I think that when we process information consciously, using rational thought and reasoning, that’s only a fraction of the information we integrate at any moment. Sensory information interacts with various internal systems to create affect as well as thought, and while most of it we can categorise in relation to emotional or rational concepts, there are some affect-related information or tangential thoughts that don’t quite fit into a neat and ordered conceptual system. Some people learn to discard this information as irrational or insignificant - it certainly messes with the sense of order and rationality many people expect from their reality. Others are less bothered by the ‘fuzziness’ or fluidity of their conceptual systems - either in general or in relation to a particular area of interest (including those we love). Like the hoarder who tells themselves, ‘I might need that later’, they unconsciously integrate the data as ‘potential’ or ‘possible’ information much longer than the significance of its connection to memory would last. If the same or correlated information keeps cropping up in this way, eventually we’ll be aware that we ‘know’ this already, somehow...

The mathematical side of physics is often difficult for me to grasp, but the first time someone took the time to explain quantum mechanics to me, it just seemed to make sense. I was intuitively familiar with the ‘fuzziness’ or uncertainty of the world, the potentiality wave and the concept of both/and. Suddenly, the world as I had always conceptualised it had a scientific explanation - it wasn’t just in my head. I think most quantum physicists find it a comfort to focus on the mathematics (Shut Up and Calculate), as if they’re aiming to bring some sort of order and rationality to this ‘irrational’ information they would otherwise discard.

I am of the belief that some minds tend towards seeing the world as particle, while others tend towards seeing the wave. I think we should find the courage to better understand the world as both.

Morality is a reduction of objective reality to what is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ human behaviour and why. And even if we can grasp objective reality, our expression of it as moral claims necessarily loses information in the reduction process.

Choose to increase awareness, connection and collaboration - this is as close to my understanding of objective reality as I can express as a moral claim.

So if you did not know of these things and they developed over a long period of time, in spite of yourself, from a combination of the things individuals had in them, could they really be called subjective actions or thoughts? — Brett

The underlying impetus behind the actions are not subjective. It is how we describe and explain those actions and thoughts, how we structure the concepts that determine and initiate consciously cooperative or uncooperative action, which is a subjective view of reality.

People, animals, chemical reactions, molecules and atoms have collaborated since the ‘big bang’. It’s a process that is fundamental to the existence of the universe. The underlying impetus of matter to collaborate refers to an objective reality.

That we call it ‘cooperation’ and attribute ‘survival value’ to it, however, is a subjective view of that reality. Objectively, I would argue that this view is inaccurate - collaboration has nothing to do with survival. That we use it for that purpose is subjective - it benefits us, but our survival is not objectively ‘good’, nor is it necessary.

I hope that’s a little clearer. If not, please let me know which parts are not making sense.

Ok, now I'm interested. What would the "objective position" entail? — schopenhauer1

The basic idea is what I’ve been describing here: to explore a view of reality beyond any human perspective of value and significance. To recognise that our morality pertains to an incomplete structure of what is real and how it all relates. Regardless of whether we believe procreation to be a good/bad action towards a potential life, or a good/bad action for parents, or even a good/bad action for society or our species, an objective view of procreation shows it to be completely unnecessary.

Humanity’s objective responsibility towards existence does not lie in our capacity for survival, domination or proliferation, but in our advanced capacity to increase awareness, connection and collaboration well beyond our species, our planet, and even the limits of our four- and five-dimensional existence. What constrains us are the individual and collective choices we make to ignore, isolate and exclude in a Sisyphean effort to survive, dominate or proliferate - with globally destructive results.

A reality can be seen as flawed when it begins to destroy itself. We need to recognise by the state of our planet that the way we have structured the position of humanity in our global and universal reality is flawed. Evolutionary theory is incomplete - natural selection is a limiting, not a motivating factor. We didn’t evolve TO survive - we evolved AND survived. That paints a different picture - one that positions procreation as profoundly irrelevant to anyone who wishes to make the most of their own existence.

When I’m not concerned with what is good for me, but looking objectively at my individual existence in the unfolding universe, procreation on my part has negligible benefit, and considerably greater costs.

As good a parent as I believe myself to be, anything I have the capacity to achieve with my existence can be done without bringing another life into the world.

All arguments in support of procreation are limited by the human perspective, and are therefore either selfish, anthropocentric or ignorant.

There is no objective argument to support procreation as necessary or beneficial in our current global or universal situation.

I'd probably agree there positive not quite the same as affirmative ethics as he uses the term, but there are parallels. One of these being that one is overlooked for the other, or rather violated for the other. — schopenhauer1

As I mentioned, the distinction is that positive ethics doesn’t necessarily ignore the negative. A sound positive ethics would be in harmony with a sound negative ethics. If you have to overlook one for the other, then at least one of them is flawed.

I am not sure, but I believe we've had this conversation before. If so, I probably brought up that this is very close to Nietzsche's idea of "beyond good and evil". In other words, there is no good or evil, suffering isn't actually "bad". Rather, suffering provides meaning and we should bask in its radiant glow of significance-making. I think this is just subversion of pain in order to justify it. If the conundrum is that life has pain, if we make pain "good" then we can justify its existence. I just don't buy it being "good" or providing "significance". In a world without pain or suffering (if we want to split the concepts in whatever self-styled manner), even the pain of not having a bit of pain to make life more significant would be there. So I guess this goes down to the metaphysics of pain. But even if we were to say that reality MUST have pain for X, we can simply say that we simply don't need reality then. In other words, no one has to experience it in the first place. And precisely the antinatalist notion that NO ONE actually misses out by not experience anything in the first place, there really is not much of a counterargument to it except the notion that people must be born to experience X, Y, Z experiences (perhaps you collaboration, etc.). But that then begs the question why? And then we are back to square one. — schopenhauer1

You seem to be struggling to get beyond good and evil, though. I’m not trying to justify pain, or to make it ‘good’ - we can’t get beyond value and significance by appealing to value and significance. Pain is real at every possible level, and for anyone or anything that exists it IS a fundamental part of that existence. We don’t have to exist, we don’t have to be aware, or connect or collaborate - nobody needs to be born, nobody needs to procreate. Everything that does exist has, at some level, chosen to do so: to be aware, to connect and to collaborate to a certain extent. There is no MUST to be considered here. You may not have chosen to exist as a conscious being, but this ‘you’ consists of aware, connected and collaborating matter that was determined to develop and achieve for its own benefit, in response to the awareness, connection and collaboration of those who may have consciously or unconsciously contributed to your existence.

There is no world without pain - no existence even in a remote or implausible possibility that does not require attention of some kind to adjust to change (not just temporal or physical change, but also change in value, significance, meaning or other correlation). You can refuse to be aware of any change, but to do so successfully and eradicate any instance of pain at any level of awareness, you would need to not exist at any level. That’s your prerogative. So, while I understand that pain reduced to significance is more bad than good from our limited perspective, I think we need to get beyond the value or significance of pain in order to grasp its objective reality. We don’t have to like it, but there’s no point in trying to create or imagine a world without it. And there’s no point thinking that we’re somehow reducing some potential person’s pain by preventing their physical existence, as if that’s an act of ‘love’ on our part. All we’re doing is shifting them into the ‘you matter’ column and then back to the ‘you don’t matter’ column. If you’re going to do that, it’s not love - it’s exclusion.

