Dewey remarks on the schism between the practical and moral interpretations of action. He says that the whole enterprise of classifying something as "moral" often becomes a thinly veiled excuse for not focussing on practical consequences (i.e. as in the classic gloss of utilitarianism, that the ends justify the means). Or equally, by making it an ideal, an excuse to do nothing, since qua ideal it is somehow above enaction.

What Dewey suggests is that we allow ourselves to be guided by our principles, but that wisdom consists in discovering the most optimum actions in situ. These are themselves the precursors to optimum ends. Make of it what you will.

Talcott Parsons - The Structure of Social Action, Volume I

Life in general is systemic. It is information bossing matter around, as much or more than vice versa. — Olivier5

I think the essence of systems thinking is that things do not boss each other around so much as they exhibit robust patterns of interconnectedness in a process of ongoing complexification...

while I am always conscious of beauty, I am often times completely unaware that a thing is beautiful. — Mww

It seems to me impossible that while you are conscious of beauty you are unaware of beauty. Your approach is to suggest that you have an abstract knowledge called awareness and then failing to find that instantiated therefore no consciousness of awareness. You are begging your own question.

I'll happily stipulate that we do have such background knowledge and awareness, but all that says is that we are aware "that there is such a thing as beauty." And while we are aware of that, we are also conscious...of that.

So is consciousness really synonymous with awareness, when there seems to be degrees of awareness within conciousness thanks to the process of attention? — Harry Hindu

I think the whole concept of attention fits perfectly with the notion that there are degrees of awareness and consciousness. It seems that attention corresponds to a high current degree of awareness. Like self-criticality. There is awareness, and there is self-awareness.

can be quite conscious, and still be unaware of something — Mww

Not to split hairs, but you can't simultaneously be conscious and unaware of the same thing. You can be conscious of some things and unaware of other things....

And in this sense is not consciousness just another word for awareness? — Harry Hindu

As I just responded to Mww, I'm of the opinion that consciousness and awareness are the same.

But if one wishes to think being aware and being conscious are the same thing — Mww

I personally do think awareness and consciousness are synonymous. We are in the arena of definition now, of course.

And isnt the content dependent upon the type of senses you have? Does more senses at work mean more consciousness for an entity? — Harry Hindu

I think that there is a correspondence. It isn't adventitious that consciousness emerges along with the complexification of the central nervous system. I think the same process continues at a conceptual level, the more complex our conceptual schema, the more complex the consciousness. It seems intuitive.

The degrees given in scales like these refer to differences in content, not in consciousness in the sense that the OP means it. — bert1

What is consciousness if not its content?

Consciousness does not come in degrees — bert1

This is trivially not true even from an empirical perspective:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altered_level_of_consciousness

Other: books + discussions + daily walks/hikes. — 180 Proof

What are your secondary sources? :rofl:

There is an experiment with a cat wherein it is presented with a certain atypical (for the cat) sound that is within its range of hearing. Measurements of the cat's brain do not indicate that the cat has heard the sound. Subsequently, the sound is associated with an important event to the cat (feeding). Thereafter, measurements of the cat's brain also register the sound, even when separated from the food stimulus.

Has the cat not, in this case, become "more conscious"? Certainly more "aware," which is to me synonymous.

I know I realise stuff that I didn't before. But is this process infinite? I mean yeah, I am more conscious than I was when I was a child, but I would say I am not more than I was 10 years ago. I know more stuff in the fields I am interested in, but I am not sure if that is the equivalent of being more conscious. — Eugen

Most change/growth processes exhibit a rapid initial phase followed by a "decreasing gains" phase. Imagine if you had gone to work in a factory at 18, then at 40 decided to return to school and ended up getting a PhD in political economy. I think in that case you might well experience an expansion of consciousness akin to that of childhood again.

I'm currently reading Dewey's book Human Nature and Conduct: On Social Psychology and Habit. It's a fascinating look at how much of what we think of as our "intelligence" is a function of our habits of social interaction and habits of thought. Break out of your old habits and you will experience a revolution of consciousness......

But we could also say that more complex organisms would be more conscious than we are. — Eugen

Are you "more conscious" now than when you were a child? I know I am. Consciousness is certainly a spectrum.

In this thread I'm interested to hear if other people have their own core principles that they think entail all of their positions on all of the different philosophical sub-questions, and if they think that there are common errors underlying all of the positions that they think are wrong. — Pfhorrest

I think that my core principles should be consistent with each other and with the body of my thought as a whole. I don't attempt to enforce that from the ground up. It is more of a "systemic coherence" to which I aspire.

