In terms of human volition, there are two aspect one may consider: permission, and power. To a parent, the aspect of permission is important: " you may have an ice cream after dinner." To Schopenhauer, power is important. "You might choose your beliefs." That's because, if you are concerned with objective reality, the principal problem you have is to define causality objectively. Compared to that, every other issue is basically trite. — ernestm

This is an interesting perspective. As a parent, I learned that permission (and indeed power) is based on perceived potential. So long as the child is unaware of their potential to have an ice cream without permission, then the child’s perceived potential can be limited by the parent. Once that potential is perceived as not limited by parental permission, it becomes about perceived consequences and affect. As a parent, it’s tempting to relate these consequences and/or affect back to ourselves, extending the perception of our ‘power’ over the child. So long as one remains ignorant (or fearful) of their own potential, ‘power’ is perceived as external.

I think that a more objective understanding of causality is found in relating the different subjective perspectives of potential information, or value relations. Schopenhauer’s four subjective correlates are all examples of this perceived potential: understanding, reason, sensibility and inner sense. These are anthropocentric terms, but in my view this ‘inner causality’ can be understood more objectively (with caution) in relation to ‘the will’, as an interaction of limited ‘perspectives’ of potential or value. As usual with discussions around objectivity, though, language and meaning are a minefield.

I doubt that we can even talk about commonly held notions here. Most people have rather hazy notions of objectivity and of truth, and 'objective truth' is doubly hazy. But most of all, I just don't see what would motivate such a discussion. So far it seems to be meandering in the haze, just as one would expect. — SophistiCat

Uncertainty or ‘fuzziness’ is what motivates the discussion. Interactions between different perspectives of this uncertainty may help to bring relational structure to the fuzziness, in my opinion.

Only one truth value can exist for every proposition. There is a matchbox on the table in front of you and you know that either there is at least one match inside it or there is not. “There is a match in the matchbox” has the objective truth value T (1) or F (0). Let’s say you have no clue what if anything is in the box. Let’s say it’s impossible ever to open and check. Let’s say it would dissolve the moment anyone tried and no scientist could ever by any means, x-rays or whatever, get any idea what was in the box. That has no influence on the truth value. — Congau

You can insist on the existence of an objective truth value, but its existence is only ever a possibility, just like the existence of ‘God’. Any statement you make regarding the existence or properties of this ‘objective truth value’ is both true and false, or neither, because there is no way of distinguishing its value objectively.

Are you confusing the meaning of the word “value” here? A mathematical value is just a number, it doesn’t mean that it is actually valuable for anyone. No one may care the least to know the truth about some insignificant detail in the universe, but it still has a truth value. — Congau

Are you sure about that? If a mathematical value was not valuable for anyone, would it even exist as a concept?

Given that we can never be absolutely certain of what is true, is ‘objective truth’:
— Possibility
I love these contradictions.

If its a "given", isnt it true? And if it applies to "we", and not just "you", isnt it objective?

So basically you're saying that it is objectively true that we can never be absolutely certain that what is true, is objective truth. — Harry Hindu

‘Given’ doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true - this is a perceived limitation of the perspective from which I am asking the question. I’ve stated it because I don’t automatically assume this to be objectively true. If you disagree with this limitation, feel free to make your case.

If I had said ‘no one can ever be absolutely certain’, that would imply objectivity. By ‘we’, I’m referring to those of us involved in the discussion; you (collectively) and I. Again, if you disagree with the perspective as given, then make your case.

‘Objective truth’ is a concept whose meaning is in dispute. I’m inviting people to explore the relevant issues from a position of uncertainty.

Not sure if that is what you are looking for, but if I let my brain's pattern recognition take over for a bit here, there seem to be (at least) three ways people use the way "objective truth":

One is when people want to refer to objective facts, that is, states of affairs in the physical world. Usually, something is considered an objective fact when it's immediately apparent to every observer (the sun rises in the east and sets in the west) or has been corroborated by a sufficient number of trustworthy observers, ideally using the scientific method.

A second one is when people want to refer to something that is really well justified by reason. For example, it might be the case that certain strategies in chess are considered "objectively better" than others based on a thorough analysis of their likelihood to win games. The criterion here is simply that you can follow the reasoning an agree with it.

Lastly, on a philosophy forum, people might be talking about "metaphysically" objective truths. That is, things that are not just thoroughly justified by reason (though they need to be) but actually provide information about what things are like behind the veil of human perception. I think Descartes "cogito, ergo sum" would fall under this category, though it's no longer considered thoroughly justified.

The common element seems to be the direct opposition to subjectivity. So "objective truth" is supposed to denote something that is beyond an individual's ability to disagree with it. — Echarmion

Thank you for your thoughtful post. I agree that these describe three common ways that people conceptualise ‘objective truth’. The assumption they have in common is that objectivity must be in direct opposition to subjectivity: that is, it must be justifiable from any human perspective, despite what we may want to believe. But the problem is that each of these descriptions are relative to subjectivity.

The first description is relative to the position of an observer in time and space. No one’s going to argue with us right now about the sun rising in the east and setting in the west (unless they fail to understand what we mean by those words), but we also understand that this is neither a universally nor an eternally positioned observation in reality.

The second one takes into account potential information, but effectively ignores qualitative differences in perspective, and perceives only probabilistic or quantitative potential information, reducible to the most likely or most useful value. No one’s going to dispute sound reasoning, but we also understand that we can’t make predictions about the truth of human behaviour, for instance, based on reasoning alone. We can make reasoned judgements about what should happen, but that’s not objectively true, because people often don’t do what is reasonable.

The third one I find interesting. The only example you’ve given is no longer justified by reason, which already suggests subjectivity. Descartes’ attempt to discard all uncertainty runs counter to what we now understand of quantum mechanics, but it has been useful in demonstrating the limitations of human experience in relation to objectivity.

According to recent neuroscience, the brain doesn’t interact directly with the environment in a stimulus-response format, but rather makes predictions based on an interoceptive network of potential information as affect: reduced to the energy (quantitative) and attention (qualitative) requirements and capacity of the organism. It’s basically the same for most animals, but in the case of humans, this potential information is differentiated into a much more complex conceptual system that enables us to make, test, evaluate and adjust these budgeting predictions continually before and during action.

What this all suggests (in my view) is that maximising the relative diversity of subjective information obtains a more accurate understanding of objective truth. Rather than simply reducing our capacity to disagree, we can maximise our capacity to agree on principle by striving to relate to different perspectives.

I don't really understand what you are trying to do here. You give us three choices for 'objective truth', but there is no generally accepted meaning of these words, and you don't supply any apart from those three formulations. So are we to take these formulations as candidate definitions? But what would motivate our choice? Why are you looking for a definition? There is no value in defining words per se. — SophistiCat

Well, I’m not looking for a definition. I agree that there is no generally accepted meaning of these words. The formulations are meant to challenge three commonly held notions of ‘objective truth’. You can take them as candidate definitions if that’s what you’re after, but all I’m after is a discussion on the difficulties and contradictions they present.

There is no value in defining words, no - but I think there is a more accurate understanding to be found in discussing alternate and conflicting perspectives of a concept in relation to meaning.

Well. From the psycholinguistic standpoint, I would offer considering the power of conditional verbs, as to what 'may be objectively true' and as to what 'might be objectively true.' Its a subtle but powerful distinction. — ernestm

Thank you for your comments. I’ve found that many people don’t make an accurate distinction between potential and possible, though - and may/might doesn’t really help to clarify. There is a tendency to perceive potential information as quantitative (probabilistic) only, and dismiss qualitative information as too uncertain (irreducible) to be useful. A general misunderstanding of the relation between action, affect and emotion also prevents us from accurately structuring qualitative potential information we have in relation to objective truth.

But all of that is nothing compared to the possible information we ignore in our search for objectivity - imaginative, fictional, impractical, improbable, fanciful and just plain ‘false’ information contributes as much to our human capacity to understand objective truth as facts and figures. When someone’s perspective differs from our own so much that we are certain their knowledge, thought, feeling, memory or belief is ‘wrong’, we cannot claim a more objective position until we can understand not only how their perspective is possible, but how they perceive its potential when we don’t.

