My feelings

Those are your experiences. — Pfhorrest

Yes, not their experiences.

my neurological wiring

That’s a cause, not a reason. — Pfhorrest

What's the difference as far as a proper understanding of morality is concerned?

unconscious following of social norms

That’s “because someone said so”. — Pfhorrest

No its not, no one need say anything, we learn social norms from birth.

predictions of positive outcomes for me

Gauged by your expected experiences? — Pfhorrest

Yep my experiences. I need not care in the slightest about the valence of the experiences of others, only their likely responses.

God

“Because someone said so”. — Pfhorrest

No. He might have instilled the instinct to act that way in me. No one need say anything at all.

the effects of the moral ether, aliens controlling me because we're living in a simulation...

Causes, not reasons. — Pfhorrest

Again, you'd need to clarify the difference in this context.


We might just not 'work out' what the morally right course of action is at all. It doesn't mean that no right course of action exists (nihilism) nor does it mean we can't say that some course of action is better than another, but 'better' might be by almost any measure. You're just picking 'because it makes most people happy', it could be 'because it makes you happy', or 'because it makes society more productive'....

But on what grounds does your behavior toward them seem good or bad, if not either their experiences, or because someone else just said so? — Pfhorrest

My feelings, my neurological wiring, unconscious following of social norms, predictions of positive outcomes for me, God, the effects of the moral ether, aliens controlling me because we're living in a simulation...

You keep making some kind of category error in talking like these things can come apart, like the "good" and "bad" in "feels good or bad" is a different sense than in "morally good or bad". Hedonic experiences analytically just are things that feel good or bad, in the same way that empirical experiences analytically just are things that look true or false. — Pfhorrest

No they're not. Moral judgements of good and bad apply to behaviours, not to experiences. Hitting children is a behaviour which most think is morally bad, being hit is an experience which most think is hedonicly bad. The two are not the same. Assuming they are assumes a kind of 'Golden Rule' morality without any justification.

The moral conclusion they should derive is that it is bad to subject people who are like Alice in the relevant way to such circumstances, because it causes displeasure in them, but it's okay to subject people like Bob to it, since those people don't experience displeasure in those circumstances. — Pfhorrest

You've given no argument as to why this is the moral conclusion. Is all you're saying here that you prefer 'Golden Rule' type morality because it's easier to work out?

I'm not just saying "it's possible, take my word for it", I'm saying nobody has given a good reason why it's not possible. — Pfhorrest

But then I don't understand what your argument is. We all already knew it was possible. all meta-ethical positions are possible and no-one has given any reasons why any of them are not possible. So what's new here?

And if you're going to whittle away at those options you're giving the benefit of the doubt, without taking anybody's word on it, all you've left to go on is experiences of things seeming good or bad, as many such experiences as you can account for. — Pfhorrest

I agree. But what seems good and bad in morality is behaviour, not experiences. It's my behaviour to to others that seems morally good/bad to me, not my experiences.

Economic history tells us a story what happened, but usually we don't want to hear it as we are obsessed about some righteous or ideological agenda. — ssu

Yeah, 'cause history is never written with any kind of agenda!

It’s more that, as described above, we should proceed on the assumption that our phenomenal experiences are in principle sharable: that we can figure out what is different about ourselves and the circumstances we’re in that accounts for the differences in our experiences, and then build a model that accounts for every kind of experience anybody would have in any circumstance — Pfhorrest

Well, that sounds like a laudable aim, but you've rejected that approach already. You're saying "let's assume moral goodness is equivalent in some way to hedonic pleasure" and just ignoring that fact that millions of people feel differently. In what way does your approach try to "figure out what is different about ourselves and the circumstances we’re in that accounts for the differences in our experiences"?

Making it objectively just means concerning yourself in the same way with experiences that you personally aren’t having right now. In the same way that you could be an empiricist and be a total solipsist, believing that things you personally don’t see are not real; making such empiricism objective just means accounting for everything that “seems true” (empirically) to everyone in every context. Likewise, hedonism can be made objective by accounting for everything that “seems good” (hedonically) to everyone in every context. — Pfhorrest

You keep repeating what you claim to be possible, and I understand that, what I'm asking is why. If I were to say "you know how when you push a ball it rolls down hill? Well so it's the same with helium balloons", you'd tell me that despite me saying they fall into the same category, they don't. It's like that with your descriptive and normative categories. All you're doing is saying that however we treat descriptive theories, we can do the same with normative theories, but you're not presenting any arguments to make your case, simply declaring that it can be done.

