when thus understood, "fitness" strictly applies to the Neo-Darwinian synthesis of Darwin and Mendel, ... — javra

You lost me here! :grin:
But it's OK. Not important. — Alkis Piskas

To all the same clarify: Gregor Mendel is the guy who discovered genes by working on pea plants. He knew of Darwin's work but his is work was unknown to Darwin. It wasn't until later than Mendel's discovery of genes was incorporated with Darwin's notion of natural selection. This incorporation of Darwin's work with Mendel's work goes by the name of Neo-Darwinism. Properly speaking, today's biological notion of "fitness" is not a Darwinian concept but a Neo-Darwinian one - one which Darwin himself was ignorant of, since he did not know about genes.

I consider all this an exellent analysis! :up: — Alkis Piskas

Glad it made sense. Cheers. :grin:

His moral and political philosophies contradict the implications adopted by others, for instance eugenics, showing that his haters have wrongly and undeservedly cast him with aspersions from which his reputation has yet to recover. Such a shame. — NOS4A2

Out of curiosity, I once read though most of his "Principles of Ethics". I found it to be utilitarianism 101. A very different spiel than what we now commonly interpret by the notion of "Social Darwinism". So I'm seconding your comments here.

the latter phrasing [re: “survival of the form that survives in successive generations”] can just as well be reduced to “survival of that form which survives”. — javra

I see what you mean. But is just "survives" enough? Every organism survives ...
I believe that Darwin's "reproductive success" is very clear and satisfies his theory. If we have to translate it in to "survival", we could say "the form that survives longer, in terms of generations". As we say figuratively that a person "survives through his children".

it depends on how the phrase "survival of the fittest" gets interpreted. — javra

Yes, it can be interprested in different ways. However, as I mentioned to Vera Mont, there's only one definition as far as Darwin's theory is concerned. Which, BTW, I missed to include in my description of the topic. — Alkis Piskas

To try to clarify what I was saying:

A) When contextualized by the modern field of biological evolution, the term “survive” can in a very rough way be equated to the term “outlive” (as in, "children typically survive their own parents", as you've mentioned) - this rather than holding the meaning of “continuing to live”. Since “survival of the fittest” is applied in the context of biological evolution, this phrase could then be reworded as “the outliving of those forms which are fittest”.

[Hence, to my understanding: When the term is thus evolutionarily applied, an organism that lives its whole life without reproducing does not evolutionarily survive - for there is no form it serves as ancestor to that outlives it.]

B) Next, when “fitness” is biologically defined as “the quantitative representation of a form’s reproductive success” or something to the like (of note: when thus understood, "fitness" strictly applies to the Neo-Darwinian synthesis of Darwin and Mendel, being a semantic unknown to Darwin himself), the term “fitness” too can be roughly equated to “the attribute of outliving (that which one was biologically generated by)”.

[Note that “the continuing to live ("survival" in this sense) of that form which holds greatest reproductive success ("fitness" in its modern evolutionary sense)” is not a very cogent proposition in the context of evolutionary theory. For example, an organism with very short lifespan that successfully reproduces galore will have a relatively great fitness - despite not continuing to live for very long.]

C) Then, when integrating (a) with (b), within this context of Neo-Darwinian biological evolution, one could potentially conclude that the biological phrase “survival of the fittest” can translate via its biological semantics into “the outliving (of ancestors) of that form which most outlives (its ancestors)” or, again via semantics typically applied to the field of modern evolutionary theory, into “the survival of that form which most survives”.

[To emphasize, "fitness" as, in short, reproductive success is a biological notion that was unknown to Darwin and his contemporaries (Spencer, Wallace, etc.). It was first proposed with its modern biological sense [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitness_(biology)#History]in 1924.[/url] So, while “survival of the fittest” could have made sense in a Darwinian model of evolution (given that "fitness" did not then entail a quantitative representation of a form's reproductive success), in the Neo-Darwinian model of evolution this phrase does run a significant risk of being interpreted as a tautology among biologists in the field.]

That’s my best current impression, at any rate.

I only read The Origin of Species, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, and his autobiography - this decades ago with no recollection of the editions I read, nor with much background knowledge of how he incorporated “survival of the fittest” into later editions due to, I believe it was, Wallace’s influence. So I'm no academic on the matter. But I did find this news article which supports the impression that reading him made on me back when I read Darwin: he didn't endorse the notion of selfish individualism being a leading driver of evolution. Here’s a noteworthy, though inadequately referenced, excerpt from the article:

Charles Darwin not only did not coin the phrase “survival of the fittest” (the phrase was invented by Herbert Spencer), but he argued against it. In “On the Origin of Species,” he wrote: “it hardly seems probable that the number of men gifted with such virtues [as bravery and sympathy] ... could be increased through natural selection, that is, by the survival of the fittest.”

Darwin was very clear about the weakness of the survival-of-the-fittest argument and the strength of his “sympathy hypothesis” when he wrote: “Those communities which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members would flourish best and rear the greatest number of offspring.” What Darwin called “sympathy,” in the words of Paul Ekman, “today would be termed empathy, altruism, or compassion.”

