Yes, you are correct I did not know about the coding parameters. But do I care,;NO. — Becky

I don't care either, but if you don't quote, it potentially means your post is overlooked as quoting will allow the other person to see that someone has responded to them. There will be a small notification that appears when someone is quoted. You may not care if someone sees your response, and again, doesn't matter to me what functions you use or not, just trying to be helpful.

Physics, and chemistry are the base of our existence. If you don’t understand that you understand nothing — Becky

This is an interesting philosophical claim. Physics and chemistry are sciences that explain observations. That is not the "thing-itself". Rather it is an epistemological methodology for explanation. What the nature of existence is, is a metaphysical claim, that is not the realm of science itself. What you mean to say, I think, is that you take a physicalist metaphysical position of the world. However, a physicalist metaphysical position entails no assessment or evaluation for how humans can respond to the world. That is why it is one reason why it is a category error. You have not provided the steps to justify why a physicalist position entails anything regarding how humans experience the world.

“Suffering to be born” Again disagree with that statement. We are chemical beings Your statement that we are suffering to be born makes it religious. Math and physics are true religion is a fairytale — Becky

First off, do you know how to use the quoting function? You can click and drag over the words and then let go. You will see a "quote" button. Click that, and you have quoted someone's post.

Anyways, you are making a category error. The fact that math, physics, and chemistry describes the physical processes that make our experiential states, that is a non-sequitor as to the human experiences life itself qua human experience.

God! You guys are so wordy! Does that make you better? Or more knowledgeable? You think I’m a pessimist because I can’t wait to die? I dispute that Assumption. Anybody that knows me personally state I am one of the happiest people they have ever met. — Becky

You can be a happy-go-lucky pessimist. Pessimism is not depression or a mood state. Rather, Philosophical Pessimism, is generally a negative assessment about the structures of existence and human nature. Mainly, it is asking: "Is there an inherent and necessary suffering to being born"?

I was not assuming anything about you, just providing a response to your question.

Personally, I can’t wait. To be rid of this physical being. To be energy. Are we still trapped by time? — Becky

A sunny day, a sunset, beautiful landscape, novel experiences (seeing a new place, trying a new thing), seeing old friends, sharing life experiences with others, aesthetic or sublime states from art and nature, music, humor, laughing, flow states, creative endeavors (projects, writing, designing, music and art creation), engaging discussions, engaging dramas, tragedies, comedies, and stories, new understanding of something, seeing something in a different way, relationships, friendships, accomplishment, physical pleasures such as moderate drinking, exercise high, moderate eating of good food. This is more-or-less what you will see when people say why we should live.

So it all starts from being born in the first place. Whether the parent knows it or not, they are making a political and philosophical decision when having a new person. They believe life is good enough to make a decision for someone else to be born into. They like their way of life, and want to perpetuate that to others. Now, this doesn't include unintended pregnancies and birth (though it may because abortion is available but other ethical ideas might make this murky for certain people). However, most people see birth as something that is good. However, is it?

My main question is: Is a world not even close to a utopia worth being born into?

A utopia is achievable. No, not in this universe, true. It is conceivable but not achievable. This is a world where we must cope, accept what is not ideal, change expectations, adapt, overcome, survive, maintain, and find entertainment. It's a world where we are constantly lacking, and not totally satisfied for long.

If we distill it down to a basic principle, we can see that involves a basic lacking principle. The philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer called this principle "Will". Whatever you call it, the principle is the same. It manifests in survival, maintenance, and seeking entertainment. That is where all desires spring from. There is also the day-to-day absurdities of repetition. The world turns, over and over. We eat, crap, sleep, repeat. The absurdity of maintaining and entertaining. There are the whole myriad of uncountable contingent harms of circumstance. These are harms that happen on a daily basis: frustrations, physical harm, humiliation, shame, annoyances, conflict with other people, social pressures, disappointments, uncomfortable environments, etc. etc.

In an non-utopian world, so-called therapies include things like "radical acceptance", "positive psychology", "no pain, no gain" mentality, changing expectations, comparing your own situation to worse situations, and a whole lot more. The main point with these therapies is that it is your fault that you perceive any negative thing. It never wants you to think that the perhaps the world itself is inherently of a negative position, and that of all the possible worlds, this one is on the lower mediocre one at best (if that can even be qualified). If we were to see the structural flaws, we would have more despair, less enthusiasm for birth, and a general turning away from this world. The powers-that-be would not want this.