This is a bit murky and pseudo-spiritual. You'd have to explain. My response to this particular sentiment is that you think the universe has some plan or perspective of its own outside of the human perspective. I'd need proof of that. Even if there was a "higher" perspective... how does it affect humans? Think of this idea.. What if a big giant god-like being was watching us and had a completely different view of morality.. to him, our suffering matters not.. How does that affect us, the sufferers? Of course, this is a terrible view to start.. I really don't want to bring religious hodgepodge into this.. It leads to all sorts of non-real/non-relevant rabbit-holes (in my opinion). We mine as well talk about what we know at hand- the human perspective and what we can agree to be the case. — schopenhauer1

Because I used the word ‘meaningful’ without reducing it to something significant? I’m not suggesting some ‘higher plan’ or external being - I’m happy to avoid the religious hodgepodge, too. But the idea that we can only know the human perspective is a cop-out. We’ve structured the history of the universe well beyond the human perspective. We managed most of it by imagining a big giant god-like being watching us that had a completely different view of that universe. We know now that essential to our survival is understanding how the rest of the ecosystem evaluates their subjective experiences of our behaviour - to do this we must imagine a broader, critical view of our morality, where our suffering, our perspective of pain, matters no more than the suffering of a great white shark or a mosquito. So let’s not limit ourselves to the human perspective any more, and strive towards a consensus on a more universal or objective view.

The idea of caring for others, the value of life, was not created by Christianity, it had to exist first. Just like the idea, I believe, that caring for others is in human nature and not some sort of contrived idea for keeping the peace, something contrived to contribute towards your survival over others.

Our capacities for caring, our morals, where do they come from? We didn’t invent them. “To invent or create anything, you must already have both very specific wants and equally specific powers” (Midgley, Heart and Mind). Wanting something must happen before choosing. Caring must come before the world it shapes.
I’m aware my whole premise rests on this being true, and I recall other conversations about this that became a long slog. But I can only make my case on what I believe to be true. So I’m arguing my case on the basis of this being true.

What I’m positing is that this is who we are. It’s not a subjective idea of ourselves. Morality is the objective reality and it addresses all the questions about what’s real so that we can know who we are, what’s important and how we should live. — Brett

But morality is still a limited construction of that objective reality from the qualitative hierarchies of value in relation to subjective human experiences. It addresses these questions, sure - but it’s not as ‘objective’ as you think.

That’s not to say that we invented our morals, as such - rather that they’re incomplete (and possibly even incorrect) structures of reality. We can only structure and predict the ‘objective reality’ (ie. meaning) of individual human behaviour in relation to how we evaluate our experience of past behaviour. We make judgements and predictions about future behaviour based on those structures, refine and adjust them to reduce prediction error, and share them with others to reach a consensus on what is ‘real’ in an objective sense. It’s no different from any other aspect of reality - except that we struggle to extend a consensus of the qualitative aspects of our experience beyond the human perspective.

This hasn’t seemed all that important a distinction - until we began to realise that our very survival relies much more on how the rest of the ecosystem evaluates their experience of our past behaviour than we thought.

We structure our reality not just in relation to the three dimensions of space and the fourth of time, but in relation to value hierarchies that integrate the fifth dimensional qualitative aspects of our experience: hotter or colder, longer or shorter, higher or lower, lighter or darker, softer or harder, more or less, etc - and we then structure those value hierarchies according to a sixth dimension of social meaning: rich or poor, sick or healthy, good or bad, etc.

Gods developed from an awareness that there was more going on in reality than we could deduce from our senses or predict from past experience, more than we could structure in the four dimensions that we could agree was ‘real’. The qualitative aspects to our experience that could not be explained and predicted in relation to the familiar events and objects of four dimensional reality became the subject of myths and stories, religion, philosophy, metaphysics and science. Good and Evil, Love and War, the movements of the sky and the seasons; pain and loss, lack and humility, illness and death, why this child is the only one in her family with red hair, etc...

We formulate structural systems such as language, logic, measurement, mathematics and morals that enable us to reduce these five and six dimensional aspects of reality to four, three and even two or one dimensional information. But our dependence on these formulas and concepts (and the extent to which we no longer refine or adjust them to reduce prediction error, but instead ignore, isolate and exclude contradictory information from our experience) lead us to believe that reality is only what fits into these structural systems.

‘Caring for others’ refers to a six dimensional reality that awareness, connection and collaboration is inherent in all matter and underlies every interaction in the universe, regardless of value. Morality is only how we interpret that for ourselves.

A similar development took place in the United States, particularly in New England, the Upper Midwest, and Northwest, secular and religious culture produced large religious and non-profit social service, education, and medical establishments. The St. Joseph sisters (several varieties) were a part of this. So were Methodists, Lutherans, Jews, et al.

To a large extent, that legacy has withered. After the 1960s exodus of church membership across the church (Protestant and Catholic both), and the abrupt shrinkage of the lay orders, the churches began to lose the economic/membership base that had supported their work.

St. Joseph Carondelet nuns, for instance, were forced to sell their group of hospitals as they shrank and aged out of the capacity to continue on. Actually, the religious & non-profit hospitals were a high-water mark in both cost effectiveness and quality of delivered services. — Bitter Crank

Interesting, that hasn’t happened here - probably thanks to government support. There are very few sisters still teaching or working in hospitals, and yet both remain a benchmark for service quality and cost-effectiveness. Despite the dramatic fall in church membership and lay orders, the Catholic education systems here have grown from strength to strength since the 1960s, and currently hold a lot of sway in the overall education system in Australia - too much, some would argue. Even most major public hospitals here have a private catholic hospital nearby or on the premises. The public-private choice here is very different to the US, from what little I’ve seen. Less pronounced, perhaps? Idk

I can make any number of choices based on preferences that are not constrained by the negative ethics. — schopenhauer1

And yet, you argue that...

In the intra-wordly mess of the real world, someone will ALWAYS be harmed by your decisions, and you by there's. — schopenhauer1

That seems a contradiction.

Julio Cabrera has some interesting arguments, and I agree with many of them when considered from his point of view, as I do yours. Cabrera is reacting to what he calls ‘affirmative moralities’ - which is not the same as ‘positive ethics’, by the way. Affirmative moralities lack a negative perspective - they seem to be ignorant or in denial of the necessity of pain, loss, lack and humility, not just to experiencing life, but to existence. By ‘Affirmative morality’ Cabrera refers to a positive ethics that fails to acknowledge its own limitations. But Cabrera’s (and your) ‘objective’ and universal evaluation of these necessities as ‘harm’ is an equally limited perspective.

There is more to meaning than value, and an open approach to understanding the universe must at least attempt to get beyond any notion of value or significance that reduces meaning to its subjective experience. This is particularly important (and particularly difficult) for concepts such as ‘pain’, for example, where we often struggle to imagine a perspective or situation in which this experience is not ‘bad’. From the limited perspective of life, where ‘pain’ is both evaluated as ‘bad’ and recognised as necessary to existence, it’s understandable that existence or life is then seen as ‘bad’ in itself.

But a non-judgemental view of pain from all possible perspectives of existence (not just of life) shows it to be simply an awareness that energy, effort or attention is necessary to adjust to change. That we accept and even invite pain in our life as evidence of effort or resilience in an ever-changing world is not to suggest that pain is ‘good’ instead of ‘bad’, but that it is both - and ultimately neither. In a universe where change is ubiquitous, it’s understandable that pain is a fundamental experience, so it seems ridiculous in this light to call it ‘harm’ - as if existence without instances of pain were possible - or to include all possible instances of pain in a single moral perspective. The negativity of pain stems from its significance to our experience of life, not from its meaning. By understanding the meaning of pain as both positive and negative, we can make more effective use of it as an informative experience.

Cabrera is correct in arguing that most moralities reject the negative in favour of the positive, but even his own morality exists within a limited perspective of life. When we recognise the limitations of this perspective, we can then begin to understand that what is both ‘bad’ and necessary in this perspective could relate to the broader universe in a more meaningful way than we think.