Darwin goes so far in his compassion argument as to tie the success of human evolution (and even “lower animals”) to the evolution of compassion. He writes that as the human race evolved from “small tribes” into large civilizations, concern about the well-being of others extended to include not just strangers but “all sentient beings.”

Wayfarer's recommendation reminded me of this complementary work, The Genial Gene.

Are selfishness and individuality—rather than kindness and cooperation—basic to biological nature? Does a "selfish gene" create universal sexual conflict? In The Genial Gene, Joan Roughgarden forcefully rejects these and other ideas that have come to dominate the study of animal evolution. Building on her brilliant and innovative book Evolution's Rainbow, in which she challenged accepted wisdom about gender identity and sexual orientation, Roughgarden upends the notion of the selfish gene and the theory of sexual selection and develops a compelling and controversial alternative theory called social selection. This scientifically rigorous, model-based challenge to an important tenet of neo-Darwinian theory emphasizes cooperation, elucidates the factors that contribute to evolutionary success in a gene pool or animal social system, and vigorously demonstrates that to identify Darwinism with selfishness and individuality misrepresents the facts of life as we now know them.

Read it some time ago. Found it an enjoyable read, and remember it being well supported by a good amount of scientific research.

To add my two cents, though I now see some of this overlaps with some previous comments:

To paraphrase a former professor of mine as I can best recall, the phrasing can well be deemed tautological; consider that “survival of the form that will leave the most copies of itself in successive generations” can biologically well translate into “survival of the form that survives in successive generations” and, since evolutionary survival is always implicitly understood in terms of generations (rather than in terms of one individual organism’s lifespan), the latter phrasing can just as well be reduced to “survival of that form which survives”.

That tidbit mentioned, to further opine, as to (1) it depends on how the phrase "survival of the fittest" gets interpreted. For instance, if “fitness” is philosophically understood in the more abstract terms of “the attribute of being conformant to some given” and one further infers that this conformity first and foremost addresses something akin to objective reality when it comes to life and its inherent subjectivity, then one can obtain the rather realistic view that those lifeforms which best conform to the requirements of objective reality’s ever-changing parameters will be most likely to survive (i.e., will, as forms, be most likely found to continue occurring in latter generations). Though this understanding of fitness is different from the official understanding of fitness as, in short, reproductive success, the two understanding can very well converge to my mind. Hence, when thus interpreted, for one example, the present human species can be deemed of very low fitness since it is not fitting itself into, i.e. conforming with, the ecological requirements of the biosphere, but instead diverging from these requirements … with global warming and its ever more devastating consequences as one primary outcome of this. Yes, a lot is opined here but, again, it's mentioned with intent to illustrate that the realism to “survival of the fittest” is contingent on how the expression is interpreted.

As to (2), how most interpret “survival of the fittest” is to my mind a simple mirror held up to the principle values which humanity at large currently entertains. We too often value authoritarian dominance over other, this being implicitly deemed synonymous to fitness by many if not most, as contrasted to living in harmony with other. In reality, non-human species that tend to not live in harmony with their surrounding species and environment also tend to not be very fit, apex predators included. If a predator species eats too much of its prey species, then the predator species will collapse and, if its collapse and absence of food is sufficient, it can go extinct. Maybe for obvious reasons, not many, if any, living examples of such species of apex predators (humans here excluded), but from what I recall ecological models illustrate this just mentioned tendency.

And in terms of (3), again imo, given the aforementioned perspectives, the phrasing is morally detrimental in so far as it reinforces the predominant view of “fitness” being equivalent to a kind of individualism wherein the individual person or cohort outcompetes all others in a zero-sum game. The phrasing further seeks to root this mindset into the objective reality of biology at large when, in fact, this mindset, generally speaking, directly contradicts what the natural world of life for the most part consists of. Competition stands out to us against a background of cooperation and harmony; we focus on the first and tend to neglect the second.

So, to sum my own perspective up, there’s a lot more cooperation and harmony in nature than what we are typically interested in acknowledging, such that it is this very cooperation and harmony which leads to the fitness of the species and individuals from which the biosphere is constituted. But cooperation and harmony is most often opposite to what we commonly interpret via the motto of “survival of the fittest”.

I'd say sure, if by "thinking thing" one would include all forms of awareness as thoughts; thereby, for example, granting that lesser lifeforms are also thinking things. (I'm not big on Cartesian implications of the cogito.)

At any rate, good enough for me to agree.

I think, maybe, we might now be in agreement? To use your own terminology:

If others think of the thinker A as ignorant, and if the thinker A thinks of him/herself as ignorant, then thinker A could well be wise instead of ignorant. A Socratic figure of sorts. Nevertheless, all the potential and actual illusions pertaining to what thinker A is will not dispel the existential fact that thinker A is … for thinker A must be in order to entertain the illusions, their own and others’, regarding what thinker A is.

Does this work for you?

As you can see we run into trouble in trying to get a fix on the self - it's in the simplest sense the thinker and I'll leave it at that. — Agent Smith

Ditto, although I favor something more akin to the "awareness-er".

What's left then to be the true self? — Agent Smith

Maybe delving into these metaphysical waters would get us too close for comfort to certain so-called religious beliefs - here mainly thinking of the Hindu notions of Brahman and Moksha. Because of this, I won't insist on the matter.

