I don't know what to say, except don't hold your breath waiting for insights, solutions or even recognition. My own recent thread on the topic was not terribly illuminating.

So I see you are working hard to change minds. And I see you are not optimistic. Is there something else you'd like to do while we await our annihilation?

:L I'm not sure I'd say we share it as a hive mind shares an experience. — Mr Phil O'Sophy

I'm perfectly happy to say that we are sharing our thoughts on this thread.

And in another context I am just as happy to say that the mental is the subjective, is that which cannot be shared.

What I'm not happy about is the idea that 'objective reality' or 'shared experience' must have a meaning that is compounded of the separate meanings of the words that can be deuced from those meanings. People sometimes claim to be 'literally over the moon', and the one thing I am quite certain of is that they cannot mean 'literally' literally.

Or consider the title's 'Collective experience'. Context gives a sense of folks saying the same kind of thing about what they individually experience. 'You see that bright light?. Looks like a supernova to me.' 'Hmm, you could be right, I thought it was just one o' them aliens...'

But Star Trek gives it another context and a very different meaning of the privacy of thought being violated.

And I have suggested it has no meaning at all in the context of the philosophical discourse that is current.

And then someone will demand to know the 'real meaning'... and round we go again.

Don't worry, you are making me consider my use of the term 'objective', and whether I have been using it in any really useful way, by saying I don't believe in an objective reality. — wax

If you are going astray, you are in good company. Wittgenstein suggests that philosophy almost entirely consists of such muddles. It might be worth your while struggling through the thread on his Philosophical Investigations there's a link to the text being discussed somewhere near the beginning.

To unfairly summarise his approach, he will take a term like 'reality' and ask where in ordinary life one might find an uncontroversial use for it so he might suggest we talk about a real tree as opposed to a picture of a tree. One might say, "Imagine a tree. Imagine climbing it." One can (really) climb a real tree, one can imagine climbing a real tree, one can imagine climbing an imaginary tree, but one cannot (really) climb an imaginary tree. And just from this one gets some feeling for where one can use 'real' and 'reality' and where it stops having a sensible application.

Re "shared mental," shared in what sense? — Terrapin Station

@Mr Phil O'sophy is the Borg.

no in that post I didn't use the word 'objective' to mean anything in particular. I was just asking for any other ways in which 'objective reality' could be defined, and what 'objective reality'' would mean then. — wax

That is what I'm complaining about; that you use words without any meaning and then ask someone else to make sense of them. To define 'objective reality would be to distinguish it from another kind of reality 'subjective reality' or 'non-objective reality'. I say that is an abuse of language and can only lead to confusion - so don't do it. Try keeping the distinction objective/subjective as applying to statements, or claims, according to their subject matter; subjective statements are about the speaker, objective statements are about the world. In the same way, a sentence is grammatical or ungrammatical, and one does not try to define 'grammatical reality' or 'a grammatical cow'.

How is any other definition of 'objective reality' possible? — wax

Well now you are using 'objective' in the same way you were using 'absolute' before. Are there different kinds of reality? Different grades? Really real reality, and maybe-waybe reality?

But how would we know whether there had been or not, without some evidence?
What does it mean for a supernova to have happened in an objective way?
This is the crux really. I don't believe that absolute objectivity can really exist, not even for God...but people seem to conclude that there is via a sort of common sense line of thinking... — wax

A supernova doesn't happen in an objective or a subjective way, and it means nothing because it is a misuse of language. A supernova is an object. Experience is evidence.

Where did that 'absolute' come from? What meaning does it have in this context? 'Absolute' is a word I cannot find a use for in this context.

You talk about what you believe can and cannot exist - "absolute objectivity"; what you believe is something about you, and subjective, but what exists is something about the world and objective, so you are just speaking in a muddled way of your subjective take on the objectivity of objectivity.
And since it is your subjective belief, I cannot even disagree, but will simply say, I prefer not to think like that.

It's a distinction that is much misused and misunderstood. The argument you are making is to my mind almost as misguided as your opponents' position.To claim that everything is subjective is simply to make the distinction meaningless and deprive us of a couple of words.

