We know from a lot of evidence that consciousness is a property of our brains. — Terrapin Station

Could you give an example of the evidence?

Do people that think this believe that consciousness is inherent in carbon atoms but not silicon? If so are hunks of coal conscious? Can anyone please explain logically why B, C and D are true or not? — khaled

I think that typically, the line is drawn somewhere between B and C (or perhaps C and D for some) not because of what the systems are made of but because of what they can do. Functionalists typically say that thinking, knowing, feeling, perceiving, are things that brains can do but other kinds of systems cannot. Their evidence for this seems to be that when we knock out certain functions in the brain then corresponding subjective capabilities disappear, for example, we lose consciousness altogether when whacked in the head. The IIT theory of consciousness draws the line in a different place. It says a system is conscious and is only conscious if it integrates information. Brains integrate lots of information, and so are the most conscious systems. Simple atoms and molecules integrate minimal information, and so are minimally conscious. If there were a system that integrated no information, it would not be conscious.

However,

To assume that these biological machines are conscious whereas mechanical ones are not seems downright unreasonable to me. — khaled

...I agree with you. I think attempts to draw lines (either sharp or fuzzy) in nature separating the conscious from the non-conscious involve conceptual errors.

I don't have time to think of a rhyme, bur for all the Painted Jaguars on the forum:

Premises and conclusions are true or false
Inferences are valid or invalid
Arguments are sound or unsound

A sound argument has true premises and valid inferences
Some unsound arguments may have true conclusions.

If the premises of an argument are true, and the inferences are valid, the conclusion MUST be true.

EDIT: sorry, made a mistake. Fixed it.

One of the outstanding characteristics of the privileged is their inherent inability to see their privilege. — Banno

I think that's probably right. However it applies to everybody. Men have difficulty perceiving their own privilege, where it occurs. But so do women, where it occurs. Same for white, black, brown, disabled, non-disabled, and so on for all identities.

The converse is also true. People have difficulty perceiving the unprivileges of 'others' (i.e. categories one doesn't apply to oneself). Male babies are unable to unionise and form an anti-circumcision movement, so we don't generally perceive circumcision (with no or inadequate anaesthetic) as the horrific abuse that it is.

Regarding privilege generally, it seems to me the most important example of privilege relates to money, class and power (which are increasingly overlapping categories) rather than the various identities normally referred to.

Regarding the MRM, I think Karen Straughan is perhaps the strongest and most radical anti-feminist (while remaining articulate I hasten to add), well worth a look. Warren Farrell is another persuasive person in the debate, but he is less extreme than Straughan. There's plenty of youtube videos of them both.

The Red Pill documentary by Cassie Jaye is essential viewing for this topic.

This is hard to comment on without knowing the characters involved. I'd be interested in reading more about how you apply feminist philosophy to this situation.

It seems to me that 'love' is about supporting someone to develop and grow. Is your mum facilitating such development?

Yeah, I've always thought of Sam as the main hero. 'The Choices of Master Samwise' is the most pivotal and interesting of the chapters for me. The other characters all have a tough job, but they can confer with each other about the right thing to do, and the right thing to do is usually rather obvious (except for the fact that no one thought to enlist Gwaihir to drop Frodo off at Mount Doom). Sam's stuck on his own in a really shitty spot. I was never wholly convinced of his decision to abandon the quest and follow Frodo's dead (as he thought) body, even though it turned out to be the right thing to do for the quest. It was irrational based on the information he had at the time. Maybe that's the idea - his instincts saw past the rational analysis or something.

Aragorn is a sort of hero, but he doesn't have a whole lot of difficult choices. He just has to do what a king has to do, which he does. To make Aragorn into a more interesting character, you'd have to make him fail at that, and then redeem himself, or not. Boromir is more interesting in that way.

The Akallabeth has to be the best analogy for the rise and fall of earthly civilisations, but that's not in LOTR.

Regarding allegory, Tolkien contrasted it with applicability, and said he preferred the latter. I presume his own application of his work is to Christian myth, but I'm sure he would have been relaxed about others making other applications.

Also there is an analogy with academia. Denethor, Gandalf, Elrond (Roland, I'm only trying to help you Roland), Saruman, are University dons. Frodo's a PhD student. Merry and Pippin are undergraduates. Boromir is head of the Rugby team.

One of my best friends is black. There may not be a single pig-ape ancestor...

