I have frequently been forced to explain that the word "Structure" has two meanings : 1> the bricks and steel beams that a building is constructed of , and 2> "the arrangement of and relations between the parts or elements of something complex." [the logical structure] — Gnomon

But ‘structure’ - this second definition - is not necessarily ‘logical’. This is the point i’m trying to make. Potential and value doesn’t just refer to logical relations, but also emotional, sensory, social and other qualitative values. When we determine value or potential only from logical relations, we limit our perspective of reality - in the same way that measuring ‘time’ from one position in spacetime limits our perspective of the broader universe.

In that sense, how can we escape ( I'll use that wonderful word again, ha) the so-called intrinsic need for seeking gratification? — 3017amen

By recognising that it isn’t individual gratification that we’re seeking, but the energy/information required to develop and achieve, and that increasing awareness, connection and collaboration enables us to do this more efficiently (ie. with less energy/information).

To love a something, in part, means I'm both making a choice to do so, and I'm satisfying an existential or intrinsic need. Arguably to Love, is much like the need to eat or sleep. Albeit in this case, eating and sleeping would be first-tier hierarchical. To Love though, seems integral with all forms of behavioral needs. Thus I can love to eat steak, love my house, love my girlfriend, children, career, ad nauseum. — 3017amen

To love a something satisfies a ‘need’ communicated to us by internal systems: a limited individual perspective of what matters. Our bodily systems are always making choices about how to budget their limited energy based on what matters, and communicating those needs to the overall system. Maslow’s hierarchy stipulates that these bodily needs are first priority - that all the minor systems must reach a level of sufficient energy/information before the system can start to address higher needs. But Maslow’s hierarchy is individual, and works on a sense of abundance: that there is more than enough energy/information available - we each just need to be systematic in our efforts to acquire it. The hierarchy is not effective for individuals in the grip of a nationwide famine, for instance. Those individuals develop and achieve not by focusing on meeting basic individual needs first, but by using what little energy/information they have available to increase awareness, connection and collaboration beyond the grip of the famine. Otherwise they will all eventually starve.

So, in thinking out loud here, I'm trying to understand why you believe pleasure-seeking would not be 'necessary' for human existence. — 3017amen

Pleasure-seeking can be considered ‘necessary’ for individual human existence - if that individual human existence was the entire universe/system. We know that it isn’t, but we prefer to behave as if it is:

Internal conditions of ‘sufficient’ energy/information are achieved by creating isolated systems of what matters. By ignoring information or excluding it as ‘other’, an individual system of potential interactions (eg. a living cell) can perpetuate a temporal state of almost ‘being’ everything that matters to the universe/system. This is the illusion of ‘survival’, where motivations, pleasure-seeking and/or love are based on a limited perspective of what matters to the universe/system. — Possibility

What kind of art represents the meaning of art. When does something stop being art and when does something start being art. For example what are your thoughts on conceptual art? Does someone need to understand the true meaning of art to create something that is worthy of the title. And how do you wrap your head around something that is so abstract. — pet

Art is a manifestation of relationship between the subjective experience of an artist and their medium, intended to then be experienced by an audience/viewer as shared meaning beyond the medium itself.

I think something starts being art when it approaches this shared meaning, and stops being art without opportunity to approach shared meaning.

I think any ‘conceptual art’ that doesn’t enable the audience/viewer to find meaning beyond the medium alone is not art: it’s just material.

Someone doesn’t need to understand the true meaning of art to create something worthy of the title - they just need to be aware of potential and have the courage to connect with an audience by collaborating with material.

As for wrapping one’s head around the abstract: I think sometimes the relationship between the artist and their medium is so abstract that there is little opportunity for the audience/viewer to approach shared meaning. It’s a matter of opinion as to whether the fault lies with the artist’s disconnection from their audience, or with the audience’s disconnection from the potential of the medium. This is where ‘high art’ can challenge the audience/viewer to open their mind to greater potential in the world, but they’re treading a fine line.

Of course, the commercial aspect of high art is another matter.

Do you have any insight as to how the ego/attachments play with optimism and pessimism? I have often worried that feeding one feeds the other and that a person could only make themselves miserable by trying to see positive in all events. When I see an optimist I feel they enjoy life more but when something hard enough comes along to break through it, they're beyond devastated. And as someone who had been lost in pessimism for many years, I handled tragedy and loss well but dulled myself from feeling any joy at all. They both seem like kinds of distortions to me, and I am curious to know if anyone has managed to balance the two(if they can be balanced, or if they're the same thing) as opposed to attempting to deny them entirely. I would still prefer to limit them as much as I can, but i believe that that will require the same type of control that a person would have to have to manage them. — PoorAt99

I think it’s possible to experience both joy and loss without attachment. If you recognise joy as an experience of the fleeting present, then you don’t feel the need to hold onto it, but are instead open to experience the joy of the next moment, and the next, and so on. Likewise, if you recognise loss as an experience of attachment to a past experience of this fleeting present, then you realise that you are missing the joy of the next moment by looking for it in the past.

Apparently, I misunderstood your intention for this thread as similar to my own usage of the term "Field" to denote the distinction between Realism and Idealism. So, when you contrasted "Fieldism" with "Materialism", I immediately thought of my own notion of a "Mind Field". The only hit I got on Google for "mind field", though, was for a TV documentary that has nothing to do with my concept, except that it is an evocative word-play. I thought the metaphor would be more apparent and common. I was wrong. If I have hi-jacked your thread, I apologize. — Gnomon

Not my thread, so it’s possible that it’s me hijacking the thread, not you.

Do you mean that I don't make a clear distinction between them? If so, that's probably because my BothAnd philosophy is Holistic, and looks for commonalities where most people only see differences. BothAnd is a Yin/Yang worldview in which the line between Black & White is arbitrary, indicated graphically by a white dot in the black area, and a black dot in the white area. So, in reality the whole circle is a gradual shade of gray. That may be what you call "murky". If not, please give me a specific example of murkiness. — Gnomon

It’s more that you focus on the commonalities as if there are no differences. This is the problem with metaphor. There’s a reason why Yin/Yang is drawn the way it is. Rather than the whole circle being a gradual shade of grey, the small circle inside each area suggests that there is a relationship between Black & White that establishes a structure of inclusion. Understanding that structural relationship is the key to a holistic worldview.

A magnetic field is imagined as pervading the universe with little dimensionless magnets (illustrated with arrows) at every vector point in space. Likewise, I imagine the Mind Field as pervading the universe with little dimensionless information elements (bits) at each mathematical (value) point in space. The usual definition of a field is intended to be materialistic, but the points or vectors that make-up the field are not made of matter or even energy, but of immaterial potential. Information is also Potential and Value.. — Gnomon

This is not how I imagine a magnetic field, and I don’t think the field is intended to be as materialistic as that. Rather, the field describes a mathematical relationship between moving electrical charges and predictions about these movements, regardless of time. The thing about materialism is that it assumes reality is only 3+1 dimensions - objects in time - so everything that cannot be directly observed/measured in time must be described as a logical relationship to 3D value points in space. The way I see it, the ‘dimensionless magnets’ you refer to are really immaterial, logically structured relationships or formulas of potentiality. So if you have information on two magnetised points in 3D space, then you can calculate and map the potential of their interaction according to the magnetic field, before determining and initiating actions in 4D ‘reality’.