Procreation, regardless of whether we consider it good or bad from whatever perspective, is objectively not necessary. I think that’s the important thing that everyone needs to understand. But the ignorant will continue to believe it is what they are supposed to do, for whatever reason. Most of those reasons are directly related to their value systems, their moral perspective. So you can argue from a moral perspective if you want to, but you’re spending all your time arguing for your moral perspective, which is far more difficult and complex. If that’s your agenda (and I suspect it is), then go for it, and I’ll leave you to it.

But if your agenda is antinatalism, then I would suggest that it’s certainly possible (and more flexible) to argue its merits from an amoral, objective position.

Do go on, Australia has always fascinated me... — Wallows

Since about the 1850s, small groups of Catholic sisters (mostly Sisters of St Joseph) have provided low cost education and health care for remote communities where there was insufficient public education or healthcare available. In the 1970s, the government established an arrangement, at least with Catholic schools, that required them to be subject to teaching and other quality standards in exchange for substantial funding. It’s been an interesting arrangement that seems to have influenced policy on both sides and is often misunderstood, although I’m not party to the details.

Cool point, man. I do wonder if the money changers and the clearing of The Second Temple by Jesus, was in any shape or manner a negative ethic shunned by Jesus? — Wallows

I don’t think that Jesus shunned negative ethics - he just found most of them more limiting than they needed to be. When he threw the money changers out of the temple, it was in response to the corruption of the temple authorities - in league with these money changers and animal sellers - who sought to make a profit from the strict regulations that prevented the poor from lawfully worshipping God.

A question that arose in that thread, that concerns me is why aren't the majority of Abrahamic religions more left-leaning rather than being conservative in nature?

Now, I have no idea how to approach this question, rather than state the deviation from the norm that is the US. We had people like Max Weber, who grounded or reified the values of Christianity into Protestant work ethics and its more serious derivative being Calvinism, into being compatible with capitalism and with that enlightened self-interest.

Yet, having been influenced by the more mainstream version of Catholicism, which has been de facto eliminated from public discourse in the US, for whatever reason, I feel that socialism or in a more extreme version, even communism are the actual philosophies of Christianity, given a hard reading of the Bible.

Does anyone agree with this sentiment?
Why or why not? — Wallows

The way I see it, Catholicism, at least, relies on tradition, ritual and institution as much as its financial security for survival, so conservative leanings are very much in its best interests.

In Australia, the govermment has always relied on Catholicism to supplement its health and education systems, which makes for a complex political relationship that seems to create a kind of conservative socialism - at least since the 1970s.

In the US, the left-leaning movement of Progressive Christianity advocates political activism of a socialist nature, although it lacks the numbers, security and influence of its more traditional, conservative counterparts.

My own reading of the Bible suggests that Jesus, at least, took an apolitical stance, despite how he framed it in the context. He advocated self-rule: a less genetic or culturally-based version of the kingless, fathered state formed by the early Hebrews, except without the need for negative ethics. The idea was that it shouldn’t matter who appeared to have political or social authority, there is a universally recognised positive ethics that transcends, rather than overrides, any illusion of external control.

The principle is the standard, and it indeed DOES break down after birth. This is the intra-worldly affairs darthbarracuda mentioned, versus the interwordly affairs. Simply speaking, the standard would be PERFECTLY followed before birth, but indeed, the messiness of time/space makes this perfection a broken reality — schopenhauer1

The principle is not the standard - it’s the foundation. If it breaks down in spacetime, or once life begins, then it’s nothing more than imagination - an unrealistic ideal.

No, the violation at birth of non-aggression and non-harm in order to follow your "collaboration" agenda just doesn't fly. You are making people HAVE to follow your agenda of collaboration. Why does this matter more than things like not causing conditions of harm upon another? You think it sounds good, so someone else MUST live this collaboration scheme out? Not a good excuse. — schopenhauer1

I’m not making anyone do anything. The collaboration that leads to birth is not always consciously determined. When it is, as I mentioned, it’s an act of ignorance. All this ethical principle does is recognise the fundamental impetus of the unfolding universe itself, and ‘go with the flow’ as it were. The majority of what we call ‘undue suffering’ is a result of choosing to resist this flow, which is easy enough to do. SHOULD is not the same as MUST - ethics cannot compel behaviour, as much as we may like it to.

Not sure what you mean. It can encourage to not do something you might otherwise do. One of the best examples of this is by not procreating thus not forcing and not causing the condition of harm on others. — schopenhauer1

Encouraging someone to NOT do something is DIScouraging them to act, without offering any alternative. By your negative ethics, how do I know whether any other action will be seen as aggressive or will cause harm? Don’t cause harm; don’t use aggression; don’t procreate - this cannot be encouraging anyone to act. You’re trying to convince everyone that it’s better to NOT exist than to exist, better NOT to act than to act in the wrong way, and yet you yourself continue to exist and to act by choice. So by what principle would you be making those choices?

To the extent that I am ignorant of, isolated from or excluding the effect my actions may have on others, those actions are more likely to be perceived as forceful or harmful to someone. By instead acting to increase awareness, and choosing to connect and collaborate in some way with every interaction, I minimise harm and aggression without the need for negative ethics, and continue to exist and to act without fear.

Positive and negative ethics that cannot work in harmony must be flawed in some way. You seem to be having trouble finding a positive ethics to go with your negative one. It should be your first clue that your negative ethics breaks down once life begins.

As I've said elsewhere: Except for cases which I acknowledged- children needing guidance from parents, self-defense, or the threat-of-force, there are no excuses other than people have an agenda, and they want someone else to follow that agenda and that agenda is more important than the non-aggression principle.
— schopenhauer1

Since there can be exceptions to this principle, can you tell us how we can know when we can violate this thing and why we can violate it at these times-that is, why they are exceptions to the rule?
I believe this approach may work better instead of us just repeating our points. — HereToDisscuss

I have to agree that this is where your argument breaks down, @schopenhauer1. A principle should be able to stand without exception, otherwise it is neither a foundation, nor is it fundamental as such. It’s like the Ten Commandments...followed immediately by hundreds of qualifying regulations and exceptions...

As a suggestion of positive ethics, I offer the following ethical principle: increase awareness, connection and collaboration. There being no positive without a corresponding negative, one should also strive to reduce ignorance, isolation and exclusion - but that’s pretty much the same thing. I think you’ll find that this principle stands without exception (although it requires more courage than most of us can summon on our own).

In following this ethical principle, procreation often appears to be a good thing, but it’s ultimately an act of ignorance - one that also encourages parents to isolate and exclude in a number of ways. So to reduce procreation, we should be increasing awareness of more far-reaching and less exclusive ways to connect and collaborate in the world.

Negative ethics seems more effective, even when it’s flawed, only because it allows you to perceive yourself as ‘good’ simply by opposing certain behaviour in others. But negative ethics is for evaluating our own behaviour, not the behaviour of others. It isn’t meant to be prescriptive, and employed as such, it can only limit our actions, not encourage them.

Positive ethics gives us a path to follow, a way to go. Negative ethics only tells us which is the wrong way.

Ownership is perceiving an object or event as a conceptual extension of the ‘self’.

Many animals have developed a capacity to be aware of, connect and collaborate with other four-dimensional ‘beings’ or events in the environment, and become as familiar with them as with their own bodies. They learn to reflexively associate certain change patterns in these others with a necessary threat-related response in themselves. Those familiar events include their home, their territory, food/water sources or members of their social group.

Some animals extend the association still further by marking their territory, chemically signifying this subjective familiarity in a more ‘objective’ way. Like humans offering sacrifices to the gods, they only know how they’d respond to the warning, and actually have no information about the threat they’re trying to deter.

Humans have developed a variety of ways to signify and objectify this same familiarity (and associated fear of loss) as a deterrent to others - from a line drawn in the sand to branding, symbols, colour codes, jewellery, walls, name plates, etc.