Perhaps with this conclusion of a lower mediocre world, we can take the view of Philosophical Pessimism. That is to say, the world isn't that great (despite romantic odes of fervor and praise trying to convince otherwise), and that we should not put more people into it. We can form pessimist communities where we can all recognize this reality for what it is, and not try to pollannaize it, overlook it, ignore it, etc. We can look at it dead on and give the appropriate assessment of it. These communities can bring people together in this understanding.

Thank you for your post. Always good to read about such concepts.

Mine was much simpler I'm afraid. I don't know what he meant but by common themes of recent threads (Judas was a hero) I have an idea. Inaccuracy of modern religion. Something I believe is very possible. Again my statement is much more simple. Most humans are idiots. So we shouldn't be punished for believing in "the wrong God" unless the doctrine held specifically annotated the Creator as separate from the one focused on.

Even the state doesn't execute the mentally deficient. Therefore, an all knowing God wouldn't either. — Outlander

I get the sentiment. I find it more interesting that religion fascinates human lives so much in so many quarters. It's like a fantasy that people are permitted to indulge in because its origins are from long ago.

I'm kind of fascinated with the Roman and Greek gods, and how people worshiped them. The Hebrew God, Yahweh offered commandments to follow for his people (I'm not saying this was actually offered, but according to its own mythology). What did the pagan gods of Zeus, Hera, Apollo, Athena, Jupiter, Vesta, Venus, etc. offer their adherents? Not a set of laws. What was the Greek worshipper and believer getting and bestowing on these gods? The Israelites were to obtain prosperity and keep their land if they did their part. The Israelites had a code of how to live. What did the Greco-Roman adherents have from following Jupiter? I'm guessing the lack of substance made it ripe for people like Paul to convert them to a more unifying belief system. I don't know though.

There were Greco-Roman myths, and then there were Greco-Roman philosophies to explain the myths or de-legitimize them. There were ceremonies, holidays, pilgrimages, temples, priests, and oracles. But I don't know how much coherence and semblence these had. How did this all "hang together" really? It seemed a hodgepodge of civic and personal petitioning that were kind of a little of this and that. Judah-ism's biblical narrative and covanental nature, provided a sweeping narrative where everything from creation to ethics to the End of Times was all explained in a systematic way. This same systematic grouping of mysteries of creation, end of times, and how to live one's life didn't seem to be as all-encompasing in the Greco-Roman pagan world. Thus, mystery cults sort of filled this gap. So did things like Neoplatonism and Gnosticism which were also trying to be systematic, based largely on Plato's ideas of Forms and archetypes being emanated. Finally, there was Paul who thought of his own mystery-cult which became Orthodox (Catholic/Greek Orthodox/Protestant) Christianity.

But again, I'd like to know what it was like to live in the hodgepodge of non-systematic religions such as non-mystery cultic Greco-Roman religion. I want to know the average "regular Joe" worshiper in a small town or village in the Roman world. Did religion really matter to them, or was it kind of a sort of tradition that they just followed, that they really didn't think much about? I mean how compelling is Jupiter, Apollo, etc. as real rulers of sorts in some cosmic way? It seems like a joke, as if the stories were always myths and never really believed by the adherents.

Agree however as a mortal and how foolish and even regrettable our formation was we really can't be expected to know anything other than 'God' meaning the Creator or any name knowingly referencing any other by intent. We just were simply not given the capacity to know or understand rather differentiate these sort of things. — Outlander

I don't get it. Is this what you think @Gnostic Christian Bishop is trying to say? I kind of consider myself a secular gnostic, so I have sympathies, but not with the idea that there's really an Unknown God who begets the Barbelo who then begets emanations of all sorts which begets Sophia which begets Ialdaboath, which begets helpers and then men, but who then are given the spirit of Barbelo through Sophia in a sort of trick and whereby the descendants of Seth are then given the sparks of real higher knowledge within them from the higher beings. That seems a bit far-fetched.