So when you look at a combined ‘field’ of mind, you’re trying to map a structural relationship between several different formulas of potentiality (which is the work of quantum field theory and other ToEs in physics), but you need to also consider how these relate to other relationships of potentiality that employ alternative value structures to logic, such as qualitative relations, human motives and sociological structures. Materialism either doesn’t recognise these, isolates them as ‘mental phenomena’ (intuitive dualism), or assumes they’re all logically structured in some way. All of these are relationships of potentiality: they are real, immaterial, outside time and provide information that allows us to predict, prevent, and enable potential interactions. Most importantly, they are all structured relative to an observer: a point that exists beyond space and time, relating events and objects according to certain values or significance. Materialism considers this point to be objective, but quantum mechanics recognises the observer as subjective - one of many possible observers. This then points to another type of relationship between these possible observers - which materialism envisages as a multiverse, a ‘many worlds’ interpretation.

The way I see it, these relationships of potentiality - the combined ‘field’ of mind - all refer to five-dimensional information: potential and value.

can you please clarify this? — 3017amen

My use of ‘escape it’ was in response to your use of it here:

we are self-directed individuals seeking happiness, thus cannot escape the self-serving interest component — 3017amen

Yes, we are seeking what we refer to as ‘happiness’, but this self-serving interest component is a misunderstanding of what ‘happiness’ entails as an experiencing, self-reflective subject.

If you are saying it takes less conscious effort, isn't that the same as saying something like; intrinsic needs, or hardwired, or instinctual, etc.. — 3017amen

I’m not referring to efforts to suppress behaviour that we understand to be instinctual. I’m referring to conscious, self-reflective and self-evaluative efforts to understand and challenge what motivates us to choose this behaviour. We’ve been doing this for thousands of years, and teaching our children to do the same. It takes much less conscious effort to believe that we ‘cannot escape’ pleasure-seeking, than to understand that pleasure-seeking isn’t as ‘necessary’ as we think.

What causes human's to seek pleasure and/or Love ? One plausible answer would be metaphysical will. Accordingly, that would be something existential that just is...otherwise, maybe other possibilities could include something else that is beyond logic; intrinsic, instinctual, phenomenal, genetic, emergent, et al . — 3017amen

Personally, I think that ‘love’ at its most fundamental is the origin of the universe, but we don’t really understand what that means. I think a fundamental truth beyond logic is that the universe matters to the universe, regardless of anything. This truth brings meaning to interactions between potential, which realise a mutual capacity to develop and achieve by increasing awareness, connection and collaboration in the universe as it unfolds with each interaction.

With each particle interaction manifesting only one observed/measured potential at a time, and this limited energy/information only rarely available in subsequent interactions, the challenge for those partial manifestations of the universe - as systems of potential interactions - that remain open to further potential interaction is to structure the information they have to increase awareness, connection and collaboration within these limited and limiting conditions of available energy/information.

Internal conditions of ‘sufficient’ energy/information are achieved by creating isolated systems of what matters. By ignoring information or excluding it as ‘other’, an individual system of potential interactions (eg. a living cell) can perpetuate a temporal state of almost ‘being’ everything that matters to the universe/system. This is the illusion of ‘survival’, where motivations, pleasure-seeking and/or love are based on a limited perspective of what matters to the universe/system.

I didn't feel disrespected --- just misunderstood; in that you think I'm ignoring Science. Your knowledge of my thesis may be limited to the few posts on this forum. But it's much more comprehensive than that, more scientific and more structural. However, it is mostly concerned with the cutting edge of Physics, which encounters paradoxes that could be better understood in terms of Information Theory. Information has a mathematical logical "structure" of its own. — Gnomon

Well I have read a fair amount of your website, and I maintain that while you make good use of science when it suits, the connection you make between science and poetry is murky. It is this structural connection that I’m most interested in, because I agree with much of what you’ve written either side of it, and what I don’t agree with seems to come down to this murkiness, in my opinion. This discussion seems to highlight some of that murkiness.

Actually, I think "materialism" is an appropriate assumption for classical Physics, including Chemistry and Biology. It's only when research focuses on cosmic and quantum scale "reality" that Materialism becomes misleading and self-defeating. Likewise, Psychology and Sociology can make valid discoveries using materialist assumptions. But when they get into some mental or mystical topics, an understanding of the ubiquitous role of immaterial Information would be helpful. — Gnomon

I agree that the materialist science of classical physics, chemistry and biology is a useful base to start from, but I don’t think you can apply materialist assumptions only when it suits. This is where I think most structural relations struggle in formulating a ToE. Information, for instance, can be both ‘material’ and ‘immaterial’ - it’s the point at which our understanding of information makes that shift which is most difficult to structure: at the origins of the universe, life, consciousness and the self. It’s at these points that materialist assumptions fail us, but understanding how and why they fail us is the key to a ToE. Materialist assumptions aren’t tools you can pick up and put down - an inability to make sense of the ‘mental’ and ‘mystical’ is inherent in the assumptions, not the science. The trick is to retain the science using an alternative structural relation that incorporates an explanation of metaphysics.

What particular "structure" is that? — Gnomon

In this discussion, I think your use of a mathematical concept as metaphor to connect physics to ‘mind’ is murky at best. I will try to explain what I’m getting at when I have more time. I also think the ‘universe inside mind’ structure can be particularly misleading and self-defeating when looking at consciousness and the self in relation to ‘material’ information. But that may be for another discussion.

A couple of points, if I may.

‘Escape it’ were your words, not mine. I don’t see love as a battle to escape or even overcome selfishness, and I’ve specifically not referred to ‘altruistic’, ‘unselfish’ or ‘unconditional’ notions of love because of this misunderstanding. From the most basic level through to the most ‘ideal’, love is not a negation of self, but an integration of self with other. When we love it isn’t about self-denial - if you read again what I’ve written then you’ll see this. Individual needs certainly become less important, but there’s no opposition to joy or pleasure in themselves.

That said, I dispute the notion that self-serving interest is ‘hard-wired’ in humanity - only that it requires less conscious effort. Achieving inner peace, joy and happiness is more connected to the higher ideals of love than to any ‘self-directed’ pursuit of pleasure.

I mean no disrespect - I’m not trying to refute your theories, but to build on them. If it seems like I’m focusing only on where our theories diverge, it’s only because I see the potential in your worldview. I can follow your analogies, and for the most part I don’t find them to be ‘quackery’ at all - just lacking in structural relations to reality, but that’s a common feature of speculative philosophy. My own theories are remarkably similar to yours in many ways: including the incorporation of quantum mechanics and information theory, and the evolution of information processing through physics, chemistry, biology and then psychology.

I’m certainly not a materialist, but the topic here is modern realism, so I think it’s useful to see how a theory incorporating ‘fieldism’ stacks up to materialism in relation to reality. I think that integrating your philosophy (much of which I agree with) with science is going to require you to adjust how you see it all structured in relation to reality - whether or not you agree with my approach. It’s a shame you seem overly attached to a particular structure - you have a lot of really great concepts to work with.