Descriptive practices are different from normative ones, they have different properties and different sociological roles, as such it's not the case that however we treat the former we can do so with the latter.

We can analyse how different people feel in different circumstances, sure. Then we'd have a good description of how and when people feel good/bad. At no point in time in such an investigation will we have even touched on an argument as to why we ought to make others feel either of these ways.

Imagine I have an absolutely perfect understanding of what makes people feel good - I have a 100% accurate model. Why ought I carry out behaviours to bring that state about?

we are talking about dividing the number represented by "1", not some physical object... how do you propose that it might be divided. You cannot take a knife or a pizza roller to it. — Metaphysician Undercover

With the Platonic form of a pizza roller??

At what point do we begin to question the premise "brains produce consciousness"? Do we reject it if there's no explanation in 100 years? 1,000 years? 10,000 years*? — RogueAI

Well I presume we'll be abandoning it right now. The fact that some random poster on an Internet forum finds the arguments to be "lame" is, after all, the main standard of modern science. Newton's notions of gravity were famously abandoned after Ilovetherovers57 called them "a bit off".

And now I see someone else here "agrees", well... It's a wonder the professional cognitive scientists, neuroscientists, philosophers and psychologists who've been diligently investigating conciousness for the past few decades, don't just hang up their coats right now after such a damning counter-argument.

The Rosenberg thing was more of a suggestion than anything. I didn't expect it to get all serious like this. And you're also acting like this is a super serious thread. — Wheatley

Fair enough.

Nagel is a dick.

He's all over YouTube. I saw him in moving naturalism forward, I saw him debate William Lane Craig. — Wheatley

Well then quote something from his talks on YouTube. This is a discussion forum. There's nothing to discuss regarding your opinion that Rosenberg should not be taken seriously on this, or any, matter.

I have no idea how anyone can take Alex Rosenberg seriously. — Wheatley

And yet...

It's so hard to find quotes from Alex Rosenberg without buying his book. I scoured much of the internet. — Wheatley

Funny how it's hard to take seriously a man for whom you've no written record of anything he's said.

I know it's not the smoking gun you were hoping for. — Wheatley

No indeed. I should add some element of arguing against ridiculous strawmen to my 'all the worst argumentative techniques I've recently encountered' fantasy-thread.

Alex Rosenberg. — Wheatley

I've read a little of Rosenburg, could you supply a quote?

Scientists will never understand why philosophical questions are not resolvable by scientific means, because it's a philosophical issue, not a scientific one. — Wayfarer

I didn't say "irresolvable by scientific means", I just said "irresolveable".

I don't read this as denying consciousness so much as pointing out that it is post hoc. — Banno

Yeah, that's one of the claims. As this thread's failure to cite a single example is amply demonstrating, absolutely no one is denying that there is a phenomena in need of explanation. The arguments within science are entirely over what the properties of that phenomena are. The argument in philosophy seems to be entirely over what constitutes an explanation. Which, as ever with philosophy, seems to be irresolveable.

Yeah. In his joint works with Marcel Kinsbourne, Dennett says

Conscious experiences are real events occurring in the real time and space of the brain, and hence they are clockable and locatable within the appropriate limits of precision for real phenomena of their type

The objection, in Nagel's terms is over the "immediately aware of real subjective experiences". Neurologically, we are not 'immediately' aware, we recall (and in doing so, construct) experiences from the past.

Dennett really does deny that the first-person nature of lived experience is real. — Wayfarer

...

What he says it is, is the consequence of billons of unconscious cellular interactions that give rise to the illusion of first-person consciousness, which is ultimately devoid of a — Wayfarer

Sounds real to me. How have you concluded he denies something is real yet in the same paragraph go on to summarise what he thinks it is. What's the 'it' if he's denying it is real?

Now that would be a good OP. Looking forward to not participating... — Banno

I'm hoping it'll stretch to at least ten pages, the first five of which will be me arguing that the laws of air flow dynamics are wrong before declaring that I've actually re-invented those laws in a completely new way.

In the mid section I'll claim the word 'fly' really means 'to flap wings' because that's what Aristotle meant by it, so anyone using it differently is obviously part of a deceptive conspiracy theory.