Really, Gnosticism seems to be what happens when Hellenists with heavily Egyptian synthesis, comes in contact with Jewish and early Jewish Christian sects. They were perplexed by certain things about Yawheh as depicted in the Hebrew Scriptures so tried to correct this by saying there was a higher god above this one, heavily relying on Plato's Timaeus to create this mythology of a god who copies the realm of archetypes. Anyways, even if it is one of the world's first New Age philosophies (synthesizing Greek, Jewish, and Christian ideas), I do think it is interesting how they see the physical world as corrupt, full of suffering, etc. and were highly anti-procreation.

So I'm trying to understand the point of these posts. Is it to show the Gnostic idea that there is a "higher god" above the God of the Bible?

It must be Ialdaboath tricking them :wink:.

Indeed, but then I did say earlier that there is still no genuine solution to the hard problem, if indeed it even is a problem. The trouble is we seem unable to express a way of looking at the problem without falling into the Cartesian Theatre by default. I do think though that the solution will be more in that kind of idea of a "virtual space", a space enabled by something akin to computationalism. It can't be some kind of representationalism, if by that we mean a genuine "image" of the world. — Graeme M

Yes this solution too would be falling into the Cartesian Theater. what is "virtual space"? It is yet a hidden mind :D lurking in there. It is sometimes hard to distinguish behavior from mental states. For example, computers are processing information. Processing by itself is not mental states. However, you start to sympathize with the panpsychist view when you ask, "Why can't processing be mental states"? Thus processing itself becomes a sort of indicator of experiential phenomena perhaps. Of course, the kind of experience a simple process has versus brain processing might be completely different. If you start discriminating about which kinds of processing can constitute mental states, then you are simply back to the Cartesian Theater and hidden dualism problem.

I believe that the clearest solution to that is to choose to believe that experience is an operational space - a kind of schematic domain, perhaps even a logical domain. It isn't telling us what the world is like, it's telling us how our operational affordances are organised. — Graeme M

But this "space" and its "telling us what the world is like" is the thing itself to be explained. That is the hard problem- that it has a "telling us what the world is like" aspect at all. This aspect is what is so incorrigibly hard to account for metaphysically. It looks like you are unintentionally participating in the Cartesian Theater fallacy itself by positing this "space" and then referring back to its physical constituents.

Panpsychism from a materialist perspective is absurd, unless you consider an amputated thumb to be as human as the rest of the body. — Gregory

I think the panpsychists on this thread have gone out of their way to try to explain the nuances of their views often misrepresented by such statements as these. I'm honestly not quite getting what you're getting at with this post. It seems more than a bit odd. Perhaps @prothero wants to take a swing at the thumb comment? And what does "Be Him" mean? Are you agreeing in some way via Spinozan pantheism or Hegelian idealism that all things are experiential to some degree?

It’s just speech. You could scan the annals of medicine and find not a single person injured by words. If you don’t believe in free speech for everyone, you don’t believe in free speech. — NOS4A2

This is misrepresenting the argument. The President can say what he wants. The sentiment is that at what point does the person in power have a responsibility to the public with how he uses his speech? Perhaps we can agree that "social media" can be a free-form Wild West forum. However, the sentiment is, should a president be engaging in this manner? What responsibility does the person in office have to not spout whatever information comes to his head? And the other sentiment is, where is the outrage on the right? Yeah for this ONE time some newspapers that support him have said this was bad, but it is only now that they see the light? I call intellectual dishonesty here. These same right-wing pundits would not so much as let Obama wear a tan suit without screaming bloody murder and how unpatriotic he was. The right has shown its faux-moralism in spades during Trump's presidency. It's not like the faux-moralism wasn't apparent before this, but it is now so abundantly out in the open, it has nowhere to go. It has become a morally relativistic caricature of itself, the very morally relativistic caricature so often hurled at the left and dirty "liberals".

For a panpsychist experience is ubiquitous in nature (not consciousness like we humans possess, a special kind of experience or mind) but relations to other events, to the future and novelty (creativity) and to continuity with the past. — prothero

Process theory essentially comes down to the idea that durational events themselves are experiential and this is odd to most people. However, it is only as odd, or maybe even less odd than dualistic Cartesian Theater "experience foam" that just "arises" from "integration" events as a latecomer on the scene. Pick your poison.