I try not to think of alternative perspectives to my own as wrong. Indeed, I don't think they are wrong. They are part of a different type of worldview, with different fundamental experiential underpinnings; and may, in themselves, be consistent. Just not consistent with my views.

Edit. Consider scientific theories. If anything is a candidate for right versus wrong it is science. But this is not true. Science is never right, because it is always approximate. A scientific theory is more accurate than one that it replaces because it is able to explain a wider array of phenomena. So is more inclusive. I think this represents a general characteristic of theoretical knowledge shared by philosophy. Philosophy's goal should be that of expansive inclusivity, with a progressive reduction of error (inaccuracy).

So the things which I think of as "wrong" may simply be perspectives I have as yet been unable to assimilate.

Any system which stores energy essentially "violates" the second law of thermodynamics. However this is a "system local" violation. The system as a whole obeys the second law. Nevertheless, having localized gradients of negentropy does create interesting possibilities, so it's not an entirely unreasonable question.

I don't think anyone has any propositional knowledge if you define knowledge as justified true belief (I can add to that to avoid Gettier) All justification is going to require an inference and you cannot know that your reasoning is reliable without relying on your reasoning which would be begging the question. — GodlessGirl

So, if a tree falls on me, and I think "I was just hit by a tree," how does my justification (that I was hit by a tree) require me to make an inference?

What kind of privacy breaches happen in the medical field? — Enrique

No limit. Results get sent to the wrong people. Some people conspire to steal personal health information to sell it. Everything in between. People snoop on their friends, or on famous people. Etc. Etc. Etc.

edit: there is malfeasance, but much of what I do is process related. As regulations become more strict, outmoded processes tend to produce accidental privacy breaches. I work at identifying and remedying these a lot.

Who's doing the suing, is it class actions for online security breaches, sole individuals against information distribution companies, corporations for intellectual property concerns? What kind of improvements are being made to privacy law by way of legal proceedings? What medical circumstances warrant lawsuits? — Enrique

There is an ever-increasing escalation of the importance of protecting privacy, which is reflected in evolving regulations surrounding the collection, use, and sharing of private information. I don't know of any details surrounding a lot of the consumer cases you mentioned, but in the medical field specifically privacy breaches and investigations are frequent and the decisions by the IPC on a case by case basis get regularly piled on to the mass of existing legislative and regulatory guidelines.

I guess it is like legislation by bureaucracy.

It seems that with a few strategically directed lawsuits or particularly well-constructed legal documents, some simple precedents could be set that protect citizens without requiring massive legislative reform, — Enrique

I'm a privacy officer in the medical field and privacy law is far from simple, I can assure you. Lawsuits there are aplenty.

Sybil: the Two Nations, by Benjamin Disraeli, the original novel of Victorian class struggle.

Sartor Resartus was a fantastic read, I'd highly recommend for anyone who truly loves the english language.

edit. Also finished Economy and Society, which was a grind. I'll move on to Dewey's Human Nature and Conduct, which should rather be a treat.

↪SophistiCat
You must know the paradox called the ship of Theseus. What's your solution for it? — Olivier5

I think the systems theoretic answer would be that it does not require a solution. It is only a paradox if you attempt to enforce either a bottom-up or a top-down interpretation exclusively. Bi-perspectivism is a feature of systems philosophy.

Yes but 'limit' is not the same as 'equals'. — EnPassant

Actually it is, that's why they use the equals sign. It's the entire essence of calculus.

I posit that what happened there can easily be explained within a non-reductionist system approach: it's the structure, the shape of the pieces and the way they are put together, that makes the clock work. So all you need to replace a part is a replica of the same shape, the actual material you use is secondary (though it matters of course, eg for durability reasons) as long as it is solid at ambiant temperature. — Olivier5

Absolutely. I am a staunch systems theorist. It is analysis, but operating within a different governing paradigm, systems-centric.

But there doesn’t seem to be any upward spectrum: there doesn’t seem to be a way to engage less-than-fully-professionally with the true professionals, and in doing so become more professionally adept myself, without just fully committing to becoming a full-fledged professional philosopher myself. There’s a discontinuity in the philosophical dialogue there. — Pfhorrest

Social philosophy is, ab initio, aware that by being professional it, in an important sense, artificially disconnects itself from its true subject matter. To the point where some investigations are pursued both scientifically and also, in parallel, with a conscious disregard for the professional viewpoint, i.e. naively or naturally. (read that in Habermas a few months back). I'd say the same applies to philosophy in general.

edit: Doesn't it really all boil down to vocabulary? If we share a vocabulary then to that extent we are conscious of participating in a relevant discourse. If you extrapolate a concept and our vocabularies continue to overlap then that is a mutually reinforcing dialogue....