This seems highly plausible to me. It never felt quite right that we should be descended solely from apes. We're far too pink. When we want to insult people, we turn more readily to their piggishness than to their apishness. I don't trust pigs, not because I don't understand them, but because I understand them too well. The psychology seems a much better fit.

World government, administered online. Get everyone a cheap phone so they can vote. Public Co-option of google infrastructure to do it, perhaps.

To solve global problems countries have to co-operate to do a lot of difficult and extremely disruptive and expensive things. They won't do that, not all at once in a sufficiently co-ordinated way. It's too disparate and competitive.

Failing that, live on a boat or something.

So firstly I need to analyse what constitutes a valid philosophical enquiry. — Helen G

That's an odd thing for them to ask you for. I don't think there is a clear agreed upon answer. I suppose there are a few approaches. Of the top of my head:

A philosophical question is a question we do not yet know how to answer.
A philosophical question is about the relationships between concepts.

I've never read Descartes, but you could look at Wikipedia or the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. They will probably also have entries on what constitutes a philosophical enquiry. Still very mean to ask you to do the philosophy of philosophy when you haven't yet done much philosophy.

As for this:

Analyse ways in which language impacts on philosophy, such as logic, ambiguity, mathematics and paradox — Helen G

..that's awfully abstract. Is that the exact wording they give? It's an odd question - again it's taking a bird's eye view of philosophy. I don't see how anyone who isn't already familiar with a lot of philosophy could really form an impression of how language impacts on philosophy.

I suppose there are plenty of confusions and arguments based on poorly defined terms... is that what they want you to talk about? But that's not confined to philosophy. Maybe sorting such confusions out is the business of philosophy.

I think it would be quite fair to ask them for further detail on what they are asking for. Or you could do the time-honoured philosophical strategy of attacking the vagueness of the question and going through all the things it could possibly mean in as condescending a way as you possibly can.

So 2050, 31 years from now is the end of times? I'll mark it on my calendar along with all the other end of times predictions that have come and gone. — Hanover

I don't know the exact date the rotten tree leaning over my house will fall. But that doesn't mean I should ignore it. I don't understand this weird smugness about other people not guessing correctly.

Perhaps you can show how your definition is of something. — tim wood

The object of a definition is a word. We define words, not things. The word 'God' definitely exists. And it is trivial to make a definition, (e.g. let 'God' mean that which created the universe), as you say we can define anything any way we like. The more difficult and interesting question is, does the word 'God' (once we have defined it) have a referent?

So, for a quick and dirty example:

Let 'God' be that which is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent.

Is there anything which exists that is omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient?

I think there is, I think space is all these things. Space is certainly omnipresent. If omnipotence is conceived not in terms of 'can do any random sentence with a verb in it' but in terms of 'all the power to act that there is', then space is omnipotent in the sense that it does everything. If omniscience is conceived not in terms of 'knows every proposition' but in terms of 'consciousness being everywhere throughout its being', and it is logically impossible for consciousness to be emergent (as I have argued ad nauseum elsewhere), then space is omniscient.

...therefore the referent of 'God' is space.

------------

In all this I argue from a definition, plus observations/things we already know about, to a conclusion about something's existence. To insist I start with existence and nothing else is strange, and I don't understand why you would do that.

I own the quote, but I can't find it, so lack its context. — tim wood

Check the title of the thread.

But first let us satisfy ourselves that the parish-pump idea of the necessity (or even the desirability) of a real existing God can be dispensed with as the immature wishfull thinking that it is. — tim wood

In this thread are you trying to address this then? I think that one conception of god has a real physical instantiation. But you won't let me talk about it because I am not allowed a definition of 'God', all I am allowed is his existence. I can't get anywhere with that. And that's not just a problem with God, that's a problem with anything. I can't determine whether horses exist or not if you won't allow me a concept of 'horse'. It's easy to show why. Take a prokkjellyvunt. Do they exist? Well, it's hard to say, until we know what I mean by prokkjellyvunt. Maybe its a matchstick construction that I built on my desk with glue, and I have named it so. Then to show it exists I could take some photos of it and send them to you.

Is it possible that more cleverness, more decision making, and more planning is not the answer? — unenlightened

No I don't think so. World government is not something we have tried before. A system is a saviour for a time. A world-size problem needs a world-size system. Not doing this is exactly to keep running towards the cliff edge.

