If by sentient you mean "can sense," then yes. Some definitions of sentience go beyond that. Beyond sensing, I'm agnostic. More accurately, skeptic. I doubt, but I hold judgment in reserve. The problem is that the areas beyond sensing are not here well-defined for our purposes, and not anywhere well-defined, that I can find. It seems to imply human-like consciousness. If there's such a thing as plant consciousness, I'd like to know about it. — tim wood

Unfortunately, I’m not clear on what the “yes” answers when taken in context of the paragraph. “Yes” that trees cannot sense gravity and sunlight? From the paragraph in total it might be a “yes” that trees can sense these things.

Two things I can think of that are minimal life functions are using fuel to create energy, and reproducing. — tim wood

Despite teleology being deemed erroneous by the prevailing materialist metaphysics of the day, you’ll notice that in our mode of thinking teleology will be intrinsic to both aspects you address: something being done for the purpose of some given X; e.g. “using fuel” for the purpose of (i.e., because of the need of) “creating energy”, or “reproducing” for the purpose of (as one example) “preserving one’s own identity”. In both examples, the latter is the telos to the former activity.

This cannot be said of entropic givens governed by efficient causation; e.g. the billiard ball moved left when hit on the right by the cue for the purpose of [?] … It doesn’t work. Well, with the one single exception of “for the purpose of following paths of least resistance toward absolute entropy”—but this purpose would be universal to all entropic givens, and so can be easily ignored in favor of the efficient causation which is specific to givens (e.g., the billiard ball moved the way it did because it was hit by the cue).

Start with your understanding of sentience. It's neither argument nor instructive if you beg the question with a fortuitous definition. — tim wood

By sentience I merely mean “the capacity to sense things” or, as is stated in the first part of Wiktionary’s first definition, “experiencing sensations”. There is no other word for this property—and, although the word can be anthropocentrically addressed, we already hold the word “sapience” for humans … as it is indirectly used in “Homo Sapiens”.

Sensations, or the experience of things sensed, will hold a valence that is either positive, negative, or else is an ambivalence (as here used, neither positive nor negative but somewhere in-between; e.g., indifference or uncertainty). It is valence that propels actions and reactions in relation to stimuli. Roots, for example, hold a positive valence toward gravity—gravity being something that the tree senses (that stimulates it and is therefore a stimuli for the tree).

How much of this do we agree upon? While there can be more to say, if there is little agreement so far the rest will likely not be meaningful.

Yes, well, you haven’t addressed a single one of my three questions to you.

The question then becomes, is there any way to hear - discern in some way - what arborism might be saying, expressing it in tree terms? — tim wood

What it is definitely saying is that trees have a metaphorical ‘point of view’ which is a literal awareness of other, and that there therefore is something it is like to be a tree. But your hypothesis is maybe putting the cart before the horse. We’re yet working on establishing that trees can sense things.

From your reference: "The term was introduced in 1972 by Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela to define the self-maintaining chemistry of living cells." What has this to do with mind? — tim wood

The connection can be found here and here within the article I’ve linked to. One doesn’t need to read Thompson’s book to get its basic meaning—it's entitled Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind. Although it’s a very interesting book to read, if one holds an interest for the topic(s).

I’ll do my best to address the rest after you answer these three questions I previously asked which address the very issues you’ve specified:

Since it’s the capacity to sense—regardless of what and of means—which defines a sentient being as such, are you arguing that trees cannot sense either gravity or sunlight?

[…]

Addressed differently, what set of processes differentiates trees from rocks if not awareness conjoined with goal-striving being found in the former but not the latter? And if trees are to be indistinguishable from rocks in being solely governed by entropy, then on what grounds does one argue that trees are lifeforms rather than inanimate matter? — javra

Notice I’m not speculating on what it’s like to be a tree (e.g., we obviously hold no conceptualization of what it could be to flourish only when other creatures eat our body parts so as to spread our zygotes about in order that they might grow—animals eat fruit to spread the tree’s seeds about when addressing the function/purpose of fruit). Rather, I’m attempting to rationally argue that trees are sentient beings by virtue of being living things. Or at least attempting to figure out how it could rationally be supported that trees are not sentient.

Due to time, I’ll be forthright in my views and not beat around the bush. My bad in advance if I’m currently too cranky.

There can be anthropomorphism at play in any of our judgments concerning awareness and will. Our judgments of these can just as readily be clouded, if not utterly flawed, by an ego-driven anthropocentrism which states that “if it is not that precise form which only humans can experience, then it cannot exist in any other form in any non-human lifeform”. This mindset can often be found in ethology (the empirical, scientific study of animal behavior): animals cannot hold emotions such as anger or fear because emotions as we know them are only found in us human, therefore no animal can hold emotions of any form, period! (who gives a sheit about their limbic system being pretty much the same as our own, especially when regarding primates). Same can be said with arguments for awareness, will, and reasoning: if it is not that specific form which only humans can do, then it cannot in any way exist in any other form anywhere else. The reasoning as to why this is never given, only the assertion.

the tree has no eyes. — tim wood

An empirically demonstrable conclusion we all know of, but I don’t understand its significance when addressing a tree’s awareness in sensing, and consequent propensity toward, gravity and sunlight. Since it’s the capacity to sense—regardless of what and of means—which defines a sentient being as such, are you arguing that trees cannot sense either gravity or sunlight?

It has no mind. — tim wood

This is contingent upon how mind is defined; Varela et al. (who uphold the concept of autopoiesis) would disagree. But granting that here a mind is implicitly defined as that which necessarily correlates to a central nervous system, no, trees cannot have a mind thus defined because they are not planarians, arthropods, or chordates (with vertebrates as a subset of the latter).

It has no space or time. — tim wood

This is an unsupported assertion. I’ve often heard it said even of mammals. As though dogs have no memory of where they’ve been and who they’ve interacted with in the past and no anticipation of what is to come in the future. But they don’t think of beginnings and ends to the universe like we do, so our anthropocentrism then quickly concludes that they only live in a non-temporal present. (this is contrary to evidence, if it needs to be said) Of course trees have no theory of time and space. But to say that their behaviors are not governed by before and afters (time) or by distances and proximities (space) is … at best utterly unsubstantiated.

In terse overview of what I’m here upholding, trees are not humans, nor are they vertebrates—and so do not have attributes only applicable to humans and vertebrates. This, however, does not argue against trees holding awareness conjoined goal-strivings—to be clear, of a non-human, non-vertebrate kind.

Addressed differently, what set of processes differentiates trees from rocks if not awareness conjoined with goal-striving being found in the former but not the latter? And if trees are to be indistinguishable from rocks in being solely governed by entropy, then on what grounds does one argue that trees are lifeforms rather than inanimate matter?