Finally I'm going to claim that aeronautical engineers foolishly think weight has no bearing at all on flight, fail to cite any such thing, then pretend I'm above such workaday requirements as actually reading the subject you're criticising.

It'll be pretty standard fare, shame you'll miss it.

But that's exactly what I was doing;

Eugen's opinions = biases and personal beliefs.

My opinions = rational, self-evident common sense. — Banno

No, that's exactly what you were doing in your opinion, which is just a biased personal belief.

In my opinion, which is self-evident common sense you weren't.

This is really easy, I can definitely see the attraction. I'm going to start a thread on how Jumbo Jets must be a conspiracy because c'mon, they're obviously too heavy to fly, and no amount of so-called aeronautical engineers biased and personal beliefs are going to persuade me otherwise.

I puzzle at this, since a few of the things you have said have indicated that you might have a theistic bias, and hence a preference for spirits and souls and such. — Banno

I think you're forgetting some key definitions

Other people's opinions = biases and personal beliefs.

My opinions = rational, self-evident common sense

OK. Can I first paraphrase you to check I've understood what you're saying so far? I have something like...

There is such a thing as correct opinion which we may only approach, but never claim to have reached for certain, and the measure of having gotten closer to it is agreement with some shared phenomenal experience.

Where there is no shared phenomenal experience there's no correct opinion.

Where we don't know if there's shared phenomenal experience, we're better off proceeding as if there is because that we we might approach a correct opinion, whereas presuming there isn't rules out that possibility.

You seem then to be arguing that with morality, we are in this third position. It's not clear that there's a shared phenomenal experience of what's right and wrong, but we're not going to find a correct opinion unless we proceed as if there is.

I agree with the first three propositions, It's the last one I'm having trouble with (to the extent that I'm not even sure I've characterised it correctly). So the opinion that I'm asking about is the opinion that right/wrong equates to pleasure/pain. That opinion seems not to be one which benefits from much shared phenomenal experience - people seem to disagree quite widely about it. So that would clearly fall under the second proposition above.

You seem to then make some jump (which I'm unclear about) to saying that we might benefit under the third proposition, if we just equated good/bad with pleasure/pain - despite the fact that this would contradict many people's phenomenal experience - simply because it enables us to measure it against something which is shared phenomenally and so approach a correct opinion.

But this last seems like a very weird trick to pull. I might say the same about art appreciation (which is not shared phenomenally), let say that the good-art/bard-art distinction (which is currently not shred phenomenally) actually maps to looks-like-what-it's-a-picture-of/doesn't-look-like-what-it's-a-picture-of - something that contradicts many people's phenomenal experience of good-art, but it enables us to measure it against something which is shared phenomenally and so approach a correct opinion.

I decided not to go down that path in this thread. — Banno

Fair enough, your point was sufficiently made without it. It's of interest to me how some moral pronouncements fall into that category, but others don't. Refraining from sex before marriage, we expect the person to desire it, but suppress that desire for moral reasons. With kicking puppies we expect the person to not even want to kick puppies. I think here the religious takeover of morality (with its ideas of original sin) has caused two perhaps completely separate aspects of psychology to be lumped under one term - but that's an aside here.

Here's an analysis that is not the subject/object distinction, but which runs in a similar vein.

That I like vanilla is a fact about me. I don't expect that you also like vanilla. It's not a moral preference.

My "preference" for not kicking puppies is different to my preference for vanilla precisely in that I do expect you not to kick puppies. Hence what characterises moral statements is that they are taken to apply generally.

This general applicability might be taken to look like objectivity. It is however quite different. — Banno

Perfect. I would add though, that, in some cases, I also think there's something wrong with the other person if they want to kick puppies. It's not just an expectation about behaviour, it's an expectation about character.

That's making justification consensus-based, not truth. — Banno

Wouldn't then the resulting propositions be labelled 'well-justified'? But they're not, they're labelled 'true'. If we want to know the meaning of a word we must look to its use. 'True' (among other things) is used of proposition where we would expect and epistemic peer to agree with it given the same evidence. Those are the situations in which we use the term. We don't ordinarily go around adding '...is true' to the end of every proposition.

We use it mostly where there is, or could be, some disagreement '...no, it's true'. What we expect to happen is the person then agrees with us (or is more likely to) that's why we added it the unadorned proposition. We expect that if they don't agree with us, they will find themselves in error later (some action will lead to unexpected results - ie, they will come to agree with us one way or another.