I used the mathematical notion of a "field" as an analogy, not as a literal description of the universal Mind. Besides, a mathematical "field" is not a physical object, but a metaphysical metaphor, treated as-if there was an infinite array of non-dimensional points in space. I think you took my analogy too literally. — Gnomon

I never said a mathematical ‘field’ was a physical object, but a relation of potential interaction in space. Just because it’s metaphysical doesn’t necessarily mean it can’t also be scientific. Calling your use of the term a ‘metaphor’ only avoids a scientific examination of the relation, without eliminating the need for it. I get that your use of ‘field’ is an analogy - I’m only trying to integrate your philosophy with science. And ‘non-dimensional points in space’ doesn’t make sense: space IS a dimensional relation, so all points in space are dimensional.

The "Universal Mind" that I am referring to is already beyond "emotions, fears and beliefs" because it is non-physical. It is not in the universe, but the world is in the Mind. It is separable from physicality only in the sense that it transcends space-time. So, if you want to get on the same page with me, you'll have to go clear out of the material world. — Gnomon

You can’t go ‘clear out of the material world’ and expect to remain inseparable from it. Transcending space-time is not about disregarding it entirely, but about relating to all of it from a point beyond, recognising that this point suggests more to reality, and increasing awareness of that ‘more’ - always in relation to all of space-time. The information processing of the individual human mind already transcends space-time, so what you’re describing here is not beyond the universe at all, but is already related to the ‘material world’ in very particular ways.

The way I see it, there is a universality that transcends even this concept of ‘mind’.

At the same time, as others have alluded, we are self-directed individuals seeking happiness, thus cannot escape the self-serving interest component. Kind of like the need to procreate/aspire to have children of our own.

(Albeit adoption, seems to be more in line with an altruistic act or concept... .) — 3017amen

Well, we can escape it, it’s just less effort to roll with it, and justify it, and pretend that it’s somehow necessary.

The ‘need’ to procreate derives from the little effort it takes to love a physical extension of ourselves. The more that extension deviates, the greater the challenge to love them as something more complex than ‘object’. Some people love the genetic ‘object’ that is their child, or certain positive experiences of ‘being a parent’ that the child provides them, and struggle with the rest. Adoption should start from this second tier, because it then challenges the parent to love not just the experiences of parenting, but the potential for growth beyond the ‘good’ experiences - which is where the challenge of adoption beyond the newborn stage should begin. We are then challenged to love relating to the world beyond what is personally significant in our own life - which should be the base challenge to love as a foster parent.

If the term "Information" can refer to both topics, why not use a term that combines them into a single concept? My BothAnd philosophy is similar to the Yin/Yang worldview of Taoism. Science studies fragments, while philosophy (metaphysics) studies Wholes. EnFormAction is not intended to be a scientific term for labeling parts, but instead, a philosophical concept for understanding the whole cosmos. It doesn't add "another" field, it combines all of the above into a single Information Field. With that kind of holistic terminology, we can study the universe as-if it is not just atoms-in-the-void, but a universal Mind, processing Information. That's not an empirical scientific perspective; but I think it is a valid philosophical worldview. — Gnomon

I can understand and appreciate your holistic approach to the concept of a ‘universal mind’ processing information, as well as your use of created terminology to avoid (or delay) the scientific or philosophical rigour of relating your worldview to established concepts - either in science or philosophy. It’s a slow and frustrating process - but I think it’s worth the effort, and I don’t think a modern philosophy can afford to isolate its terminology from science anymore, let alone from established philosophical thought. FWIW I get the feeling we’re roughly on the same page here, new terminology aside.

I think your use of the term ‘field’ is misleading when you combine and look at it holistically - it implies a single mathematical formula for the relationship between this information and the ‘universal mind’ concept, but there isn’t one. Each of the four fundamental fields has a unique and irreducible formula that requires an input of four-dimensional information as time-independent ‘values’ (or 3D information in relation to time values). Theoretically, if this ‘universal mind’ has the capacity to combine these field formulae with the other nine in relation to all the existing four-dimensional information in the universe, then I think the result is not a single information or causal ‘field’ but an additional structural aspect: a fifth dimension based on potential interaction, in which the information is structured as time-independent value relations (both quantitative and qualitative) - in reference to an experiencing, five-dimensional subject.

The logical and psychological information processing of a ‘universal mind’ is only part of the story. If you want to get to a universality beyond the emotions, fears and beliefs of an integrated ‘mind’ (one inseparable from its physicality), then you’re looking at a six-dimensional aspect of pure relation beyond value or significance: what matters is not just what is significant to all of us, but also what matters to everyone and everything else relative to their significance to us. Then the entire universe matters, and we’re not missing anything. Then the evolution and integration of information from physics to chemistry to biology to sociology/psychology to an holistic universe starts to make more sense.

I do not deny that we can depart from a word's original etymology, as language is relatively arbitrary. However there seem to be some issues if happy is defined as A feeling of positivity, rather than simply positivity. After all, feelings plainly have objects (or they would not be differentiated). It would be, under that definition, improper to say one "feels happy," as happy is not an object distinct from the feeling. Instead, one ought to say something like one "feels good", and that is "happiness".

This seems to me an uncommon choice of language, but its not language I am trying to understand, but the meaning behind it. If that's what you mean when you use that word, then I agree with you, under your definition happy is not the same as good, as it is good qualified to a feeling only. Would you agree with that assessment? — Dranu

Yes, but it isn’t improper (language being relatively arbitrary), only unnecessary and confusing to qualify ‘happy’, defined as a feeling, with the term ‘feeling’.

Having said that, however, the notion of ‘being happy’ has two meanings - and this is what leads to the more common use of ‘feeling’ as a qualifier of ‘happy’. My father always used to ask me, whenever I visited, “Are you happy?” I found it a strange question, and wanted to qualify it by asking “Do you mean about being here, or generally?”

So when people say ‘I feel happy’, they’re referring to a positive affect that is not necessarily connected to them ‘being happy’, generally speaking. The implication with ‘feeling happy’ is that the positive affect IS the experience. It’s often used this way when one is under the influence of drugs, or otherwise unaccustomed or unwilling to attribute this positive affect to themselves in general.

It is the more general notion of ‘being happy’ that is being discussed here at length, particularly in relation to morality. A lasting ‘happiness’ in this sense isn’t about maintaining a pleasurable life (which is impossible) or about avoiding or eliminating experiences of suffering, or even necessarily about ‘being good’. It’s about maintaining a positive internal experience of self. I can say that ‘I am happy’ when self-reflection generates a positive affect in me.

Many of our experiences of self come from external sources: what we do or say, how others respond to us, what they say about us, what we see in the mirror, as well as our online profiles, friends, family, occupation or material extensions such as clothes, car, house, bank balance, etc. But an internal experience of self is an awareness of our own thoughts, memories, imagination, feelings, knowledge, beliefs, fears, values, motivations and conceptual relations.

If this internal experience of self doesn’t generate for us a positive affect, then we won’t really ‘be happy’, no matter how ‘good’ our external experience of self might become. And if we don’t recognise our own capacity to improve on this internal experience, then we may occasionally ‘be happy’ as a fleeting feeling, but we won’t achieve ‘happiness’ in general: this eudaimonia that refers to interoception of a positive affect in relation to self.

The way I see it, what is most fundamental in the universe is not ‘stuff’, but interaction.
— Possibility
That fundamental "Interaction" sounds like a reference to Energy. But it could also refer to Communication. My term EnFormAction unites both of those meanings into a universal causal field, from which both Matter and Mind eventually emerge from evolution. It's fundamental in that it is the essence of everything in the universe. — Gnomon

It can refer to BOTH energy AND communication (information) - but I’m not convinced that a new term is either necessary or helpful, and I don’t think adding interaction as another ‘field’ separate from gravity, electromagnetism, etc makes sense, either.