As humans, we have convinced ourselves that we can hypothetically avoid all experiences of loss in this way, and therefore reduce suffering. We own a dog to protect our property to protect our home to protect our family to protect our genes...

What we fail to recognise, however, is that loss and lack are necessary experiences of life: even if I own everything, I will still experience lack because I am not what I own, and I will not avoid loss because everything is a finite event, including me. I am a dissipative structure in a state of inequilibrium, continually absorbing and discarding parts of myself - it is the only way I am still alive. I am necessarily less than the universe.

I am aware of more than this/here/now. I know that I exist in relation to that/there/then.

That’s about as much as I can be certain of.

My question arises at this point. Is this view of the position of history in a person's life not a view which is in complete denial of the true position of history in everbody's life?

My thesis in this regard is the following: as I am living from moment to moment, everything I am doing and which is happening to me in this sweeping process called life is, while it is going over from the present to the past, forming me, giving shape to my life, from birth to death. These sweeping / shaping "forces" are my history and I can never ever be separated from them in the sense of: on the one hand, here am I, and, on the other hand, there are they. These "forces" are integral to who I am - they "integrate" me to be who I am. Therefrore, it can never be justified to state that someone "has" a history. Much nearer to the truth will be to state that someone is what he/she has become in his/her history. — Daniel C

I am an event more than I am an object: I have a fixed duration, a history.

But I am an experiencing subject more than I am an event in history: I consist of a collection of interrelated, informative historical events (not all of which have definite three-dimensional aspects), structuring who I am not even according to their temporal aspects in some linear progression, but more according to their significance or value for my experience in any moment: a five-dimensional ‘block universe’ of the mind that informs the will in its faculty of determining and initiating action, with or without consciousness.

In the same way, history as a broader topic is explored not just as a ‘timeline’ of objectively defined events, but as a five-dimensional structure of conceptualised events, subjectively experienced and expressed in relation to geographical, cultural, religious or political value/significance.

Then what do you mean by positive affect? I do not know what "positive" means in this context if it means something other than "good." Remember, I am thinking happy, good, and positive all mean the same thing, so I am hoping from some reason for the added complexity of them meaning something different. I am trying to figure out a clear definition for each. — Dranu

"I have a good affect", meaning it is an affect which gives satisfaction or fulfillment to the end of interoception. Of course since you mean a positive affect is not identical to a good affect, I might be using the term positive different than yourself. I do not know. — Dranu

‘Positive’ and ‘negative’ refer to opposing ends of a spectrum that are not necessarily good or bad. If I have an affect that is positive, that’s good for me, in itself. When I refer to an experience or object as ‘good’, I am correlating it with a positive affect, whether or not that affect is mine, necessarily.

If a serial rapist or murderer, for instance, has a positive affect, that may not necessarily be ‘good’, objectively or morally speaking, although they would find it subjectively ‘good’ for them. So when you claim to ‘have a good affect’, you’re making an assumption that what feels good for you is objectively good. By replacing ‘positive’ with ‘good’, you effectively conceal the subjectivity - not of the affect itself, but of the positive affect you attribute to your (self-reflective) experience of that affect.

‘Good’ claims a non-specific association with positive affect, and requires qualifiers for clarity. Whose positive affect is associated here? Objectivity is implied when ‘good’ is employed in a particular way - but is not intrinsic to the term, and conceals the introspective aspect of the claim.

‘Positive’ is often interchanged with ‘good’, but the term actually has nothing to do with affect in itself. ‘Affect’ is implied when ‘positive’ is employed in a particular way, but is not intrinsic to the term.

‘Happy’ is specifically associated with a subjective, internal experience of positive affect - predicting a specific emotional concept as a result of introspection (self) or observation (others). Introspection is intrinsic to the term.

This sounds good, but this can be totalitarianism masked as do-goodness. We all have to work, some even in jobs that "make a difference". You can call this collaboration, but so what. It just means we have to be at a certain place, work with other people, produce more stuff, and repeat. Oh, and then we have to buy into the narrative that we are "self-actualizing" by all this "great work of great contribution" we are doing. So the conclusion is, have more people so they can "feel good" about "collaborating". It's just a totalitarianism of the "feel good collaborating sort". Its still an agenda foisted upon the unwitting people who are forced to be a part of it... Even if we lived in the fluffiest of work environments, and we were all environmental justice warriors treating the planet better than we do, that doesn't change the circumstances that I am talking about. Besides the fact that this is not reality, a forced agenda is a forced agenda. Also, no matter what, suffering will take place. Suffering and negative experiences always finds a way. — schopenhauer1

This is where I think you and I differ the most, because the way I see it, we don’t have to do anything at all. You seem to think that the world is ‘run’ by forces beyond your control, that there are things you are compelled to do simply because you exist, and that’s what seems to upset you. But I’m not talking about a top-down approach, about an authority foisting an agenda upon anyone. To force everyone to collaborate defeats the purpose, don’t you think? Communism taught us that.

I’m talking about how I choose to interact with the world. I know that I don’t have to survive, that I don’t have to work, or to become independent or influential, or to contribute to society, or to pass on my genetic code, or even to eat, sleep, breathe, etc. I know that I don’t have to be aware, to connect or to collaborate any more than I have to ignore, isolate or exclude. I also know that whenever I suffer, it’s because of ignorance, isolation or exclusion on my part as much as whatever or whoever appears to be causing that suffering.

I think this is a bit of a poor excuse. Imagine using this as a defense against any other aggression. Also, I just don't buy into "all action is determined and initiated by awareness..". Rather, the action is determined by individuals with goals, wants, desires, etc. You are taking onus of the individual and turning into some rarefied, unsubstantiated ether where the parents are no longer the ones actually creating the new human. — schopenhauer1

Regardless of an individual’s goals, wants, desires, etc, the belief that any action is fully determined by a singular will is false - hubris, even. Just because only human will is aware of itself, does not mean it’s the only will involved in determining action. I’m not referring to any ether, and I’m not suggesting the parents aren’t creating the new human, only that they aren’t acting in isolation. They’re collaborating with cause and effect.

But to create someone else because one needs to collaborate is not a justification, even if it is perhaps the case of why people procreate. Why collaboration is more important than causing no harm, or forcing something on someone else is not address except as the idea that it "magically" runs the universe and we can't stop it. However, we can. Just don't procreate. Use your loneliness and do other things with it. — schopenhauer1

I’m not saying it is a justification, nor am I saying that one needs to collaborate. Collaboration is more fundamental than causing no harm or forcing something on someone else - which is why it’s more important to me - and the fact that causing no harm is more important to you doesn’t change the fundamental nature of collaboration. Of course we can stop instances of collaboration - each instance has to be willed, after all, conscious or not. What we can’t stop is every instance of collaboration, every instance of procreation - that would be thinking we can ‘force’ our will onto others.

Even if we didn't have environmental and overpopulation problems, etc. I would advocate antinatalism. It's about not forcing suffering and consistently following the non-aggression principle on others, period. — schopenhauer1

I would too, but not because of any non-aggression principle. Rather because evolution as a means to survival, domination and procreation is false and advocates ignorance, isolation and exclusion, which in turn increases suffering. This suffering appears ‘forced’ because it is surrounded by ignorance, isolation and exclusion on BOTH sides. Increasing awareness, connection and collaboration is the ONLY effective way to not ‘force’ suffering without ‘forcing’ suffering in other ways. Your non-aggression principle is followed either by ‘force’ OR by increasing awareness, connection and collaboration, period.

I think philosophical pessimism can certainly contribute (and indeed has contributed greatly) to rational, logical, intelligent and realistic thought. I think it needs to at least inform any philosophy that claims to be comprehensive. A philosophy that doesn’t recognise the uncertainty or fallibility of the assumptions and constructed concepts upon which it is based, or that fails to account for the necessary experience of pain, loss and humiliation in life, is fundamentally incomplete, in my view.