We sometimes use it as a summary for the simple repetition of a collection of propositions too large or unforeseeable to repeat. "Everything in that book is true", "They always tell the truth", but here it is deflationary - we could simply repeat all the propositions - but even if we did, we might still embellish some with "...it's true", if we wanted extra agreement.

What I can't think of is a single example of the use of the term that's not measured by agreement. The membership criteria for that which is within the set {propositions which are true} are propositions which we expect an epistemic peer would agree on given the same evidence.

But we've trod this ground before, I know we don't agree on this and probably never will, that's why I made the comment to @Enai De A Lukal, and not in response to your post. Not that I'm not quite happy to go through it all again with you, I perfectly enjoyed it last time, but we are repeating ourselves, and so if you're the only person interested in refuting this line of argument, people might get bored - and we can't have that.

Check against observations? — Pfhorrest

Really, You'd happily label a proposition 'true' based solely on your own observation? That seems uncharacteristically hubristic. I'd at least entertain the possibility that I was wrong and not claim 'truth' until I'd had that observation confirmed, by the consensus of others. Take your approach and UFOs are true.

So you posted all this because...? — Isaac


I find it problematic when stupidity becomes part of the scientific world. — Eugen — Eugen

Yes, but why would we all want to know what you find problematic? We're not your therapists.

Some things are stupid and they don't deserve my time. — Eugen

So you posted all this because...?

consciousness exists because:
- I am wondering if it exists — Eugen

No. You wondered if it existed. You have no experience of wondering, you are not aware of these processes in real time.

- I have the illusion it exists, and to experience illusions, I need to be conscious — Eugen

Do you? Isn't that just begging the question?

- to believe in reasoning, arguments and scientific proofs, I need to be consciouss — Eugen

Question-begging again.

we have a bunch of people saying: consciousness or 1st person experiences do not exist because we don't see them when we perform experiments. — Eugen

You haven't quoted a single person saying this.

firstly, seeing or hearing or any other observational qualities are consciousness extensions — Eugen

Says who?

only what science can prove it's valid - well, in this case, the burden of proving this claim is on you. — Eugen

Why?


---

Please have a look at the advice on OP writing and consider reading some of the existing work on the philosophy of conciousness before commenting on it. When you do, you may find the discussion more productive if you take a single issue you disagree with and explain why, most of the arguments on either side are quite complex and composed of many linked stages, it's generally better to take them one stage at a time.

Do you have anything more substantive to say than just declaring your own incredulity? Like any view on the detail of any of the arguments you oppose, for example?

The guidelines specify that you should be

Able to write a thoughtful OP of reasonable length that illustrates this interest, and to provide arguments for any position you intend to advocate.

Here's a link to a few points about writing a quality OP.

If something is "dependent upon the opinions of people" then you're talking about consensus (or popular opinion, or something like this), not truth. — Enai De A Lukal

But isn't this what the whole issue hinges on, and therefore removing it would re-frame the problem? Take the quest for the Holy Grail - I could define The Holy Grail as the cup from which Christ drank before the crucifixion (I think), but that definition has nothing to do with my ability to recognise it when I see it. The definition used to tell whether my quest for the Holy Grail has been satisfactory must be an algorithm I can apply to any given cup, the output of which will tell me if it is The Holy Grail. Since I can't directly check if it's the cup from which Christ drank before the crucifixion, this is a useless definition for me. I need something more like "It has six rubies around it which glow in the dark" or some such, so that I can apply that test to all the cups I find. I can't think of a test that can be applied to propositions or beliefs to see if they are true propositions or beliefs that does not involve consensus, thus making 'truth' de facto consensus-based.

Erasing the truth is unphilosophical from where I am at. — MathematicalPhysicist

I should alert one of the mods to the fact that they accidentally erased The Truth. I expect they naively thought it might be mere speculation.

"Admins have the right to ban members. We don't do that lightly, and you will probably be warned about your behaviour if you are under consideration for a ban. However, if you are a spammer, troll, racist or in some other way obviously unsuited to the forum, a summary ban will be applied."

I don't see anything inconsistent with the rules here.

I really didn’t intend this whole thread to be a defense of just one small part of my own principles. I wanted to talk about systemic principles in general and gave mine as an example of the kind of thing I mean. — Pfhorrest

That's fine, I won't continue this line of enquiry then, another time maybe.