Talking about the universe in terms of interacting ‘fields’ is probably more accurate than interacting ‘events’ (Rovelli) or ‘objects’ (classical physics). But a ‘field’ is, by definition, the map of a potential interaction in relation to spacetime. So when we talk about interaction between fields, we’re not talking about time-dependent causality - I think it might have more to do with quantum decoherence.

If it qualifies feeling (which I assume you would agree with), then how does feeling not qualify it?

For instance qualifications of feelings can be quite properly and meaningfully used independent of feelings without reference to any feelings. E.g. "A sad state of affairs." — Dranu

‘Happy’ already IS feeling, it doesn’t need ‘feeling’ to qualify it. You’re confusing ‘happy’ as a feeling (which doesn’t require a qualifier) with ‘happy’ used as an adjective.

In my view, ‘good’ is a misleading term that enables us to associate positive affect without qualification, and make value judgements on the world as if these judgements were objective. ‘Happy’ used as an adjective or adverb has a similar misleading effect, although it refers specifically to interoception, whereas ‘good’ refers to internal and/or external experiences.

All of this stems from the insecurity of referring to irreducible value aspects of reality. — Possibility

‘A sad state of affairs’ attempts to make a value judgement on the state of affairs as if that judgement were objective. But ‘sad’, just like ‘happy’, refers to interoception - a subjective, internal experience of affect. This statement falsely implies that an internal negative affect in relation to this state of affairs is universal - making a negative value judgement about the state of affairs and passing it off as objective. It’s a misuse of language that conceals the subjectivity of the statement: a common strategy of modern rhetoric.

So then happiness is a good feeling by your definition. What then does one mean when they say "I feel happy", if "happy does not mean good?" — Dranu

The use of the qualifier ‘feeling’ in reference to ‘happy’ shouldn’t be necessary. It is used only because we misuse the concept ‘happy’ as a qualifier in itself, disconnecting it from the affect or feeling to which it refers. — Possibility

That's plausible except there are some fields we can map or interact with. A magnet in the presence of iron filings will show the magnetic field lines. Light rays are the field lines of electromagnetism. And of course there is gravity.

I think the fields are what is real, and the particles are the potential interactions. Unless there is some further reality underlying fields. — Marchesk

I’m not denying the fields are ‘real’, nor am I denying that we can interact with them or map them - just not directly and not completely. What I’m saying is that these maps and lines correspond to the relationships we can observe or measure through our interactions with the universe, but we cannot presume that this is what they ARE, any more than we could presume 150 years ago that atoms were indivisible and therefore fundamental.

Everything we ‘know’ about these ‘fields’ consists of our conceptual relations of formulated potential and actual interactions. What we don’t know about what they are or what underlies them consists of unrecognised potential or possible interactions from which we (or our scientific methods) are currently ignorant, isolated or excluded to some extent. This is also the case for ‘stuff’ that we know or don’t know, and ‘stuff’ that is known or unknown by everything else in the universe. What is fundamental in our universe is interaction: from which all information manifests as the ‘stuff’ of reality.

The way I see it, what is most fundamental in the universe is not ‘stuff’, but interaction. Particles are a decoherence of potentiality from these field interactions. But the ‘fields’ are just formulae. They’re our manifestations of how logic and mathematics make sense of interactions of potentiality in relation to the current understanding we have about the universe, which allow us to make predictions about this universe well beyond our own limited, minuscule and temporary existence.

The ‘fields’ exist because without them, we have no solid evidence or logical explanation for our interactions with this atemporal potentiality of the universe. All we have are our discrete and limited observations, and the conceptual relations that our mind constructs from all possible, potential and actual interactions we may be aware of across the universe - past, present and future, mysterious and predictable, desired and despised, unlikely, averted and inevitable...

These ‘fields’ mark the threshold of our scientific uncertainty - something I think we’re going to have to face eventually. Quantum mechanics suggests that this is our new reality.

The thing is quite a few members on here are ordinary language philosophy fans, and not great fans of metaphysics, so discussing the usage of words is important to them, since they're convinced philosophy goes wrong with a misuse of language, particularly when it comes to ontology.

I think we experience the world as if there is a subjective/objective divide, but the ontological situation is unclear, because we don't know the nature of consciousness. However, we're made of the same stuff as everything else, so I tend to think it's an epistemological divide. — Marchesk

I agree with you that the subject-object divide is not ontological, but epistemological. I think this is the confusion that Wayfarer describes in the ‘common language’ use of these terms - especially in relation to what is not an ‘object’. And I also agree with you that arguments about the ‘correct’ use of language are frequent here, both in ontological and epistemological discussions - particularly in discussions that bring these two together. I think when we attempt to define the ‘real world’ as it is and as we understand it - especially when we seek to deconstruct this subject-object divide - we venture onto ontological/epistemological ‘common’ ground, and are tempted to find ‘common language’ or dictionary definitions for support, despite the errors in understanding.

FWIW, I see ‘subject’ and ‘object’ as relative epistemological concepts that allow for a form of panpsychism. I certainly don’t see it ONLY in terms of human beings as subject and the world as object - that’s just where we start to understand the world. For me, there is something it is like to be a carbon atom (but not a rock), quantum information theory makes intuitive sense to me, and Ball’s variation on the twenty questions game (late in the video you posted) most beautifully describes for me the nature of our unfolding universe.

I have to say that I would have initially agreed with @Wayfarer in this discussion - I always thought when talking about a ‘being’ that we’re commonly assuming some level of consciousness or at least life, but I also understand that, ontologically speaking, a ‘being’ refers specifically to temporal existence.

I think we reserve the term ‘being’ for the living in order to distinguish it from ‘object’, which we understand to be lifeless, and therefore static. I’ll admit that referring to a building, for instance, as a ‘being’ seems strange to me, even as I recognise it as an instance of being. But I no longer think it’s useful to make this distinction, especially if, with Rovelli, we recognise that the universe more accurately consists of interrelated ‘events’ rather than ‘objects’.

So I acknowledge that buildings and office furniture ARE beings after all - and that to distinguish them, ontologically speaking, as ‘objects’ instead fails to recognise their relative temporal existence in the universe.

Plus, I think if we’re aiming to plausibly explain the origin of life at some point in our philosophy, then it’s important to dispense with this being-object distinction that implies ‘life’ as something added to matter.

How is there an outcome without a motive? Could that happen? — Brett

The origin of life is an outcome without apparent motive. Any ‘motive’ we try to attribute to this outcome is a self-justifying prophecy, because there can be no ‘motive’ prior to the existence of life.

How do we recognise the outcome we’re chasing, who’s outcome, how do we arrive at it? — Brett

The outcome doesn’t belong to anyone. In Fleming’s case, an outcome - inhibition of bacterial growth - was observed and recognised as being desirable, found to be predictable and was replicated in order to achieve Fleming’s goal of curing disease. But the ‘individual goal’ of the penicillin mould was not to cure disease, not to collaborate, but to isolate and exclude bacteria to achieve its own ends. And yet, by Fleming collaborating with this recognised ‘potential’ in the mould, by working together with it, he was able to arrive at the outcome he was chasing, which was the same as the outcome the mould was chasing.