I fear for and pity those who need their information to be curated. — NOS4A2

I think it's more the fact that it is the President of the United States saying these things. Such people with powerful public positions should be more responsible with their speech. Where are people like William Bennett on Trump? He was moralistic, stone-throwing crusader when he perceived Clinton had an affair as president. Yet, where is his ilk when Trump says and does the shameful, deceitful, outright stupid, uninformed, ignorant comments that he has been doing just about every day of his presidency? This is just tribalism at its worst :vomit:. Somehow decency and virtue only matters if liberals and Democrats are in office :roll:. Moral majority my ass.

Reflexive means self-referential. Reflexivity is what access consciousness is all about: having access to information about your own mental states, self-awareness in a functional, behavioral way. “What it’s like” is what phenomenal consciousness is about: what the subject first-person experience of being a certain kind of thing is. I’m saying consciousness as we ordinarily think of it is just what it’s like to be self-aware. The “what it’s like” part isn’t special to humans though; only the self-aware part is. — Pfhorrest

Got it. People just don't like the idea of "drops" or "occassions" of experience. To them, brains are either online or offline. No brain, no online. No certain parts of the brain, no online. This raises a whole bunch of other problems, but they rather those problems than experience being primal. The main interesting point of Whitehead was the idea of "corpuscular societies" vs. "compound individuals.

]In some instances, actual occasions will come together and give rise to a “regnant” or dominant society of occasions. The most obvious example of this is when the molecule-occasions and cell-occasions in a body produce, by means of a central nervous system, a mind or soul. This mind or soul prehends all the feeling and experience of the billions of other bodily occasions and coordinates and integrates them into higher and more complex forms of experience. The entire society that supports and includes a dominant member is, to use Hartshorne’s term, a compound individual.

Other times, however, a bodily society of occasions lacks a dominant member to organize and integrate the experiences of others. Rocks, trees, and other non-sentient objects are examples of these aggregate or corpuscular societies. In this case, the diverse experiences of the multitude of actual occasions conflict, compete, and are for the most part lost and cancel each other out. Whereas the society of occasions that comprises a compound individual is a monarchy, Whitehead describes corpuscular societies as “democracies.” This duality accounts for how, at the macroscopic phenomenal level, we experience a duality between the mental and physical despite the fundamentally and uniformly experiential nature of reality. Those things that seem to be purely physical are corpuscular societies of occasions, while those objects that seem to possess consciousness, intelligence, or subjectivity are compound individuals. — IEP, Process Philosophy

Similarly, Tononi has very similar ideas in his integrated information theory:

(f) Aggregates are not conscious
‘Take a sentence of a dozen words, and take twelve men and tell to each one word. Then stand the men in a row or jam them in a bunch, and let each think of his word as intently as he will; nowhere will there be a consciousness of the whole sentence’. This is how William James illustrated the combination problem of panpsychism [110]. Or take John Searle: ‘Consciousness cannot spread over the universe like a thin veneer of jam; there has to be a point where my consciousness ends and yours begins’ [117]. Indeed, if consciousness is everywhere, why should it not animate the United States of America? IIT deals squarely with this problem by stating that only maxima of integrated information exist. Consider two people talking: within each brain, there will be a major complex—a set of neurons that form a maximally irreducible cause–effect structure with definite borders and a high value of Φmax. Now let the two speak together. They will now form a system that is also irreducible (Φ > zero) due to their interactions. However, it is not maximally irreducible, since its value of integrated information will be much less than that of each of the two major complexes it contains. According to IIT, there should indeed be two separate experiences, but no superordinate conscious entity that is the union of the two. In other words, there is nothing-it-is-like-to-be two people, let alone the 300 plus million citizens making up the USA.13 Again, this point can be exemplified schematically by the system of figure 5a, right panel. While the five small complexes do interact, forming a larger integrated system, the larger system is not a complex: by the exclusion postulate, only the five smaller complexes exist, since they are local maxima of integrated information (Φmax = 0.19), while the larger system is not a complex (Φ = 0.03). Worse, a dumb thing with hardly any intrinsically distinguishable states, say a grain of sand for the sake of the argument, has no experience whatsoever. And heaping a large number of such zero-Φ systems on top of each other would not increase their Φ to a non-zero value: to be a sand dune does not feel like anything either—aggregates have no consciousness. — https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2014.0167

Since everything has some what-it’s-like on my account, it’s the being-a-reflexive-thing part that matters. — Pfhorrest

What do you mean by "what-it's-like" vs. "being-a-reflexive-thing"?