You use the term differently than I do. To me, it's the idea that you can explain anything by looking at its parts, and that this will provide sufficient explanation and prediction. I disagree on ground of system theory, that says that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. — Olivier5

Yes, this is exactly the sense in which I started the thread.

The products of the actual reductive enterprise are valuable, as this can in one sense be viewed as the process of scientific analysis. But the extrapolation to the conclusion that "that's all there is" misses the bigger picture.

I think there is an entire spectrum activities that are incumbent on the human race collectively and individually also. So perhaps not every person in every field aspires to being philosophical. But ideally, "philosophizing" should be conducted by a wide variety of people in a wide variety of fields. Resulting in a wide variety of outputs.

Such is my take.

This is a pretty complex question. Habermas, for example, sees over specialization as one of the main causes of alienation in modernity.

No doubt, we are beginning to learn about the ubiquitous benefits of adopting a holistic approach. I'm sure education is no exception. Should we divorce education from the demands of mere technical exigencies? Perhaps, but this then becomes an even larger economic issue. Complex.

So you would be surprised if a simple simulation of basic physics could produce simulations of chemical interactions, even just a few molecules interacting as expected by the known laws of chemistry? — Pfhorrest

Pfhorrest, there is no intertheoretic reduction of chemistry to physics.

What really interests me is how a geometric construct called the amplituhedron, functioning along the lines of fractal attractors in systems theory, allows particle-particle interactions which used to require supercomputers significant calculation time to be done by hand on one sheet of paper.

edit: From "Intertheory Relations in Physics" (Stanford EoP)

Even within physical science, reduction between different levels of explanation is problematic—indeed, it is almost always so. Chemistry is supposed to have been reduced to quantum mechanics, yet people still argue over the basic question of how quantum mechanics can describe the shape of a molecule. The statistical mechanics of a fluid reduces to its thermodynamics in the limit of infinitely many particles, yet that limit breaks down near the critical point, where liquid and vapour merge, and where we never see a continuum no matter how distantly we observe the particles … . The geometrical (Newtonian) optics of rays should be the limit of wave optics as the wavelength becomes negligibly small, yet … the reduction (mathematically similar to that of classical to quantum mechanics) is obstructed by singularities

But if you simulate the universe and only simulate quantum fields, do you think you will not eventually end up with simulated chemical substances following laws of chemistry? — Pfhorrest

That seems highly hypothetical to me. Like angels on the head of a pin hypothetical. I would say the syngeristic-holistic fact of reality transcends simple simulation, yes.

We could, in principle, just describe what a bunch of quantum fields are doing, and get a picture (e.g. view a simulation) of human beings with all their thoughts and feelings — Pfhorrest

I think that's the whole point is that we couldn't just do that. That's the essence of system-emergent properties. As systems co-evolve, new types of inter-relationships come into being which did not exist among the constituent sub-systems.

You could argue, for example, that the laws of chemistry have always existed. But until the long process of plasma-particle-object evolution has actually happened and complex systems capable of housing chemical interactions actually come into being, saying those chemical laws previously existed seems a stretch to me.

Basically, reductionism is an inevitable consequence of the way we've defined the word "explanation". — TheMadFool

Analysis and reductionism are not the same thing. You can analyze anything into its components. It only becomes reductive when you assume that every phenomena at the system level (i.e. the thing being analyzed) must be sufficiently described at the level of the analyzed components.

No it isn't. Whereas "capacity " is a noun indicating "actual or potential ability to perform, yield, or withstand," "initiating" is a verb showing "to begin, set going, or originate — Lida Rose

having the "capacity to act" is the same thing as having the "capacity to initiate an action" to be more precise. So if you can "initiate" an action that is the definition of autotelic. Otherwise, you don't have the capacity to act, you have the capacity "to be acted upon".

Laszlo's reconciliation of the mind-body problem is compelling. It is in his Introduction to Systems Philosophy.

More to system thinking and structuralism. — Olivier5

I'm very much a proponent and advocate of systems philosophy. Have you read Laszlo?

In a less naive form of materialism, Descartes dualism should be reformed into the fundamental duality or ying-yang relationship between matter and information (understood as the infinite shapes and forms that matter can take and 'support'), two sides of the same coin. — Olivier5

Sounds like a reasonable direction to me....

I think Saussure's idea of negative differences between concepts and their absence of clear-cut ontological value is fundamental to understand natural languages. Concepts are relational, the meaning is at the level of the network between concepts more so than inside each concept taken in isolation. — Olivier5

Is this related to the hermenuetic circle?

I think the whole "non-issue" started with the rapid advent and hegemony of science qua mechanism. I think the concepts of "mechanism" and "progress" became improperly intertwined, resulting in a lot of misdirected effort.