I prefer to look straightforwardly at what it can usefully distinguish and use it that way. That which is subjective is, to put it very crudely 'stuff about me' and that which is objective is 'stuff about the world'.
So, that cheddar is the best cheese is down to my own taste, and is subjective, whereas that cheddar is made from cows' milk is objective.

If you claim that brie is the best cheese, because it is subjective, and the subject changes with the speaker, there is no disagreement, no contradiction. Whereas if you claim that cheddar is made from chalk, one of us is wrong. It's a very useful distinction for philosophers as it tells them what is worth disputing.

Either there has been a supernova, or there has not. That is objective, and not a matter of opinion. If one person claims to have seen a supernova, we don't exactly know, because people can be mistaken whether there is an objective supernova or a subjective mistake. But it is the agreement of others that convinces us that the supernova is objective, precisely because what is subjective we do not usually agree on.

If I might rename your things a moment red, yellow, and blue, Then all I think this gets you is that yellow and blue are both "not-red", and so on all round. What it doesn't seem to get you is that the 'not-redness of blue' is in any way similar to the 'not-redness of yellow.

I'd like to be putting this more clearly ... perhaps tomorrow.

you aren't owed any justification for that rejection. — Maggy

Indeed not. and your right to not discuss the topic of the thread is fully acknowledged on my part. Indeed I wish quite a few people who do not wish to had availed themselves of the option, and also not found it necessary to inform me at length and in detail of their rights and wishes.

I tend to think of poetry as the antidote to propaganda. Poetry adds meaning and propaganda destroys it. But beware, all that rhythms is not poetry - Beanz doz not mean Heinz, freshness cannot by any means be put back, nor can the impossible be cleaned up. Thus saith the poet.

No need to reinvent the karmic wheel. Folks have been ruminating on such vital questions for a while. You'll get more from a bit of historical research than you will from the bullshit of a bunch of ignorant sceptics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmoved_mover

Has anyone ever jumped for joy?

Even worse, how accurate has previous doomsday predictions been? — Taneras

The nice people who set up the Svalbad seed bank chose to assume an ecological disaster. They don't look silly because one hasn't happened, any more than having a fire alarm looks silly unless you have a fire. They do look a bit silly because their precaution looks inadequate. Frankly, the argument that it is silly to consider disaster unless it has happened is so fatuous as to look insane. It is the complete opposite of the rational precautionary approach that science and industry takes in every other field.

I started to look at your clickbait, and then gave up. There is a level of fuckwittery to which I will not descend, and that is well below it.

What do you think constitutes not continuing to run towards the cliff edge? — bert1

Well the idea I'm playing with is to suppose that science and reason has created a problem and cannot solve it, because there is no reason to stop. Humans are stuck in a multi-billion way prisoner's dilemma where every individual's best interests lead them to continue towards the cliff, in a vast game of chicken. Perhaps there would be still time, if we stopped, but we are not going to stop, because those who stop are already being trampled by those who won't. So the preppers in their reasonable insanity are stockpiling, grabbing what they can, building their fences and bunkers, and that is obviously the sensible thing to do, given the imminent cliff. Bunkers will not be open to the general public.

Political correctness is both an ideological invention and a way of avoiding fights. — Judaka

Well I'm open to correction, political or factual, but I'm only really aware of the phrase being used as a term of abuse. Can you find someone who has declared themselves an advocate?

Alas, fdrake stole my thunder while I did a quick google.

Well there you have it. Authoritarians with no authority, you can't get more straw of a man than that. That is to say anyone who wants to make accusations of political correctness is a proponent of political correctness, trying to control the debate.

But people who criticism the promotion of political correctness in its present form, aren't usually advocating that people should have the right to say 'all the horrible things that naturally pop into their heads through the frictions in their lives' — wax

You may be right, or it may be that two straw men are burning each other. What really is political correctness and what do its critics criticise? This?

The proponents of political correctness like to portray anyone who takes objection to political correctness as a bigot or a neanderthal. Any expression containing even a hint of anger brings on that response. — Ilya B Shambat

What I'm saying in general is that political correctness isn't an ideological innovation, it's about avoiding fights. People who assert the right to say all the horrible things that naturally pop into one's head through the frictions of life, are asserting the right to get their heads kicked in by the people they enrage. If people value honesty over a peaceful neighbourhood, they're liable to get what they want.