All of the interesting stuff that “consciousness” in its usual sense means is handled under the easy problem, as access consciousness. — Pfhorrest

That is one interpretation that I think is proposed by Ned Block. However, it may be that A-consciousness is intertwined with P-consciousness. I think it might be more fruitful to make a distinction between pure behavior vs. cognition. Neural networks are behaving, minds are cognizing.

In other words, something like panpsychism. — Pfhorrest

Interesting. Any scientific theories of that sort posit panpsychism as related to observer-dependent quantum theory?

Can you describe an act of introspection that is not accompanied by "sensations"? — Graeme M

You are misrepresenting my view. I said it may be necessary but not sufficient. In other words, I don't just imagine "green". I imagine a green object. Something might invoke a feeling like joy, that is not a qualia but an emotion or affective response of some sort. It is the fact that there is an internal-ness in general, whether that be colors, sounds, smells, whole objects, feelings, or even events associated with these things. The experience of understanding new information. Of understanding a piece of art. Of remembering a grocery list. These are more than mere qualia as far as my definition of it goes. I define qualia as sensations, not every internal experience you can have. Some other people might define it in a broader sense. Even if that was the case, that is playing semantics not philosophy per se. In other words, qualia can mean a billion things and it wouldn't change the nature of the hard question, nor its importance in philosophy of mind.

Science deals with the empirical, the quantitative, the measurable, the observable, the physical. Believing in science does not entail accepting the metaphysical view of mechanistic determinism or eliminative materialism. A scientist can be religious, can be a neutral monist or even a panpsychist. Doing science does not entail a strictly materialist worldview. Science tells us important things about the world but not everything. — prothero

True, but for all intents and purposes, science assumes certain premises such that matter/energy and space/time is what is being measured. Thus, the hard problem might be one that is one step out of the grasp being that it might be a more metaphysical problem as you are saying. It is likely that a non-physicalist scientific explanation would be almost a contradiction in how it is based. The closest we can get is maybe ideas of observer-based worlds which posits an observer in the equation as a must?

ur brains can and do compute a vast amount of information for which we have no felt analog. That is also what we assume computers do - undertake complex computations for which there is no felt analog, no inner experience. No qualia. Qualia are all there is, as far as the hard problem goes. — Graeme M

This is the difference between cognition and behavior. It is doubtful most computers are cognizant, but certainly they perform behaviors which might be called "processing". These presumably come with no internal states, however. The exact problem here is how processing is internal states.

Qualia are all there is, as far as the hard problem goes. — Graeme M

Again, imagination, introspection of any sort on any feelings, awareness of something, remembrance, future projections, etc. These are all introspective inner qualities that are more than just qualia. Imagine a friend right now. That is more than just qualia. You are actually reconstructing a whole set of things beyond simply colors, sound, feel, etc. Qualia are simply sensations. Unless you think all introspection is just sensations, then this is wrong. As I stated before, sensations may be a necessary part of the all introspection, but not sufficient to account for all of it.

My proposition is that, on this kind of definition, were mental states not experienced (were they not attended by qualia) they should not require an explanation. There'd be no hard problem and as a consequence no claims for panpsychism. — Graeme M

Even if you reduced the idea of inner experience to the term "qualia", then qualia would simply encompass all the phenomena I mentioned, and yes, this still would have to be accounted for. It is not like this minimizes the problem, it just encompasses everything under one term.

These are all still qualia. If humans were really P-Zombies and did not entertain qualia (but nonetheless acted just as though they did), would there be any need for panpsychism as an explanation? I'm puzzled by the general line here - if a person can do all the things I do but without qualia, then it seems we could explain these behaviours without recourse to any additional property beyond those uncovered by science so far. Where would panpsychism be required? — Graeme M

Qualia is brute sensation (e.g. seeing green, hearing noise, etc.). Although imagination, and memories probably rely on qualia, etc. they are not the same as qualia. My point was there are other internal states besides just qualia that one can have. And I don't understand why you would be deflating the issue. The very question regarding the Hard Question is to understand how/why internal states are equivalent to brain processes. Anything else is not the world we live in, but P-Zombie world. That is not ours though, so it is a big deal.