I'd honestly scrap the word 'confidence.' It's not about confidence. You're looking for a justification, and I'm no mathematician, but I'd look towards math if first and foremost if you're looking to ground your beliefs in something. There is such a thing as a mathematical equilibrium, and personally I make use of this when it comes to decision making in games.

If we frame the idea of 'absolute truth' or whatever in the context of something - say, a game - I think it becomes a little easier. The problem with this discussions is that we don't really particularize them and as a result everyone gets confused and it turns into a mess. If you were to actually particularize it and ask about, say, absolute truth or objectivity in the context of game strategy the discussion becomes a little more honed and insightful. — BitconnectCarlos

Thank you for your comments. TBH I’m not looking for a justification, because I don’t believe objective truth can be justified or defined as such. That’s the point. Looking to mathematics is as limiting as looking to propositional logic or game theory for the reality of objective truth. Yes, it is easier to reduce the information to a particular context or position, and it’s certainly useful in structuring quantitative potential information, but that’s not objective. When we relate whatever insight we receive from the discussion back to ‘objective truth’, that insight must be acknowledged as a relative and therefore limited perspective of possibility.

If we’re not honestly conveying the truth of our uncertainty or source of confidence in information as part of the process, enabling us to take into account potential and possible information as such, then I think we’ve lost sight of the most accurate perspective we can present in relation to truth. If we take all of this uncertainty and feeling into account when we relate our position with that of someone else, I think we have the opportunity to construct a more complete relational structure of potential and possible information, and from that a more accurate understanding of where we stand in relation to ‘objective truth’.

Ah. The first problem is, some people say there is no such thing as objective truth. Your presentation resembles the proverbial lawyer question 'have you stopped beating your wife"' lol. Not intended to say you are wrong, just that it precludes the issue of whether there is objective truth in the first place. — ernestm

‘Objective truth’ exists as a possibility. That’s as much as I can assert with any confidence. My point is that we ignore, isolate and exclude what is possible and what has potential from alternative conceptualisations of ‘objective truth’, which calls the objectivity of this ‘truth’ into question.

People seem to have confidence to act on things with all sorts of criteria and often will realize they don't like their previous criteria and act on the opposite belief, so I don't think one is much use.

I agree. At the moment we act, the information we act on is what is integrated into the brain’s prediction according to the organism’s energy and attention requirements and capacity. We don’t always use an opportunity to consciously evaluate all the information against criteria. — Coben

I'd just like to add that the idea that we can never be absolutely certain of what is true is an assertion of absolute truth. Now I have been chastized for raising such and issue, but I think it is less picky and more important than it might seem to some people. The conclusion that one can never be certain is likely based on epistemological concerns, perhaps bringing in things like beliefs about perception, the limits of empirical knowledge, the potential for fallibility in premises in deduction and so on. IOW the conclusion is a belief based on a lot of supporting beliefs and we also need to be certain about all of them. So it takes a number of certain beliefs to draw the conclusion that we can't be certain. — Coben

Again, I agree - our uncertainty is based on information we may have beyond the information that determines our actions, which draws our attention to a possibility that the information we act on may be false.

I think it's a very good heuristic, in many situations, perhaps most. But I think it's a problematic conclusion since it is itself a counterexample that is based on further counterexamples. — Coben

It’s a temporarily satisfying heuristic, at least. We learn the truth about who we are at any point in our interaction with the world, but if we take this to be ‘objective truth’ then we go into each interaction experientially ‘blind’ and susceptible to prediction error.

Confidence and certainty are attitudes. They don't really give us any epistemological information. People state all sorts of things with confidence and most think they are logical. — Coben

Fair enough, but ‘attitude’ refers to a relative position which limits our perception of epistemological potential. So in relation to objectivity, confidence and certainty are more influential than you might think. This is where potential information comes into play.

The majority of epistemological information we have is potential information - that is, its structural relation to reality is incomplete, probabilistic or fuzzy at best - and that’s just the quantitative information. Some information is structured according to an interoception of affect in relation to epistemological experience (pleasantly arousing feelings associated with experiences of ‘knowing’ or stating knowledge).

My understanding of logic is that it constructs an ‘attitude’ towards truth that excludes any structural relations according to affect, and then proceeds to reduce all other potential information to a binary value that assumes maximum certainty. Any logically valid assertion would be ‘true’ despite any information regarding how anyone might feel, but also despite any information beyond a human capacity for sufficient certainty. That’s a lot of information that we’ve discarded from a supposedly ‘objective’’ view of truth.

Hmm. A false trichotomy )
First you would have to add a condition, if there is such a thing as objective truth, then...are these alternatives the only ones, and whether or not they are, is one or more of them a correct definition? — ernestm

Exactly, which precludes objectivity. I’m not after a definition as such - which assumes only one definition is the ‘correct’ one - just a discussion that relates to it from alternative perspectives, with a view to a more accurate understanding.

So my view is obviously the third option: our most accurate understanding is to relate (from our limited perspective) to the possibility of objective truth as inclusive of information beyond our own capacity to make use of it, epistemologically or otherwise.

A truth value is absolute and binary, either true or false and nothing in between. Whatever we believe the truth value of a proposition to be, doesn’t change its real truth value (which we will never know with absolute certainty).

The proposition: “Hauptmann murdered the Lindbergh baby” has one truth value that has existed since the event happened (or didn’t) and will exist for all eternity. It is either true or false and that will never change. Investigators can continue to debate and change their theories about which truth value is the correct one, but it will remain (although unknown to us). Hauptmann did it, or he didn’t, and that is not dependent on the degree of our certainty. — Congau

A truth value is binary concept, either true or false and nothing in between, WITHIN the limited perspective and value system of propositional logic. But this perspective is a far cry from objective truth. It’s just a human construction of reality that assumes only one language system exists and that everyone values information only according to the rules of propositional logic. Within this limited perspective of reality, in theory, yes, only one ‘real’ or ‘correct’ truth value can be thought to exist for this proposition ‘for all eternity’ - once the proposition itself became valid as a proposition, anyway.

I recognise that propositional logic is a reductionist attempt to process conflicting information in order to determine a clearer perspective of truth, regardless of beliefs. But the position from which one proposes truth is limited to maximise a degree of logical certainty at the expense of objectivity. This perspective cannot entertain the notion that truth exists beyond our limited human capacity to state it confidently as a formal proposition. We can use propositional logic to get closer to truth where our ideology differs, but not where we differ on certainty.

The thing is, uncertainty cannot be dismissed as a limited perspective of objective truth. You can argue for the existence of a ‘real truth value’ as confidently as you can argue for the existence of a ‘God’. It exists as a possibility - that’s as much as we can be certain of, objectively speaking. “A real truth value is possible” is an objective truth (insofar as it can be stated) - but it doesn’t give us much confidence to act, does it? Because, by the same token, we also understand that “anything is possible”, and we are then tasked with humbly distinguishing the limited potential we perceive in ourselves in relation to it, in order to act.

So, is objective truth what we have confidence to act on, what we (as logical beings) can state with confidence, or what we can understand with confidence (despite it giving us less confidence to act)? This may be an opportunity to start a broader discussion...

I've been reading more of Davies' book and just came across this example:

In some species of deer, if you cut a notch in the antlers, next year’s regrown antlers come complete with an ectopic branch (tine) at that same location. Where, one wonders, is the ‘notch information’ stored in the deer? Obviously not in the antlers, which drop off. In the head? How does a deer’s head know its antler has a notch half a metre away from it, and how do cells at the scalp store a map of the branching structure so as to note exactly where the notch was? Weird!

Davies, Paul. The Demon in the Machine (pp. 119-120). Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition.

This is in the context of other examples which posit electrical fields as possibly have an influence in epigenetics and therefore morphogenesis. I wonder if they’re related to the magnetic fields that purportedly allow pigeons to navigate and salmon to find their home creek. Nature sure seems to have memories. — Wayfarer

Not that weird. He’s implying more information or ‘knowledge’ than is necessary to form a tine. The brain doesn’t interact with the world directly, rather it maps sensory information according to the energy (potential) and attention (value) requirements of the organism over time and space. The relative position of the notch in relation to predictions for energy, attention and time isn’t all that complex. It isn’t ‘memory’ at the level of value differentiation (qualia and logic) that humans can have, but it works in basically the same way. Most animals with brains would have this level of capacity for integrating information into an interoceptive network, without conscious awareness of the information itself. It’s how most so-called ‘instinctual’ behaviour works.