But usually they don't like being called out themselves as aggressive morons unfit for civilisation, but expect others to be polite to them. This is the foolishness of political incorrectness.

'Excellent' is also the WRONG answer. The mistake is to think when I say 'how are you?', I am asking how you are. I'm not, and I don't want to know how you are. I'm reassuring you that I'm not about to assault you, and the RIGHT response is for you to give me the same assurance in turn, by saying, 'Fine, how are you?'. I then say 'Great.', and we're done, and no one has been injured. Then and only then, you can tentatively presume on our acquaintance to the extent of mentioning that your dog just died and you have been diagnosed with terminal cancer, and if I don't give a shit I'll say 'Hard luck old man, you know, if there's anything I can do...', and And if I do give a shit, I'll say, 'let's go for a drink after work.'

Why is it philosophers don't know what anything means?

"A bore is someone who, when you ask him how he is, tells you."

Because such ritual questions and responses are not to be understood literally, but as signs of social recognition and inclusion. They negate the implicit threat of proximity rather than invite an exchange of personal history. "Take your self-righteous honesty and stick it where the sun don't shine, wankers!" he helpfully explains.

One of the things I think philosophy can do, and does do if you are doing it right, is to bring to light the deep assumptions and motivations that underpin conventional wisdom.

Solution.

I think a world government run by an AI with democratic human oversight is our best chance. — bert1

Thesis.
The crisis has been brought about by not enough intelligence, not enough government, not enough humans deciding what they want.

Is it possible that more cleverness, more decision making, and more planning is not the answer? Is it possible that when heading for the cliff, either a change of direction or stopping entirely is more what's needed? Go to the world government website, and there is a quote from Einstein. Einstein has the answers, Einstein for president. This touching faith in the puissance of great men, is - shall we just say, 'a religious impulse'?

Anyway, here's the updated theme tune courtesy of @fdrake, moving us on a little from the angry hippy phase, when a change of mind still seemed possible.

Here's something that some folks have thought to be worth doing, and has already turned out to not have been quite as future proof as they thought. https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/norway-seed-bank-svalbard-frost-upgrade-government-norwegian-latest-a8231361.html

The way this thread has gone, you would think that no one has ever considered something bad happening except religious nuts.

I’ve reread your first post and I take note of your “hand-waving gestures”. Which is, I guess, “just putting this out there”. Is that right? You threw a hand grenade into the room. — Brett

The earliest reference to the notion that burning coal might eventually lead to global warming was 1912, I think. A century later, the might has become definite, the eventually has become currently, and consequences are becoming inescapable. I didn't throw the hand grenade into the room, I merely mentioned it was there. Don't shoot the messenger. I don't really want to ague the toss about whether we will start calling it a catastrophe in 2030, or 2050, or whether the global psyche can be fairly characterised as fearful or angry or anything else at this time.

What is still important?
— unenlightened

Is this your question? — Brett

Yes. That is the question I am asking myself and the paper is asking itself Given a future social collapse and environmental collapse, and assuming that unlike Hanover you don't think that littering the countryside with arms dumps and food caches is the solution, what will help, what is worth doing?

I'm a wee bit surprised that no one has taken the monastic view, that in the dark ages, one must hunker down in an abstemious cooperative community dedicated to the preservation of knowledge. The wonderful tech that everyone is so attached to. I'm a wee bit surprised that so few people are even able to consider the idea without accusing me of terrorism, or some other madness.

When you say 'almost' you mean 'exactly'. Oh but wait, I mean baked beans, you can't know yourself that you mean 'exactly', because you don't know that 'exactly' means 'what unenlightened meant', not to be confused with 'what unenlightened said', which is just a bunch of words that don't mean anything.

But don't worry, I am certain even if you don't know what I mean. But you can't be certain that I almost got it, unless you know what I meant by what I said, and that it almost meant 'it' where it means what you said., or what you meant by what you said, whatever that was - nobody knows.

Have to confess I struggled to misunderstand that - something about the Irish, an Orange parade and mashing people ... sounded a bit racist.

