Money makes the system stupid - or at least, irrational. Money-as-profit has a logic of its own, which has no connection to human logic, or fulfillment or satisfaction. When money is made the driving force of a society, everything else yields to its logic; all other faculties serve its interest. — Vera Mont

It certainly might look that way, but people have to accede to that authority on a continuing basis.

As I see it, money has become a resource. Resources must be regulated, the more stringently the more essential they are to life. So if money has become "the resource of resources," then by all practical reason, it should be subject to the maximum regulation benefitting the general good of human life.

I don't understand how enlightened self-interest can not yet have reared its head though. If we settled on an income gap where the wealthiest were allowed to make just 1000x more than the poorest, we could establish a more sustainable system with a better quality of living at the bottom and more room at the top. If one-hundred million dollars can be you anything you want many times over, what is the point of having a billion? Or ten billion? Presumably, there is at least some correlation between wealth and intellect and knowledge. It's almost like money makes you stupid too.

Hardly humanist instruction. Transcendental reverie. It doesn't fit the case.

The next time the woke tell me they are going to set rolling the wheel of Dhamma, I'll give them a pass...

Slow, or lazy? We allow ourselves to be distracted from important matters by trivialities.

Not in their teachings I think. Buddhism stress the values of ego-less-ness and humility. Who knows does not speak, who speaks does not know, says Lao Tzu.

I don't know that information itself has a value; it would depend on whether the recipient can use it constructively. — Vera Mont

Which was really my meaning. The implication of calling it "the information age" is that it should have value.

In every case where an attempt at reasonable egalitarian democratic organization was made, you can trace the reason for its failure to a handful of self-interested actors, who either sabotaged the experiment from the beginning, or tilted its structure toward the acceptance of some animals being more equal than others. — Vera Mont

Just so. But what I wrote was just a more optimistic recasting of the observation made by 180 Proof. Just because we have a bad track record, doesn't me we couldn't succeed.

The Dream Cycle of H. P. Lovecraft
by H.P. Lovecraft

That's a vague response, but to me it seems a bit self-righteous. 'Anyone skeptical about the possibility of utopia is just unwilling to put in the work.' — plaque flag

I do not share the belief that utopia means nowhere. To me, this is not vague. Both Mannheim and Ricouer have much constructive commentary on the value of the idea of utopia in responding to ideologies, which are more like apologetics.

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Yes, a rose by any other name. By the way, I corrected the book from "Manufacturing Consent" (which I haven't read) to "Necessary Illusions" (which I just did). The appendices of which are filled with documentary evidence.

Israel respects that. — frank

I guess it depends on your definition of "respects." I haven't read the entire 260 page apartheid study, but Chomsky goes into a lot of detail about how the media has long ignored Israeli atrocities in the book "Necessary Illusions".

Can't believe that they are ready to dry out the Federal Reserve for a country they have never been there - Ukraine - and they don't care about Afghanistan when it has been a key factor in their war against Al-Qaeda in the last decades... — javi2541997

It's almost like these actions are governed by convenient utilities rather than any kind of value commitment.

Hamas atrocities are extensively covered, but not one headline piece discussing the murderous rhetoric and actions from the Israeli government?
— Echarmion
It doesn't seam to me:
https://www.vox.com/23910085/netanyahu-israel-right-hamas-gaza-war-history
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-10-10/israel-hamas-war-netanyahu-mideast-policies
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/10/opinion/israel-hamas-.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/10/11/netanyahu-populism-weakened-israeli-security/ — neomac

And it is also the culmination of a systematic policy of apartheid, which was described in this 2022 study by Amnesty International.

History teaches ad nauseam that we, as a species, are incapable of deliberative self-governance — 180 Proof

History teaches records ad nauseam that we, as a species,are incapable of have hitherto failed in our efforts of deliberative self-governance

It seems that the whole agenda of endless minority rights (fostering polarization in a climate of endlessly competing petty virtues) is the ultimate misdirection of the smallest minority of them all, the privileged elite. The most universal set of human rights should serve all minorities equally well.

Surely what is "reasonable" is a subjective opinion, not an absolute. — Agree-to-Disagree

Since every subjective opinion is constructed and framed using concepts which only arise and exist in an intersubjective matrix, I daresay it is reasonable to suggest that reasonableness is an intersubjective standard.

Who said that sustainability is the result that we should be trying to achieve? — Agree-to-Disagree

Is there a more reasonable goal?