But pessimism philosophy regularly stops short of doing philosophy, in my view. In this way, I tend to see them as a ‘reality check’ or process of ‘cleaning house’.

So "feeling happy" means awareness of "positive affect in introception." Is "positive affect" distinct from "good affect?" If so how? — Dranu

I wouldn’t use ‘good’ in this context - it doesn’t make sense to me. Do you have an example of it being used in this way, or are you simply throwing words together?

If not, then would'nt it logically follow that since "feeling happy" means "feeling positive", and "feeling positive" means "feeling good", then good and happy mean the same thing even if we normally use happiness in context of a feeling qualifier? — Dranu

This is what I mean about reducing a fifth dimensional aspect of reality. ‘Feeling good’ and ‘feeling happy’ both refer to a positive affect, but not in the same way. Language is a bit like drawing - you’re combining concepts/line strokes to reduce meaning to words on a page.

‘Good’ is an overall value concept that attributes a positive affect to something - in this case, it is attributed to how one is ‘feeling’. So ‘good’ is the qualifier here.

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.

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.

If no one was born in the first place, no one would need to collaborate. So perhaps if we were to compromise, we can say once born, it is best practice to collaborate, but it shouldn't be forced. It certainly shouldn't be force recruited by creating a being so that they can collaborate. Rather, it would be more a post-facto reality of having been born and living with other people. — schopenhauer1

Nothing should be forced, we agree on that. But in my view the concept of ‘force’ is a misunderstanding regarding what determines and initiates action in the first place. All action is determined and initiated by awareness/ignorance, connection/isolation and collaboration/exclusion - even the creation of a being. Nothing here is forced - the being exists as a result of the awareness, connection and collaboration of interacting elements, but is also limited to some extent by their ignorance, isolation and exclusion. You can’t force life - everything requires collaboration, and a life can certainly - and often does - refuse to be created or refuse to continue living, despite our best efforts.

Don’t get me wrong - I agree with you that procreation should never be thought of as an obligation, a right or even a privilege, and I think the vast majority of focus, energy and effort put into procreation is wasteful, ignorant and misguided, perpetuated by an insufficient theory of evolution which claims that our purpose is to survive, dominate and procreate, when none of these are necessary AT ALL.

But I think your claim that anyone who procreates is forcing life - acting with aggression against ‘someone’s’ will - shows a misunderstanding of how and why we act. I think it’s more complex than that.

Procreation is too often a cop-out: I’ve given up on trying to achieve anything, so I’ll make another human being to do it for me. I agree that this can be seen as ‘forcing life’ - but in my view it’s more accurately ignorance of one’s capacity to achieve. Still, we don’t always create a being so that they can collaborate - often we create one so that we can collaborate. Parenting, when taken seriously, is an opportunity to increase awareness, connection and collaboration both now and beyond one’s lifetime. It’s a noble pursuit, but we should be aware that its positive effect in the universe as a whole is negligible - and coupled with procreation the overall negative effect is potentially much greater, especially given our current level of resource consumption per capita.

We should be aware that there are many other more effective ways we can connect and collaborate that are less resource-hungry and less dismissive of our own capacity as a human being than creating another being. Plus, we should be aware that there are too many beings already created who desperately need whatever we have to offer any ‘potential being’, to even consider adding to the glut. In that respect, procreation is environmentally, socially and perhaps even morally irresponsible. Contraception, adoption and foster care, for instance, should be considered as much environmental initiatives as social ones.

Those who choose not to bring children into the world and instead devote their own lives (however brief) to effecting real, positive change in how those who already exist interact with the universe (not seeking individual power, independence or influence) are the most valuable human beings, in my opinion. They recognise the ultimate value of a single human life lies not in surviving, dominating or procreating - not in increasing one’s apparent force upon the world - but in increasing awareness, connection and collaboration with every interaction. Even Jesus could tell you that.

But it requires us to stop focusing on avoiding harm or suffering, especially in our own life. In this respect, I think the focus of your argument is off. Antinatalism is NOT a movement to reduce suffering, as much as you try to package it that way. This, I think, is a reason for opposition to your viewpoint. You’re accusing people of force or aggression they didn’t intend, and then expecting them to listen to your reasons why. It simply doesn’t make sense on the surface to associate my decision to bring a child into the world with violating your personal principle of non-aggression.

In my view it isn’t aggression, but ignorance that needs to be tackled here. We lack awareness of the negative effect: not on a single ‘potential being’ in terms of force or harm, but on the environment or unfolding universe as a whole; and we also fundamentally misunderstand why, as a being, I determined to live in the first place, and what harm I accept in order to do so.

How would you define "feeling" and "happy" in this sentence. If "happiness" needs a modifier "feeling" to associate it with "feeling" then what does "happiness" itself mean disconnected from that qualifier "feeling"? — Dranu

Happiness is a feeling, an internal experience that refers to patterns of information we conceptualise as ‘happy’. The concept ‘happy’ refers specifically to interoception, but the concept ‘good’ refers to an overall hierarchy of value, in this sense applied to interoception - ie. feeling.

‘I feel happy’ refers to an immediate recognition of positive affect in interoception; ‘I am happy’ relates that affect to one’s experience of their overall situation. The distinction is subtle, but the effect is to associate the positive affect with objectively verifiable elements of one’s experience. It’s an assumption, what Lisa Feldman Barrett refers to as ‘affective realism’. This is where confusion begins. When ‘being happy’ is associated more with our external, physical life than our inner, experiential life, it seems more ‘real’ because it’s objectively verifiable. I can believe that I am happy because the external situation with which I have associated that happiness hasn’t changed, even if I no longer feel happy - the negative affect can easily be attributed to feeling unwell, nervous, stressed about something else, etc.

Recognising that ‘happy’ cannot be disconnected from the positive affect in interoception prevents us from assuming that happiness lies in what material goods we possess or the way our current situation appears to others.

Reducing the fifth dimension, the value aspect of our reality, to four dimensional events or objects necessarily discards information about that aspect. Just as drawing a table (reducing a three dimensional object to two dimensions or even one) must be carefully done so that we continue to recognise it as an accurate portrayal of the three dimensional object, so reducing the five dimensional concepts ‘happy’ or ‘good’ to a description of objectively verifiable events (4D) or objects (3D) requires great care to retain accurate information regarding its fifth dimensional aspect - its relation to value structures and systems.

Your arguments are always so well structured, schopenhauer. This was an open door that I couldn’t resist, for argument’s sake...

Like any ethical debate, it comes down to first principles. If you don't believe forcing others to do things is wrong, then this argument would not matter to you. However, if the scenario is thus:

You think that if you paid fairly for your property and have possession on it and the party who gave it to you agreed to the exchange or giving of the property, and that property was stolen or taken without permission is wrong... — schopenhauer1

The extent to which this is ‘wrong’ is dependent upon whether I believe that the external objects and money I possess are a physical extension of my person. Australian Aboriginal culture, for instance, does not consider objects to be a physical extension of one’s person. They don’t value property ownership as such in the same way that we do - or fences, for that matter. As a result, a large number of young children over the years have been punished for trespassing, or incarcerated for ‘stealing’ what was not being used, and from their point of view, was simply there for the taking. It’s difficult to instil into these children that it’s wrong to steal without undermining some of the more admirable qualities of their culture and upbringing.

You think that someone who believes X, Y, Z political beliefs at gunpoint forces you to recant your position, sign a waiver that you will only follow his/her point of view is wrong.. — schopenhauer1

If someone thinks that they can change my point of view or beliefs by pointing a gun at me and forcing me to sign something, then they are very much mistaken. They have no idea what it takes to change a belief.