What I said, or at least meant to say is that my certainty of whether or not there is "a green growing thing that I can see through my window", is dependent on the certainty that I have an unmistakably correct understanding of what that phrase means. — Metaphysician Undercover

Well happily, I can confirm that there is not "a green growing thing that I can see though my window" anywhere except on my computer screen. The only phrase I can see though my window is "Coastal Mobility" which is written on the building opposite. But since you are not sure that you understand what I am talking about, I might as well stop talking. When you say 'phrase', I assume you mean 'tasty sausage', is that right?

I am not the one muddying the waters, — Metaphysician Undercover

So you agree that there is no uncertainty about there being a green growing thing that I can see through the window? Then my work here is done.

But should I accept your premises that (1) the end is nigh and (2) it's too late or just impossible to repair, then what I ought to do is stockpile food, fuel, and an arsenal. I should prepare as the preppers do. — Hanover

Yes. It's surprisingly (to me) popular, and I assume that is a prudential, rational 'ought' you're deploying. I, of course disagree, that this is at all a sensible response, for reasons that are discussed in the article, and will be familiar to Noah, who in my opinion was well advised to take his eco-system with him into the ark, instead of extra crates of destructive power.

However, ‘fear is already dominating ’ was not answered. — Brett

Evidence of fear.
1. Wall building, border closing, troop mobilising, defence spending.
2. Intolerance of dissent, polarisation, hate speech.
3. 'Strengthening', meaning callousness, authoritarianism, nationalism.

In the UK, the mantra of "strong and stable" has become a horrible joke. But I'm not in the business of researched analysis, merely of hand-waving gestures you can take or leave, according to whatever criteria you wish to call rational.

I'm totally cool with that. Let's do our bit to give some status to principled non-conformism, especially when it results in crucifixion.

It's from that era. The hippie response to the cold war/Vietnam war.

Oh here's a factoid. 1.5 million people were internally displaced in the US in 2017.
http://www.internal-displacement.org/countries/united-states

I'll use them as evidence of something

So, folks, this is the game I am inviting you to play. Stop finding reasons why the future cannot be known, because you all don't behave like that any other time, you save money you get qualifications, you make plans and buy season tickets. So imagine that you have seriously come to the view that some combination of sea-level rise flooding most major cities, more extreme and unpredictable weather , an overall warming of anywhere from 2 to 6 degrees C. Leave it vague, but assume massive population displacements, assume some infrastructure collapse, civil unrest, starvation and disease. Assume normal service will not be resumed. The internet might be slow.
So the plans that you have been making on the assumption that everything will go on as before, need some adjustment. It's not worth making plans. What is still important?

And here, especially for Brett, is the thread theme song.

This reminds me a little of the fear ramped up during the Cold War, until children were taught to hide under school desks and families bought their own nuclear bunkers. The insanity was high then and this doesn’t look so different. — Brett

I guess it depends where you live, but the time that I am reminded of is more the thirties. Nobody wants to know that a war is coming there is an angry divisive atmosphere comprised of mixed fear and despair, the rise of Fascism and much wild indulgence.

But whether anyone likes the tone is no concern to me. Fear might be appropriate, but is singularly ineffective. Fear leads to bigger walls to keep out the dreaded migrants and the greedy stockpiling of the preppers. Fear leads to the anointing of Elon Musk as saviour of humanity - fear personified. Fear is already dominating, and doesn't need my little thread.

If you take this seriously, fear is ended, and grief can begin. It is way too late for acting rationally, even if such a thing were philosophically conceivable. Indeed it is the fantasy of rationality that has lead us to the extreme of debating here in all seriousness, with scientific rigour and appropriate format references, the possibility of our having already contrived our own destruction. And what was it you thought was insane, again?

What gave you the impression that I was defending it? — fdrake

I'm only quoting you because you're the only one talking about the topic. I don't mean to accuse you, and I'm not really even addressing you more than the rest of the world, and mostly myself.

the emphasis you are placing on seeing nature as neither reserve nor enemy is fully consistent with a perspective that sees both as detrimental to human welfare, while still using human welfare as a system of valuation for our collective actions and attitudes towards nature. In essence, you are selling a promise to improve our chances of survival and development by stopping the rape of nature. — fdrake

To a large extent, I'm trying on a perspective. As if, we are at the end of something, that might be civilisation, or humanity, or a particular scientistic ideology, as if we (I) realise too late or almost too late that all this (unspecified but sort of understood) is already dead. So that most of our conversations should they survive will look to 'them' like the religious arguments of the scholastics, complex, futile dated, irrelevant. I'm not committed to anything more than an obituary of failed philosophies in all this.