Probability of course has to do with predicting the future and I assume quantum physicists use complicated mathematical formulas to reach varying degrees of certainty. Complete certainty is never possible because you can never take into account all particles that may enter into your universe. Therefore, what will be is not included in what is when considered as facts. Everything that will be is present as potential, of course, but that has no meaning in terms of facts and truth in any conceivable sense for human beings. This is not cultural or conventional; it has to do with our animal condition inside time and space. Only the past (which includes “the present”) has a truth value and it is absolutely and objectively either true or false: What has happened, has happened; it can’t be changed or whether it is known to us or not, is irrelevant: It is the existing absolute objective truth. — Congau

I agree that we’ll never reach complete certainty, and that what will be is not included in what is when considered as facts. But I will argue that potential information - what can be (whether it will be or not) - does have meaning in relation to a human perspective of objective truth. This is because the human perspective is not confined to time and space, and in fact necessarily extends beyond it.

Your use of the term ‘truth value’ seems confused. We have agreed that ‘truth value’ refers to a true-false binary, but you keep using it as if it’s a magically appearing, objective property of an event, not a value we attribute to our relative perspective of that event in relation to possibility. The past, present and future are conceptual representations of our relative perspective of reality in relation to time: they are not actual, stationary objects that have inherent and unchangeable properties. We can relate to the same event from these different temporal perspectives, but its ‘truth value’ does not change or magically appear in relation to time. It is our perspective of certainty (ie. potential information) in relation to that truth value that changes over time.

‘Truth value’ is a logical perspective of objective truth: one that assumes invariable or absolute certainty. I agree that our perspective of a past event in relation to objective truth appears not to change over time, assuming our degree of certainty is invariable. I think we can agree that this isn’t the case. So it’s a misunderstanding to talk about binary truth value as ‘absolute and objectively’ anything.

Once a described event is in the past relative to our position, and the truth value (from our perspective) is 1, then it is still possible for potential information to change that truth value to 0. Likewise, if a described event is in the past relative to our position, and we have attributed a truth value of 0, then it is possible for new potential information to change that truth value to 1. The logical perspective gives no indication as to the uncertainty of our position, and in fact ignores, isolates and excludes any potential information that would contribute to that uncertainty.

Let me give an example. I was watching a TV show recently, where someone referred to evidence they had in their possession from the Lindbergh baby case. Given that Hauptmann was convicted and executed for the crime, the truth value to a proposition that ‘Hauptmann kidnapped and murdered the Lindbergh baby’ would be 1 for most people, even though we can never reach complete certainty. Now, the person on this show was saying that, going over this particular material, he had good reason to believe that Hauptmann was innocent, and that he had been unfortunate enough to have taken on a particular boarder at the time, resulting in damning evidence to be found in his home and possession.

So, if we look at two propositions:

A. Hauptmann was convicted and executed for the kidnap and murder of the Lindbergh baby.
B. Hauptmann kidnapped and murdered the Lindbergh baby.

You may say that both events inherently have a ‘truth value’ because they exist in the past (relative to us), whether or not that value is or can be known to us. But you seem to believe that our perspective of objective truth is dependent on this truth value alone. You recognise that we can’t ever be absolutely certain, but then you talk about ‘truth value’ as if we should be.

In my view, we attribute a ‘truth value’ to both propositions based on how we collapse all perceived potential information into facts. We may agree that the truth value of both A and B is 1, but we may not necessarily have the same perspective of potential information or facts contributing to our certainty in relation to that truth value.

So, when new information comes to light, it is our perspective of all the potential information we have - including those on which the facts we have are based and those that are incompletely structured - that may change the truth value we attribute to B.

Potentiality doesn’t figure into this scheme since in principle anything is potentially possible. It is only relevant when potentiality is understood as a definite present condition; as for example when all the genetic data about the plant that might come into existence is currently present in the seed, (but the prediction about what the plant might later look like has no truth value since anything could interfere with its development) — Congau

In principle, anything is possible, but possibility is not the same as potentiality. Potential information is relevant when it is perceived as such. The genetic data about the plant is currently present in the appearance of the seed, from which you can perceive potential information about what it can look like later. From this information, you would have sufficient certainty to predict that a nasturtium seed, for instance, is not going to be a tree. If that isn’t ‘truth value’, then we’re definitely not on the same page here.

"It may be hopeless, but I'm trying anyway." (My pragmatic maxim).

"No unanswerable questions, no unquestionable answers." (My core philosophical principles).

"From the meaning of words to the meaning of life". (My take on what philosophy is about).

I love catchy little slogans like that, but they basically communicate nothing useful out of context. — Pfhorrest

These are great! I love the first two, I’d argue on the third, but I do get where you’re coming from.

I guess I’m referring to an essence and a basic structure. As an example, you may have picked up that the core of my own philosophy has been “to increase awareness, connection and collaboration (with courage)”. I think it’s applied most accurately within a relational structure of existence that has six dimensional aspects (which obviously takes some explanation), but it’s a starting point, at least.

It’s irrelevant to our perceived capacity to make predictions about anything at this stage, but essentially it’s still information.
— Possibility

I don’t agree. It broadens the definition of information to be so all inclusive that it becomes meaningless. — Wayfarer

Only if you’re looking for a definition in terms of what it is that everything else isn’t. But if information is fundamental, then everything IS information. It is the diversity of meaning itself: the difference that makes a difference.

I’m here to test and adjust my philosophy in relation to the tougher questions and most recent answers. I have no formal education in philosophy, so I also get plenty of advice here on what to read in relation to these questions and answers.

I used to think I could eventually write down my whole philosophy as you have done, but I’ve found through discussions here that reducing it to a single written approach often narrows its capacity to be understood broadly. I have to say, though - I admire your efforts, I recognise a lot of your philosophy in my own, and wish I could understand more of your explanations to discuss it with you in detail - my attempts at responding to your essays were deleted before posting because they sounded like a book review.

That said, I’ve found that no one here really wants to read the complex details of someone else’s philosophy unless it closely matches their own. I recognise that both you and Gnomon have relatively complete philosophical systems mapped out, which you continue to reference during discussions. I’ve started down that rabbit hole a few times, and while I was excited to read elements of my own philosophy reflected back to me, I eventually got lost in a sea of complex scientific concepts or neologisms. I wonder if either of you have considered condensing your system into something that fits onto a t-shirt? I realise that this seems a tall order, but I honestly don’t think a philosophical approach should be so complicated in the end that we can’t find a way to teach the basics to a six year old. That’s been my ultimate aim, personally.

I’m enjoying the discussions here, and although at times I feel a little out of my depth, I’ve been gradually learning more productive approaches to contributing, and there are enough generous and patient posters here to make it worth engaging in discussions - if only to discover what I still need to learn, or what others are simply unable to see from their perspective.

But random stuff contains no information, as a matter of definition. A person, or a scientist, can discover information about it - composition, density and so on - but that doesn't mean that it contains information.

Look at the SETI program - it's been scanning the cosmos for 30 years looking for 'telltale signs of life'. No doubt that search has generated petabytes of stored data - but the 'telltale sign', which is ordered information, has never been found. — Wayfarer

Just because we have no way to structure that information in relation to our limited perception of the cosmos, doesn’t mean the information doesn’t exist. It’s irrelevant to our perceived capacity to make predictions about anything at this stage, but essentially it’s still information.

Objectivity is defined by in relation to subjects. Without a subject, there is nothing objective about it. — Wayfarer

Objectivity is a relation beyond the subject, not in spite of it.

Uncertainty and error from noise is a given in relation to actual information. We go to a lot of trouble to ignore, isolate and exclude all of this uncertainty, to collapse it to a binary true-false that we call logic. But in reality, what we make use of in our own (often subconscious) interactions with the world - what enables us to learn from the past and form predictions about the future - is a subjective relation to irreducible potential/value information. And beyond that subjectivity is all the potential information with which we can interact in a meaningful way through subject-to-subject relations, increasing our understanding of an objectivity beyond our limited capacity to collapse potential information.

