nature's design. The human craving for justification on matters such as life and death cannot be satisfied, hence humanity has a need that nature cannot satisfy. The tragedy, following this theory, is that humans spend all their time trying not to be human. The human being, therefore, is a paradox.

In "The Last Messiah", Zapffe described four principal defense mechanisms that humankind uses to avoid facing this paradox:

-Isolation is "a fully arbitrary dismissal from consciousness of all disturbing and destructive thought and feeling".[5]

-Anchoring is the "fixation of points within, or construction of walls around, the liquid fray of consciousness".[5] The anchoring mechanism provides individuals with a value or an ideal to consistently focus their attention on. Zapffe also applied the anchoring principle to society and stated that "God, the Church, the State, morality, fate, the laws of life, the people, the future"[5] are all examples of collective primary anchoring firmaments.

-Distraction is when "one limits attention to the critical bounds by constantly enthralling it with impressions".[5] Distraction focuses all of one's energy on a task or idea to prevent the mind from turning in on itself.

-Sublimation is the refocusing of energy away from negative outlets, toward positive ones. The individuals distance themselves and look at their existence from an aesthetic point of view (e.g., writers, poets, painters). Zapffe himself pointed out that his produced works were the product of sublimation. — Wiki

I don't think you can sweep science in its wider sense aside, because I have to figure out if it's true that we have Zapffean programming.

I can also take honesty (if only self-honesty in a world that punishes truthtellers) to be a fundamental virtue, something like my inflexible point of honor. I may bravely face the Zapffean Void as someone who at least tried not to lie so much to himself. — plaque flag

You won't find it under a microscope. You can infer it from what people's motives are perhaps. I had a thread on evolutionary psychology where it is debatable how much of human psychology is shaped by biological natural selection (rather than cultural learning): https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14488/evolutionary-psychology-what-are-peoples-views-on-it/p1

The human condition is our self-awareness. We must deal with our Zapffean programming. Science is a pursuit. The human condition is our very being. The human condition is primary to scientific artifices.

There is in principle no difficulty answering Srap Tasmaner's argument in relation to 'procreative genes'. If cultural transmission made them only mildly advantageous, they could go the same way as the vitamin C enzyme.

I do not think this has happened. I do not think cultural transmission is reliable or powerful enough to explain what we see. For example, cultures in different societies and periods vary widely in their attitude towards homosexuality, but the percentages of people with various sexual orientations do not. If sexual orientation is purely determined by culture, why do homosexuals continue to exist in very homophobic cultures? Why don't societies occasionally become 'very gay', with a large percentage of exclusive homosexuals? — GrahamJ

This is very much what I was trying to argue, that genes that drove productive behavior would be very unlikely to get replaced by culture alone, and that natural selection would unquestionably have favored such genes in our ancestors. The evidence for their existence is only the ubiquity of reproduce behavior, I guess, since I just don't know if there's research. — Srap Tasmaner

So lots of things here. First off, cool post as you do explicate other genetic mechanisms for species' change besides natural selection and it's good to be reminded of those.

Second, what you say there about attitudes towards sexual orientation and culture is a bit of a misrepresentation of what I am saying. I am have not really made any position as to why homosexuality (or any other orientation) exists. For the sake of this argument, I am leaving that as it simply differs with the individual. You can perhaps pinpoint why some children don't like chocolate but their parents do, and one could imagine this might be the same thing. But is it fully genetic? I don't know. But either way, that would be besides the point of my argument, though I can see how that is being used as a sort of "control" or analogy.

Rather, I am saying that other-oriented sexuality (i.e. wanting to be sexual with a partner(s), who presumably one finds attractive) is largely cultural. Think about all the steps from point a to point z.

1) The other person's physical appearance (and perhaps their personality traits) has to arouse, excite, or incentivize you in some way.
How can we isolate this to be purely innate or genetic and not something that the culture instills over and over and thus is so foundational that it seems innate? No one has to explicitly teach you anything for early connections to be made by "This stimulus should bring on this response".

2) People can get off even without being "attracted to anything". With the right stimulation, presumably, organs can still produce the same results of pleasurable sensations.
How do we know the connection from "finding someone attractive" and then "the desire to get off to/with that person because they are attractive" is not itself a culturally/conceptually created phenomenon?

It's impossible to tell to any real degree without isolating people in their own island without any awareness of sexuality and see how it plays out. Of course, there's the whole chicken or the egg thing. Obviously people who got to the island were reproduced, so.. that would have to be indeed an extreme experiment to cut all ties with what came before it.

This is to say that, all of this is very complex sociological interplay going on. Evolutionary Psychology's (with uppercase EP) premise is that, not just global brain mechanisms (generalized features like language, long term potentiation, and such) are evolutionarily selected, but specific conceptualized behaviors. So for example, there are EP theories on leadership, mating strategies, capacity for morality, etc. etc. But this link has to be proven to be innate and not cultural. Does simply doing "cross-cultural" studies "prove" any of that? I am not so sure. Culture itself, can have evolutionary-like qualities akin to natural selection, but that isn't natural selection. Rather, "cultural tropes" can stabilize such that it makes sense to act in such-and-such way. For example, women generally menstruate monthly if left without other factors like birth control, etc.. Might this affect how men and women act in a cross-cultural fashion? Perhaps, but even this reality still creates cultural strategies around it (perhaps men can journey longer because of this or end up becoming praised for their "resources" they bring back). But the biology is not selecting the behavior directly through some selective genetic mechanism, but rather the culture is compensating for the bio-physical realities of their situation.