I'd like to make a connection - perhaps it's extravagant.

1. Controlling the environment tends to destabilise it.
2. Controlling the psyche tends to destabilise it.

1. is obvious in this context as to meaning, truth is another matter. As to 2., it is half formed, but think as a maybe-paradigm of the Catholic attempt to control sexuality, and the scandal of child abuse - latest instalment in Australia this week. There must be a mathematics of control systems, but it probably involves strange attractors and does my head in.

Your argument for this in simplified format:

I don't want to dismiss the personal side of identity, but [...] you can think what you like - in Lala land. — javra

No, I don't think you're catching my drift. What I think of myself, that I am British, that I am a fine philosopher, red hot lover etc. is important, but there are others, faceless bureaucrats, moderators, the lovely local ladies, who by their actions confirm or deny that identity. That the lovely ladies like to visit confirms my identity and realises it. makes it a reality, rather than my fantasy. There is personal identity, and there is social identity and it is in the interaction or reconciliation between them that humiliation or elevation takes place.

I don't think it's a sin to believe that technology gives us the opportunity to live better lives. I'm very grateful that when I get ill I can go to a doctor, that we can clean stuff to reduce disease, but what I'm most grateful for is the kind of thinking and tinkering that leads to such cumulative betterment. Lives are longer now than ever, so I'll remain optimistic that there is a place for scalpels, microscopes, soap and antibiotics in Eden, and that there's no place in it for cholera and tuberculosis. — fdrake

Tinkering sounds so innocent, not like rape at all. My medical hero of the 20th century is President Carter .

Guinea worm disease is set to become the second human disease in history, after smallpox, to be eradicated. It will be the first parasitic disease to be eradicated and the first disease to be eradicated without the use of a vaccine or medicine.

No big tech, just good governance and hygiene.

But if you will not admit to sin, try this for a heresy: Human longevity and human happiness are not the beginning and end of virtue. Man is not the measure of all things. but even if he were, science has not arranged the environment all that well for him. Clean water, good sewage, will do most of the work against cholera; clean air, good animal husbandry will do most of the work against tuberculosis. Clean air... now how did the air get dirty?

It's ironic really the scientific and rational education I have been subjected to in this thread in defence of the culture of mass destruction and extinction. As though it is all made up, or if not made up, then unimportant, or if important, easily fixable, or if not fixable, a price worth paying, or if not worth paying...

Science has won, modernism has won, and we snake oil salesmen are laughable - but it is a gallows laugh. I'm just putting it out there, your philosophies are hangovers from a primitive age from the age of childhood tantrums with mother. Time to grow up and start acting responsibly. Mother is old and sick, not very happy with her children, not going to clean up after you any more.

technology makes nature less cruel to us, — fdrake

I think this is Deeply Shallow. As if nature is not our mother and sustainer. As if we are not the product of nature. It's odd, because this is the trope one more often finds coming from the other side - humans are natural, therefore motor cars are natural. Well indeed, and extinctions are natural. But then nature is not cruel or kind and nothing is better or worse than any other.

Technology allows us to hack nature; literally, technology is a giant machete. We attack our mother with a machete and then accuse her of cruelty. We need to change our mindset at this archetypal level in order to begin to understand what is happening or we will literally go to our self-manufactured extinction still complaining about 'cruel nature'. Technology is the problem. Perhaps technology can be the solution too, but it will take a deep identity change in the hand that wields it.

Suppose your example goes another way, suppose the person who is asking, differs from the person answering, and says "no that's not a tree, it's a shrub", and then produces of argument for that point of view. The person who claimed that it was a tree, and insisted on certainty, did not know of the special circumstances, without the power of reason and argument. — Metaphysician Undercover

We can argue about nomenclature, but it is a different kind of uncertainty entirely, and one that W. also goes into exhaustively. Why muddy the waters instead of dealing with the example given, and the special circumstances given?