I argue that telos is a human template, an overlay of plausible explanation under a set of presuppositions. - All good and orderly in its place, but not the goal here! — tim wood

If I’ve understood you properly given the context of your previous posts, you argue that there is no goal-striving to anything in nature, including to trees’ behaviors. Or are you saying that goals are not the goal of this thread as was outlined in the OP? In which case, I thought it obvious that I was obliging your questions to me with my answers. (to be clear, this in my longwinded last post to you)

If the former, however, OK—but on what rational grounds does this argument stand?

That's not remote from the original meaning. See Aristotle - The Importance of Telos — Wayfarer

Yes, true. Still, I’m sometimes at odds about either referring to Aristotelian theory or not so doing when describing what I endorse. Not only is my knowledge of Aristotle mostly second hand—although I did read portion of his De Anima—but his concept of virtue as the human telos, while I ultimately agree with it, to me is too constrictive of human nature to be of much help on its own. We can choose other teloi in our attempts to best obtain satisfaction, happiness, flourishing and the like. As one example, the mass murderer that wills to get away with the perfect crime is not motivated by virtue in seeking his optimal happiness/flourishing, and sometimes perfect crimes have been committed in one way or another—the less grave the more common, such as in cheating someone or some community. Though the ugly part of human existence, these sometimes successful ambitions need to be taken into account as well—something that I so far don’t satisfactorily find in Aristotle. Taking this to a more metaphysical level, some humans would do anything either virtuous or vicious—here focusing on the latter—to get as close as they can to being unquestioned tyrants of everything that surrounds … in a sense, to becoming a singular, untouchable, omnipotent deity everyone else bows down to. Stalin comes to mind here as example. Anyway, telos as it is associated with Aristotle to my knowledge doesn’t address such choices between what could be depicted as metaphysically possible aims. And virtue often times can result in much sorrow and strife, as well as failure—again, not something which Aristotle tmk satisfactorily addresses.

I so far find this in the article you’ve liked to as well.

Though I neglected to say it this time around, I usually say “an Aristotelian-like telos”—since I agree with his notion of a first teleological cause to existence in total … for clarity, this, again, more along the lines of Neoplatonist notions of “the One” as a non-deity awareness/being of omni-benevolence, aka perfect love, to which we hold various proximities, and which in imperfect ways resides both within and without all of us, as some say. But—seeing how one thing leads to another—I’ll cut this short

Telos. Either the living thing has it (in some sense) and we describe it, or it's all our description. DNA is a compelling argument for telos. The telos of the kitten is to become a cat. Yet in just that sense,telos becomes just a generic name for the kitten's becoming a cat, becomes a word meaningless in itself. No part of kitten or cat is telos.

Maybe telos lies in purpose - purposiveness apart from DNA. That would seem to require volition. But the will is free: is telos freedom? The idea is to get telos apart from mechanical functioning, yet still be a something part of the living thing, yet, in the case of plants, not be a product of mind. Something with the capacity, at least, to choose, but that the choice in some sense is not a choice. Can you give direction here or add some light? If you're content with telos as mechanism, then we're back to the machine. — tim wood

Difficult questions. But I’ll try to support my views as best I can (turns out not in very few words).

Firstly, telos, to me, roughly means a given existing as a potentiality whose presence as such will both predate and cause the manifestation of effects which bring that addressed into closer proximity to its fruition. So contemplated, and once accepted as a metaphysical possibility, it could then in simplistic terms be either applied to givens devoid of awareness or to givens endowed with awareness.

For example, inanimate matter acts entropically—and can thereby be appraised as holding absolute entropy as its telos. Entropy is an entire subject onto itself, at least for me; while I’m not ready to start a thread on it, to me absolute entropy does not entail disorder but, rather, an undifferentiated and non-quantitative order of physical being wherein the identities of individual physical entities dissipate into … well, something like energy devoid of mass, time, or space. This being a little background to this premise: entropic givens pursue paths of least resistance within their environment toward absolute entropy—such that their behaviors are all choice-devoid paths toward the telos of absolute entropy. BTW, this hypothesized telos of absolute entropy to me mirrors a hypothesized possible end-state of awareness as a non-quantitative unity devoid of otherness which severs as the zenith of awareness's potential—something that I find myself easily projecting upon concepts such as Nirvana and Moksha in the East and “the One” in Neoplatonic traditions within the west.

The dyadic opposite to entropy is negentropy, i.e. life. Rather than dwell on very ambiguous concepts such as those of “mind” or “consciousness”—which can be difficult to argue apply to all life—I’ll instead address the attribute of awareness (something upon which our self-awareness is built). The simplest known life are prokaryotic organisms (archaea and bacteria)—although gametes to me are not too far away from this when contemplating simplest forms of awareness. These simplest lifeforms hold empirically evident awareness via which their capacity to respond to environments unfolds—needless to say, this in absence of a nervous system. And there, simplistically addressed, the teloi primarily considered are no longer universal to all that is but localized within and respective to individual lifeforms.

A big downside to my perspectives is the absence of a metaphysical understanding of how entropic givens have given way to negentropic givens. What can I say, this same problem faces everyone that accepts what empirical sciences agree upon, materialists holding no exception. There must be a behavioral quantum leap from entropic givens, such as rocks, to living systems, such as bacteria. This is where I find Apo’s metaphysics alluring. Still, to me, it’s about progressive evolutions—slow, difficult, and strife-filled—toward ever greater degrees of awareness, which is where I disagree with Apo on metaphysical levels concerning final ends. Either way, nucleic acids seem to be an in-between to that which is entropy governed and that which is negentropic—as can also be said of proteins (e.g. prions).

Staying on topic as regards life and, as example, trees, it in all its instantiations is purposeful. The sperm’s motions are easy to address, but the same also applies to the egg: both hold a telos of biological conception of a zygote. When both are healthy, both will respond to obstructions standing in the way of this telos being actualized. Viewed in light of biological evolution and the need to consume prey (organic sustenance so as to maintain homeostasis) and to escape predation, prokaryotic organisms too will react to environments in response to the telos of … for simplicity, survival (granting this concept is poorly understood: e.g. survival of genes irrespective to phenotypes, survival of phenotypes via genes, some other conceptualization?). In simple terms, those prokaryotic organisms who do not act and react in accordance with this telos then become extinct and are no more.

Obviously a bacterium’s teloi will be extremely less developed than a human’s. Still, to the extent that the bacterium acts and reacts via teloi, the same bacterium will then be endowed, I believe, with a rudimentary form of volition, i.e. will, that is aimed toward some end.