You think that someone physically harming someone else is wrong... — schopenhauer1

Not all physical harm is ‘wrong’. What we refer to as damage, injury, pain or adverse effect includes all instances of growth, change, birth and death. It is the intent (or lack thereof) behind the action that determines whether it’s ‘wrong’.

These are all examples of agreeing with the non-aggression principle (implicitly). If one believes that consistency is important in ethical matters, then procreation too falls under this principle like the others. If procreation truly is forcing something onto another, this principle has been violated, and would thus be a problem. So, most people do implicitly believe this principle but turn a blind eye when or don't even think it relevant when it comes to procreation. This is a consistency problem.

So to reiterate, it comes to first principles. If you don't think aggression is an ethical issue, this won't matter. However, for those who do think so (most non-sociopaths it would seem), then yes this would be an issue and more a matter of consistency than questioning the actual principle itself. — schopenhauer1

Aggression is forcefulness of feeling or action. Non-aggression is not a first principle in my book. Not a sociopath, though, as far as I can tell. For me, the first principles are awareness instead of ignorance, connection over isolation and collaboration rather than exclusion. What is ‘wrong’ about stealing is ignorance; what is ‘wrong’ about forcing political beliefs is exclusion; what is ‘wrong’ about physically harming someone is a lack of connection.

As for what is ‘wrong’ about procreation, the way I see it, it isn’t aggression or forcing something onto another. Like harm, it’s the intent (or lack thereof) behind the action that determines whether it’s ‘wrong’.

Is there a logical difference between being happy and being good? — Dranu

There seems to be some mixing up of applications of the terms ‘happy’ and ‘good’ in reference to the subject. The OP questions the difference between ‘being happy’ and ‘being good’, but other posters here have interchanged ‘being’ and ‘feeling’. There is little difference between feeling happy and feeling good, but being good is another thing entirely.

When I believe I am happy, my inner experience (interoception) expresses a positive affect, and I’m assuming or predicting the emotional concept ‘happy’ based on all available information.

When I believe I am good, I’m assuming or predicting a positive evaluation in others’ experience of me, based on my words and actions in relation to my evaluation of the thoughts and intentions behind them.

It is possible to be happy without being good, and to be good without necessarily being happy, so I don’t see how they can be logically the same.

I refer to a pen as ‘good’ when my expectations of the concept ‘pen’ are met. In that situation I would be happy, but I wouldn’t consider referring to the pen as ‘happy’.

So it makes more sense to me to say that I am happy when everything and everyone I interact with is ‘good’, and I am ‘good’ when everyone I interact with is happy.

The Subjects of Reality
What is the nature of the mind, inasmuch as that means the capacity for believing and making such judgements about what to believe? — Pfhorrest

The mind is the structure of our conceptual systems, that enable us to make predictions about our interactions with the world. In my view, it is here that we have the capacity to interact with the world beyond time, whether we do so consciously or not.

What we believe is what information we can integrate into these conceptual systems - what enables us to reduce prediction error in how we interact with the world.

The Institutes of Knowledge
What is the proper educational system, or who should be making those descriptive judgements and how should they relate to each other and others, socially speaking? — Pfhorrest

The way I see it, there is no authority of knowledge among human beings, no elite group of knowledgeable. Our sources of knowledge, understanding and wisdom are and should be as diverse as possible. I think we can learn as much in this broad sense from a year spent listening to those in prison as from a year spent listening to those in lecture halls at university - when we value all information regardless of moral claims and can employ critical and creative thinking without judgement (ie. without dismissing information that contains falsehoods or immorality, for instance).

But not everyone is as open to knowledge, understanding and wisdom as we can be - and those who are certainly aren’t valued for that capacity.

Everyone should be pursuing not just knowledge, but understanding and wisdom - as much as they can. Not everyone will. Knowledge is an individual pursuit, but understanding requires one to recognise that we cannot know enough on our own - that expanding our capacity to know beyond the physical constraints of the brain involves connecting or developing ongoing relationships with others and, not so much trusting their knowledge, but being able to include it somehow.

Further expanding our capacity to know and understand the world requires us to develop still more relationships with others who not only possess knowledge but also understanding that we cannot grasp ourselves due to our personal limitations (including an unwillingness to engage in immoral behaviour or interact with an imaginary perspective of the world). Nurturing these relationships and understanding when and how we can draw on this knowledge, as well as when and how we should be sharing what we know and understand with others, IS wisdom.

It isn’t about authority or power in knowledge, but about relationships and meaning. Humility enables us to recognise our physical limitations in pursuing knowledge, and courage inspires us to transcend those limitations in how we relate to the world by developing complex networks of knowledge beyond our own minds.

Bonus question: How do we get people to care about education and knowledge and reality to begin with? — Pfhorrest

As adults, the simplest life is one in which we operate almost entirely from our conceptual systems, with little to no interaction with new information. But we still don’t know enough about reality yet - we still suffer from prediction error. There is an element of our social system that encourages us to strive towards attaining this error-free position: without the pain, loss, lack or humiliation that comes from having to interact with a reality that isn’t what we expect it to be.

Ideally, the more accurate our conceptual systems, the less suffering from prediction error as we interact with the world. But we often construe this as striving only to reduce suffering from prediction error (ie. less pain, lack, humiliation, etc) - which can be achieved by simply neglecting to evaluate or test predictions - rather than striving to improve our conceptual systems.

We then reduce this ‘ideal’ to certain evidence: education, wealth, popularity, intelligence, influence, authority, etc. - as if attaining these are what reduce prediction error.

We need to counteract the social system that idealises this external ‘evidence’ of success and favours reduced prediction error over increased interaction. We can do this by more diversely illustrating the difference between ignorance and knowledge, fantasy and reality, protection and education, fear and courage - and by valuing the latter in every instance, without avoiding interaction with the former as a source of information.

The Importance of Knowledge
Why does it matter what is real or not, true or false, in the first place? — Pfhorrest

Prediction error is a key source of suffering in the world. When our conceptual systems are inaccurate, we encounter more prediction error in our interactions, which can lead to anxiety or depression, as well as anger, hatred, violence, oppression, despair, etc. As a result, we tend to withdraw from or avoid interactions that may result in prediction error.

But the only effective way to reduce prediction error in our interactions is to be prepared to continually restructure our conceptual systems to integrate new information, and accept that we cannot know everything there is to know. It requires us to come to terms with experiencing a pervasive uncertainty in relation to what is real, and to improve our perception of reality through increased interaction and interdependence.

There is a paper by the French philosopher of science, Michel Bitbol, It is never known but is the knower: consciousness and the blind spot of science which elaborates this point from a contemporary perspective. — Wayfarer

Interesting read - a much better way of explaining what I’ve alluded to in my response to the ‘Objects of Reality’ question here.

From my notes on Lisa Feldman Barrett’s ‘How Emotions Are Made’:

Social reality: When you are born, you can’t regulate your body budget by yourself - somebody else has to do it. In the process, your brain learns statistically, creates concepts, and wires itself to its environment, which is filled with other people who have structured their social world in particular ways. That social world becomes real to you as well. We’re the only animal that can communicate purely mental concepts among ourselves. No particular social reality is inevitable, just one that works for the group (and is constrained by physical reality)...

Culture works most smoothly if we believe in our own mental creations, such as money and laws, without realising that we’re doing so. We don’t suspect the involvement of our own hand (or neurons, as it were) in these constructions, so we just treat them as reality. But we constantly mistake perceiver-dependent concepts - flowers, weeds, colours, money, race, facial expressions, etc - for perceiver-independent reality. Many concepts that people consider to be purely physical are in fact beliefs about the physical, such as emotions, and many that appear to be biological are actually social...

When you create a social reality but fail to realise it, the result is a mess. Every psychological concept is social reality. Not all cultures have them...