A concept always refers to a five dimensional subjective experience, so to distinguish between ‘reason’ as a concept and ‘reason’ as process is simply to reduce the concept to four dimensional information - to the form of temporal event - in an attempt to reify or define it. Reason as a process precludes our ability to use it in predicting or anticipating other events, relating to our experience outside time. Some people also personify Reason in a respectful effort to relate to it as an ‘other’ - a fellow experiencing subject.

The way I see it, reason is the structure in our understanding of the world, how we relate information beyond the spatial and temporal aspects of reality. It may be seen as purely logical, in which case it can be reduced to one dimensional, mechanical information. But there is much more to reason than rationality and logic.

Not all value structures are quantifiable, and to confine our understanding of the world only to these quantifiable or even mathematically reducible value structures is to limit our understanding of the world. The so-called verification of knowledge claims by such reductionism is evidence of our fears. The diversity of our language use, including written and verbal, imagery, music, movement and symbolism, points to the versatility of reason and the scope of information it is capable of acquiring about the world.

Incidentally, there is more to understanding the world than even the concept of ‘reason’ suggests. We also have a capacity to relate to the world beyond reason, beyond our diverse value structures that attribute significance to what matters.

This might have been the case once, but it may not be the only way for people to reach their goals anymore, and I say reach their goals because they are individual goals.

Diversity puts a strain on collaboration. There are far more “tribes” with different agenda than we’ve ever had. Communities no longer have common goals. Who do you collaborate with? those with similar goals. Diversity creates adversity.

Collaboration might be like the vestigial organs in humans. It still seems to be part of being human and we act it out but it does nothing anymore and many no longer truly feel it. — Brett

You don’t have to ‘feel’ collaboration for it to occur, and it certainly doesn’t require common goals as such. Collaboration only requires that the outcome, not necessarily the motive, is the same.

Diversity interferes with collaboration only because we place more importance on the motive or the ‘individual goal’ than the actual outcome in how we relate to each other, and to the world.

When Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin, it was on a contaminated petri dish that he had previously discarded from an unsuccessful experiment. Once we can recognise and predict the outcome we’re chasing and map the causal conditions, then we can consciously collaborate to recreate the required conditions, and the diversity in the ‘individual goal’ is quickly forgotten.

I'm suggesting that the ideal of being collaborative and altruistic is put on display while other motivations aren't. Which leads to an imbalance in the representation of ideas in forums like these. I'm asking whether that is true, if so why that is and whether that undermines the discussions here. — Judaka

I don’t see altruism or collaboration as motivation in itself. I think perhaps this is a misunderstanding: that we should be striving to be ‘altruistic’ for its own sake. Altruism and collaboration are not what drives us - they are the means by which we succeed at anything. Once we determine where we want to go, what we hope to achieve, then collaboration is the most effective means to achieve this; the ONLY means to achieve anything. We are limited only by our lack of collaboration, which stems partly from our lack of connection, which in turn stems partly from our lack of awareness. The capacity is there - we’re just so afraid of failure that we refuse to try. We’d rather keep excluding, isolating and ignoring what doesn’t fit into our neat intellectual concepts of the world, than admit that our concepts are lacking, that there is more to reality, and that we cannot make sense of it alone.

I think that philosophy, more than most pursuits of knowledge, recognises the importance of collaboration - at least in some areas. Most of the information that contributes to philosophy comes from the painstaking research, study and exploration by those with little to no interest in philosophy at all. What undermines the discussions here may simply be this assumption that people are pushing an agenda of ‘altruism’ or ‘collaboration’ for its own sake, and the distrust we may have for what appears to be an open-ended or undisclosed result. That’s understandable. We like to think we’re working towards something concrete, and many so-called philosophers these days seem reluctant to lose sight of the shore - especially those of us here who are otherwise alone and isolated in our philosophical studies.

The general view is that there is currently no concrete step forward - there hasn’t been for a while now. And just because we’re earnestly looking for one that seems solid enough, doesn’t mean we’re prepared to test them out. It can be difficult to tell here if anyone is ‘walking the talk’ - particularly when it comes to ‘altruism’ and humanitarian aims. But the ultimate aim of philosophy should be to arrive at a practical understanding of the real world, rather than one that sounds reasonable in theory. In as much as a philosophy highlights anomalies in our experience of human behaviour - whether ‘altruism’ or ‘evil’ - it must be deemed insufficient as practical understanding.

I think when we’re trying to protect our philosophy from the real world, it probably needs a rethink.

My question is basically
1) Do you agree that posters on this forum generally and quite strongly emphasise altruistic and humanitarian aims?
2) Do you agree that people in the real world, while still being generally good people, are less concerned with being as altruistic?
3) If you agree then why do you think this is? — Judaka

1) I think there are certainly posters on this forum who do strongly emphasise altruistic and humanitarian aims, but there are also many who merely give lip service to it, and many more who misunderstand what is meant by collaboration, as a concept that is more fundamental than altruism or humanitarianism.

2) I think we have developed a social reality which downplays the value of altruism in favour of the individual. I think we still recognise some value to collaboration, but we misconstrue the aim of that collaboration as serving only those individual ends which ‘naturally’ align with those of others - and once we have achieved these we look to where our ends diverge and we are in conflict, or where those we have helped to achieve are then serving their own ends to our detriment. I think we are generally ‘good’ as long as we are surrounded by ‘good’, and we see altruism as any ‘good’ that we observe whenever we deem that surrounding ‘good’ to be insufficient. Altruism is not something we acknowledge in ourselves - only in others.

3) I think that we generally misunderstand the origin of altruism and the fundamental nature of collaboration. We seem to believe (thanks to Darwin) that it all developed out of our need for survival, and that humanity has excelled at this to the point that we no longer need collaboration to survive, which indicates to me that we’ve lost sight of its fundamental role in our existence. To define collaboration as ‘working together for a common goal’ implies motive, but there is evidence of collaboration without a clear motive even in the most basic chemical reactions.

Collaboration is simply ‘working together’. It does not require self-consciousness, a known motive or even life - only the simplest sense that what matters is this vague awareness of and connection with more than this, here and now. This basic collaboration occurs to some limited extent in every process and every cell of every body, in every chemical reaction that contributes to them, and in every atom that interacts both within and around us.

That the vast majority of interaction in the universe does NOT result in much collaboration, connection or even awareness does not preclude its fundamental necessity in our own highly unlikely existence.

The way I see it, love and desire originate from the same affect or feeling, but the confusion comes from a misunderstanding of ‘person’ as referring to an object or experience, rather than to a potentiality or a meaningful relationship.

When we ‘love that dress’, we’re referring to an object: to its physical properties as we experience them. It could be the colour, the style, the feel of the material. We may desire that dress now, but as a person who desires, we’re not a static object but a developing and experiencing being who can change in how we relate to an object from one moment to the next. Plus, we probably won’t love that dress anymore if it shrinks in the wash, or gets a red wine stain...

When we love the taste of chicken, we’re referring to an experience, regardless of the properties of whatever object it may be attributed to. It’s the same when we love a person not necessarily for their physical appearance, but for how they positively contribute to the way we feel about and experience ourselves, that person and the world in general.