Many people (probably most people) are more concerned with the continued and healthy future of a subset of humanity (e.g. themselves, their family, their friends, their country, etc). — Agree-to-Disagree

I'm sure this is true. But is it reasonable? Humanity is a species whose environment is the earth. Yes, a privileged subset of humanity can survive by exploiting the rest, but that isn't sustainable. Communism might have been one approach to achieving collective cooperation, but I don't think you can legitimately characterize the general goal of collective cooperation as "communist" - unless you are conducting propaganda. Which is what is done. Think of how polarizing some of the most "enlightened" movements are. "Woke" simultaneously implies that I am right and that you are ignorant. No truly enlightened being would ever make that claim, but would demonstrate wokefulness through humanitarian actions.

You only need to look at what has been achieved in the fight against global warming to see that collective and cooperative effort at a global scale is almost impossible to achieve. — Agree-to-Disagree

Yes, when I wrote my conservative MP, Kellie Leitch, to insist that the government mandate labelling of GMO products, she wrote back telling me it was "impractical." Bullshit. I know its not impractical, because other countries do it. Nothing is impossible to achieve, if it becomes the focus of a concerted, collective effort. The Apollo project is a great example. The technological achievements made with little or no computerization were staggering.

These do seem very obvious words to type — universeness

Yes, exactly. Reason has its coherent being in each of us, but humans are prone to living in state of bad-faith with our better understanding. And some human beings make it their business to profit by the manipulation of this phenomenon. Who would ever have thought that misinformation could become a commodity? People are encouraged to equate freedom with an absence of responsibility, when, in fact, freedom can only be realized through responsibility. And we have the modern world. Slaves to stupidity with no master but greed.

And there's no one to blame — plaque flag

Here we differ. I think the problem hinges on the desire to assume responsibility.

Communication seems always to have been an insurmountable obstacle to consensus. — Vera Mont

And yet supposedly we live in the information age. So if information does not foster communication, perhaps that is a value also which as been corrupted through commoditization.

descriptively accurate for sure

Essays in Experimental Logic
by John Dewey

Qua lawfulness.

Well, presumably sound arguments pertain to truths that are not trivially evident. So the function of reason is to both understand and to express, translating the intuition of a complex truth that does not reduce to a simple symbolic form (or it would would be immediately self evident and not require an argument). So the capacity of understanding engenders the power of expression, which enforces the belief.

There is actually no choice in the matter at all, since to understand the soundness of an argument is to believe it. This is Nagel’s position, by the way, in regard to logical truth. — J

This seems to entail the instrumentality of reason.

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Teleology would mean that some natural laws, unlike all the basic scientific laws discovered so far, are temporally historical in their operation....Natural teleology would require two things. First, that the nonteleological and timeless laws of physics...are not fully deterministic....Second, among those possible futures there will be some that are more eligible than others as possible steps on the way to the formation of more complex systems....Teleological laws would assign higher probability to steps in state space that have a higher "velocity" towards certain outcomes. (Nagel, Mind and Cosmos, pp 92-93)

In fact, experiments in abiogenesis seem to support such a hypothesis. The number of inorganic chemical precursors for a living cell is very high, over seventy. Such that the probability of all of them naturally coalescing within the confines of artificial cell membranes in an experiment was infinitesimal. What in fact happened, was that many of the lipid membranes contained zero molecules, while a few of the membranes contained all of the necessary components. The "desired" complex future state was preferentially selected. Teleology.

Thus a teleological entity need not possess intention. — Leontiskos

Well, Aristotle articulates a kind of non-intentional teleology. However we are again begging questions. The notion that there could be purpose without intention to me is just "autologically unsound." As soon as you allow purposiveness, you have intention.

Where, in particular? I’ve read some of his work, which has impressed me deeply, but I can’t recall this discussion in particular (although I do know that the idea of ‘the universe become self aware’ was part of his Mind and Cosmos.) — Wayfarer

It's one of the main themes of Mind and Cosmos. As I mentioned, it's a very short book and more than pays back the time invested to read it.

That said, I don't quite see how teleology and instrumentality are the same thing. Perhaps you can elaborate? — Leontiskos

Well if it is teleological then it is purpose-driven. So then enaction of the purpose requires means, which I would call instruments or tools. Which can be more or less appropriate of the purpose. Id be interested in a comprehensive study of instrumentality, tools, and morphology.