Doubtless the ends which determine actions and reactions—hence teloi—of a bacterium are a genetically governed aspect of the bacterium’s behavioral phenotype. I.e., the bacterium won’t be able to choose its aims as we humans often do (this only to an extent when metaphysically appraised). These same teloi will serve as a bacterium’s proto-forethought. Say the bacterium is faced with something to eat. Its telos here is to eat. Its actions and reactions shall adjust according to—in manners caused by—this preexisting telos (in conjunction with is awareness of its environment to which it reacts). It doesn’t think what to do to best manifest its goal. But, I argue, it does chose between mutually exclusive—hence contradicting—alternatives. More precisely: With its telos being determinate and its environment of a prey ever changing, its behaviors toward this telos must then be neither perfectly deterministic nor perfectly random. The alternative to both these extremes is that of a very primitive form of freewill as to what to do in order to satisfy its determined telos.

I get that this is uncharted territory, but this is where I’m currently at.

The bacterium, then, in a very primitive way, reasons without what we term thought. Roughly speaking, it in a very limited way takes into account causes and motives—motives here being nothing more than teloi—for what the prey is most likely to do next so as to satisfy/actualize its telos of eating its prey.

Again, the taking into account of causes and motives in one's responses to context is, technically, an intrinsic aspect of what reasoning is.

OK, not all prokaryotic organisms are predatory—so this same argument cannot apply to all species of prokaryotic organisms. But I hope it suffices to illustrate that awareness, individual specific teloi, and free choice (free will) can be argued present in very primitive degrees within the most primitive forms of life. None are then applicable to entropic givens. (Although, I’m fiddling about with notions of some form of pre-awareness process from which awareness can develop as it would pertain to some type of pan-semiotic or panpsychism system—this hoping to better bridge the gap between entropic givens and negentropic givens. No fun and no luck, at least so far.)

Trees then are more developed than bacterium. Same overall process can be argued to still apply. For example, a) roots growing with a gene-determinate telos within their behavioral phenotype of finding organic-matter-resultant things to consume within earth by aligning themselves with gravity and b) being neither fully deterministic nor fully random in their reactions to obstacles in the way of actualizing this telos—i.e. endowed with some prototypic free will as to how to react so as to best satisfy its individualized teloi.

I figure making the aforementioned any more concise would be to at best make it utterly unintelligible. So I’m leaving it as is.

But the kiss! I remember that! And I'm old enough now to recognize that as the miracle of chemistry in action. But there were choices. Chemistry was push; I had some choice of direction. Is there a telos here? — tim wood

:smile: Yup, I can remember it too. Haven't found my permanent mate yet, so I’m still looking forward to it myself. As to a telos, I’m arguing that if there was motivation to the kiss (consciously apprehended or not) then there was a telos (and if not, it would have been metaphysically mechanical). I’ve never heard it being applied to psyche, but motivation to me is a form of retrocausation: the motive is the effect as existent potential that temporally precedes the all the specific causes for it becoming manifest—with these causes for one’s objective becoming physically objective being the very telos/motive-governed choices one makes. But again, we humans often get to choose which aims/motives/teloi we subsequently willfully pursue.

The point is that telos is something in itself, or is just a word for things already described and named. Which way do you argue? — tim wood

Hope this longwinded post satisfactorily addressed this question.

Is reason more accessible? For present purpose and as preliminary, let's set two criteria for reason, the presence of either being sufficient as evidence for the presence of reason - this subject to change. First, if a living thing can respond to a threat and protect itself and warn other to protect themselves (which trees apparently can do), then that thing reasons. Second, if a living thing appears to manifest self-awareness, then that thing reasons.

Trees reason (lots of things reason). But I do not think trees are self-aware. After some thought, I'm forced toward thinking this approach is a dead end. Not a dead end as a product of thinking toward some end or for some purpose, but a dead end in terms of grasp of the essential.

I don't think trees think. More likely they're biological machines. But not even machines with a telos, unless by telos is meant an accident. — tim wood

To present a different interpretation:

I’m thinking that only in self-awareness does one become aware of one’s own goals and, hence, or one’s own teloi. Most of the time, however, for better or worse we humans act and live in manners devoid of this self-awareness, devoid of a self-consciousness concerning what makes us us. We do this when we’re in the zone, consumed with praxis fitting in all ways as it ideally should—not needing to ponder which way is best but, instead, simply being. Otherwise expressed, it is when we know without language or analysis (without any meta-narrative) who we are at the given juncture and what we should do so as to satisfy our will’s impetus. We certainly are readily endowed with a self-awareness capacity—in which we indulge most always whenever there is any form of uncertainty as to what is or should be (by which I don’t mean that we necessarily doubt anything during such times). But it is typically when life is fluidly lived, rather than being though about, that we feel most exalted in living. If a concrete example is needed: engaging in that lusted for first kiss while lost in the immeasurable timespan of the moment, this rather than contemplating how to best go about things to actualize it and make it successful (including while kissing). I get that a philosophy forum is not the best place to make this observation; theorists are us, and its part of our cherished praxis; all the same, I’m arguing that self-awareness is an optimal means toward the end of fruitfully living in manners ideally devoid of its presence, this where only raw awareness is and where it’s presence as life becomes sharpened and intensified without uncertainty or obstructions.

Then, in these times of awareness that is devoid of self-awareness, we still reason—but not via thoughts. In a sense it becomes an autonomically intrinsic aspect of who we are as a responsive agency. It yet has an aim, or telos. When our will is obstructed at such times we in due measure become displeased, volitionally suffer, because that which we are innately striving for becomes in due measure harder to obtain. And this is where self-awareness obviously is indispensable for us.

In rough parallel, all plants generally speaking hold (non-self-) awareness of gravity and sunlight, as well as of the threshold between self and non-self. They all respond to obstacle standing in the way as parts of the non-self. And they all are driven by an un-thought of telos to reach that which they are unthinkingly striving for. I personally believe the same awareness of givens and striving toward something that is to be obtained is applicable to all life. Hence, that all life is telos driven. To say the obvious just in case, just as human awareness far surpasses that of the great apes (biological slang for all apes other than the gibbon), a plant’s awareness can only be far less developed by overwhelming magnitudes relative to a humans. If its of benefit to the clarity of this stance, I sometimes liken it to that Freemason pyramid found on the US dolor bill: The top of the pyramid that is a quantum leap from the rest represents sapience; beneath it there is the remaining pyramid of sentience/agency that extends down to the lowest degrees of awareness which are also the most numerous; the entire pyramid mirroring an ecological pyramid of life.

Not that any of this resolves what life is via reasoning. But it portrays a different rationale for lifeforms such as trees: Here, trees are themselves telos-driven awareness, albeit of far lesser magnitudes by comparison to humans—a type of awareness that is obviously not endowed with the behavioral plasticity which self-awareness facilitates—this instead of being telos-devoid machines.

The same rabbit-hole you address still remains. Though I’m stanchly preferential to us coming to understand what things are—rather than making things up as we go along. In the case of life, to me, what telos-driven awareness is.