But love can be deeper than that. Because we can love a person not just for how they make us feel at the time, but for the potential we see in them, and the potential they bring out in us. At this level, we’re not deterred by bad moods or stressful situations, by their shyness or prickly personality, their embarrassing faux pas or bad taste in clothing. We can see past how others see them in that moment to who they can be, even if they don’t quite see it themselves, and we strive to bring out the best in them - not just for how it makes us feel, but for their benefit and the benefit of anyone else who interacts with them. This is not the same as trying to change, improve or ‘rescue’ them - it’s about potential, not possibility - we need to be honest about their capacity, and about ours. But it is this love that endures through the rocky patches of life and marriage, through illness and money troubles and teenagers and nightmare in-laws...

And we can also love a person for the added meaning that relationship brings to how we relate to the universe as a whole. At this level, the love we have for them intensifies every interaction we have with the world, because we relate to everything not only through our own experience, but through our relationship with that person we love as an experiencing being. In this way, what might otherwise have escaped our notice has meaning for us purely because we know it has meaning for them. We can relate to the world almost with two minds. It is this love that endures long after that person has been lost to everyone else.

I think this is why they often say that love is a journey...

My X >>> All the suffering my child will experience (including his own X) — khaled

I’m going to stop you here, because I’m starting to see why we’re getting nowhere - you cannot rationally apply logical reasoning to moral intentions. I’m pretty sure this violates rationality. For brevity’s sake, I’ll quote from SEP:

One of Schopenhauer’s most significant assertions is that the four different modes of explanation only run in parallel with each other, and cannot coherently be intermixed. If we begin by choosing a certain style of explanation, then we immediately choose the kinds of object to which we can refer. Conversely, if we begin by choosing a certain kind of object to explain, we are obliged to use the style of reasoning associated with that kind of object. It thus violates the rationality of explanation to confuse one kind of explanation with another kind of object. We cannot begin with a style of explanation that involves material objects and their associated cause-and-effect relationships, for example, and then argue to a conclusion that involves a different kind of object, such as an abstract concept. Likewise, we cannot begin with abstract conceptual definitions and accordingly employ logical reasoning for the purposes of concluding our argumentation with assertions about things that exist. — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Arthur Schopenhauer

Likewise, we cannot begin with ‘individual’, ‘suffering’ or ‘harm’ as abstract conceptual definitions and accordingly employ logical reasoning for the purpose of concluding our argumentation with assertions about the morality of intentions. So you CAN argue that it’s illogical for parents to both procreate and minimise ‘harm’ to a conceptual ‘individual’ (and I might even agree with you, conceptually speaking), but if you’re going to argue about the morality of intentions, then you cannot use logical reasoning to do so - you would need to construct an argument employing moral reasoning about psychologically motivating forces. You haven’t done that, because you’ve started with abstract concepts and logical reasoning.

I think that this is where we’re coming unstuck. You keep referring to abstract concepts of ‘suffering’, ‘harm’ and ‘individual’, while I keep referring to them as moral concepts. Either you’re arguing logically, or you’re arguing morally. You can’t begin with logical explanations in order to conclude a moral argument, and expect it to be rational.

I'm confused. I thought you were making the case that all of our actions have some moral support behind them. But here you're talking about survival instinct — khaled

My mention of ‘survival instinct’ was anticipating your response to the question of why you eat when you’re hungry. You do realise that you don’t have to eat, even when you’re hungry, don’t you? You think that hunger ‘makes’ you eat because you don’t believe you can choose NOT to eat once you get hungry. But you can. People do it all the time. Just as you can choose not to survive, not to have sex or to procreate, against what many still consider to be an ‘overwhelming’ biological urge. It’s a matter of changing how you evaluate the urge to act, and how you evaluate the ‘suffering’ you would experience from not acting.

Every ‘instinct’ we think we have is an unconsciously determined and initiated action - one that can be consciously determined and initiated if we choose to be aware of the process. But we choose ignorance, instead - because otherwise we would need to consider the ethical implications of our actions, even at this level. It’s part of our unwritten social contract to eat when we’re hungry, convinced that we’re harming no one (that matters) by doing so. But in some situations, people are starving because they’re unable to ‘eat when they’re hungry’ without violating someone else’s property rights, considered more important than hunger because we enforce it as law - because WE don’t have to think about the ethical implications of eating when we’re hungry.

So, by my book, a serial killer is ignoring their capacity to act against their urge to kill. They’ve given themselves permission to ‘kill when they want to’, convinced that they’re harming no one (that matters) by doing so. There is no ‘overwhelming biological urge’ that one cannot overcome by developing a conscious awareness of the process. So there are no human actions that are free of ethical implications due to something that ‘makes’ us do it.

Let X be the suffering due to not having a child. The person in question here is saying

My X >>> All the suffering my child will experience (including his own X)

Is this really an acceptable evaluation for anyone. That's like someone justifying murder by saying "my minor inconvenience due to having to meet this guy twice a week is greater than all the grief I caused by killing him"

There is only very few instances where I would believe both of these are true. Again, I don't "ban" procreation, if someone can show me that the first scenario is the case for them, sure have kids. You'll have one child every 200 couples or so then maybe, and that's being generous — khaled

But again, you’re making a logical evaluation based on your perspective and extrapolating that to be some objective ‘evaluation for anyone’. But there is only the individual and their subjective evaluation - they don’t have to show YOU that their evaluation of the harm/benefit scale favours them having a child. They don’t have to answer to you at all, or to logic, because the will of the individual is most important here (according to your ethical perspective).

As for justifying murder, it is your evaluation of his inconvenience as ‘minor’ and your awareness of ‘all the grief it would cause’ that makes it unacceptable for you. He obviously saw it differently at the time, otherwise he would not have committed the act. He might regret it later, as he becomes aware of the grief he causes, but it’s easy to ignore or devalue ‘possible future grief’ to unknown individuals in the face of overwhelming personal suffering. That doesn’t make it right, but it does allow those who subscribe to an ethics of ‘cause as little harm as possible - especially to oneself’ to justify either murder or procreation.

How would there be nothing wrong by my standards. They can "forget to consider" it genuinely but if they actively ignore it of course that's wrong. A murderer can't "actively ignore" the suffering he causes and then claim to be doing nothing wrong. — khaled

But they’re not ignoring actual suffering, only your subjective prediction of possible suffering. If they subscribe to ‘cause as little harm as possible’, they’re not expected to be aware of (and in agreement with) your evaluation of their future actions, only with their own. You’re not presenting objective facts, you’re giving your individual opinion. So what makes you think your value structure is more accurate than theirs? Because it appeals to logic?

I don't get where this ignoring information thing came from. I'm not ignoring any information as far as I can see — khaled

Not you - I was referring to those you’re trying to convince not to procreate. Even if they followed your ethical guidelines, they can still ignore your claim that procreation would be ‘harming’ a possible child more than it relieves their own yearning, and there would be nothing morally ‘wrong’ about that, by your standards. So the success of your argument still relies on increasing awareness and reducing ignorance...

And anyone in their right minds would clearly see that there is no way they benefit more from having a child than their child suffers their entire lifetime. "Suffering due to not having a child" is a form of suffering. What they would be proposing is that that form alone outweights ALL forms of suffering their child will experience. There is just no way that's true. — khaled

‘Anyone in their right minds’ is a subjective value structure. What you mean is ‘anyone in YOUR mind’. This is your perspective of their life and the life of their child, not theirs. Someone else’s evaluation of their own individual yearning to be a parent and the possible life of their own child is always going to be drastically different to your perspective. Suffering isn’t about quantity of instances, but about qualitative evaluation. As someone who places no value in the existence of either individual (only in the quantity of suffering they represent), your logical evaluation of their possible instances of ‘suffering’ means exactly squat to them. There is no way you can know what is true for either of them.