So, it still comes back to qualia though doesn't it? P-Zombies are used to make this distinction about qualia-laden systems, but presuming we actually could have a P-Zombie, would we be inclined to posit anything about the P-Zombie that needs to be explained by panpsychism that cannot already be explained by existing theory? — Graeme M

Try imagining something. Remember an event that happened. Feel sad. Feel joy. These are things that are mental states. P-Zombies presumably don't do that but somehow act as they do.

I wrote a couple things in the other thread that might help explain the problem better:

To be clear, most scientific views would not posit a dualism in the world. Everything is physically manifested in some way whether matter/energy and time/space. Thus positing a mind that is emergent from matter, though seemingly appropriate (as emergence is assumed in the physical sphere), would inappropriate as it posits a dualism at some point.

So a sophisticated panpsychist might point out that if a cognitive scientists were to say "At X time, in this part of the brain, there is an "integration" that is happening which causes the emergence of consciosness".. the part about "causing emergence" becomes its own explanatory gap that needs to be explain. What is this emergence of consciousness itself besides that of being correlated with the integration of brain states?

I think this is a misreading of the problem I am suggesting with physicalist answers of causes. So physical events presumably have physical answers, and thus all the answers about gas causing the car to go are legitimate as they are all in the same realm (physical). But here is something different.

You see, it is also how radically different you consider mental states. There is a radical break between matter in various processes and arrangements and observers/internal states/feeling/awareness. To say that one just "pops out" or "emerges" of the former would be to claim to be a dualism whereby a very different realm is occurring- that of experiencing (but only under certain circumstances). So what can you do with this? Well, what happens is you keep pushing the Cartesian Theater back until you realize it was homunculus all the way down.

Simple behaviors of neurono-chemical interactions and physical properties creating states of awareness just seems to beg the question. We already know experience exists. We already know it is associated with neural/biological systems. We don't know how neuro-biological systems themselves are the same as experience.There is a gap there. No gap is present for why gas causes the car to go. More explanations can add detail, but if you were to say gas pouring into a chamber and exploding, etc. IS some sort of feely, awareness thing really.. well that indeed would be an explanatory gap. Now a physical thing is causing this internal state of awareness- a radical different state altogether. T

That is the equivalent of what is being claimed of neuro-biological processes. You see.. physical, chemical, physical chemical physical chemical, more physical chemical physical chemical. WHAM!!! EXPERIENCE!!! Something is not right there.

And then HERE is where someone chimes in and say NO it's the INFORMATION that is experiential :roll:.

Basically what this is amounts to is that science must posit some kind of monistic physicalism (there should not be any "spooky" things "emerging" that is not physical itself). However, experience itself, though completely correlated with physical processes, itself cannot be explained as to how it is one and the same as the physical, other than being correlated with it. It becomes an epiphenomena of magical dualistic "foam" that is called an "illusion" that appears on the scene (which itself cannot be accounted for). This explanatory gap that is committed to "illusion" status or have its premises assumed in the consequent and becomes something of a thorny issue. The only thing the scientist can do, is keep solving the easy problems.

Much of the problem again, comes from the Cartesian Theater problem. At some point, the homunculus comes in the picture.. Some sort of "integration" event where enough physical events bring about mental events. But this is the exact question that is being asked, and thus it becomes begging the question to simply posit "integration" happens and thus consciousness.

One of the reasons why the average American worker (blue collar, white collar, high school drop out or Phd) hasn't made more progress towards their own liberation is that they have persisted in thinking we are all free and equal, and that the only reason the poor stay poor is that they are too god damned lazy to make it, and the reason people got ahead was because they were smart and very hard working, and they did it all by themselves. — Bitter Crank

Again, exactly the conservative argument.

The idea that technically everyone is equal and free to pursue whatever dreams they wish to pursue runs into the implacable brick wall of reality. A few people might get over the brick wall, but most (the vast majority) do not. — Bitter Crank

But that's the exact argument that will be used by conservatives.