One could argue that the problem is not external but internal - individual self-control is ultimately the only proper answer to any problem. But this would take imminent metanoia en masse of company ceos, voting populations, oligarchs and dictators, which on statistical grounds alone seems unlikely.

My invocation of an AI is just a practical suggestion which may not be a good one. If the massive changes to global society is to be effected with miminum loss of life and minimising suffering, the calculations involved in figuring out what to grow where and how to distribute food and energy and whatnot would be horribly complex.

What do you think constitutes not continuing to run towards the cliff edge?

I think a world government run by an AI with democratic human oversight is our best chance. Tell it what we want, it works out how to do it, and we just do what it says. Actually we probably don't need an AI. We know roughly what we need to do, we just don't have the right political structures yet. We could set them up easily enough with the internet. Just as online retailers undercut the high street, so could online government gradually make national governments redundant, or at least limited to managing local affairs. Jamalrob, could you purchase worldgovernment.com and take us into a bright new future?

EDIT: someone already has! Cool! http://www.worldservice.org

OK, so Berkeleyan idealism is that an object is nothing other than its perceived qualities, if I remember correctly.

So, applying this to God, if that is what you are getting at, if God is to exist then he is nothing other than his perceived qualities. Is that the line of thinking you are trying to elicit?

Can anyone apart from tim wood explain what he is driving at? I'm lost.

Everyone should bear witness to the fact that Baden is "right". — Harry Hindu

Baden is not the kind of thing that can be 'right'. Baden can be good or bad. Directions can be right or left. Inferences can be true or false. Statements can be sound or unsound. And whole arguments can be valid or invalid, as well as true or false. I hope we can now draw a line under this.

Sure. The following feelings I would characterise as typically male. The feeling of immersion and intense interest one can have when solving mechanical problems, for example when I built a recumbent bicycle (it wasn't very good - needs a lot of adjustment); the dissatisfaction that men feel if they are not working reasonably hard; I think men have a strong desire to be good providers, I know I do; men feel that conceptual clarity is important and worth pursuing.

Of course, women may also have all these experiences, but I very much doubt if they have them at the same frequency as men. I have never known a woman to mend a puncture on a bicycle. I have even shown women who profess to wish to be independent how to mend a puncture on a bicycle, and I still end up mending it for them. They leave the bike in full view with a flat tyre until my impulse to fix it overrides any other consideration. They are fundamentally not interested in mending bicycles, but they know I am intensely interested in doing so. They want functioning bicycles, but do they want to fix them? They do not, sir. Not while there is a man about.

Out of curiosity, has anyone on the forum ever know an bicycle puncture to be fixed by a female? Has any woman on the forum ever fixed a puncture?

Well, "absurd" isn't really a counterargument. I'll be here when you've got some explanation as to what gender "feels" like rather than just a knee-jerk dismissal. — NKBJ

I'm not sure what it feels like exactly for others, as one only ever really feels one's own experiences. But I think it makes sense for me, for example, to say what it feels like to be male. I have some feelings, experiences and responses to stimuli which are very much a consequence of my being male. That seems uncontroversial enough.

Are we talking about genders or gender roles? They are different.

Gender doesn't feeeeel like anything. And neither does biological sex. — NKBJ

This seems absurd to me.

Others might be who cooks, cleans, and likes pretty things versus watching sports, working outside of the house, etc. — NKBJ

These are activities, not genders.

Social construction is just egotism: I can be anything I want to be! — Bitter Crank

That's not social construction.

Nor are people with genuine gender disphoria, as far as I understand, in a position to freely choose what gender to identify with, any more than gay people choose to be gay.

Gender is by definition a social construct. — NKBJ

What does 'gender' mean then? And can you give some examples of it?

I think gender roles, or gender stereotypes, are at least partly socially constructed. But I don't think what gender people feel they are is predominantly socially constructed. What one feels oneself to be and the roles one adopts in society are logically distinct things.

What follows from existence? Some or all of the following: distinguishability, perceptibility, reasonable inferrability, etc. I'm not sure where that gets us, and why this is interesting. We can do the same with anything. I grant you your horse, but the only thing I grant you is its existence. What follows from that? I'm struggling to understand the significance of this line of enquiry.

None of that actually logically follows from god's existence, though. It only follows if we assume a variety of beliefs about god. — Terrapin Station

Oh, I see, sorry that was a prescription of the OP. I didn't read it properly, my bad.