The pebbles will not all be the same size, so a 40 kilo pile may or may not contain twice as many pebbles as a 20 kilo pile, but it will indeed hold much more information.
— Janus

How so? I'm not asking about information ABOUT the pile, but what information it contains. If you see a bag of stones, do you think it contains any information? If so, what? — Wayfarer

What’s with the distinction from information ABOUT? That’s essentially what information does - it informs one system about another system. But the information we perceive that a pile of stones has as a system is dependent upon our capacity to interact with that system’s capacity to inform.

This highlights the actual/potential misunderstanding about information. What @Janus is referring to is potential information - the pile’s capacity to inform - whereas Wayfarer is referring to actual information: the differentiated result of an interaction between my perceived potential to observe and the pile’s potential to inform. It is the potential information that is more objective - the actual information is subject to your capacity (and willingness) to interact with a pile of stones, and is therefore a limited perspective of information.

Does "information" at all solve anything related to the hard question of consciousness? Specifically, I am thinking of qualia. I am still seeing the hard question alluding this as well. There is still an unexplained element of how information explains how color and smell are the same as its physical constituents that cause it. There is a bifurcation there that seems to always elude. You can talk meaningfully about information in terms of physical (neural signals, bio-chemistry, physics) and psychological (the color red can indicate certain things- blood, ripe fruit, red is not green, but close to orange, etc.). However, it does not necessarily close the explanatory gap between the two (Ah, so information means X = Y!). Nope. — schopenhauer1

Not in any straightforward way. There have been efforts to use information theory in order to shore up a theory of consciousness that accounts for the hard problem ("integrated information theory") but no one seems to understand what its authors are on about. — StreetlightX

The problem with IIT (IMHO) is that it defines both conscious experience and information as actual - consisting of a cause-effect relationship. But the psi it refers to is NOT the most fundamental unit of consciousness they claim it is, anymore than atoms are the most fundamental unit of reality. That’s just as far as scientific certainty goes. Nevertheless, I think the theory has potential, if explored in the context of quantum rather than classical physics. But that’s only an intuitive assessment - I can’t make head or tail of the calculations in either theories, only the interpretations, so I’m not really qualified to take it further.

FWIW - Qualia, as I see it, refers to qualitative potential information or value, in much the same way that probability refers to quantitative potential information. This is information the brain pieces together to make predictions about our interaction with the world - given that the brain doesn’t interact directly with the world, but rather as an allocation of energy (potential) and attention (value) to the various parts of the organism in relation to these predictions. Consciousness would then be the five-dimensional conceptual predictive ‘map’ we each continually reconstruct about ourselves in relation to the world, as a relational structure of both qualitative and quantitative potential information relative to its differentiation from the ongoing sensory event of the organism in 4D spacetime.

I agree with @unenlightened - the third image potentially has the most information, but we just can’t understand how any of it would matter or mean anything.

Now, from the perspective of a tiny bug on a printed copy of this image, who is chemically attracted to the inked sections, this image would be a wealth of information...

But then what is it? You can’t answer that question - which is the point of the OP. — Wayfarer

As I understand it, information is the capacity to distinguish between possible alternatives. One bit of Shannon information is fundamentally a relation between two possibilities, not two potential alternatives, or two actual alternatives.

So information, at its most fundamental, manifests ‘the difference that makes a difference’ between a binary of possibility: matter/anti-matter, for instance, or true/false or I/0. As such, it is the basic building block of existence.

Where have you mentioned that before? If anything, quantum physics increases the notion of objectivity. There are no minds in quantum physics, no difference between thinking things and any other thing. — Congau

Well, I mentioned that binary truth relates to quantum mechanics, anyway. I agree that quantum physics increases the notion of objectivity - it does so at the expense of certainty. That’s my point. Quantum physics employs probability and structures quantitative potential information as irreducible wave functions to increase this objectivity.

About the difference between fact and truth: A fact is anything that could be scientifically proven if science put it to a test. That doesn’t mean objective truth of course since science can be wrong. There is no such thing as proof in the absolute sense, but we have conventionally decided that things we can observe and deduce as certain within the laws of nature are facts. That’s what any shopkeeper means by “fact” even if he doesn’t express it in those words.
(I once heard a tv evangelist say: “It’s a fact that Jesus is the son of God.” That sentence is nonsensical whatever you believe, but it makes sense if a believer uses the word “truth” in such an instance.) — Congau

This makes more sense to me. Facts are provable within a shared value system but not objective, despite what scientific language might imply.

I didn’t actually intend to convey an idea about how we arrive at conclusions about the true identity of objects. I just suggested that the expression “view from nowhere” plays into the hands of subjectivists who can retort that such a thing is inconceivable. I now realize that any mention of “view” in connection with objectivity is misleading. — Congau

FWIW Nagel’s book describes objectivity/subjectivity as a matter of degrees, and from what I recall argues that this ‘view from nowhere’ is conceivable (and useful as such), but not attainable.

But the point is, information can’t be reduced to energy and matter, although I suspect that will be over your head. Otherwise, why would Norbert Wiener have made the point in the first place? — Wayfarer

That’s because both matter and energy can be reduced to information. Information can manifest as matter or as energy, but it can also be neither.

Where is that idea of yours actually coming from? How can that be a clarification of a common word we already thought we knew when not even a dictionary is suggesting anything like it? If it is your intention to introduce an epistemological understanding that necessitates interaction for all our essential perceptions of the world, so be it. Then we can discuss if this epistemology is plausible, but stretching mere words will not get you there. Most people who have learned the word “fact” would think they knew a fact when observing any disconnected occurrence alone in the wilderness. In philosophy I’m not in the habit of calling the masses as my witness, but when it comes to the mere meaning of a simple word, it has no other definitions than what the speakers of a language collectively think it means. — Congau

As I mentioned, this idea is based on an intuitive understanding of quantum mechanics, which necessitates interaction for all our essential perceptions of the world. If you want to call the plausibility of quantum mechanics into question, that’s not something I’m mathematically capable of getting into. But I will say that most people who have learned the word ‘fact’ do not learn it in the context of quantum physics. If you’re going to advocate reductionism, I don’t believe you can base it on an epistemological understanding of classical physics anymore.

Your distinction between fact and truth (and there is a distinction) is covered by the dictionary phrase “that actually exists”. That tree making a sound in the forest is only a fact if it actually exists. A generally law (a true one) “if x then y” may be true regardless of the actual existence of x, but it doesn’t express a fact since it doesn’t refer to an existing thing. However, if you find a fallen tree in the forest you may deduce that it is a fact that it made a noise when it fell. — Congau

You may deduce that it made a noise when it fell, but your deduction remains potential information. It seems to me that your understanding of ‘fact’ rests more on certainty than on actuality. Logical truth is not the same as objective truth - it is based on an assumption that truth=perceived certainty=actuality. Your perceived certainty that there can be no reality whereby the fallen tree did NOT make a sound is probabilistic, not actual.

“The view from nowhere” may not be very meaningful as a concept and I can see why subjectivists may want to attack it. Maybe it would be more helpful to talk about the view from anywhere referring to a truth that can be deduced from whatever perspective. We look at an object from all sides and thereby get an objective idea of what its totally looks like even though it can never be immediately observed. — Congau

Well, if you believe that objectivity is about what can be deduced from all possible perspectives, then you’ll need to take a closer look at quantum mechanics. But we can look here at how we get a more objective idea of what an object looks like.

This is where we get into dimensional aspects of reality. When we observe or measure an object from all sides, we relate the appearance of these ‘sides’ to each other and structure a four-dimensional perspective of the object’s three-dimensional aspects from the difference between each view. This perspective is more objective than a single, immediate observation (ie. through one eye). As humans, we observe all objects from at least two different angles and, from this as well as past observations (ie. from their differences, not their similarities), deduce an object’s three-dimensional reality.

When we experience an event, however, your four-dimensional perspective is not identical to mine, even if we are observing the same 3D objects in relation to time. You will miss details that I notice easily, and vice versa. By relating our observations of the event from two different four-dimensional perspectives, we can share knowledge of this four-dimensional event that is more objective than either of our single perspectives. The tendency here is to assume this objectivity consists only of information that is common to both perspectives (as per reductionism) - but that’s not how we determine the three-dimensionality of an object, is it?