----------

looks like my timing isn't half bad :razz:

But I want to differentiate between what surpasses reason, and what falls short of it. Hope that makes sense. — Wayfarer

It does. Thanks

I think a distinction can be made between 'transrational', 'non-rational', and 'irrational'. Reason doesn't have to be omniscient in order to be effective - in other words, it can be effective without being all-knowing. — Wayfarer

Hm. I’ve so far thought that we can arationally discern things (else: noninferentially discern). For example, whenever we know that we are perceiving some given X, we know this arationally—i.e., without an immediate dependence on consciously known causes, motives, or explanations for this so being. We of course use reasoning to explain why we perceive things, to justify that our perceptions of givens are true, and so forth. But our knowing that we are perceiving what we perceive—i.e. that we seem to be experiencing that which we experience—is an arational apprehension/cognizance. Same with our intuiting an intuition, our thinking a thought, our sensing a sensation, and so on. All these, again, occur independently of our conscious apprehension of causes, motives, and explanations for that which is being noninferentially discerned; hence, independently of consciously occurring reasoning. And, I would argue, it is one of the most important forms of knowledge we hold, for these arationally attained knowns serve as a foundation to most, if not all, of our inferences concerning what is--the latter being contingent upon reasoning.

With me approaching the issue from this state of contemplation, can you better clarity the differences between “transrational” and “non-rational”?

I share this speculation, and I enjoyed the way you expressed it. — syntax

Rarely do I get compliments, so I'm relishing it. Thank you and cheers.

But it would be a narrow definition of reasoning to identify it with just something people pursue as a method of inquiry. — apokrisis

What I held in mind is that conscious reasoning—the process of consciously finding and structuring causes, motives, and explanations for givens—is more than a pursuit of some people. Lesser animals quite arguably engage in it; e.g. predators to catch their prey and those preyed upon to escape their predators. My point here being that, most especially in humans, conscious reasoning is an innate aspect of our being—one that matures with age from infancy when we first try to achieve our ends, and that easily becomes meta-cognitive (cognition about cognition and the like) for adult humans.

The primary datum of experience is that nature itself appears intelligible, or rationally structured. — apokrisis

I agree with this.

And the principle of sufficient reason/principle of locality might speak to atomistic patterns of causal action. But physics also needs its matching holistic principles - of least action and cosmological homogeneity - for a complete description of nature's causal structure. It must see form and purpose as part of the total picture that would be a generalised Logos. — apokrisis

Yet form and purpose are integral aspects of reasoning—for they each are causes, motives, or explanations for givens.

What I was intending is that “why being itself holds presence” is something that cannot be satisfactorily accounted for by causes, motives, or explanations.

As to the metaphysical issues you bring up in your reply, as is no surprise from former discussions, overall we agree upon a lot when it comes to metaphysics. Our pivotal disagreement, if I remember right, is however one of ultimate metaphysical ends—this being entwined with the top-down causal mechanism(s) that holds everything together on a global level. We’ve been though this argument previously without any proper resolution between us. So I’ll cordially refrain from going down the same traveled path.

Page 132. "Life will not answer to reason. And meaning is too young a thing to have much power over it." — tim wood

Interesting topic for me. I find a partial truth to this quoted text. But I’m digging toward something deeper than life as we know it; I’m thinking of being per se. The presence of being is itself arational (as here contrasted to irrational, or “error-endowed reasoning”)—the presence of being eludes the very principle of sufficient reason, and so is beyond the very purview of reason.

Reasoning: the provision of causes, motives, and explanations for what is, i.e. for being per se whether in whole or in part.

Is the arational a product of reasoning so concluding it to be or, conversely, is reasoning both map and, yet further, an ultimately transient terrain for the underlying arational, for the mystery of being of which life directly and intimately partakes?

Given my affinities, I’m again reminded of the pre-Socratic notion of logos, the reasoning pertaining both to the physical cosmos and to individuals which are aspects of it.

When considering both the cosmos and its individual beings, reasoning can at least in part be said to ratio paths to take from those not to take. Yet, for us individuals, reasoning only serves as a means of discerning what is true from what is not. It is not in and of itself the truth which is being pursued by application of reasoning (including truths as they pertain to the cosmic logos/reasoning/causation of which physicality is constituted).

With these musings in mind—which I don’t deny are themselves one individual's reasoning—I can’t help but speculate that at the deepest of metaphysical levels truth is the arational itself, the being of being, and not the reasoning we use to best hold onto that which is both immediately and metaphysically true.

So, paraphrased in a way that makes more sense to me: “Being will not answer to reason. And meaning is too young of a thing to [hold an ability to comprehend] it.”

My stand is that we have little control over our personalities and our own actions. — tiffany

You’re conceding to something by saying “little control” rather than “no control”.

I can agree that we have partial but not full control over everything which we are at any given time: there’s genetics, there’s environment interacting with the former, and there are all the previous choices whose outcomes have accumulated into one’s present mind and character. At any present moment, we hold no control over any of these (here considering time travel to be fiction) This, however, is not to then conclude that one is devoid of responsibility for who one has become, hence is, and for who one will further become.

Regarding responsibility and metaphysical compatiblism:

To be clear, I’m interpreting responsibility at its most general to be, in short, the metaphysical ability to respond to givens—irrespective of whether these are physical or metaphysical (like responding to laws of thought by concluding a contradiction to be an error of reasoning, rather than a true contradiction; etc.).

No form of responsibility can logically occur in the complete absence of freewill. Hence, no form of agency. Hence, no form of “I” or “thou”; no praise; no blame; no authorship to actions, choices, and the resulting effects; etc.—therefore, no such thing as ownership of one’s own mind or personality. In the complete absence of any type of metaphysical freewill, it would logically all merely be just one more link in an infinite causal chain or web of causal chains—this where causal determinism is endorsed. No starting source for this causal chain can be and, hence, no responsibility for anything whatsoever can be logically ascribed.

This metaphysical topic of responsibility is a thorn in the side of both causal determinism and causal indeterminism as both are most commonly understood today—for neither accommodate such a thing as metaphysical freewill and, thereby, any viable causal mechanism for responsibility.

It may be easy for some to brush this logical necessity of causation under the rug by brandishing all awareness of responsibility as illusory. Yet so doing, when rationally appraised on its own terms, leads to a rational unintelligibly of everything that is, just as much as Zeno’s paradoxes of motion do. In part, this is because everything that is is known via the lens, so to speak, of agency and its response-ability. As one example, the very claim that “I/you/we/they know/presume/opine/etc.” is one of agency endowed with response-ability to some given. In this example, the response is that of knowledge, or presumption, or opinion held for which the given agency is understood to hold a metaphysical authorship.