I think that the enactment of an idea would be the abstract idea made concrete.

to give an account of being — tim wood

I'd say that reason is ultimately instrumental. Basically, consciousness is teleology. In "gradually waking up and becoming aware of itself" (Nagel) the universe actualizes meaning. Human beings also actualize meaning. Hence the power of actions which fail, but in the pursuit of a noble goal, symbolic actions.

Well, without the value of the vision of the goal, the goal itself has no value. So it is the idea that creates the value that realizes the goal.

So Nagel feels that the fact of consciousness stands on its own as hard evidence that requires a non-materialist explanation. I think that pretty much sums up my (his) response to both those issues. Evidence is by definition a mental function or feature. Features of objective reality are not evidence, unless they are evidence for someone of something....

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Very much in line with 'research program' I'm pursuing.

If you haven't already read Nagel's Mind and Cosmos I'd highly recommend it. It's a short book.

So I see matter as a stable or "pent up/locked up" form of energy — Benj96

Precisely. And you can also view complex systems as being more elaborate instances of this phenomenon. Systems can store energy in any of its variety of forms, chemical, mechanical, etc. etc.. Moreover, I would say that, when energy is stored in a more complex system, it cannot be directly quantified and compared to energy stored in less complex system. The energic footprint of organic matter is equivalent to the total footprint of all the various energies contained within its constitutive systems, ranging from the quantum to the chemical to the organic levels. I'm not sure we can even make a good estimate as to what is the true energic footprint of consciousness.

We don't know if consciousness has been produced as part of the biological life. — Alkis Piskas

Correct. It's the central question of the book I'm currently reading, Mind and Cosmos. Nagel is evaluating the differences between 'reductive' approaches (which entail panpsychism) and emergent approaches, which leave something of an explanatory gap regarding the meaning of emergence.

What else could there be? I don't know of anythings physical producing something non-physical. — Alkis Piskas

Per the above, it is possible that there non-physical aspects to the physical, proto-conscious features, in a reductive interpretation. Of course you are begging the question when it comes to consciousness, which is the entire point.

These are attempts to compromise non-compromisable things, find middle-solutions, etc. And they are of course totally theoretical, existing in a frame, context of their own — Alkis Piskas

I don't know if you noticed, but all of the most advanced physics is entirely "theoretical". The question as to what is/isn't "hard evidence" is itself psycho-social.

OK, but this is just a literal-etymological analysis. This is not an answers to What does "trans-physical" mean? I, on the other hand, brought up the definition from two dictionaries. If you don't know yourself what it actually means, you shouldn't talk about it and waste people's time. — Alkis Piskas

Even if the mechanisms that produced biological life, including consciousness, are, at some level, the same as those that operate in the evolution of the physical universe, it does not follow that those mechanisms are physical...Perhaps some transphysical and transmental concept is required to capture both mechanisms.... (Tom Sorell, Descartes Reinvented)

All speech is "just" literal-etymological in nature (i.e. arising through historical-contextual usage). You think that "definitions" in dictionaries represent the sine qua non of meaning? Well, maybe at a very rudimentary stage of learning that is true.

I just read Thomas Nagel's endorsement of Jaegwon Kim's view of the nature of metaphysics, with which I also "am very much in sympathy":

Metaphysics is the domain where different languages, theories, explanations, and conceptual systems come together and have their mutual ontological relationships sorted out and clarified.

In other words, metaphysics is a project whose aim is to study and elaborate the nature of the connections between apparently discrete domains. If you are a reductive materialist (is anyone anymore) then you consciously reject metaphysics. If you credibly believe that the universe exhibits mental as well as physical aspects, then you embrace metaphysics.

So I guess, if you believe that mental phenomena are imaginary, then you reject the validity of metaphysics. However, since your rejection of metaphysics would itself be a mental phenomenon, I don't where that would leave you.

Consciousness certainly directs energy in a meaningful way, which is the basis of the phenomenon of teleology. So if consciousness directs energy, it interacts with energy. Basically, you can see matter as just that, viz. a mechanism for energy interaction. It appears to have more in common with energy than "inert" matter (dynamism, direction). But then no matter is really inert, since it all exists in systems of one form or another, which are temporally dynamic, i.e. contain energy.

My definition of metaphysics is that is the study of that which is beyond the possibility of experience, — Bob Ross

The nature of experience is that it expands with knowledge. Compare the experience of the human, versus that of the single-celled creatures from which we sprang. Consider the experience of a symphony by a trained musician versus someone with no musical knowledge. Thomas Nagel stresses the point that our tools for comprehending reality are limited, but those limits are constantly evolving.

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