It is what is different about each perspective, and therefore irreducible, that increases objectivity. Their similarities give us confidence that we are referring to the same thing - a base of perceived certainty on which to construct a more objective view - but to achieve this we need to be prepared to question this perceived certainty in relation to dissenting perspectives. In other words, we need to be prepared to question the objectivity of what speakers of a language collectively think a word means if reductionism all the way down to quantum reality results in prediction error.

There is a limit to how useful it is to change the definition of common words in order to name concepts you feel are not properly labeled. It’s bound to be confusing when your opponent doesn’t realize that you are not using a word in its normal sense.
The dictionary (dictionary.com) says that “fact” means “something that actually exists; reality; truth” and that’s how I have understood it all along.
When you say: “a fact cannot be completely independent of perception, and therefore cannot be objective”, you are rejecting the dictionary definition since you have already acknowledged that truth is objective. “Fact” equals “truth”, says the dictionary and if you insist that fact/truth is dependent on perception, our very faulty perception, it can obviously not be objective. — Congau

I’m not changing the definition, I’m clarifying it. ‘Something that actually exists’ must be real and it must be true; but all truth is not necessarily manifest in reality as such, and neither does it necessarily exist as something actual.

I recognise that your approach to truth and reality is reductionist. Because of this, I have also referred to objective truth and reality as a quantum theoretical approach. Pure binary truth (true/false) is a base relation of possibility, which is necessary to manifest a potential, and interacting potential is necessary to manifest ‘something that actually exists’: actual, observable, measurable fact. So, truth as fact consists of interacting potential information, which consists of relating possibility. I agree that a fact is necessarily true - my argument is that truth is not necessarily a fact.

I must ask you the old question: "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"
The sound was there, sound waves were emitted, that is the truth, that is a fact, as certain as any fact in the world can be. — Congau

The answer to ‘does it make a sound?’ is contingent upon the potential information that ‘a tree falls in the forest’, not on anyone being around to hear it. As a fact, the sound is independent of perception in the forest, but not independent of the perspective of the question. Its truth value is contingent upon the fact that ‘a tree falls in the forest’, but from the perspective of the question this is potential information, not actual. So, while the answer to the question is ‘yes’, it is truth and it is objective, it is only a fact IFF a tree does actually fall in the forest. It refers to an objective truth as a relation of potential information, but is irreducible to actual fact, despite our mutual certainty.

The definition of ‘objective’ is where I think our main issue arises, though. I recognise that the dictionary definition of ‘objective’ is “not dependent on the mind for existence; actual”. But I would argue that even though what is actual may exist independently of your mind or mine, it is not entirely independent of perspective as such. I recall that Thomas Nagel explores this philosophical notion of ‘objectivity’ as a ‘view from nowhere’, but I may need to go back over my notes in order to clarify my argument, if you’re keen to get into it. This fits with the argument from quantum theory, which I touched on above.

Have I understood you correctly? — Congau

Yes, it sounds like we’re on the same page here. I want to thank you for your patience and generosity throughout this discussion. I’m not always communicating as clearly as I think I am, so I appreciate you taking the time to approach a shared meaning.

The important thing is: What does it say about reality?
My basic claim at the start of this discussion was that reality consists of objective facts (truths) that are completely independent of how anyone perceives them and that I maintain. If someone is able or unable to use information fruitfully to make accurate predictions about the future or to realize connections between present and past objects, that may say something about different kinds of facts or at least our psychological relationship to them, but it doesn’t change the facts. The facts are the same whether or not anyone perceives them or use them. — Congau

You keep using ‘objective facts’ as the origin of truth. Although I think I understand why, I believe this is a misunderstanding (and a common one).

Facts are dimensionally located answers to dimensionally located questions about reality (a relation to objective truth). The statement ‘Peter broke his leg in 2019’ becomes a ‘fact’ IFF the statement relates to a shared perspective or view of ‘objective’ truth. That is, the statement refers to a particular spatio-temporal event observed from a relative position in time, expressed in relation to a particular cultural and linguistic value structure. Without those relations, the same statement has an undetermined relational structure to objective truth, and no fact can be established.

Facts do not exist independently, but relative both to the position of the question, and to objective truth. If the question is not asked, then the fact (the answer) cannot exist. So a fact cannot be completely independent of perception, and therefore cannot be objective.

‘Peter broke his leg in 2021’ cannot be a fact (yet), because the question to which this is a potential answer cannot even be asked from this dimensional position. We can, however make the statement ‘Peter will break his leg in 2021’, but as a fact there is so little potential information perceivable to us in the world that it’s barely worth a mention. That’s not to say relevant potential information doesn’t exist, only that it’s too ‘fuzzy’ to determine any degree of certainty.

As for the statement ‘Peter broke his leg in 2019’, this may be determined as a fact from our current position (the question) in relation to objective truth. So long as we share that perspective in relation to both the statement and to objective truth, then we should come to the same probable conclusion about its relative ‘truth value’. To the extent that our relative positions differ, we may still reach the same binary conclusion (when pushed to decide), but our certainty will vary.

I have also felt offended.

I am not sure women would have ever gotten a civilization going. Men seem more capable of getting past personal differences and achieving goals. I know I am not the person who can better.

Before leaving, I want to say, Jesse Jackson said poverty is like living in a war zone. That is very different from pointing to people living simply in a Garden of Eden as a definition of living in poverty.

Evidently explaining the difference an economic crash made on my understanding of poverty, did not convey the meaning I intended. Sorry about my communication skills being so bad and having such an obnoxious personality. I did the best I could. — Athena

It’s not about feeling offended - it’s about how you respond to it. I tend to view ‘feeling offended’ as a general recognition that someone doesn’t perceive reality in the same way as I do. But that’s not a bad thing: it’s a challenge to recognise that ‘reality’ includes more than what fits into my value system. The assumption is that if I express a different perspective, then I’m devaluing yours. So there is a tendency for you to try and justify or boost the overall value of your own perspective in comparison, or to reassert your value system as ‘reality’.

I’ve found it more productive, however, to try and relate to your perspective first, but find a way of communicating that shared relation in a broader context that challenges both views. This requires that I be willing to dismantle my own perspective of reality to include what has no value for me as part of a more objective reality.

Unfortunately, not everyone is willing to imagine or relate to a reality or view of truth beyond their own perspective, especially if it challenges their value structures. By relate, I don’t mean agree with or have experienced yourself, but to recognise as meaningful - as having the capacity to inform and broaden your perspective of reality, even if it holds no value for you. Even if it is painful or heartbreaking or immoral or offensive.

I’m not going to apologise for challenging the way you think about the world. I don’t believe any perspective can be ’wrong’, but I will point out missing information that I believe would enable you to accommodate alternative perspectives without feeling threatened or offended. Your personality doesn’t come across as obnoxious at all, by the way - but we don’t really convey ‘meaning’, rather we convey our perspective of meaning. So if you don’t convey what you intended, rather than give up on communicating, be prepared to look for limitations in your perspective: something you’re not seeing. We all have them - it’s part of being human. Our value systems and perspective of reality are more adjustable and expandable than you think; that’s what language, thought and imagination are for.

FWIW, Jesse Jackson is entitled to his limited perspective of poverty, as you are to yours. If your particular perspective was personally satisfying, then we probably wouldn’t be having this discussion. My description of an alternative view of poverty - not as a Garden of Eden, but as a focus less on the intolerability of comparative pain, humility and lack and more on recognising the unlimited potential and value of relationships and compassion - was an attempt to illustrate a broader view of ‘poverty’ that you might have missed in your own experience. I wasn’t dismissing your experience of economic lack, simply because I suggested an alternative value to focus on in a similar situation. Even the most affluent people experience pain, humility and lack, and many are willing to destroy their relationships and connection with the world in their attempts to avoid it. In my view, it is our relationships and connection with the world - and our willingness to be aware, connected and collaborating through experiences of pain, humility and lack/loss so that others’ suffering may be reduced - that gives our own life meaning, value, satisfaction, happiness, etc.

As for women being unable to get past personal differences and achieve goals, I thoroughly disagree, and many of your previous posts would suggest that you do, too. My view is that we need each other’s approach as a counterbalance more than we’re willing to admit, but more importantly I think we need to get over the idea that either men or women (or indeed, you or me) are necessarily better or worse at anything in particular. It’s unproductive, and limits rather than enables us to achieve.