It’s important to here distinguish agency, and hence responsibility, from any indeterminism wherein effects are understood to be random. Though the metaphysically free choice is not deterministic and can thereby be understood as indeterministic—i.e., not deterministic—no responsibility can logically hold when actions and choices are metaphysically random.

Notwithstanding, the very same presence of responsibility, or agency, likewise logically requires the presence of specific effects determined by specific causes—i.e. the presence of some type of non-ubiquitous causal determinism. For an agency to act or decide anything, the activity needs to have determinate outcomes of one form of another if responsibility is to in any way remain valid. Hence, if X is responsible for Z, then X a) must have itself held a causal role in the outcome of effect Z—with the causal role somehow stemming from X and not merely being one aspect of an infinite causal chain—and b) this causal relation between X and Z must itself be in some way determinate, hence fixed, thereby leading back to X as the source of responsibility for Z. Otherwise, again, no responsibility for effect Z can be logically ascribed to agency X as the reason for Z’s being. This to keep things simple and not address a requirement for a relatively stable causal determinism in the environment one makes choices within.

This is a summative paraphrasing of David Hume’s argument for metaphysical compatibilism. An argument whose validity I acknowledge.

We don’t assign responsibility to a wind-blow rock’s resulting into an avalanche because the rock is not a causal source of the outcome, no more than is the wind which blew it, or the global atmosphere which caused the wind to so move, etc. We assign responsibility to everything from Fido digging holes in the backyard to our political leaders’ effects on our collective wellbeing due to the presence of a non-ubiquitous causal determinism interacting with a non-deterministic causal mechanism which we term “free will”. (Unfortunately, there’s a far greater probability that Fido recognizes he did something he shouldn’t have done when chastised for digging holes in the backyard than that our political leaders ever recognize that they are capable of, and thereby culpable for, errors.)

In short—and here overlooking the causal mechanism of the physical world we inhabit—if we’re to in any way be validly responsible for anything, including our own being, then some form of metaphysical freewill must hold presence … and, along with it, some form of causal determinism—one that is at the very least applicable to freewill caused choices and their resulting actions as effects.

Love is important because, without it, the popular music industry would collapse. — Ciceronianus the White

I take this to be a good example, though maybe not all that popular:

The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return

Why is it (love) so important if you never grew up with the sincerity and genuineness of it in the household. — Danny

Adding to a lot of what has already been said in the thread:

Love is important because—when things don’t short-circuit and turn into idolatry, possessiveness, or animosity—love in due measure emotively unifies oneself with other(s) such that the other(s) become of equal value to oneself.

It’s an “all for one and one for all” mentality that can only honestly be when it subsists on an underlying emotive drive that in English goes by the term “love”. This could be between two romantic partners, between children and parents, love of one’s community, the camaraderie of very earnest friends, the list is very long.

Without this emotive convergence of selves with other which love brings about, we wouldn’t have compassion, harmony, understanding, etc. for each other—ever. Instead there’d only be hatred for others occasionally sprinkled with utter indifference to their states of being—this being something which makes most of us miserable ourselves.

Romantic love is quite wonderful when you have it due to its immediate intimacy—applicable to newly formed lovers just as much as it is to people yet happily married after 50 years together. I nevertheless think this form of love is neither the pinnacle nor core of what love is or can be. It is only one manifestation of it. So if one is only addressing romantic love, its good when it happens, but I don’t believe it’s indispensable for living life with love.

Thinking about it here, what is lurking behind my objection to this reasoning seems to be Hume's guillotine: that one cannot derive an ought from an is. So my objection is that one cannot go from the claim "being is intrinsically good" to "therefore, one ought to procreate."

If Hume's guillotine fails and it is licit to derive an ought from an is, then I will have to admit that procreation is a supererogatory good (morally good, but not required, as in a duty), assuming that being is good. I don't assume that, though. — Thorongil

Here is a metaphysical resolution to Hume’s guillotine. I emphasize it is only outlined.

Hypothesize, first, that there is an ontically certain end-state to being, by which I mean all being everywhere, which grans being with a perfect cessation of all suffering. As laughable as this hypothetical might be to some, I deem it better than BIV hypotheses and the like. Next, hypothesize that this end-state of being can be envisioned by any self to take a number of different forms—but that out of all these alternative projections of what this end-state of being might be, only one possibility we can fathom will be ontically certain—and, hence, correct and right—whereas all others will be illusions we dream up—and, hence, incorrect and wrong.

Using these hypotheticals as premises, it can then logically be appraised that acting in accordance to, conformity with, alliance with, etc. this metaphysical, ontically certain end-state of being in which the suffering of being is obliterated—this to the best of one’s capacity given’s one’s environment—is what is right, correct, and ethical. This conclusion, then, resolves Hume’s guillotine by deriving what what ought to be done from that which metaphysically is.

As to what such possible end-states of being might be, examples include: that of nonbeing (what suicidal people most often seek); that which is often enough addressed by certain spiritualties as a perfectly formless/selfless awareness devoid of first personhood (e.g.s include Nirvana and “the One”); that of a perfect stability of selfhood, meaning the immorality of unchanging self/selves; and that of a perfect supremacy over all else. Each imagined end-state of being then holds its own means of best alignment with its fruition. For example, while a supremacy of self end-state will ultimately entail making everyone else an instrumental means to one’s own supremacy of being (and thereby relieve everyone's suffering), the technically perfect equality of a formless/selfless awareness end-state will entail things such as compassion toward others as though they were parts of you.

Because none of us can unequivocally prove the ontic certainty of any end-state of being, we thereby hold a choice in choosing which end-state to pursue--and often do so in emotive ways. All the same, there will be only one possibility which is an ontic certainty and, hence, indifferent to what any of us think or believe. And, it will be this ontically certain end-state which is that then determines which oughts are right and which are wrong.

Though only an outline of my beliefs, it, for example, here illustrates that were this end-state of being to in fact be that of nonbeing, then antinaturalism would be right and correct—this due to being a logically valid means to the end-state that is here believed to be (an ought from an is). However, were the ontically certain end-state of being to in fact be that of a selfless awareness/being wherein perfect equality of being is obtained, for example, then striving for a cessation of being/awareness would be a wrong and incorrect means of actualizing what is best (again, this ought being derived from the metaphysical is of this particular end-state’s factual being).

In this set of hypotheticals, justifying which end-state is ontically certain, i.e. true, would be a completely different issue. Nevertheless, it does resolve Hume’s guillotine.

The thing is, were one to believe this end-state of being to in fact be nonbeing, it would resolve nothing of ethics save, well, the striving to end all life ... if one can call this ethical.