In me humble opinion combining the two selves makes more sense than opting for either alone even though both [...] are illusions. — Agent Smith

Hence the crux: illusions to whom? To non-existing givens?

However, knowledge (epistemology, not ontology) of the self consists of the self to the self or the self to others; there's no third alternative, — Agent Smith

Yet the same can be said of anything physical: e.g. knowledge of a rock consists of the rock to the self or the rock to others. But this does not then signify that a rock's "real identity" = "rock to one's self" + "rock to others".

As to a third alternative, I'll tepidly propose that personal identity is as subject to indirect realism as would be anything physical, consisting in part of aspects that are independent of particular thoughts or beliefs (of noumenal givens, as Kant might call them) and, in part, of aspects that are a directly construct of particular thoughts or beliefs. For instance, a self requires a first-person point of view, whatever that might ontologically be, that partitions reality into self an other - and this irrespective of particular thoughts or beliefs on the matter. On the other hand, that this first-person point of view is itself endowed with this or that attribute can then well be a full construct of the particular thoughts and beliefs - one's own and other's - in question.

Still, this would mean that the equation you've proposed is not fully accurate.

Hm … do you then hold that human selfhood is Berkeleyan (“to be is to be perceived”) while reality is not? This where reality includes things such as human bodies and brains and facts (including facts of what one has previously intended and chosen)?

To me this seems too much of an ontological mismatch. And I’m personally not one for Berkeleyan immaterialism.

There are 3 selves (identities)
1. Who others think you are (So)
2. Who you think you are (Ss)
3. Who you really are (Sr)

Sr = So + Ss — Agent Smith

Don’t have an answer for the OP, and while I agree that the human self is in many a way interpersonal and multidimensional, the implications of this math feel off.

If the equation is right, then: A guy who is thought to be X by others and who thinks of himself as X then will mandatorily be X.

Won't necessarily apply if X is “a god” or “an extraterrestrial alien” or “a subhuman”. But to be more detailed: If a guy perpetually lies to himself and to others with enough cunning to make his lies convincing, if others thereby think him to be honest, and if he holds a psychosis in which he also thinks himself honest, does this then make this teller of lies an honest person?

As my example tries to illustrate, there seems to be more to the reality of personal identity - or at least some aspects of it - than the mere sum of thoughts (one’s own and others’) regarding it. For instance, personal identity will in part consist of existential facts regarding what one has intended and chosen so far in one’s life; thoughts, one’s own and others’, might either correspond to these facts or they might not - but thoughts per se can’t alter or otherwise recreate these facts.

That said, this is deep waters for me, and I’d rather not swim too far out.

RIP Z :roll: — jgill

Darn. Saw the banning only after my last post. Seems like play time might be over for me. Oh well.

Perhaps in lieu of putting words in my mouth and inserting your foot in yours, you can ask for clarification and/or additional support for claims made. — Zettel

OK then, maybe I've read too much into what you're saying. I'll give it another go. From the OP:

Are metaphysical doctrines such as aesthetics and ethics really "branches" of philosophy, or are they just thinly disguised poetry? The propositions issuing from metaphysics and philosophy seem logically and epistemologically distinct.

Philosophy means "love of wisdom". Wisdom requires knowledge, not belief, opinion, sentiment or personal view, else how does (read: "can") one 'know' who or what is wise? — Zettel

So, "philosophy means 'love of wisdom'" and "wisdom requires knowledge". OK, though this does not then imply that philosophy is "love of knowledge" per se.

If I understand the OP well enough, it contends that "love of wisdom" which aspires to gain knowledge of what values are (such as ethical and aesthetic values) and why they are as they are should not be properly considered philosophy.

So far you've specified that this is so because ethics and aesthetics (both of which consist of values, or worths) are not empirically verifiable and so cannot consist of knowledge (regarding "what is" rather than "what is to you")

But this again seems self-refuting to me: "love", emotive though it is, holds a value, a worth, otherwise it becomes a meaningless term; so your very affirmation of what proper philosophy (i.e., "love of wisdom") is will be grounded on that which you claim to be the "thinly disguised poetry" of metaphysics, rather than on empirically verifiable knowns. Thereby (given the dichotomy you're presented) by your own standards making the enterprise of demarcating proper philosophy - i.e., proper love of wisdom - itself metaphysical, i.e. thinly disguised poetry.

On the other hand, if you can somehow demonstrate love to be an empirically verifiable known regarding "what is", then you'd likewise demonstrate a value/worth to be an empirically verifiable known - thereby making axiology (which again encompasses the study of ethical and aesthetic value) a worthwhile philosophical study by the OP's standards.

This is not to say you are not entitled to your feelings; it is to say that your feelings do not describe "what is", only "what is to you". Big difference. — Zettel

by knowledge I mean awareness of "what is". "What is" is that which is empirically verified. — Zettel

An argument: the proposition that axiology (i.e. the philosophical study of value)—which can thereby include the study of ethical and aesthetic values—ought not be properly considered a subset of philosophy on grounds that axiology does not address “what is” (which is empirically verifiable) but “what is to you” (which is not empirically verifiable) is, in short, self-refuting; this because the very affirmation’s truth value (if any) is contingent on standards of value (such as in relation to what is good, right, correct, or proper and their converse in respect to philosophy) that cannot be empirically verifiable via observations and, thereby, which hold no truth value in relation to “what is”.