This is the problem with ideology: there is an assumption of the eternal. I want to be very clear that I’m not advocating tolerance as an ideal or eternal situation. And when I say that suffering is a meaningful experience, I’m referring to the capacity for a temporary event to inform our perspective of reality.

I never said that your experience of poverty was ‘beneficial’ or ‘worth having’ at the time. Don’t mistake meaning for perceived value or sensory affect. But what you’re telling me in declaring it was ‘meaningless’ (and by your definition) is that your experience of poverty was not serious, not important and had no useful quality or purpose. I understand that at the time you would have felt a sense of pointlessness, but looking back, do you really agree with that? I think it changed your perspective, so in that sense it was far from meaningless - but unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to have broadened your perspective. Your approach seems to be now that no-one should ever have to experience poverty as a relative sense of lack. But why? You assume I couldn’t possibly have experienced poverty because I don’t share your point of view, but are you saying then that I shouldn’t experience any relative sense of lack, and therefore never be in a position to understand your point of view?

No, not everyone else has had a different experience. There are some people who share my point of view and would not make the arguments you have made. — Athena

Either you can relate to what I am saying or you can not, and right now, you do not appear to be relating to what I am saying so yes I assume you have not had the same experience. — Athena

It’s not that simple. You’re right in that I have not had exactly the same experience, but that doesn’t mean I have no experience of poverty, or no capacity to relate to what you’ve experienced. If I’m reluctant to share my personal information with you, it’s because of how you’ve responded in the past. I disagree with your assumption that either I share your point of view, or the difference in my experience prevents me from understanding it.

Thanks to television, I know of people in remote places. You are speaking of a totally different culture. The comparison of poverty in a completely different culture, with poverty in the US, is like comparing apples to oranges. — Athena

Television gives you no indication of a subjective relation to the experience of poverty. You’re missing the point. If you’re relating apples and oranges in order to understand fruit in general, rather than making comparisons, then the discussion can still be useful and informative.

That is pretty idealistic middle-class thinking not based on knowledge of the experience and when it comes to poverty, that kind of thinking is not to be tolerated! — Athena

I think I have been fairly tolerant of your dismissive attitude towards my perspective during this discussion. I recognise that you have a unique perspective and set of experiences that is meaningful in how I relate to a more objective understanding of reality, but you don’t seem to see it that way at all. I’m not sure how much longer my tolerance is going to hold out if you keep making comments like this.

However, things that belong to the past are at least theoretically knowable, whereas future objects are not.
“Peter broke his leg in 2019.” That statement has a truth value; it is knowable.
“Peter will break his leg in 2021.” No truth value; not knowable. — Congau

The distinction of ‘theoretical knowing’ that you refer to here, for me, is between what is potentially knowable and what is possibly knowable, objectively speaking. I agree that there is so little relation to potential information in the isolated statement ‘Peter will break his leg in 2021’ that you can confidently refer to it as ‘not knowable’, especially in relation to the statement ‘Peter broke his leg in 2019’. There appears to be more potential to the statement ‘it is knowable’ in relation to this statement about Peter’s past than in relation to his future, given our perceived lack of potential to perceive potential information about 2021.

You see, all of this is potential information. Statements are limited expressions in relation to limited perceptions of relational structure (ie. arrangements or sequences of information), not isolated things or objects. So, while the statement ‘Peter broke his leg in 2019’ suggests much more relational structure to a binary truth value than ‘Peter will break his leg in 2021’, neither statement can be said to have ‘inherent’ truth value. Rather, both express a relation to ‘truth value’, which in itself Is a binary (one-dimensional) relation to all possibility.

Language messes with our understanding of this. We use the term ‘knowable’ even when we mean ‘potentially knowable’, and assume that we share this perspective, and therefore we share the limited perspective of this meaning. Objectively speaking, we understand that ‘knowledge’ is a relational construct of potential information, but because we interact with most of reality through a reduction of this potential information, and feel our certainty increase with instances of ever further reduction, it’s no surprise that we would want to express our potential relation to truth as the simplest and most certain reduction of information.

From quantum mechanics, we can reduce existence to one-dimensional relation that manifests as potential, which interacts with other potential to manifest atomic relational structure and with that all of the physical universe. We understand that potential consists of a binary relation, which corresponds to the notion of true-false.

‘To be aware of’ is not the same as ‘to experience’. Often what we experience, we are aware of only as sensory events - even though we integrate the information at the level of experience - that is, as a relation of value or potential to act.
— Possibility

I acknowledge that there are nuances to the two terms, but can you elaborate on why you find the interchangeability of these two terms inappropriate within the contexts here addressed? Both terms have relatively imprecise definitions, and I so far find that they can both be used to reference the same given attribute of conscious being. To approach this differently: to be consciously aware of X entails one’s conscious experience of X; conversely, to consciously experience X entails one’s conscious awareness of X; such that one cannot be had without the other. If you’re using the terms “awareness” and “experience” in specialized senses that makes the aforementioned usage invalid, can you point me to the literature where the two terms are thus differentiated? — javra

I agree that these terms are generally interchangeable, so it gets very confusing. In my view, ‘awareness’ refers to informative interaction as a general term, and often needs to be qualified in relation to the level of awareness, as well as whether this awareness is generally speaking, or an awareness ‘of X’. I try to reserve ‘experience’ to refer particularly to a conceptual level of awareness, mainly because we tend to use ‘experience’ as a noun in reference to this level of awareness.

In your examples here you’ve used the term ‘conscious’ to qualify both experience and awareness. In my view, to experience X one need not be conscious of X, but to be aware of X one need not be conscious at all. And I’ve now realised my error: that the distinction I was referring to was conscious awareness.

To be consciously aware of X entails one’s experience of X, but while to experience X entails consciousness, it does not entail one to be consciously aware of X.

I’m saying that we’re not always self-consciously aware of all the information we integrate from experience. This is where affective realism becomes an issue: when the cause of a particular affect is uncertain. A particularly dreary day can leave us feeling depressed without recognising that the weather had anything to with it. Or we may not realise that the reason we’ve been feeling on edge all day is because we’ve been anticipating an encounter with someone that didn’t eventuate.

My interpretation of Will is that it is dumb, blind, emotive force that causes us to exist. In a humanistic existential context, it would be the Will to live and not commit suicide, for example. In other words as apposed to instinct, we have an intrinsic need to live and feel happy. In an ontological way, it is our need to be. We want to feel happy; it is our way of Being.

And in that sense, the OP question becomes, like Colin Cooper's post suggested, we don't learn emotions. Another example (from Colin's post) one could add to the mix of things, is the emotive feeling and phenomenon of listening to music. We don't learn the initial emotional experience when listening to same. Nor do we understand what biological advantages that has to our species. When we hear it, we like it; it feels good to us.

Emotions themselves are not concepts. Our will to listen to music (jazz, rock, country, classical, bebop) confers no biological advantages to our species. Same with Love. (Lower life forms utilize instinct and emergent properties genetically coded to procreate.) The will (and choice) to love someone, listen to music, or any (higher order) emotional phenomenon is an innate feature of higher consciousness.

What is the nature of this feeling to satisfy those existential needs, is my question to Streetlightx. — 3017amen

I understand the will to be informed directly by an organism’s overall relational structure (not necessarily an awareness of that structure), including intellect and affect, and in turn it determines and initiates the specific interactions of that relational structure. Like emotion concepts, the idea that ‘life’, ‘love’, ‘happiness’ or ‘survival’ are innate concepts or instincts that simply exist - hardwired into our genetics and identical for every human - I believe is a misunderstanding, not only of how concepts are formed from empirical experience, but also of what is ultimately valuable or meaningful.

I need to clarify a distinction here, first of all, between learning about emotions as concepts, and constructing the concepts from scratch by learning to differentiate sensory information.

When we listen to music, what we get from the sensory event depends on our capacity to differentiate and interrelate diverse information from sound values. The more refined this capacity, the more diverse our interoception of affect - including both pleasant and unpleasant, arousing and calming sensations - across the duration of the sensory event. The more our affect varies, the more differentiated potential information we would experience in the one sensory event. And the more differentiated potential information, the more meaningful our relation to that experience.