In that we case we do need to delve into what it means to believe 'God exists'. We need a minimum set of characteristics or properties of God that the OP has granted. As it stands, the term 'God' is an empty variable. It's not clear what the OP has generously granted us theists. Is it just physical existence? That's not enough to capture any concept of God though. Physically, I think God is space, but that's because it fits some other traditionally Goddish qualities, like invisibility, omnipresence, solidity, partlessness, simplicity, immortality, self-movingness, etc.

So what if God exists?

- takes the pressure off life a bit if there is some kind of afterlife (could also be seen as a negative thing)
- helps with finding value in suffering - good for mental health in adversity
- good for mental health to believe that one's innermost centre is indestructible
- helpful in cultivating a sense of oneness with the natural world
- helpful in developing creatively to believe in an inner spontaneous source of newness, and the imperative to create and express
- helpful to believe that death is not the ultimate evil - avoidance of death can result in inauthentic living
- helps in understanding the world as panpsychic

I don't mean to imply any exclusivity here. Atheists and other kinds of theists also can develop attitudes, values and ways of thinking from which they can derive similar benefits, no doubt.

I could also come up with a list of negative ones, but most of them would be for a God I did not believe in.

Sure. There are tensions within Harry's position.

Thanks Baden, but it's one that Harry made I think. It's odd that the WHO didn't come up with something as simple and easy to understand as the NHS definition.

I do think the WHO definition, and the dictionary definition linked to, do not reflect the usage of the word in the circles I mix in. Many autistic people experience gender disphoria, and I think it is genuine (at least in all the cases I have met), and the identity they claim is rooted in how they feel, not in what roles and behaviour they adopt or are expected to adopt.

The NHS has a much better definition that refers to experience and how a person feels:

Gender dysphoria is a condition where a person experiences discomfort or distress because there's a mismatch between their biological sex and gender identity. It's sometimes known as gender incongruence.

Biological sex is assigned at birth, depending on the appearance of the genitals. Gender identity is the gender that a person "identifies" with or feels themselves to be.

While biological sex and gender identity are the same for most people, this isn't the case for everyone. For example, some people may have the anatomy of a man, but identify themselves as a woman, while others may not feel they're definitively either male or female. — NHS

Consider this video if you are interested in gender in autism:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bVg855hZOk

The WHO definition of gender seems too objective to me. You could unfailingly deduce someone's gender identity from their behaviour according to that. But that ignores the phenomenology. It is logically possible for a biological woman to strongly feel that she is most essentially male, that she has the wrong type of body, but because she doesn't want to deal with all the bullshit she marries a man and lives the life of a perfect stereotypical 50s housewife. Yet she would surely identify as male, at least in her own head. The WHO definition does not capture her. Does it?

Also some examples of gender identities would be awfully useful in the WHO definition.

BTW, I am not a medical man, but does anyone else think that "Everything the body does has it's origin in the brain?" That is news to me. — SophistiCat

I know which part of my body most of my actions originate from.

If Bert1 is a rigid designator that refers to you, then you cannot be other than Bert1. — Banno

Which me? The bert1 I refer to when I refer just to my consciousness, or the bert1 I refer to when I refer to the flesh-memory complex you can take a photo of?

If you reject that distinction that's fine, but that just means we have different metaphysics, not different grammars, no?

Because only you can be you and I can only be me. — ArguingWAristotleTiff

But why?

Is the answer 'because that's how grammar works?' Or is there more to it than that?

Do you see any separation between your own subjectivity, and all the (ever-shifting) things that go up to make ArguingWAristotleTiff?

I'll hazard a theory of logic:

The capacity of consciousness to relate two or more of its contents and perceive their relationship.

It's a bit more general than andrewk's and makes no reference to brains. We're a bit obsessed with brains. I'll make a topic about that when I get a mo I think.

A soul is a blob of invisible ectoplasm. This is bullshit, but it's nothing to do with grammar.

Do you think the sentence: "Why is my soul in this body?" has grammatical issues?

There is no mind-body problem. The body (including the CNS) produces "the mind". "The mind" is the noise the brain makes. No brain: silence. — Bitter Crank

Here is a pristine mind untouched by philosophy. Bitter Crank has spent years frequenting this forum and the previous one and yet retains his philosophical virginity.