Consider what might happen when the context gets old, written material has aged for hundreds of years. Living in a different era now, we have great difficulty determining the meaning of old texts, because this requires putting ourselves in that context. This for example, is always a problem in interpreting religious texts, and has become a notable issue in the interpretation of the 2nd amendment of the USA. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yeah language can become divorced from context and so meaning can become less clear and certain.
But again you are not dealing with the challenge but posing a different language problem. Deal with the tree, or the shrub if you want to call it a shrub. Deal with the source of the uncertainty of its being, not the uncertainty of its name. You seem to me to want to run to a linguistic confusion in order to avoid dealing with the argument.

The point is that there is no firm foundation. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, that's not the point. You missed the point by blowing linguistic smoke. Foundations are set into the ground and so they are grounded. The green thing growing outside my window is a green thing growing outside my window and there is no uncertainty, no doubt about it, whatever language we speak. Any uncertainty one might suggest requires the same certainty that is being undermined - the special circumstances that don't, as it happens, apply.

I don't want to dismiss the personal side of identity, but lest you get too comfortable there, consider the character of someone in Nazi Germany - It matters little their personality type, their belief, confidence, humility or any other psychological condition, if the SS declares them to be a Jew then off to the camps they go. Or if you are aware, the various folks who for one reason or another are stripped of their citizenship, and sent somewhere, or forbidden to go somewhere 'My home' can remain my home in my imagination, but can be removed from me physically anyway. And that is unavoidable humiliation; you can think what you like - in Lala land.

A few years ago now, we lost most the sandy beach as the council tipped thousands of lorryloads of stones onto the seafront to strengthen the defences. They don't raise the height of the barrier, but they break the force of the waves before they reach the prom. but now there is talk of raising the little wall along the prom, by a foot or so. That's a deal of concrete over a couple of miles. But there's a deal of bricks an mortar to be lost... I'm reminded of Sometimes a Great Notion.

There's some kind of calculation to be made, about what's worth doing to preserve or protect, this or that, but that calculation can only be contemplated when there is a surplus. Some places, they just let your house fall into the sea, and call it 'managed retreat'.

We all know the world is going to hell because welfare scroungers, fat cat bankers, corrupt politicians , and boogie men. But imagine, if the reason Trump got elected is because he told people what they wanted to hear - that problems have solutions. That a wall will stop migration, that a dam will stop flooding, that work will prevent poverty, that a pill will make you happy. Imagine that things are not in human control at all. Imagine all these hotshot engineers are just playing sandcastles on the beach.

There's a lot of angry people about, and they all want to be angry at someone. Right now, its doom and gloom snake-oil salesmen. Time for their world domination to end, What say you? How dare they suggest that the human world is falling apart, that the more we try to control the environment, the more unstable it becomes? How dare they suggest that we are not in charge and not in control?

The issue was whether or not Wittgenstein's appeal to "ordinary circumstances" (87), is sufficient to "leave no room for doubt" (85). — Metaphysician Undercover

I'll have one more go with you Meta, as all my other threads are full of trolls at the moment. if you ask a non philosopher to look out of my window and say what they see, they will tell you, "A tree".
'Are you sure?'
"Of course I'm sure, I know what a tree looks like."
"But are you absolutely certain?"
"Do you think I''m daft or something"

Traditionally, philosophers have decided that this man is wrong, and have pointed out to him that in a desert the might be mirages of trees, that someone might have painted an image of a tree on the glass or projected an image onto a cloth, or indeed, that he might be daft. Let's call these 'special circumstances'.

And why cannot one reply, that all these things might be, but happen not to be?

Look at what the philosopher is doing. How has he discovered that these special circumstances exist at all? How has he discovered that one can be deceived? It is not by some complex argument or power of reason, but in exactly the same way as the non-philosopher, by going about the world, and coming across these special circumstances, and learning to recognise them in exactly the same way that he learns to recognise a tree. There is no other way. Are you sure there can be special circumstances? Are you sure these illusions are illusions? Perhaps a painted tree is a real tree, perhaps a mirage is a real oasis, why is this more sure than anything else? Perhaps daft people see reality. The apparent sophistication of doubt turns out to have no firmer foundation than the naive certainty it replaces. The non philosopher was right in the first place:

"Do you think I'm daft or something? Nay lad, It's you that's got in a muddle from too much thinking."