Intending to simplify the just expressed: you’re using your own empirically unverifiable system of values to make the philosophical assertion that the study of values and has no philosophically worth on grounds of not being empirically verifiable—thereby entailing your own assertion to have no philosophical worth.

As others have mentioned, metaphysics tends to concern itself with first principles, which I’ll contend include first principles in relation to value. These, then, address issues such as why it is that you yourself value empirically verifiable philosophy and disvalue empirically unverifiable philosophy in the first place.

Anyway, is your example irony? I don't think so. — T Clark

Hmm, the definition provided can be an instance of feigned ignorance intended to confound or provoke. Its intended meaning could be that the search for a definitive definition of “irony” might be a wild-goose chase. A playing the bimbo deal.

Else, one can take the face value intent of the definition at its word, in which case it could not quality as irony.

There’s a lot here and I’m sure there’s a lot more to say, but I’ve always found definitions of “irony” unsatisfying. — T Clark

I’m surprised that no one has so far stated this obvious definition: “Irony” means “having the quality of iron”. For example, “The Iron Age was very irony”.

Yes, this to me can be an ironic comment - without being sarcastic, satirical, or hypocritical. Knee-slapper though it may be.

Sarcasm makes use of mockery whereas irony does not. All satires I know of make use of irony whereas not all ironies are satirical. The hypocrite engages in a form of doublethink in which they hold or act on two contrary views as though both were true or correct, whereas the ironist knows full well of the intended mismatch.

My own take is that the best cases of rhetorical and dramatic irony can be likened to an intelligent blond playing the bimbo, this so as to get their way with minimal resistance from those who presume the blond to be unintelligent or unimportant, hence from others who thereby remain ignorant of what’s in fact occurring: Those in the know - be it the rhetorician, the dramatist, or even fate for some folk, this in addition to the onlooking audience, if any - get that what’s at hand is a concealed means of actualizing an end toward which those not in the know are being led without their immediate awareness.

Socratic irony might well be a misnomer - in that Socrates deemed himself wiser than his opponent in not thinking to know that which he did not know, and there’s no definitive reason to presume Socrates insincere in so affirming. If so, Socrates never feigned ignorance to begin with.

Still, I kind of like the definition first offered in this post. Has a far more definitive ring to it by contrast to the ambiguous dictionary definitions so far here discussed. :smile:

There's a difference between a list that could never, in principle, be completed. and one which is potentially finite, but large enough that we could never find the time to complete it, ... — Janus

Either way, wouldn’t the full list be never completed, hence never expressed, hence remain inexpressible?

:razz:

... But there's always more to be expressed in relation to much ado about nothing, no doubt.

... Ever wonder if the frog thinks that everything worthy of expression can be expressed in croaks, this in principle if not in practice? Hmm, a humorous way of trying to draw attention to the possibility that a hundred thousand years from now they might be conveying information in manners that human words as we know them can't, thereby allowing for the public conceptualization of ideas we humans cannot conceive of.

But back to: if you think some things are inexpressible in words then prove it expressing in words that which you deem to so be inexpressible in words. :joke:

My view is that no animal, humans included, forms connections between word-sounds and certain neural networks. — javra


This seems to be directly contradicted by the evidence. Am I misunderstanding your claim, or are you just saying that evidence from cognitive science is all wrong? — Isaac

You’ve misunderstood. I’m saying that first-person awareness - such as of word-sounds - can be said to supervene upon neural networks but that this does not imply that neural networks are equivalent to first-person awareness. This just as a table is not equivalent to the molecules upon which it supervenes. And this irrespective of whether the supervenience that occurs in mental processes is strong or weak.

A word-sound only occurs relative to awareness. Otherwise, the issue would be about a certain type of vibration in air waves affecting some sensory receptors tied into certain neural networks. I'm saying that aspects of awareness do not form connections to neural networks, that this conceptualization holds a maybe subtle but very drastic category error, for all aspects of awareness supervene on neural networks.

Instead, I find it correct to conceptualize the issue in the following manner: certain neural networks form connections to other neural networks - while, concurrently, certain aspects of awareness which supervene on the first grouping of neural networks will form connections to other aspects of awareness that supervene on the second grouping of neural networks.

All this in the context of first-person awareness associating words to concepts.

But it seems clear we hold very different models in relation to minds. Since its not something that will be easily resolved, I'll try to step out of the overall conversation.

In short, unless one has his head up in faith land (I don't differentiate between theists and atheists in this), all one knows will be acknowledged fallible. Correct till evidenced otherwise. Akin to how the empirical sciences go about business.

If one says that good is to be associated with correct, then wouldn't wrong be associated with false? — ToothyMaw

I'd rephrase it: correct (what is right) is good; incorrect (what is wrong) is bad. Don't know, but am thinking this might make significant differences to your question.