It is a bitter realization to come to understand that our system operates pretty much for the benefit of the rich, and the poor are free and equal insofar as they obey. — Bitter Crank

But you don't understand. Everyone has an opportunity to do well. You see, some people made better decisions to become doctors and lawyers and entrepreneurs.

The hidden text when you hover over it says:
"Continental philosophers: Replacing words with math symbols doesn't make it clear, replacing words with new words that I just made up makes things clear." :rofl:

He's got them both dead on.

Thanks!

I thought this was appropriate :rofl:
http://existentialcomics.com/

I just said this earlier:

Communism doesn't solve the problem of work. It simply creates a larger overseer of the work that people will perform. According to some though, work provides some sort of dignity or some self-reinforcing slogans of that nature. So uh, I guess the State will allow us to let us carry on our services of "dignity" for the "greater good" of the State. My question is what does this really solve?

Also, as you stated, people with greater capacity will simply become the leaders, direct things, make the things happen. The ones who don't have the capacity will slowly become siphoned off from power, and there will simply be another form of hierarchy- the ones that produce and the ones that need the help of the producers. Then the producers themselves won't even want to produce anymore. The whole thing collapses on its own weight and its back to some people having more wealth accumulation than others. — schopenhauer1

What I said in my last post.

There's no perfect system, because humans are involved. And some humans will seek to be more equal than the others. It might be rich capitalists, but it could also be higher up communist party members with all the right connections. Under any system, there's always going to be scarcity of some kind that's desired. It could be land, social status, precious jewels, whatever. And there will always be people better able for whatever reason (moral or otherwise) to acquire those things. — Marchesk

Communism doesn't solve the problem of work. It simply creates a larger overseer of the work that people will perform. According to some though, work provides some sort of dignity or some self-reinforcing slogans of that nature. So uh, I guess the State will allow us to let us carry on our services of "dignity" for the "greater good" of the State. My question is what does this really solve?

Also, as you stated, people with greater capacity will simply become the leaders, direct things, make the things happen. The ones who don't have the capacity will slowly become siphoned off from power, and there will simply be another form of hierarchy- the ones that produce and the ones that need the help of the producers. Then the producers themselves won't even want to produce anymore. The whole thing collapses on its own weight and its back to some people having more wealth accumulation than others.

I don't know very much about IIT, though what little I do know of it didn't lead me to think it promoted panpsychism. As you say, I believe the theory claims to model information integration mathematically in order to predict what systems might be conscious (I guess on the basis that consciousness is enabled by complex bi-directional and integrated information flows). But that still depends on some kind of computational system (the idea being that complex feed-forward/feedback circuits enables complex computations) so I am not sure how panpsychism could be implied by IIT? I guess I am still not clear on just what panpsychism really says. I had a quick skim of a couple of definitions but they seem to be sketchy, talking only of mentality and thought and "minds", whatever those things are. — Graeme M

The problem is the "arising" of consciousness from non-consciousness. What is "this" that is "there" that was not there before? If you say "consciousness!", then how is this not a dualism of sorts?

No, I'm uninterested in anything you have to say. — StreetlightX

I hope the government you are striving for won't run like this.

Yes, because he's unconcerned with anti-natalist/pessimist bullshit. I said it before and I'll say it again, try to steer this thread in that direction and I will continue to delete your comments. You can peddle that crap elsewhere. — StreetlightX

Blazin' saddles you're being touchy! It doesn't have to do with antinatalism. It may have to do with the fact that the problem lies in a) the work itself and b) that if not the current powers, then someone or something is going to tell people what to do. It is a critique. It seems like you don't like something I say or disagree and you threaten "Antinatalism and delete!". Now, would you like to address what I actually mentioned rather than red herring this about antinatalism?