To me, that obliterates meaningful distinctions between different motives. If all actions are selfish then no actions are compassionate. The latter becomes a meaningless category. — Thorongil

Once on gets past the often materialist mindset that self, that ego, is a bag of organized flesh, it then becomes both feasible and quite obvious that selfhood can be quite expansive. The nationalist’s self is intimately entwined with the selfhood of his or her nation as the nationalist interprets it. The lover’s self is and becomes ever more intimately entwined with the self of the beloved and vice versa—if love persists. These extensions of non-flesh bound selfhood can become more abstract, such as a scientist’s concern for all scientists at large—this being the selfhood of a community into which the individual’s self inheres into—or more concrete, such as a lifelong friend’s concern for his or her lifelong friend. Needless to say, healthy relations between parents and their children will exhibit this same extension of selfhood in-between.

As to how, I’ll stick to the workings of our mirror neurons.

Yet in all such cases, what can otherwise be identified as the other here becomes to some meaningful extent, often enough reciprocally, an inherent aspect of one's own self. And, in so becoming, the other then becomes something of intrinsic value to oneself. This shouldn’t be odd to anyone. When a loved one—friend, romantic partner, family member, a member of one’s community one greatly esteems, etc.—dies, we sense that a part of us dies and, hence, a personal loss … this in due measure to the love held. Not due to loss of instrumental value, but due to a diminishing of what we hold intrinsic value for.

Yet to call such empathy based relations selfless is—when philosophically addressed—a category error. They are all contingent upon the presence of selfhood and its wants, be these wants individual or communal.

So while I concede that there cannot metaphysically be such a thing as a non-selfish motive for a selfhood to do something, the motives one has in mind are the very foundation upon which the ordinary dichotomy between “selfish” people and “selfless” people is founded. When we as selves ego-centrically pursue an expansion of intrinsic value for everyone, when this is our motive for our choices and actions, we act (more) “selflessly”. When we as selves ego-centrically act and choose with the motive of increasing all other’s instrumental value relative to ourselves, we then act (more) “selfishly”. Though not even Stalin was a perfectly selfish bastard. I’m using scare quotes because this is the same equivocation between technical reality egos interacting with themselves and of common usage you disagreed with in a previous post.

What motive, hence reason, driven action can a self possibly hold that is in an unequivocal sense not governed by the self in question, thereby being a “non-selfish reason” for some action? Compassion is a form of empathy as far as I know, which I've already addressed in this post.

p.s. I’m no objectivist. Rather I believe in teleological causation being real, such that the telos we egos will often enough choose to be driven by--such that our motives, in other words--will make all the ethical difference in the world.

fair enough

Selfishness isn't ethical, though. This is a category mistake.

[...]

Now here's the makings of a nonselfish reason. What do you mean by mankind? It sounds Platonic. — Thorongil

Call me cynical, or worse, but I don’t comprehend how mankind could have any value to anyone outside of self-interests in the wellbeing of others. Self-interests are about the either sustained or increased wellbeing of the self and, because of this, are all self-centered when philosophically addressed: i.e., centered around the wants of the particular self or, else, a cohort of individual selves that share a common want and, hence, a common intention.

With that understanding in mind, anyone who would even remotely care for their community—mankind being about as relatively unselfish a compassion for a community as anyone can feasibly hold; (e.g. empathy for someone on the other side of the world which one learns of via news but is otherwise unaffected by, etc.)—would be solely motivated by their own ego’s self-interests. Empathy in general works this way: when it does happen, another’s welfare becomes converged with one’s own; mirror-neurons within one’s self that in turn affects one’s own being via the events that unfold for some other, if one would like to address this physiologically. Those who hold such a concern for the wellbeing of mankind are often termed humanitarians—concern for the general being of the species of which one is a member of (I didn't want to imply just males by the term). Global issues such as a reduction in global warming, increased global justice, having fewer kids in the world starve to death, this sort of thing. The future generations which would be impacted by global warming, global injustice that doesn’t immediately affect one’s own life where one lives, and the starvation of particular children one only knows about in abstract ways have nothing to do with the wellbeing of one’s immediate self—save for this empathy based self-interest in the wellbeing of humanity at large. I’ve heard of plenty of humanitarians who are atheistic and, due to this, non-Platonic. So I don’t find any connection to the ontologies maintained.

What is it about mankind that it needs maintaining? — Thorongil

Who or what might be “maintaining” mankind if not mankind itself, which is itself an aggregate of all individual humans? Societies historically tend to turn tyrannical when the individuals within it don’t communally do anything to maintain the society they partake of. Yes, first me and my own, then I help if I can those others that surround—this just as they tell you on airplanes of how to best proceed in case of an emergency, and this for very good reason. Nevertheless, society is now global—more applicable to the species at large than ever before.

Am I missing something here?

Thus, the best choice of all is never having been. — schopenhauer1

I’ll be forthright. My mindset is that we’re all selfish, we all want something; and we all get irritated or worse when we clash with those whose wants are mutually exclusive with our own.

As to it being better to never have been, this too is a self’s want. We can first address an individual’s want to have never been (it happens), then the generalized want that humanity would have never have been. But there is no valid reason to stop there if this is our resolution to suffering. Hence, we progress to it would have been better if life in general would have never been anywhere. And lastly, we concluded with it would have been better if being itself would have never been. For either via materialism of other ontologies, turns out that when being is there is either a good likelihood for life to eventually develop and hold presence or, otherwise, its just accepted that life is a brute fact.

Since no one has figured out any sufficient reason for being’s presence irrespective of ontology, though, the wish that being would have never been is as nonsensical and impractical as presuming oneself to have the capacity to turn all of being everywhere into nonbeing.

Being is; life is; humanity is. The only proper question to be asked is “what now?” Encouraging a global suicide of all life, or worse, doesn’t sit well with many, including me as concerns, at least, my own transient being and that of my loved ones. I haven’t yet heard you advocate for this aim, so let’s agree to put this hypothetical out of existence.

I’ve never claimed or meant to insinuate that if someone doesn't want to have children they should have children nevertheless. This scenario generally doesn’t make for the best of childhoods--sometimes far worse. So this only tends to increase suffering. But if you want all people to stop reproducing, my guess is that those who unthinkingly reproduce with the least amount of concern or compassion for new lives will continue to do so via unprotected sex in bathroom stalls and the like without paying attention to your arguments or anybody else’s. Thereby again increasing total suffering in the world.

Again, humanity is, just as we all are. So, if there is agreement on the aforementioned, which way forward to best resolve this problem of global suffering?

It's still a voluntary choice, though. — Thorongil

Especially when it comes to humans, there’s more procreated than just flesh. Humans being a sexually reproducing species, we amalgamate two separate bodies of flesh to create a new one that is a hybrid of both parents. As a generality, the child also inherits an amalgamation of the two parent’s worldviews, including heuristics for the living of life and a prioritization of goals to be pursued. It’s a lot more complex, I know, but this can be stated to be the general norm worldwide.