And if that is so, then how does falsifying things tie into your assertion that we consider correct answers to be good regardless of their actual correctness? You could have a claim that is believed to be true that may actually be false, and then the values "wrong" and "good" are assigned to the same answer, even if it is unbeknownst to the people reaching the answer. That is, if you believe that perceived correctness actually makes something good. — ToothyMaw

I'm working with the presumption, if one can call it that, that everyone is fallible. If one wants to assume some infallible proclamation of truth, correct proposition, etc., then this departs from my own point of view. I do place a strong emphasis on verification and falsification of all beliefs. This though might end up heading toward epistemology. A different topic than that of this thread.

I don't see how your statement about an apple being added to an apple constitutes any serious account of the fact that people often times recognize that they are wrong, and do not just assume that anything they have determined to be correct (whether or not it is actually correct) is good. — ToothyMaw

You wanted things simple, so I expressed a simple example. That adults take the example for granted does not imply that so do young enough children first learning their maths.

But what value does a false thing have if not wrong if good is assumed if a thing is correct? — ToothyMaw

Could you clarify this question?

Yes, I think people pursue correct answers and acknowledge when they don't find them. — ToothyMaw

As do I, as I believe I previously expressed via "verification and falsification".

And no one just equates "good" and "correct". That would be like saying that 2 + 2 = 4 could be a moral principle because it is correct. — ToothyMaw

The good, goodness, expands far beyond morality. "That was a good movie / book" isn't about morality. But it yet addresses that which is good. Same with correctness in non-ethical judgments.

Point being, despite all the relative issues involved with correctness, it as thing to be striven for is not relative to the whim of cultures or individuals but, rather, is a universal to all individuals and cultures regardless of whims. Hoping that makes sense.

So, we blindly pursue correct answers because they are considered "good", and we may not reach correct answers but still call them correct, and also inevitably go with our account of what is correct because we deem it correct (and, thus, "good").

That doesn't seem circular to you? — ToothyMaw

Not necessarily. We perpetually verify and, where possible, falsify: one apple and one apple indeed equate to two apples and not one.

All the same, do you find that appraisal discordant to the way thing are in the world?

I wasn't speaking ill of such a project. — ToothyMaw

We likely then have different sentiments toward Frankenstein's monster. Ok, then.

If we do what Javra says and try to form some sort of Frankenstein's monster of psychology, ethics, and neuroscience, we could come the closest to having some sort of objective moral project short of throwing our lot in with God. — ToothyMaw

Ha. Is this fear before rationality? If converging psychology, ethics, and neuroscience is off-putting to you, then by all means proceed otherwise. Good luck to you.

It was about correctness, not truth. Though I grant the two can overlap.

In simplistic terms, when one appraises if 1 + 1 = 2 is correct, one's judgment will be fully relative to that concerned in one's appraisal (differing from, say, if it is correct that 236 - 45 = 6) but in all such cases the notion of correctness remains constant irrespective of that addressed. We furthermore universally deem correct answers good - so that we all seek correct answers to questions, irrespective of what we may deem to be the correct answer in concrete terms (e.g., if we deem it the correct answer that 1 +1 = 1 we will then abide by that answer on account of deeming it correct).

I'm not here arguing that they are; I'm only suggesting that it is possible for ethical judgments to hold the same roundabout property. Always relative to context and it's particulars. Yet always holding a universal and constant good that is universally pursued irrespective of concrete particulars and our biased judgments.

John Dewey had a rebuttal to this notion, as explained by Putnam. Just substitute ‘avoidance of suffering’ for ‘pleasure’.

If “agreeableness is precisely the agreeableness or congruence of some objective condition with some impulse, habit, or tendency of the agent,"

then

"of course, pure pleasure is a myth. Any pleasure is qualitatively unique, being precisely the harmony of one set of conditions with its appropriate activity. The pleasure of eating is one thing; the pleasure of hearing music, another; the pleasure of an amiable act, another; the pleasure of drunkenness or of anger is still another." — Joshs

This to me gets into the issue of universals. One could also stipulate that since each and every apple is unique no such thing as the concept of apple can be real or have any import in what we do. This being a different issue to me.

Besides, my principle claim was the following only:

Of course, all this is contingent on there being a) a universal, foundational, (one could add, metaphysically real) drive to all conscious beings in everything we do and b) some means of satisfying it in principle. Yet, if (a) and (b), one could then well make sense of objective ethics and morality – in so far as there being an objective good to pursue by which all actions can be judged as either better or worse. — javra

A lack of disagreement doesn't mean that something is objectively true, merely that everyone agrees on it. — ToothyMaw

I wasn't addressing lack of disagreement. I was addressing the possibility of an objectively true psychological reality that universally applies to all psyches. If it were to be somehow discovered, all would have it, true. But it's objective truth wouldn't be a product of agreements.

Yes, one could make moral claims that would be correct, but these claims would still be relative. — ToothyMaw

Would this analogy help?: In parallel, all analytical judgments of correctness will always be relative to those particulars address, yet the notion of correctness remains constant.