When we misconstrue the social as physical, we misunderstand our world and ourselves. In this regard, social reality is a superpower only if we know that we have it. — Lisa Feldman Barrett

The Meaning of Reality
What do descriptive claims, that attempt to say what is real, even mean? — Pfhorrest

When we attempt to describe what is real, we draw from our conceptual system: from what we assume exists, and from what we predict will occur. These conceptual systems have been developed from information gained through past interactions with the world, and evaluated whenever we encounter prediction error: when what assume or predict doesn’t match with the information coming in. This occurs more often as children, as our conceptual systems develop, and it’s expected that we encounter less new information or prediction error as adults - that the mark of a fully-formed adult is to know what is real. But the mark of a philosopher is to recognise that our conceptual systems are in a continual state of flux.

The Objects of Reality
What are the criteria by which to judge descriptive claims, or what is it that makes something real? — Pfhorrest

Reality has a number of aspects that correspond initially to the dimensions with which we are familiar: one dimensional reality consists of a linear relationship between two points, two dimensional reality determines shape, and three dimensional reality determines a spatial aspect. The fourth dimension of reality determines a temporal aspect, and it is at this point that the way we talk about reality must take into account the role of the observer. As much as we can map and measure these first three dimensions objectively, we are far less certain of our own temporal positioning in the world.

To map two dimensions, the information must be obtained in relation to a three dimensional viewpoint - ie. from above. To map three dimensional reality, therefore, the viewpoint must be four-dimensional: measured in relation to a temporal aspect. We often forget that this external viewpoint even exists, pointing to an aspect of reality that is necessary to confirm what is real.

Here’s where it gets interesting. We know that the universe exists as a four-dimensional reality at minimum - and that we are four dimensional - because we can confirm a three dimensional aspect to reality. But in order to know anything about this four dimensional aspect, the information must be obtained in relation to a five-dimensional viewpoint: from a position beyond time.

It has been our naive attempts to blindly navigate this five dimensional aspect of reality that has enabled us to develop any understanding at all about time outside of our direct experience. What began as a recognition of elements of reality that transcend and connect our experiences to those of our ancestors and descendants, soon developed into concepts such as family, people, gods, eternity, infinity, space, energy, gravity, etc - enabling us to relate to and understand this reality that we know exists beyond our bodily or temporal experience.

The Methods of Knowledge
How are we to apply those criteria and decide on what to believe, what descriptive claims to agree with? — Pfhorrest

So I know that a vision is real regardless of distance when I can get agreement from others on its relative shape in space. I know that an object is real regardless of shape when I can get agreement from others on its relative spatial aspects over time. I know that an event is real regardless of physical aspects when I can get agreement on its relative temporal aspects in others’ experiences. And I know that an experience is real regardless of its time or duration when I can get agreement on its relative significance or value in relation to what it means. But I cannot know if meaning is real (ie. if matter or anything is real) regardless of how I experience it.

When I can reliably assert that an event is real, I can then relate that event to a collection of spatial aspects in an agreed temporal duration. By doing this, I reduce the event to its relationship with real objects, further strengthening the concept in my mind.

Likewise, with an experience in which there is no agreement on temporal aspects, we obtain agreement from others on its value aspects or significance in relation to what that experience means. This conceptualised experience can then be reduced to certain real events in relation to their significance, which can be further reduced to real objects that are then imbued with the significance of the experience.

The Subjects of Philosophy
What are the faculties that enable someone to do philosophy, to be a philosopher? — Pfhorrest

Short version, I think self reflection and self evaluation are the key faculties for doing philosophy. The capacity to be aware of our conceptual systems, and be critical of the specific way that we interact with the world in relation to how the universe interacts with each other in its diversity, provides the potential for us to strive towards more accurate conceptual systems that minimise prediction error while maximising interaction.

I think an effective philosopher has a handle on critical and creative thinking, and employs an inclusive approach to knowledge. Courage, respect and curiosity also enable one to do philosophy without limitations.

The Institutes of Philosophy
Who is to do philosophy and how should they relate to each other and others, socially speaking? — Pfhorrest

A closed mind cannot do philosophy. If you take the trouble to avoid making mistakes, then perhaps philosophy isn’t for you. History shows that philosophers can’t really avoid being mistaken about something. The best we can hope for is the rare gem of conceptual structure that leads us to new ways of thinking.

The mind isn’t structured temporally or spatially, but according to value. Reality, however, is ultimately structured according to meaning. So when we relate to each other, socially speaking, it should be with a focus on a shared value regardless of distance, space or time. But when we relate to what others experience, particularly the form in which they present it to us, it should be with a focus on reaching a shared sense of meaning regardless of value.

The Importance of Philosophy
Why do philosophy in the first place, what does it matter? — Pfhorrest

When we interact with the world, we encounter new information. We either use that information in subsequent interactions with the world, or we don’t. If we do, then the way that we use it, our philosophy, matters. But it is also the information that we don’t use, and why - the value and significance we attribute to information - that structures this philosophy.

Evolutionary theory says that the most important thing we pass on to our descendants is our genetic information, but I disagree with this. The way I see it, the most important thing we pass on is the capacity to make effective use of new information. Without it, we’re not really living, are we?

The Objects of Philosophy
What is philosophy aiming for, by what criteria would we judge success or at least progress in philosophical endeavors? — Pfhorrest

Philosophy aims to structure and restructure our conceptual models of the world, to make the most effective use of all the information we have. Progress in philosophical endeavour, then, is achieved when we can account for anomalous data or experiences, when we can include and collaborate with alternative viewpoints, and when we can revive and integrate suppressed or forgotten knowledge into how we interact with the world.

Successful philosophical endeavour aims to integrate useful information from disparate sources for application to living well - ie. interacting with the world with less prediction error.

The Method of Philosophy
How is philosophy to be done? — Pfhorrest

All information is potentially useful, so the first step would be to reserve judgement on information in an objective sense.

We are, however, each progressively limited in our capacity to be aware, connect and collaborate with information by the five dimensions of our existence, and so we cannot always make use of information ourselves. We are equipped, all the same, with the means to share that information with those for whom it may prove much more useful.

Philosophy may sometimes involve, therefore, extracting incomplete information as raw experience from what has been integrated and reduced to suit these individual or cultural limitations any number of times. This may involve grafting the information onto our own experiences or other experiential accounts, or borrowing structural patterns as a guide to completing the experiential information. This type of speculative philosophy is fraught with error, but relying only on reducible information encourages us to be dismissive of the additional aspects available in information from subjective experience. Keeping track of where and how we depend on assumptions, concepts and modelling can be more important than avoiding them altogether.

The Meaning of Philosophy
What defines philosophy and demarcates it from other fields? — Pfhorrest

Philosophy is the seeking of wisdom - not simply knowledge, or even an understanding of the world. As such it permeates every field. To demarcate the seeking of wisdom from any field of endeavour is to claim that there is no wisdom to be found in that field. I think you showed this with your diagram.

Knowledge is an awareness of information; Understanding is the connection we make with the information we have about the world; and Wisdom is how we collaborate with that information. Wisdom ties in with knowledge and understanding in such a way that all three are inseparable. You can’t really understand something, even if you think you know as much as you can about it, until you can apply that knowledge in how you interact with the world. In the same way wisdom isn’t really wisdom if we ignore information or cannot (or will not) strive to understand all the information available to us.

Philosophy values all information, regardless of its current usefulness, and seeks to make effective use of all that we know and understand about the world - paying particular attention to what we don’t yet know, what we know but fail to understand, and what we know and understand but fail to integrate or apply to our interactions with the world.