Then there’s base and elevated selfishness. Base selfishness has children to do all the hard work around the farm/abode and to ensure the parents are well off in their old age—possibly with more territory. Elevated selfishness, in one of its many abstract forms, has children to propagate virtue and wisdom—hey, it’s very elevated here—thereby propagating a hybrid of the parent’s identity. Were only base selfishness to reproduce itself, humanity and the planet would go down the drain quicker than otherwise. Conversely, were only elevated selfishness to propagate itself such that no base selfishness remained, well, that blasphemous dream of utopia by comparison to where we are now would become objectified/manifest.

Again generally, base selfishness is not the kind to give a hoot about the wellbeing of the offspring, never mind of the community … ultimately, the global community as an influence upon what occurs locally. Hence, it’s generally those who are not of a base selfishness that contemplate whether or not there’s any virtue to bringing new life into the world. But if all these non-basely selfish people were to stop reproducing, human life would then become a hell on earth wherein some degree of elevated selfishness yet occasionally rears its ugly head into the world—random things sometimes occur—only to be humiliated, tortured in one way or another, etc., etc., etc.

Arguable, I’m aware, yet the conclusion of all this is as follows: it is only ethical for elevated selfishness to reproduce itself in the world—given that the conditions for raising children of like elevated selfishness can be safely enough established by the parents.

Because some would rather term elevated selfishness “non-selfish”, this then presents one non-selfish reason/motive to have children: yes, laughable as it may seem, for the benefit of mankind (a category which does not exclude the very parents of elevated selfishness/selflessness which given birth … nor the very offspring themselves).

There are also the unexpected conceptions of a future human life. The same overall argument should still apply.

Hey, it’s a feasible reason, I’m thinking, one that most would acknowledge to be close enough to non-selfish to fit the bill. Also, I don’t have children as of yet, so I can feely allow myself to indulge in this idealistic, theoretical mindset. Who knows, there might even be some truth to it.

Speaking as a philosophical skeptic myself, there’s some important qualifiers to certainty that are too often left implicit. Are we addressing that which is ontically certain? That which is infallibly certain to our subjective being? Or that which we are quite certain about though in acknowledgedly fallible ways? The three are not the same. Doubt, btw, is not identical to uncertainty: e.g. the future may be uncertain when addressed in a long enough term, but then saying that the future is uncertain is not the same as saying that the future is doubtful. To doubt is—as the term is always used—to hold an uncertainty about something which has already been established by someone somewhere to be certain. To be in states of wonder and curiosity, for example, is to be in states where one is not certain about all the pertinent aspects of that regarded—i.e. is to hold uncertainty about that concerned—without there being involved any doubt in respect to that regarded.

So we minimally have three types of certainty: that which is ontic and indifferent to our appraisal; that which is an infallible appraisal of what is (… of what is ontically certain); and that which is acknowledgeable fallible yet nevertheless an appraisal which we hold with certainty (again, concerning that which ontically is).

To have infallible certainty that there is no infallible certainty is a blatant contradiction—and, hence, an error of reasoning.

The philosophical skeptic, however, can quite cogently maintain a fallible certainty that no infallible certainty can be evidenced—including the infallible certainty that infallible certainties are impossible.

This then makes Yadoula’s comment correct (here overlooking any possible intermediate arguments): the only way you can be infallibly certain of anything is if you hold infallible certainty of everything (tangentially, this to me speaks of a non-dualistic awareness and its infallible certainty of what is, if such a perfectly formless awareness can ever be actualized).

As to repercussions for knowledge, it can easily translate into the fallibilism proposed by Peirce.

Heck, there’s been disagreement among philosophical skeptics in the consequences of this position for quite a long time. Still, to be clear in a general audience sort of way, no philosophical skeptic can ever be a Cartesian skeptic … for it’s by the very definition of philosophical skepticism already apprehended with fallible certainty that there is no infallible certainty to be obtained via methodological doubts.

I’ve been earnestly trying to break away from the forum for a while now—this for the time being. If there isn’t a robust refutation of what I’ve here posted, I might not reply. My bad. (Hopefully there’s more agreement than not.)

:up:

So then one is left with an irreducible moral and aesthetic component to psychology, I think, in answering any question of the 'proper functioning' of the human psyche, or a supposed irreducible human nature. Which will be the less debilitating the more it is explicit in a theory. — unenlightened

Couldn't agree more.

I’ve never, never, liked Freudianisms. Anything that is remotely worthwhile in Freud can be found in William James’s “Principles of Psychology”—a lengthy book which incorporated Darwinian evolution with James’ honest accounts of what we’d term spiritual accounts, of course staying true to all experiments known at the time concerning both physiology and established accounts of behaviors. My favorite Freudianism to criticize is his Oedipus/Electra complexes; cuz if the kid were to have only one parent of the opposite sex then they’d be chasing their parent all day long for tail. Besides, it’s a damned blatant justification for pedophilia no one ever seems to want to address (the preadolescent kids want to have sex with their parents, apparently). Freud is what you get when you mix atheism, mythologies, an authoritarian complex, and good decade’s worth of cocaine use. But Victorian people lapped up his talk—doctors miraculously curing “hysteria” with dildos and orgasms (telling I think)—because it spoke a lot more to being human than did the Behaviorism that quickly took over academia. Which is not to diminish the data on classical and operant conditioning. Cog.sci . is one form of psychology I hold esteem for: as with any other science, it theorizes, but all these are checked and balanced by needing to remain aligned to the empirical data acquired.

As to everything from exorcisms to New Age-isms that go haywire and the like, all this is detrimental when—and because—it forsakes the physical logos of the world as though it weren’t there (this to continue using the terminology I’ve previously made use of in this thread). Sorry, you may not like gravity and might want to fly off of tall structures because of some novel insights … but evolution as we know it will still have its say (the biological too is an aspect of the world’s physical logos).

You raise complex topics that I don’t want to belittle—for they’re quite pertinent. Nevertheless, I don’t believe that insisting on physicalism can serve as a remedy to them. Should of worked by now, I would think.

We share many views in common. Best of luck with your endeavors.

Hm. It’s not that the philosophy of mind is directly formative of the psyche it seeks to explain. Rather, the ontology I subscribe to facilitates the significant possibility that there can be such a thing as formless awareness; this at what I hope is readily understood to be a metaphysical level of being—for both the physical and the mental are endowed with form(s). This would be a perfectly selfless being/awareness devoid of first personhood—due there being nothing other relative to it by which first personhood can be established. In using this significant possibility as a premise of what is metaphysically ontic, then it can be inferred that all selves are, if one likes, fragmented or divided parts of this formless awareness in various proximities to this ideal state of being. An ant would be further away from it than a human. But this gets complex very quickly in any number of different ways.