I dunno….just seemed to smack of anthropomorphism. — Mww

You've cut the first quoted sentence short. I find the sentence important in it's entirety, including the part about "the culturally-relative, abstract, connotations which redness can imply". To me words facilitate the ability to form abstractions from abstractions from abstractions ... ultimately abstracted from experienced particulars. We may make use of the former while lesser animals don't, but I take it both experience the particulars. To be more blatant about things, while some mammals can visually associate the redness of inflamed genitalia with a readiness for reproduction, they will not be able to associate redness to, for one example, what the red circle in the Japanese flag symbolizes (the sun; power, peace, strength) - which is a culture-relative, abstract connotation that red can invoke.

Lesser predators are not aware of red or blood, for those are conceptions that belong to language using intellects. Lesser predators are aware of that which triggers their instincts, — Mww

This, though, denies the well documented reality that lesser animals can and do learn - including by forming associations. But I grant, my bias is not to deny lesser mammals the presence of any and all intellect, despite their lack of language and far less able cognitive faculties.

But alas…..we’re freakin’ married to our own words, and don’t employ a sufficient work-around when trying to show them impossible to use. — Mww

I get that, it's a little like a vicious circle. It's why I'm now leaning into ethology (animal behavior) in this discussion.

Thanks for the comments.

Jonathan Haidt argues that our moral values are the product of inborn evolutionary adaptations. He lists the following 5 innate moral foundations:

Care/harm
Fairness/cheating
Loyalty/betrayal
Authority/subversion
Sanctity/degradation

These intuitions are the tail that wags the dog of the reasoned propositions that you are counting on to give us objectively true moral axioms. — Joshs

To introduce some Buddhist-like thought, which of any can occur independently of a qualitative metric consisting of conscious being’s suffering?

I’m so far concluding that none can, in so far as all possibilities are either favored to not favored in relation to the appraised conscious suffering that would be incurred or avoided were the possibility enacted or pursued.

If so, then it could be concluded that it is an objective truth that all conscious beings seek optimal freedom from conscious suffering - this despite complexities such as weighing short-term suffering against long-term suffering.

If objectively true that we all seek optimal freedom from suffering - what in western thought could be termed the search for optimal eudemonia - then that means which in fact best liberates us from suffering will be the objectively true goal relative to all conscious beings, irrespective of (or else, in manners independent of) one’s beliefs on the matter.

Since this objectively true goal would in principle satisfy that which all yearn for, it would then be an objective good - a good that so remains independently of individuals’ subjective fancies.

Since this good would be objectively real to one and all, a proposition regarding it could then be conformant to its reality and, thereby, true.

Were this goal to be objectively real, then it would be that reality which “just is” via which what ought to be can be judged. Thereby potentially resolving the is/ought problem.

Of course, all this is contingent on there being a) a universal, foundational, (one could add, metaphysically real) drive to all conscious beings in everything we do and b) some means of satisfying it in principle. Yet, if (a) and (b), one could then well make sense of objective ethics and morality – in so far as there being an objective good to pursue by which all actions can be judged as either better or worse.

Never mind; too overly-analytical of me. — Mww

I'm curious, especially if you find fault with what I've stated, but if you insist on my never minding, alright.

I'm still not following how you've jumped to 'awareness'. Why does the dog need to be 'aware' of bones and biscuits in order for the category {stuff that's nice to eat} to form a semantic memory. — Isaac

Aren't all variations of memory (e.g. short term memory and long term memory) the storage (however imperfect it may be) of what occurs in the present awareness of the organism? If not entertaining philosophical zombie scenarios, this is the only possibility I can currently think of. I for example don't find that we as humans can recall memories of events which we were never consciously aware of in some former present time. (EDIT: false memories excluded - but this exception only seems to evidence the point made in terms of true memories.)

As to category formation, at the very least all species of will animals will make active use of categories if they are to survive - e.g., those of predator and/or of prey - in manners devoid of word use. This will include solitary animals, such as is typically the case for felines. Which to me evidences that categories can and do form in the absence of word use. (In truth, I also uphold that some category awareness will be inborn in certain animals, becoming only fine-tuned via experience ... a duckling's indifference to a goose's silhouette overhead and fearing that of a hawk's comes to mind as one researched example (though not devoid of controversy) of such ingrained recognition of categories ... but this would greatly complicate the current issue.)

It seems to me all that's required would be some connections between the word-sound 'treat' and the neural networks associated with nice food. — Isaac

My view is that no animal, humans included, forms connections between word-sounds and certain neural networks. Here I find a confounding of two different levels that concurrently occur in the same system. The animal would instead hold conscious awareness of the word-sound "treat" and would consciously associate it to, in my view, a category it is also in some way consciously aware of - most likely intuitively. And all of these activities that take place within the conscious awareness of the organism are then concurrently also manifesting in the workings of organism's neural networks.

I'm saying that without language we do not have experiences of 'red', not that we don't have experience tout court. — Isaac

I can agree that without language we would likely hold no awareness of the culturally-relative, abstract, connotations which redness can imply. That of passion - be it anger or love - for example.

But it seems to me that all lesser-animal predators will be aware of red, for it is the color of blood, which prey evidences when injured or eaten. For a lesser-animal predator to not have an experience of red would be greatly detrimental to its survival - such that experience of this color is favored by evolution in at the very least predators (irrespective of how qualitatively different their experiences of redness might be in comparison to typical human awareness of the color). I mention this because, of course, lesser animals do not make use of language (when understood as word use) to have experiences of red.