You can’t effectively alter a decision to procreate from the moral perspective of possible suffering to a possible child - anyone weighing this decision is way past possibilities - already considering the overwhelming potential a child can bring to the world, as well as their own potential as a parent, and is ready to collaborate with both. You can, however, approach the decision from the moral perspective of potential harm another child will bring to the environment and those already suffering in terms of diversion, consumption, energy and resource depletion, and point out the overwhelming potential those parents have to offer existing children who are actually suffering in the world. There is then possible, potential and existing suffering that can be alleviated here by not procreating, and instead finding alternative ways to collaborate.

I don't think this is correct. Ethics is about what you "should" or "shouldn't" do on some moral level but it doesn't actually have binding power. I don't need to think X is the right thing to do to do X. I can still do X even if I think it is wrong. So no you do not need positive ethics to consciously initiate an action. Do you appeal to a moral principle every time you go to have breakfast? — khaled

I agree that ethics doesn’t have any binding power. I personally think people ‘should’ do certain things, and they ‘shouldn’t’ do other things - but I’m under no illusions that my demanding either will have any effect - these are simply the principles I find most effective across the board, and it’s against my own principles to keep this information to myself, whether anyone else agrees with them or not.

I also agree that someone doesn’t need to think X (procreation) is the right thing to do to do X (procreate) - and they can still procreate even if they think it is wrong, and even if YOU think it is wrong. So what are we arguing about?

There are many things that we do without consciously initiating an action, but we initiate an action that we are then conscious of, all the same. If someone asked you ‘why did you have breakfast?’ You might answer, ‘because I was hungry’ - to which they might then ask, ‘well, why did you have breakfast because you were hungry?’ The reasoning you give for initiating your action X, whether or not you employed that reasoning at the time, will eventually come back to a certain moral principle which reassures you that X was the right thing to do given the circumstances, even if you think it was wrong on some other level. Perhaps if we were more conscious of determining and initiating actions according to our moral principles, we might behave more responsibly - or at least be more aware of where our moral principles contradict each other and where we discard them in favour of ‘survival instinct’, for instance (which is another way of saying ‘do what benefits the individual’). Ignorance of what determines and initiates our actions doesn’t mean those actions aren’t guided by any ethics at all. Quite the opposite - these moral principles are those we deem ‘necessary’: not just a ‘should’ but a ‘must’. Recognising that there are options even to our ‘instincts’ would enable us to critically examine our ethical perspective at a deeper level than just our behaviour as human beings.

Surely we aren't doing that. We (ie. us discussing here - not mankind as a whole) are trying to find ways to let the world do what it wants, rather than assuming we have the right to alter it for our own short-term economic ends. What does the world 'need from us'? To be left alone? — Tim3003

Sorry for the confusion - this was in reference to mankind as a whole. I recognise what we’re trying to do here.

I think what the world needs from humanity in general is our advanced capacity to increase awareness, connection and collaboration. It’s not about leaving everything alone, but about reducing a tendency to ignore, isolate and exclude out of fear.

And then we get into the whole issue of rights: ie. do we as the dominant species have the right to alter the eco-system if we want to (by design or by negligance). Or do other species have the right to their un-molested existance alongside us? — Tim3003

Objectively speaking, any right we think we have must be extended to all species equally - otherwise it isn’t a right - it’s a privilege. The question is not ‘do we have the right?’ - it is rather: Can we exercise that right without ignoring, isolating or excluding the rest of the eco-system’s right to the same? That doesn’t offer much in the way of rights.

Where the differences occur is in our capacity to increase awareness, connection and collaboration. This is not a privilege, but a reponsibility. One we seem to be ignoring, for the most part.

I don't buy into this beyond good and evil BS, that life "must" be had by yet MORE people so that those individuals can experience "growth-through-adversity". Your collaboration mumbo jumbo is just another version of "growth-through-adversity" schemes to say justify why life should be lived out by yet more people. Next. — schopenhauer1

Not what I’m saying at all. You have in your head a concept that you think is close to what I’m arguing here, and you’re running with that instead of reading what I’ve actually written. I have never said ‘growth-through-adversity’, and I have never said that life should or ‘must’ be lived by more people - because I don’t believe that it should. Talk about strawman. Take a moment to try and honestly understand what I’ve written before rejecting it based on your own assumptions of what I must be saying simply because I disagree with you on something.

Let's take a thought experiment.. let us say antinatalism caught on and a majority of the world thought like an antinatalist. What do you think that would look like? — schopenhauer1

If the majority of human beings decided not to procreate in an attempt to reduce ‘individual’ instances of suffering, then eventually you would achieve what amounts to a quantitative success. Yay, well done. But ‘suffering’ is not an event - it’s an evaluation in relation to all other experiences. So what would happen is that the negative value of each remaining instance of ‘suffering’ would gradually become more pronounced. In effect you would not achieve a reduction as such, but rather a concentration of that same negative value of ‘suffering’ across an awareness of much fewer instances.

So what you have would be fewer individuals, who would then evaluate any event prior to this more concentrated existence as less relevant than an event that happens to this existence. Their individual lives and experiences become infinitely more precious, because the relevance of their own existence is so much more finite. History becomes irrelevant. The small incidences of ‘harm’ they would have brushed off before are now considered much more serious. They’re more afraid: of those who would ‘harm’ them, of bringing ‘harm’ to others, of an unwanted end to their precious existence, of losing loved ones, etc - everything has so much more value, both positive and negative.

And with the loss of ever more individuals, each individual ‘suffering’ increases in severity for those who remain. How long do you think this antinatalism would last, once an individual recognises there are two options that would most certainly ease this intensity for themselves? Which option do you think would be more attractive?

So, while I admire the heartfelt motivation, as long as the priority is the individual you will never reduce the qualitative impact of ‘suffering’ in the world - not with antinatalism. And I maintain that it is the ethical perspective that lets you down, not the prescription of ‘don’t procreate’, which I would otherwise support.

You asked if there are any optimal conditions. I said there were none currently. In pure theory, there could be a universe that has complete optimal conditions that is tailored for every individual's absolute paradise (and everything can be turned off to suit what one wants at any given time), but that is not this reality as you have noted. We only have this reality. And if you say, we have to "fit" this reality, then that is the game that you deny that it is. No, it's not made by humans, but the way you describe reality (interacting and collaboration.. do it or pay the consequences or whatever your negative consequence is of not following your model), it is indeed something one must try to get a "handle of". There is some technique, some WAY, some thing that has to be done and if one doesn't do it, one suffers from it.. This to me is game-like. One plays by the rules or one doesn't get to benefit from playing the game or winning it. Yes, I know you are going to object to "winning" or "rules" but that is essentially what you are laying out. Even if you deny this, and then repeat your "collaboration" chorus, it doesn't negate what it is amounting to. You can say it differently, but your model is as much a game as the normative models that are around which are about the same.. deal with reality.. here is how.. growth-through-adversity in some fashion or other be it collaboration or anything else. — schopenhauer1

The difference is that you seem to think we should have a different reality. Bear with me while I attempt to understand what you’re proposing here.