The full report, for anyone who wants the details.

Definitely worth reading.

The thread might continue until someone produces an infinity of 1s, and you guys see that there is still a remainder. But then some smart ass will suggest that if we add another 1 the remainder could be resolved, and we'd start all over again and produce another infinity of 1s. And there'd still be a remainder. — Metaphysician Undercover

Or, another way of writing all that is "..."

It isn't secondary at all. If it was secondary, they wouldn't bother. The problem is social and psychological, and both aspects are equally important. Teaching people to recite platitudes without changing politics is futile, but trying to change politics without changing minds is impossible. — unenlightened

I understand, what concerns me is do we refute, one at a time, the stories told to excuse the existence of an underclass, or do we just dispute the story that there should be an underclass at all. This is the concern of many left-wing commentators, that disputing the 'race' narrative deflects from disputing the neoliberal narrative.

Why can't we dispute both? I think, the identification of perpetrator/victim groups outside of economic or political enfranchisement just creates a deflection. The wealthy or the enfranchised might well be in one of the victim groups (so that's him/her absolved of all responsibility), if not then they get to absolve responsibility by a sufficient display of contrition. And why would they do any more? These are people who can walk right past a homeless person and buy some plastic piece of shit they didn't even need. They can perform the most astonishing feats of self-excuse. It's important that we keep the most urgent issues in their face, not provide them with fully-formed excuses to avoid them.

Why is there a consistent failure to do anything? Because there is a very strong commitment to the notion that there is nothing wrong, and if there is, it is all those lefties and others banging on about race. — unenlightened

No. I think it's because a lot of powerful people are making a lot of money out of the underclass, a necessary component of any capitalist system. The fact that they can then use their media, lobbying and society influences to come with post hoc rationalisations for why things are that way is secondary. Stress policing (the current focus) is a necessary consequence of an underprivileged class, incarceration is the 'final solution' to a class of people given little option but crime or nothing. Equalising the race of those affected is not the challenge.

for fuck's sake let's not pretend that black CEOs are a big problem here. — unenlightened

I never even mentioned the scale, its the focus I'm talking about. CEOs {wealthy and powerful} are the problem, the underclass are the victims. Framing it as white men are the problem and non-white women are the victims is missing the point, and in danger of thereby missing the solution. Systemic racism is (should be) just about pointing out that this division disproportionately puts blacks (and women, since you mentioned them) in the underclass and whites (and men) in the CEOs {the wealthy and powerful}. It should not confuse a description of the problem with the identification of the solution.

Getting us white men to recognise and declare our privelidge is nothing more than a mumbled apology, and no less empty of real value. The idea of recognising white privelidge is just another distraction, if I come to you on my last crumbs of food, homeless and desperate, I don't want an apology for how I got there. I want food, a house, and some opportunity.

We need to get away from the idea that inequality among the underprivileged is the problem, it's not, its just a description and a function of it. The problem is that the category exists at all.

how are we going to convince what appears to be a majority of people on this site for intelligent people, that their attitudes are the problem? — unenlightened

That's exactly what the whole argument about systemic racism is trying to avoid. The idea that it's white people's attitudes to blacks that's the cause of the problem. Something nice and 'culture-friendly' that we can sort out with a few kindergarten lessons and some well chosen children's books. Not something like the consistent failure to do anything about housing, employment, healthcare, social care... All of which are policies responsible for the systemically racist injustice, plenty of which are as ignored by rich black CEOs as by rich white CEOs.

there are many such as the book "sapiens" but you can also read this article for a summary https://www.google.com/amp/s/qz.com/930860/what-is-the-purpose-of-happiness/amp/ — Gitonga

I see a lot about links between dopamine and environmental stimuli which may have conferred a competitive advantage. Ignoring for now the question begging problem of evolutionary explanations, all you have here are a collection of links between certain environmental stimuli and certain reports of mental state (or neurotransmitter activity).

Nothing necessitates an inflexible link between the two, nothing shows that self-reported happiness is limited to these environmental stimuli, and nothing shows that the measures of happiness used exhaust the range of measures of happiness.

Quite a long way to go before evolutionary psychology even indicates what you're claiming, let alone justifies it.

The world would therefore be entirely abstract and meaningless if there was no objective truth. Is this enough to prove relativism wrong? — Gregory

Why would our beliefs need to be objectively true in order for them to have meaning?