My clarification wasn’t clear, apparently. — Mww

My bad. Should of added a smiley face or something. My post was tongue-in-cheek. No, I'm in agreement with you. :up:

... still maintaining that experience is not contingent on narrative. :wink:

Perfect sense. Brain system does its narratives of mental events, none of which is the mental event of “experience”, yet one of its mental events is the “conscious subject”, and that mental event is that which makes sense of mental event “experience”. — Mww

I’m not getting it. How does the brain make use of words to bring into being mental events, such as those of word recognition and usage?

I could get the affirmation that CNS cells, exemplified by neurons, communicate with each other. This affirmation presumes that neurons are of themselves living agents capable of giving and receiving information, replete with their own individual positive and negative valance … their own unicellular kind of autopoietic experience - such that they strengthen their synaptic connections when the information-conveyance is to their liking, and such that lack of beneficial information-conveyance results in synaptic decay. But even when so conceptualized, where is there word usage in the constitutional activities of brain systems?

I don't follow how you're making the jump from the particulars constituting concepts to 'experiences'. Why must the particulars be experiences?

Say there's concept a dog has which makes it more likely to, say, fetch its lead when it hears the word "walk", and say this concept is constituted of several linked concepts, I don't see why any of those linked concepts need be an experience. — Isaac

For me “walk” is too ambiguous, since it’s something that can be learned via classical or operant conditioning. Haven’t checked but I presume pigeons could be taught to properly respond to this word by walking when so hearing - or else by fetching a leash, etc. The concept of “treat”, as first mentioned, seems to me far more apt for discussion. A typical treat can be a bone, a small serving of human food, a biscuit, or even a carrot if the dog so likes to eat. For the dog to understand the concept of treat it would need to abstract from a limited set of particulars such as those aforementioned to a generalized notion such as, here guestimating, “that which is given to me and make me greatly pleased”.

In presuming you’re not asking me why a dog must hold a first-person awareness rather than being a philosophical zombie of sorts (it does after all share enough CNS commonalities to our own to warrant making the issue moot, or so I'm thinking):

A dog can develop the concept of treat and associate it to the word "treat" only by a kind of inductive inference from a limited set of particulars of which it is aware of - this to the generalized notion as concept - by holding first-person awareness (to not further confound the issue by using the term “conscious awareness”) of things such as biscuits and bones. I presume we can both grant that, in typical cases, the dog has no word associations for each of these particulars it is aware of (e.g., so as to differentiate the word “biscuit” from the word “bone”). If so, then the dog uses unnarrated first person awareness of particular tokens to develop an unnarrated first person awareness of a type … Which it can then, however imperfectly, associate in semantic import to the English word “treat”.

None of this being possible if the dog were devoid of experiences pertaining to some particular treats.

What I'm suggesting is that all experience is post hoc. Everything we'd call an experience is made up after the mental events which that experience is attempting to explain. — Isaac

Roger that, as can for example be measured in milliseconds between raw sensory data from sensory organs and the after-the-fact result of the experience. But this can get knees-deep in murky issues: such as how it is that we come to hold first-person awareness of neurons and what they do in the first place if not via the experiences of first-person awareness. Besides, that experiences of a red apple, for example, are post hoc to the raw sensory data our sensory organs register does not of itself diminish the reality of us having immediate experiences of the red apple in our first person awareness.

For my part, though, I was here only questioning the appraisal that experiences need to be contingent on narration in order to manifest.

So the fundamental issue here is not really the use of words. It is for humans, but maybe less so for dogs. It's about what kind of cognitive activity constitutes an 'experience' as opposed to simply some neurons firing.

I think the evidence is pretty strong now that there's no one-to-one relationship between neural events and our 'experience', so we must explain that epistemic cut somehow. — Isaac

Yes, this is a big and very loaded fundamental question. Don't intend to get into it on this thread. But so it's said, I again very much doubt that humans require words in other to experience.

I don't know anything about canine psychology, but if it works anything like human psychology, the association of a word (or any noise at all) with an expectation is mediated primarily by the hippocampus and just works by associating previous responses with a kind of 'mock up' of that response repeated (but not carried out). So if a human says "pass me the book", my motor circuits will be fired for all the muscle movements required to pass the book, by that expression, before I actually decide to pass the book. The last action on my part is sort of 'releasing the flood gates' of the potential to act that has already built up. Or in object recognition, it might be firing all the clusters related to some action on that object (naming it, using it, emotional response to it), connected, via the hippocampus, to the output of the various auditory cortices (depending on if it were a word or another sound type).

'Experience', as in the thing we later report as our conscious experience of the event, is constructed later out of those firings (plus a whole load of random firing which are happening all the time, and a load of extraneous firings to do with unrelated environmental variables). The task of the experience narrative is (partly) to sift out all that extraneous junk so that the memory of the event is clearer - next time's firing set is nice and neat, useful and clean of noise. It doesn't really play a role in the actual word-object linking in real time. — Isaac

Cats also have a hippocampus, but tmk show no evidence of being able to associate words to concepts. So the presence of a hippocampus in a brain does not of itself provide a satisfactory explanation for why the average dog comes to associate certain terms with certain concepts. I say this with no quibble over the hippocampus’s importance to cognition - such as in word recognition, when a word's usage has become habitual, in at least humans.