In this way, instances of ‘listening to music’ have a general pattern of being highly affective for those have the capacity to appreciate the diversity. But the concept of ‘listening to music’ is perceived by many as generally pleasurable not because of any supposed ‘biological advantage’ or ‘survival value’, but because it satisfies a much deeper impetus: to increase awareness, connection and collaboration. In my view, it is this deeper impetus that drives the will - not just in humanity, but across all forms of life and matter.

You are right about me reacting, but that is not all that is happening. I also notice I am experiencing a lot of confusion, and perhaps gaining self-awareness. Compared to you, I am a poverty level street fighter, who does not understand how to things civilly. I do not like this self-awareness. I don't think this is a matter of one us being right and the other wrong. I think it is a matter of money and social position. I think I thought more like you before the 1970's recession. Before that rececession I was one of those "nice people" doing my good thing for "those people". Then I I became one of "those people" as are many people today becoming one of "those people" because of the economic crisis we are in and one of the wonderful things about this economic crisis is learning the people who work in meat processing plants do not have the means to stay healthy and not only are they a higher risk of dying, but they could contaminate our food. Now we care about them. Throughout our history people have risked their lives fighting for a better standard of living and people in your apparent position have not understood the fight. Why fight instead of being nice and reasonable? My mother did not have the economic opportunity women assume today, and my grandmother who was a devoted teacher for a good 60 years, was put in the welfare side of the nursing home where people were fed after the more affluent people were fed. I am thankful by then her mind was gone and she didn't realize she was now considered a charity case. — Athena

I think you might be making assumptions here regarding my relative affluence and social position - perhaps to justify our difference in perspective? I don’t buy it. You’re railing against the perceived injustice of your position in comparison with everyone else. What they have that you don’t, in terms of economic opportunity or health or social validation or influence or power or independence. Yet, if you travel to the remote villages of East Timor, for instance, you will find more joy in what little they have than you can imagine. There, I think, you may understand what the value of family and community really is, without the economic, health, social or political structures that fail to serve you. They are not fighting for equality or validation or a better ‘standard of living’. They are happy with what they have, but they are open to increasing awareness, connection and collaboration with people and communities across the world. And we give to them, not because they ask or demand it, but because they give us an opportunity to care about them, and in that connection we recognise how much we have to give. It’s a matter of perspective.

I don't think you have lived in poverty and experienced doing so with no one to help you. In the 60's I thought poverty was a meaningful experience that no one born white and middle class could experience. We could run away from home and play at poverty, but as long as the economy was good and we had parents to call for help, we could not really experience poverty. It took an economic crash to teach me the meaning of poverty and how meaningless it is. — Athena

Watch your assumptions here, again. No experience is meaningless - you might have just missed the point of it.

I will try again. Are you agreement with education for a technological society with unknown values replacing a liberal education for good moral judgment and defending democracy in the classroom? — Athena

Not replacing, but collaborating with, yes.

Oh my, I have a different understanding of history. I thought the American Revolution was about liberty and ending the power of England to rule in North America, and we fought two world wars, to end tyranny and defend democracy. The idea that authority and liberty are not polar opposites may have truth but it can not be the whole truth? — Athena

From an American perspective, yes, I suppose the American Revolution was about that. I wonder if you’ve ever considered any other perspective in that conflict, though. Do you understand why there is apparently no alternative perspective to consider? Have you considered why the US engaged in both world wars so late, relatively speaking, and then engaged so early in Vietnam and the Middle East? Was it really to ‘end tyranny and defend democracy’, or were there other motivations?

I’ve never claimed to know the whole truth, but I don’t believe we approach it by excluding potential information, immoral or otherwise.

Now I agree with the opening statement of that paragraph. :cheer: However, there is no justice without morality, and tolerating immorality is destructive to civilization, so it can not be tolerated. To ignore immorality is as destructive as ignoring a pandemic, and a society focused on profit instead of morality is doomed to self destruct. This is not as either/or as your examples of this or that. How does justice hinder liberty? Justice must support morality and only highly moral people can have liberty. Life is full of trinities and trinity manifest infinite possibilities. — Athena

I’m not talking about tolerating immorality or ignoring it, but if you hope to destroy it, then you’ll be throwing effort at futility, because morality is a judgement based on a limited perspective of reality - ignorant, isolated or excluded from the ‘whole truth’. A society focused on morality is also doomed to self destruct. You can’t found justice or liberty on a lack of awareness.

Liberty is not contingent upon morality, and morality is not contingent upon justice - that’s just how we like to conceptualise the world - but it isn’t reality. In truth, immorality enjoys undue freedom, and highly moral people suffer injustices. We ensure justice (and morality, too) by reducing liberty. Do you think you get to choose whether or not to ‘tolerate’ a pandemic? Do you think our efforts at isolating are the solution, or are they simply buying us time to increase awareness, connection and collaboration?

The ideal of Liberty, Morality and Justice is one of many trinities whose ‘infinite possibilities’ cannot be manifest in observable reality. It may be mathematically perfect, but if you base your concept of reality on it, then your sense of suffering will be acute, I’m afraid.

At no point can you determine the truth value of potential information. (I now use your definition, which of course is as good as any chosen definition although it was not at all what I had in mind.) The truth value (the binary true or false) will only appear when the potential has been fulfilled, at which point it is not potential anymore.

No statement about future events has any truth value, but all that concern past events have one. No matter how much potential information you have and how much you can imagine, a truth value can never be achieved, in other words you can never know what will happen in the future (even just a few seconds into the future).
(I’m here using the normal loose understanding of “know” which assumes that knowledge is possible. When we say “I knew it would happen”, we don’t mean it literary, but when we say “I know it happened”, we do.) — Congau

Can I take this as an agreement that what you refer to as ‘truth value’ is a binary true/false? If so, then at no point can we objectively know this ‘truth value’ in a statement, even when it’s in the past.

You agreed that facts are potential information. So when we realise the relational structure of potential information, it doesn’t just ‘disappear’. And if some potential information is not realised, it may be discarded by you and me as irrelevant, but it doesn’t disappear either - objectively speaking. What can happen and what could have happened are always potential information, and are always objectively either true or false, whether or not we can know that.

When we talk about ‘knowing’, we talk about the certainty of our position in relation to the potential information that we have. ‘I know it won’t happen’, ‘I know it isn’t happening’ and ‘I knew it didn’t happen’ all relate to potential information I have with regard to a possible reality. So does ‘I will know it didn’t happen’, ‘I knew it wouldn’t happen’, and ‘I know it didn’t happen’. The difference in each statement, objectively speaking, is my relative and limited perspective of all available potential information with regard to this possible reality - ie. the change in relative position and awareness between two four-dimensional events in a five-dimensional reality.

The objective truth in each statement is the same: the occurrence of the event, regardless of temporal perspective, is either true or false. That’s the binary. So what you’re referring to - the ‘truth value’ that suddenly ‘appears’ once the event is in the past relative to our perspective - is, well, relative to our perspective. When we share that perspective relative to the event, then we agree on this relative ‘truth value’. But that doesn’t make it objective.

How can you call this an objective view of the truth? Any prediction is guessing, and guessing, if anything, is subjective.
Language and common experiences are of course collective items but it would be a rather artificial stretch to call them objective. — Congau

I didn’t. I cannot HAVE an objective view of truth. I can relate potential information to the possibility of an objective view of truth, however, and in doing so increase awareness of the difference between language or common experience, for instance, and this possible objectivity.

What are the four dimensions? — Congau

This is always a difficult question to answer, because dimensions as I understand them are relative concepts and not necessarily spatial, but rather pertain to awareness/information. To state it simply, I would say they are energy/distance, direction, space and time, with the fifth dimension as value/potential and the sixth as meaning.

While some emotions are commonly understood to be correlated to interoceptive stimuli – e.g. disgust with some degree of bodily nausea – other emotions hold no such correspondence whatsoever. Envy I think is a fairly common emotion – and is one such example of an emotion that is not gained via interoception. Unlike anger or sorrow, there is no set of bodily stimuli obtained via interoception that corresponds to envy. The same may be said for other emotions such as longing. Then there are more atypical and more complex emotions that likewise are not correlated to any set of particular interoceptive instantiations: “sweet sorrow” as one example. — javra

‘Envy’ in relation to core affect has an unpleasant valence and is distinguished from ‘jealousy’ by a relatively low arousal. It is distinguished from other interoceptive instantiations of unpleasant, low arousal affect by a relative sense of loss or lack, and from other emotions such as ‘longing’ by a directional relation.