I'm not sure I understand you, and that makes me wonder if perhaps you misunderstood me. I was trying to say that wisdom is basically being able to evaluate both descriptive and prescriptive claims: where descriptive claims are those about what is or isn't, what's true or false, what's real or unreal; and prescriptive claims are those about what ought or oughtn't be, what's good or bad, what's moral or immoral. It sounds like you're saying that figuring out what's false, bad, unreal, or immoral is just as important as figuring out what's true, good, real, and moral; and I meant that to be implied by what I said before. Wisdom is the ability to discern one from the other (in both dimensions), or at least to place ideas somewhere in relation to each other on each of those scales. For the purposes (as will be elaborated later) of telling both where we are and where to go, figuratively speaking, and thus how to get there from here. — Pfhorrest

I don’t think I’ve misunderstood you - I’m talking about how we then relate to what is false or immoral or what we claim ‘oughtn’t be’. Wisdom is more than just evaluating claims - it includes determining and initiating action in relation to those claims. I think that wisdom breaks down, for instance, when we isolate, exclude or attack what is but oughtn’t be.

I’m enjoying this thread - I have used the questions to try and order my own thoughts, but my answers are perhaps too lengthy and disjointed at this stage, so I’m going to try and offer some discussion instead.

Philosophy is the love of wisdom, where by "love of" I mean attraction toward, or pursuit of; and by "wisdom" I mean the ability to discern truth from falsehood and good from bad, or at least the ability to discern superior from inferior answers to questions about either reality or morality. — Pfhorrest

I think this definition invites a limited view of wisdom. What we discern as ‘falsehood’ or ‘bad’, ‘unreal’ or ‘immoral’ is as much a part of wisdom as what is ‘good’ or ‘real’. Determining how to effectively integrate predictions, imagination and ‘immoral’ thoughts or intentions as useful information is, in my view, as important to the pursuit of wisdom as reality or morality. I don’t think it’s as dichotomous as discerning truth from falsehood or ‘good’ from ‘bad’, but rather the capacity to structure and restructure our conceptual systems to integrate ALL information about the world, not just in relation to reality or morality, but in order to more completely understand ourselves and the universe.

I like your thinking.

Nothing, for me, can be understood in terms of actuality, potentiality or possibility (but then, I do tend towards ‘glass half full’). When there is actually nothing, there is still the potential for something. Likewise, even when there evidently can be nothing, we could nevertheless imagine the possibility of something.

‘Absolute nothing’ is a concept that refers to an absence even of the possibility of anything. We can approach an understanding of this ‘absolute nothing’, but ultimately there is no way of fully understanding it as such.

Any concept of ‘nothing’ is relative at least to some possibility: being whatever is striving to understand it...a possible ‘something’ to which this ‘nothingness’ matters...for whom ‘nothing’ has meaning...

It’s problematic - to use the phrase ‘is like’ is to describe a human’s similarity to concepts with which the alien would be familiar.

Sharing meaning is about finding common ground in how we perceive reality. Does the alien understand what we mean by ‘eye’ or ‘skin’? Can we start with something we both recognise conceptually and go from there?

WIthout a shared conceptual system, I don’t know if we could even begin to describe what a human is like in a way that would be understood. That doesn’t mean it can’t happen, but I think we’d have to build a shared conceptual system first.

Ah, I see what you mean now. You mean "the artist must....in order to produce art" . I read it as "the artist must..." in the same sense as the non-artist simply trying to make inferences about the the object in general. My mistake. — Isaac

It’s more than that, though. The capacity for creative thought and alternative modelling serves us well beyond art, too. Many of our conceptual models are inaccurate or limited, leading to conflict and error in how we interact with the world. The flexibility to present and apply alternative or adjusted conceptual models enables critical thinking that leads to more accurate concepts and more effective and efficient interaction with reality.

When you take an umbrella as you leave the house, are the causal conditions of that event entirely in the past
— Possibility

As far as we know, yes. Your mind makes a prediction about the future based on past events and experiences. E.g. if you see the sky is blue you're a lot less likely to pack an umbrella. If you overheard some weather report you're likely to take it into account, even if you're not realizing it. But you may also be able to predict the weather based on physical phenomenons your unconscious mind understands, that we haven't yet been able to formalize. How bad getting caught in the rain would bother you will also play a role. — philsterr

What about whether or not you plan to walk anywhere?

Life ignores, isolates and excludes more than it cooperates - all matter does, in fact. It seems to be a default - which I imagine you mean by ‘first port of call’. But that doesn’t necessarily make these tendencies more fundamental.

All of the forward steps in the universe have come about as a result of cooperation. The origin of life appears to have been contingent upon awareness, connection and collaboration, as has its evolution - while the diversity of life comes from the extent to which the various systems ignore, isolate and exclude (ie. natural selection and ‘survival of the fittest’).

It could be argued also that the origin of the universe was contingent upon these ‘cooperative’ tendencies, while the variety of elements and chemical reactions stemmed from destructive, combative or conflict-avoiding tendencies beginning at a sub-atomic level as a limiting or diversifying factor.

I guess it depends where you consider ‘primal’ to begin.

I think its possible to consider humanity as the last remaining outpost of potentially unlimited awareness, connection and collaboration in the universe...

But the model of the table isn't more real in the artist's mind nor are these alternative models in the same field, one is how to negotiate the object in our spatiotemporal environment, the other is how to make marks on a page to best invoke such a table. Two different models with two different variance-minimising results. — Isaac

An artist must learn to process the information both (or perhaps a variety of different) ways, and to apply the ‘model’ or value structure according to the task at hand. — Possibility

I wasn’t disagreeing with you as much as you seem to think I was. They are two different value structures applied to the same reality, and can still both be used to make marks on the page and invoke a table. When you’re talking about two drawings on a page, they ARE alternative models employed in the same field. One is more real on the page than the other - it conveys more relevant information about the table in the same field than the rectangle does. That they are better suited to different fields, I agree with - hence my comment that the artist must learn to process the information both ways.

We don't need to know anything about what's 'really' there, we seem, just as a species, to be fundamentally interested in variance minimising. There appears to be a white square when the black circles are (what appears to be) behind it. As soon as the black (what now appears to be) pacmen are removed, there no longer appears to be a white square. We want to reduce this variance, we prefer a model which has either a white square or not. Not a model which has a white square one minute but none the next. So we choose one to be 'accepted' and label the other 'illusion'. Rather than doing so randomly, we do so by minimising variance with a whole host of other models too. The white square being the 'illusion' does this best. At no point in the whole process do we need access to reality nor even to care which is which. — Isaac

In order to process information most efficiently, we reduce the quantity of information transmitted to the brain by applying concepts as ‘efficient summaries’ of information. So four black circles with a white box in front of them provides the same relevant information to the brain as the four rotated ‘Pac-Man’ shapes, only requiring less neurons to fire.

An artist must learn to process the information both (or perhaps a variety of different) ways, and to apply the ‘model’ or value structure according to the task at hand. It isn’t so much about ‘what’s really there’ as about the value structures we tend to apply in most situations - that is, the relativity of our value structures in relation to the ‘experiencing self’.

From a more objective standpoint, it’s not an ‘illusion’, but an alternative subjective experience of the same reality. Understanding the similarities and differences in value structures applied - without evaluating them - enables a more objective understanding of ‘what’s really there’ than prioritising one value structure over the other. Unfortunately, language (like a form of art) is itself a value structure, so in describing what we then understand, we are necessarily reducing the quantity of information transmitted by applying concepts in a particular formation in an effort to transmit the relevant information - ie. reduce information loss.

When a computer graphic artist produces work for the internet, part of the production process is to determine the most effective format to transmit the highest quality rendition of the artwork in the smallest file size. Information loss is inevitable - the trick is to ensure the relevant information is retained. Having a variety of different algorithms (value structures) to select from is a necessary resource, and only the artist will notice what subtlety of information is lost in each version (although they’d be hard pressed to describe it).