In your alternative reality, it seems that either only one individual exists as the universe, or each individual is completely unaware of others - like a multiverse of sorts. Once aware of anything other than itself, your own existence would necessarily be in relation to whatever else exists. For this to be an ‘absolute paradise’ (in which everything can be turned off to suit what one wants at any given time), an individual must have a complete working knowledge or ‘control’ of everything that exists. And the only way to achieve that is to imagine your own universe from scratch.

So this universe with optimal conditions could possibly exist, but only within the mind of an individual, and only in absence (or ignorance) of any other form of existence. You’re effectively yearning for oblivion - this is your ‘absolute paradise’.

But let’s say an individual wishes to manifest this ‘absolute paradise’ they have imagined in which to exist. The individual would need to manifest another existence (its absolute paradise) with which to interact. In order to know what to manifest, it must have some idea of what could possibly exist. But if nothing exists except itself, then it cannot know of any other possibility, and so can only manifest another instance of itself, with the potential it perceives within itself.

But how does this individual even know anything about itself, given that one approaches an understanding of oneself only through interaction with others? What you’re proposing is the universe of an omniscient, omnipotent creator: you. But you are a product of existence in this reality.

I get that you’d like reality to reflect your own value system - we all would, because that would mean we no longer have to experience prediction error, which we tend to evaluate as ‘bad’ experience. But you’re criticising a reality that you don’t know enough about to even begin to propose an effective alternative. It’s like what @Banno refers to here regarding critical thinking without context - like the patient trying to tell a neurosurgeon where he went wrong. It’s ignorance and hubris to think you know better than a reality you don’t even understand. It just smacks of a two year old tantrum, to me.

As for ‘the game’, you can exist without ever managing to get a ‘handle of’ reality. Most of existence operates in this way. But the rules that we’ve made up insist that ‘suffering is bad’, and so we’re imposing our own restrictions on how we exist. That’s your choice - you can’t blame reality for your own evaluation of it. There is no objective ‘good’ or ‘bad’, no ‘some thing that has to be done’ - there is simply existence and whatever sense we make of it. Your interpretations of how I describe reality will always look like a ‘game’ to you, it seems. But for me, there are no rules except those we make for ourselves or attempt to impose on others.

I’ve suggested a ‘way’ to minimise our contribution to ‘suffering’ as it exists in the world, but you reject it on the grounds that it attributes no priority to the individual, even though this particular subjective value conflicts with reality as it exists in the world, increasing ‘suffering’. You seem to think there ‘should’ be a way to prioritise both the individual and their freedom from ‘suffering’, but this world only exists in the mind of the ‘individual’, and can only be manifest as a result of that individual choosing to exist in relation to others.

How does this

So negative ethics cannot stand alone.
— Possibility

Follow from this
Ethics is only about how not to act in relation to the conducting of an activity
— Possibility

They seem like unrelated statements which I don't even understand — khaled

It is in the process of consciously determining an action that a negative ethics is applied. But in order to consciously initiate an action, a positive ethics is required. In order to act, you must have some idea of what is a ‘good’ act (positive ethics), not just what is not a ‘good’ act (negative ethics). It appears to me that your positive ethics is to ‘do what benefits the individual’, which is often in direct conflict with ‘harm as little as possible’, so of course you’re still faced with a dilemma in determining every action (so long as you’re aware of the impact your action may have) - one that your particular brand of ethics cannot help you with (hence the OP question). Your intuition tells you that your negative ethics are more important than your positive ethics, as they stand - and I would agree with you here, in theory. But that doesn’t solve your problem - it only makes the antinatalist argument seem valid, and only because there is NO ACTION INITIATED. All it does is allow you to accuse those who do act, regardless of their reasons, of violating your negative ethics.

My point, however, is that the conflict between your positive and negative ethics is the main problem. If you always prioritise your negative ethics, then your only actions will be those in which your subjective evaluation of benefit to you outweighs your subjective evaluation of the extent of harm that those actions may cause others. But how do you evaluate ignoring information about possible or potential harm that could tip the scales on an action which would otherwise be deemed more beneficial to the individual than it is harmful to others? It does no harm to ignore this information, does it? You’re not initiating any action, just determining not to interact in a way that might inform you of something which has a negative benefit to you as an individual...

Which brings us back to the argument regarding procreation: you’re asking those who subscribe to your form of ethics to also rely on your subjective evaluation of possible future harm to someone who doesn’t exist, weighed against your evaluation of the action’s benefit to the parent as an individual. By your own ethics, however, YOU don’t get to decide that for them. The benefit/harm to the individual can ONLY be evaluated by the individual in question. So, by your ethics, the parent is well within their rights to evaluate procreation in relation to their own perspective of the harm/benefit scale. And there is nothing in your ethics that says they shouldn’t ignore information that it’s in their best interests to ignore.

Not true. Ethics is just about how to act as how not to act — khaled

Ethics is only about how not to act in relation to the conducting of an activity. So negative ethics cannot stand alone.

There are none currently. As you so elucidated. — schopenhauer1

Why do you say ‘currently’?

How about: increase awareness by 50 but increase ignorance by 10 (I'm just using arbitrary numbers because I don't know what these mean). Is that allowed? By "increase awareness" it is allowed, by "reduce ignorance" it's not allowed. Contradiction see? So which should take priority. — khaled

It’s not possible to increase both awareness and ignorance with the same action. Awareness is acquiring information about the world; ignorance is rejecting available information.

????? Is a world without people a world without suffering? I'd say yes. So is a world where antinatalism is applied a world without suffering? I'd say yes. So if your goal is to reduce suffering to 0, one way to do so is antinatalism — khaled

What do you understand ‘suffering’ to be?

But intentionally placing people into the game to "figure it out" (real easy words for people who have harder circumstances, but that's a secondary point), and "interacting with the world" and "learning from our mistakes". Why should anyone be put in this game to go through it? Self-justifying circular answers ensue. — schopenhauer1

There is no game: no activity that one engages in for fun or amusement; no form of competitive activity or sport played according to rules; no episode or period of play ending in a final result; no secret and clever plan or trick.

You keep trying to argue that existence is some kind of game we didn’t choose to play, but a ‘game’ is something we’ve made up. It isn’t real. No one came up with ‘existence’ as a game, and then forced other ‘individuals’ to play it. There is simply existence and whatever sense we make of it. If you’ve decided to make sense of it in terms of a ‘game’, then surely someone must have ‘created’ that game and decided on the rules. If you believe that’s not the case, then the analogy of a ‘game’ doesn’t fit, and there must be a more accurate way to make sense of existence. Or if you believe that it’s our social reality that came up with the game and the rules, then you would understand (if you made any attempt to understand instead of just protesting) that this ‘social reality’ is a subjective consensus of value structures and concepts to which we subscribe freely in our minds rather than any ‘force beyond our control’, and all of it is subject to critical examination and change.

You don’t have to try and figure it out, you don’t have to interact with the world, and you certainly don’t have to learn from your mistakes. I can’t make you do anything, and I can’t make you see the world the way I do. I’m only suggesting that you should give these a go, not because I think they’re ‘right’ or ‘good’, but because I believe it’s important for me to try and ease suffering where I can, and that I do it by at least attempting to increase awareness, connection and collaboration in each of my interactions with the world. That’s how I make sense of existence.

So thus we get to place people in a game in non-optimal conditions for the individual. — schopenhauer1

Describe to me what ‘optimal conditions’ would be for an ‘individual’ to exist.