‘Sweet sorrow’, on the other hand, seems to recognise a distinction between simultaneous and conflicting interoceptive instantiations - this is a complexity to the theory that Barrett has not developed much (as far as I can recall) but I think the theory still holds. What she refers to as ‘core affect’ is in itself a reduction of more complex information regarding the state of the organism.

If “to be aware of” is “to experience” then not all experiences are empirical. As one example, I can enactively experience my decisions (illusory or not) at the instant they are made by me, for I hold awareness of them, but will not gain this awareness via sensory receptors. My awareness of the decision I make – here strictly addressing the decision itself, rather than the alternatives I was aware of – is not obtained via interpretations of what is gained via interoception or exteroception. The same non-empirical awareness may be claimed for many things introspected: thoughts, reasoning, beliefs, and so forth. — javra

‘To be aware of’ is not the same as ‘to experience’. Often what we experience, we are aware of only as sensory events - even though we integrate the information at the level of experience - that is, as a relation of value or potential to act. Technically, we have the capacity to distinguish between the sensory event and the experience, but in many cases we have not developed this capacity for awareness in emotion, remembering, reasoning or thinking, etc.

In Barrett’s theory, the internal sensory event of a difference in core affect contributes to the complex experience of emotion, as well as external sensory events, such as where we are, who we’re with and what we’re listening to. The way I see it, other complex experiences such thoughts, memories and beliefs are also the result of evaluative interaction between internal and external sensory events - not all of which we are able to distinguish from awareness of the experience itself, let alone consciously evaluate for accuracy and relevance.

I like to think of it this way: a sensory event, whether internal or external, is temporally located. An experience, on the other hand, refers to an atemporal relativity of value and potential.

If you understand this is a conflict between authority and independence I am thrilled to come across someone who understands that and I would really appreciate your explanation of that! — Athena

No. I said that I think this is a gross misunderstanding of what it means to raise a child - it teaches them that they must choose a side in all ongoing conflicts between authority and independence, which ultimately contribute to as much suffering as they strive to reduce. All you’re doing as a parent is achieving a minimal appearance of force shift in an unwinnable war.

There is no resolution in a conflict between authority and independence because they are not polar opposites. While it appears as if increasing one decreases the other, it is illogical to think that by maximising one we eliminate the other. The dichotomy is false. Authority is contingent upon understanding one’s interdependence. When clear authority falls away, interdependence is necessary. Likewise, independence is contingent upon knowing where authority lies. And when our independence is lost, we look to authority. So, you see, it’s not a conflict at all, but a dynamic balance. Authority and independence are inversely contingent upon each other. This what the yin-yang symbol means.

:scream: I need a tranquilizer because what you said is so upsetting to me! If I came down with coronavirus I would go to the hospital and tell them just to make me comfortable and help me die, because I remember a different reality from the one we live in and I do not like this one. Your arguments seem to assure we remain powerless to do anything about the change. I keep arguing because it is my hope awareness can empower us. — Athena

Again, you seem to be reading only to react. I am not saying that we are powerless to effect change. Awareness can empower us, but only insofar as we also strive to connect and collaborate. And I was specifically referring to how we raise our children, not how we react to a current situation. It’s not about observing change and fighting it, or about choosing EITHER authority OR independence. It’s about anticipating the trajectory and doing what we can to adjust it away from potentially destructive outcomes.

Is that the advice you would give the German people as the nazi took over? Is that a stand for liberty and justice? I can see a higher morality in what you said and it would be great if we all got there, but Trump makes me doubt if we can get there peacefully. Not only is this pandemic traumatizing but I am really traumatized by how Trump is handling it and his followers marching around with rifles! I have been arguing my basic arguments for many years and kind of like not worrying about global warming because it isn't that bad yet, Trump and his followers seem to be proving me right and I don't always want to be right. It is that bad now. — Athena

Idealistically speaking, if everyone aimed to increase awareness, connection and collaboration, then situations such as Nazi Germany or Trump as President would not have occurred. Liberty and justice seem like noble ideals, but keep in mind that in reality justice hinders liberty, and liberty hinders justice. Hitler and Trump are more products of their society than heinous individuals. The Nazis were handed authority, as was Trump. It is the extent to which we have all been ignorant, isolated and exclusive that we have brought about these atrocities - including environmental destruction.

I understand your despair. Not long ago, I was highly idealistic, certain that there was one perfect way that the world should be, and that inasmuch as we were not living in that ideal and couldn’t even determine it, the world was broken. But I realised that in order to create the world the way we think it should be, we need to first accept the world as it is - not to see it as broken, but rather as a work in progress. And eventually I realised that there was not one perfect world to strive towards, but a range of possibilities, and within that a range of potential, and within that my existence as a unique manifestation in relation to all possibilities. So I strive for increasing awareness, connection and collaboration with all possibilities, and in doing so I raise my children to do the same and I contribute in the same way to the lives of others, knowing that what I’m striving to create is beyond any potential I can manifest in one ‘individual’ lifetime of experience.

Can there be involuntary emotions, according to this theory?
— Luke

I'm not entirely clear about how volition fits into the picture here, if at all. I think Barrett does have alot to say about it in her book, but I haven't yet read it. Maybe Possiblity can shed some light here? At this point, I think I can say this: it's less a question of whether emotions are voluntary or not (they arise at the intersection of some very complex and layered bio-social interactions and processes) so much as how one goes about relating to one's emotions. — StreetlightX

Barrett refers in her book to ‘the illusion of a two-system brain’: with an emotional, instinctive side kept in check or controlled by a rational, thinking side. She notes flawed experimental design for helping perpetuate this fiction by disrupting the brain’s natural process of non-stop prediction in psychological laboratory tests, breaking the dependency of brain states on those that came before, so that it looks like the brain responds automatically first and then makes a ‘choice’ later. Neuroscience, however, shows that thinking and feeling are not distinct in the brain, and that there is an important distinction between volition and awareness of volition.

Anger is a population of diverse instances, not a single automatic reaction in the true sense of the phrase. The same holds for every other category of emotion, cognition, perception, and other type of mental event. It might seem like your brain has a quick, intuitive process and a slower, deliberative one, and that the former is more emotional and the latter more rational, but this idea is not defensible on neuroscience or behavioural grounds. — FB - ‘How Emotions Are Made’

Reflexes in your peripheral nervous system have sensory neurons wired directly to motor neurons. We call the resulting actions ‘involuntary’ because there is one, and only one, specific behaviour for specific sensory stimulation due to direct wiring.
Your brain, however, is not wired like a reflex. If it were, you’d be at the mercy of the world, like a sea anemone that reflexively stabs whatever fish happens to brush up against its tentacles. The anemone’s sensory neurons, which receive input from the world, are directly connected to its motor neurons for movement. It has no volition.
A human brain’s sensory and motor neurons, however, communicate through intermediaries, called association neurons, and they endow your nervous system with a remarkable ability: decision-making. When an association neuron receives a signal from a sensory neuron, it has not one possible action but two. It can stimulate or inhibit a motor neuron. Therefore, the same sensory input can yield different outcomes on different occasions. This is the biological basis of choice, that most precious of human possessions. Thanks to association neurons, if a fish brushes against your skin, you can react with indifference, laughter, violence, or anything in between. You might feel like a sea anemone at times, but you have much more control over your harpoon than you think.
Your brain’s control network, which helps select your actions, is composed of association neurons. This network is always engaged, actively selecting your actions; you just don’t always feel in control. In other words, your experience of being in control is just that - an experience.
...Scientists are still trying to figure out how the brain creates the experience of having control. But one thing is certain: there is no scientific justification for labeling a ‘moment without awareness of control’ as emotion.
...Emotions are not temporary deviations from rationality... They are not even your reactions to the world. They are your constructions of the world. Instances of emotion are no more out of control than thoughts or perceptions or beliefs or memories. The fact is, you construct many perceptions and experiences and you perform many actions, some that you control a lot and some that you don’t. — FB