So we can live under conditions in which people thrive because they have autonomy over their lives. That is, in principle, a liberal conception. But it cannot be realised under capitalism, because most people spend most of their day under somebody else's supervision and control - namely at work. Every day, they sell not only their labour power but also their autonomy for a certain number of hours. Thus, they lose freedom, which in turn means a loss of self-determination. The power that the capitalists exert over workers doesn't benefit workers, it benefits the enterprise, which often enough turns against the workers. If you depend on someone else for your survival for the rest of your life, you are constantly forced to ensure that you remain competitive, i.e. cheaper and more productive than others. Your entire social environment is influenced and shaped by this competition, which extends into leisure time too." — StreetlightX

So as much as I agree with his assessment, I don't see any way out of not working for something. You may not work for someone but you will work for something. That is what he doesn't seem to say. So what really changes? A group of people are on top instead of one guy in a business? I mean usually organizations, though hierarchical are dispersed in various departments with various people in those departments running them. At the end of the day there is a drone in sector G who is punching stuff into a computer, or punching stuff out of plastic, or painting fences, or digging up queries (digital or rock). It's not just about the power distribution, it's about the work. And because that itself is not even on the table, what does it matter at the end? More vacation days?

The modern world is about minutia-mongering. How much minutia can you plumb the depths of? The most respected and necessary forms of output are those that are creative only in the precise ways that engineering, scientific, and technology fields allow. It creates the conundrum, you become the drone who must "mine" the minutia of technology, but this very technology frees us to think of other things as well. You must embrace the minutia of technology to get the benefits of it.

Technology, minutia-mongering is unavoidable. It is also part of the problem. Nowhere to go, and nothing to do. Become the drone and hope for some creative flow states at some points in your life, or hack it out in the wilderness, shit in a hole, and die of possible physical ailments.

You could embrace philosophical pessimism. The world was never going to provide the perfect balance your crave anyways. Your needs and wants will never be satisfied. Communal pessimism would go a step further and ask you find a community to find consolation and support in this understanding. Become the drone. Embrace the drone. Be the best engineer you can be by concentrating your hatred of the minutia in all the endeavors of minutia-mongering in your field. Write that programming language [yawn], crank out those numbers [yawn], write those tech specs [yawn], do that data testing, be the minutia, be the minutia, be the minutia...

Well relying solely on the notion of biology it would be little more than glorified pleasure chasing robed in psuedo-intellectual grandeur. A glorified dopamine addiction. We feel good when we eat, best others, socialize and then some. Naturally I'd hope and do believe there is much more to it. In humans at least. — Outlander

I like to think of it as an addiction AND a forgetting. Our psychology tends towards Pollyanaism. When things are going well, when we are in "flow states", etc. we tend to forget the disappointments, the frustrations, the tedium. Life is to be endured and that includes the pleasure chasing and addiction to dopamine.

I like to think of it as an addiction AND a forgetting. Our psychology tends towards Pollyanaism. When things are going well, when we are in "flow states", etc. we tend to forget the disappointments, being judged, needing to achieve something for someone else, the need to create output for survival, expectations, conflict, the frustrations, the lows, the lack of dopamine/serotonin, the tedium, the needs of survival, comfort, and entertainment. Life is to be endured and that includes the pleasure chasing and addiction to dopamine. Life is work that we did not choose. Sometimes we can choose a piece of it, or something favorable happens, and then it seems as if that is all of life itself. It's like an incomplete picture that our minds keep filling in, forgetting that really, there are a lot of empty holes (of desperation, pain, and disappointment). We tell each other stories to reinforce this. "Well MY life is ok.." and then it isn't. What you say for consolation and what happens are two different things.

It has the ring of a certain form of panpsychism to it but then I have those inclinations — prothero

For some interesting debates on this already, that you may have participated in yourself (I don't remember) see here:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/318/is-mind-is-an-illusion-a-legitimate-position-in-philosophy-of-mind/p1

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/329/page/p1

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/14738

I have been thinking about the will to live a lot lately and am just wondering if you guys think it's driven more by our biology or something like hope for something more/better. — HannahPledger

Both. The Will is Schop's view of reality as it is in-itself (pace Kant). There is a flip aspect whereby the monistic will "seems" individuated in time/space/causality. This individuation is then a manifestation that we now observe in our time/space/causality "lens" of the phenomenal world of appearances, as if this is "real". It is not out there, but only a projection of the mind. The will-to-live is but the Will, manifested in the world of time/space. It causes immense suffering for the creatures that experience it, as it is frustrated by constant needs, absurdity, and dissatisfaction. The human is also affected by contingent suffferings of time/space such as physical and mental suffering.