At pith, though, was whether or not language - and hence narration - is requisite for concept formation. Expressed differently: Do concepts occur first followed by word association? Or are words, and thereby narration, required for concept formation?

Here's my underlying reason for the question:

If concepts can occur prior to word recognition - since concepts are abstractions abstracted from a plurality of particulars - the implications are that experiences can then take place prior to, or else in the complete absence of, narration. This conclusion would be entailed by the process of forming concepts from particular, narration-devoid experiences.

But if words are required for concept formation, I so far fail to see an adequate explanation of how dogs - which are by nature languageless - form concepts to begin with. To this could be added the question of why dogs can and cats can’t - since both, for example, have a hippocampus and are constantly exposed to words while around humans.

To emphasize: At base in the aforementioned question regarding concept formation is whether experience can occur in the absence of narration - this in lesser animals which are by nature languageless and, as would then seem to follow, in humans as well.

In the first, the narrative is from the perspective of recounting, which necessarily presupposes a system has done its job, — Mww

I could see that, granting that it’s as metaphorically narrational as a bee’s dance is linguistic - both having nothing to do with word usage.

There are also some who claim to find freedom in the bottle. Not good for one's liver, I hear. — Banno

Eh, for my part, yours is a trite retort, especially seeing the lack of coherent rebuttals to the arguments I’ve provided. FYI, there’re other kinds of freedoms associated with to bottles that are nowhere near as common, like the far harder to express and obtain sense of profound freedom pointed to in Jim Croce’s song Time in a Bottle. And yes, unlike booze, it’s not something that can be easily, if at all, effed.

But it’s your thread; express ad nauseum what you will about your lowly flies.

but watch out, Banno might interpret what you've said in such a way as to make it seem that you are stuck in a bottle that he has freed himself from. :wink: — Janus

It would be pretty fly of him if he could so demonstrate. :wink:

Freedom … it can be such a cockeyed concept. Some seek freedom from reality; others freedom from prohibitions not to be a tyrant; but I do believe that the typical philosopher - including those anti-philosophy philosophers amongst us - seek freedom from falsehoods … very much enjoying the bottle of truth-filled reality in which we would like to perpetually dwell.

There, waxed poetic a bit in turn. :smile:

I don't think anyone 'doesn't have experiences'. I said earlier that experiences are post hoc constructions, they're narratives we use to make what just happened in our brain more predictable (understandable in more colloquial terms). We weave together disparate, and often completely contradictory processes into one coherent narrative after the mental events themselves have already taken place [...] — Isaac

With the understanding that a concept is an abstraction abstracted from particulars:

In terms of languageless creatures and language, dogs, for one example, can on average understand 89 unique words and phrases - with a demonstrated extreme of being able to recognize about 1000 - and with at least some such words understood on average referencing concepts, e.g., “treat”. So, a preliminary question: Do human words for concepts bring into being the dog’s very ability to cognize that concept which the word references? Or do dogs hold cognizance of non-linguistic (hence non-narrative) concepts which they can then associate with human words?

As per the quote above, you seem to lean toward affirming “yes” to the first and “no” to the second. Then:

Without an organism’s innate ability to cognize non-linguistically expressed (hence, non-narrative) concepts - such as the concept of treat - how do words that reference concepts, such as “treat”, become associated with anything any concept whatsoever?

Edited the crossed-out word for better comprehension.

Makes sense, in different contexts in regard to saying 'yes' or 'no' to the use of loaded words. — Janus

Was in a rush with my last post; sorry about that. I had something more fundamental in mind.

Loaded words may indeed be more easily changed in a language, but I’m sustaining that no language or part thereof is absolute. Therefore, any word or phrase can in principle change by being either endorsed for use in a language or else by being proscribed, this by any individual or cohort of these. Every time we make use of a word, we endorse its usage in the language community we partake of. Or, as phrases it (and in disagreement with his appraisal), we say yea to a word’s use every time we make use of it.

So I’m here arguing that we all partake in the construction, preservation, and alteration of the language we communally share - this via the choices we make (be they conscious or subconscious) in terms of which words we as individuals use.

Both the endorsement and proscription of particular words will be contingent on the interests of individuals: words which individuals find favorable to themselves in terms of functionality, aesthetic appeal, or (as in my previous examples) their ethics will be endorsed for use in language. “Meme” comes to mind as a word that via these means of endorsement has gained mainstream presence in at least the current English language, and this in a very short span of time. On the other hand, whatever words individuals - such as via their changing culture - no longer find favorable to themselves (functionally, aesthetically, ethically, or for any other reason) will degrade in the language until no longer present.

Hence, I'm maintaining that since no language is absolute or else set in stone, all languages thereby evolve via the endorsement or proscription of word use by individuals.

As to use of the term “red”: Two thousand years ago “red” didn’t exist as word to express the given color (neither did English for that matter). And two thousand years from now, there could well be a different term to address the same color in some neo-English language. But when it comes to our concrete experiences - unlike at least some abstracted notions which words express - words will change over time while their referents will remain the same. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, sort of thing.