Information as I’ve tried to express it is then virtually the same as Heraclitean notions of logos (better translated as “reason in the form of causes and motives” than as “word(s)”). And the formless awareness addressed could be compared to Neoplatonism’s “the One” or the Eastern concept of Nirvana—neither of which are minds—as well as to Aristotle’s first (teleological) cause.

To be very clear, I’m not trying to argue my case. Only want to illustrate how this outlook doesn’t suffer from the dilemma you’ve address—illustrated by the analogy of space, time, and matter being created by the theories one upholds (that is, if I've understood your criticism correctly). The data points remain the same regardless—in terms of psychology, physics, and everything in-between. But yes, the metaphysical explanations for them will often be considerably modified from the typical physicalist paradigm(s). (I nowadays prefer the term of a “dual aspect neutral monism” for this perspective since it tends to better convey to others what the ontology implies.)

Suggestions are welcome. — Galuchat

For what it’s worth, the broadest sense of communication I can currently speculate of is “to impart form to”—this where “form” is interpreted in the broadest sense possible, hence encapsulating both the abstract and the concrete. One example would be that one meaning holds a different form from some other meaning; even more, a paradigm is larger in form when compared to an idea since it’s a collection of many ideas—and talking is roughly a bidirectional imparting of ideals/abstract forms which then in due measure in-forms each individual awareness. As another example, the hammer imparts form to the rock—or in-forms it—by colliding with it.

I’m as of yet not personally comfortable with using the term “communication” to express such “imparting of form to” in all its usages. Still, to my mind, one could establish a dual aspect monistic ontology by interpreting all stuff, mental and physical, as information—here basically meaning, “that which endows form to”. Such a broad interpretation of information could thereby maybe be used to make the case that all information transfer is communication.

Well, interpreting information as a dual-aspect monistic substance is an approach I take but, to be honest, there are some other components at work as I’ve so far made use of this understanding. Things like various causal influences or mechanisms by which information works. Also of information yet being other than core non-dualistic awareness even though information in-forms awareness—i.e., endows awareness with its form of first person selfhood, including that of its very being as an individual awareness within the universe. This being my take on the self/no-self motif. To further clarify this last part, this in-forming of awareness certainly occurs in large part via the operations of the living, organic, physical substrata—such as brains for vertebrate life—as well as via this then formed awareness’s interaction with its environment by means of subjectivity. But this is an entirely different ball park.

At any rate, if any of this is of any use …

And yet, to say that homoeostasis, gene expression, neural stimulation, endocrine signalling, and immunomodulation are types of biocommunication, doesn't seem so far-fetched to me.

So, should the notion of communication pertain only to organic objects? And if so, at what level(s) of abstraction (i.e., physiology and/or psychology)?

For those who would appropriately refer to the etymology of the word "communication" from the Latin "communico" (share, impart, make common), I would suggest that what the process of communication shares between informer (transmitter, sender) and informee (receiver, recipient) is code, given:

1) Communication: the process of encoding, transmitting, conveying, receiving, and decoding, data (form).
2) Code: transformed, translated, or converted data (form).
3) Information: communicated data (form). — Galuchat

I’m in general agreement with unenlightened. For my part:

“Communicate” is one of those words whose ambiguity can facilitate a number of different meanings within different contexts. How much of it applies to what is ontic and how much of it will be strictly metaphorical can largely depend on the ontology that is presupposed. As to the metaphorical, when someone says something like, “don’t press any more keys on the keyboard; the computer is thinking” the “computer is thinking” part is not to be taken literally; it’s only a metaphorical shortcut to expressing concepts that otherwise require far more words to properly express.

It strikes me that going by your denotations, a hammer that haphazardly falls can be said to communicate force to the rock if falls upon.

Were this semantic to be upheld, however, it would to my mind nevertheless be distinct from the communication that occurs between sentience which thereby involves awareness and its apprehension, its understanding, of what is being communicated. For example, I can in no way concede to the rock literally understanding that a force was communicated to it by the falling hammer.

To my mind, the two semantics would be made distinct primarily due to the difference between a) the strictly entropic interactions (or inter-paths, if one likes) that occur between entropic, inanimate givens and b) the agency-caused interactions that occur among negentropic, autopoietic, agency-endowed life.

I’m on board with bridging the gap between nonlife and life in a stout ontological way, but this would not diminish the “quantum leap” (metaphorically speaking) between nonliving things and living things.

Biocommunication specifies the contexts addressed. Maybe a term for “entropic communications” could be coined so as to distinguish it from what agents do?

The morning is not the only transient timespan when utterly new and always different events unfold despite it being the same exact re-occurrence for all of humanity’s history, but also the night.

(truth in advertising: this one's taken from a Doors song)

You know the day __________ the night; night _________ the day.

Get ahold of yourself! — Bitter Crank

As though the thread wasn’t complicated enough, you have to go and bring up an infinite regress problem of all things. Let it be, I say. Practical philosophizing can be cool too (unless one’s an asshole that can’t help but bullshit due to so being :razz: )

Emotions … can’t live with them, can’t live without ‘em.



Back to pushing myself to engage in chores needing to be done. … thereby here introducing a Munchhausen problem to rival yours.

Neither suffering nor happiness are essential parts of life, we can all live without them. I agree that we all search for and enjoy happiness and avoid suffering when possible.
But.
Love and hate, attraction and revulsion, happiness and sadness, happiness and suffering are all conditions of life. The fact that we prefer some over others does not make them less inherent in life for they are in everyone's lives whether we want them or not. — Sir2u

Myself, I take it that all affective states—emotions and moods—will hold what in psychology is termed a positive valence or a negative valence … which in humans at least roughly equates to some interpretations of happiness and suffering. With some affective states sometime being in-between and thereby of relatively neutral valence, but I take this to be rare in comparison to pleasant and unpleasent states we feel, act on account of, and react to. Going by this, I’d again uphold that happiness and suffering so understood in broad terms hold inherent meaning to us. We might be using the words differently though.

Which brings us back to the forever unanswered question.

Does life have a meaning? — Sir2u

Implicit to this is to whom. My life has meaning to me, as I’m quite certain yours does to you. Sometimes, on better days, some of our lives will also have meaning interpresonally. But no life will have meaning to a rock.

A more practical way of saying it depends with what premise one starts with.

Is there any inherent meaning to happiness? — Sir2u

I’ll argue this way: Happiness is meaningful. One emotive sensation is both discerned from others and is either wanted or shun only because it is meaningful. Upheld differently, happiness holds significance to us—and because of this is meaningful, i.e. endowed with meaning.

As to it being inherently so, this comes with prioritizing being/awareness over reasoning, imo. Here I take words to of themselves be an aspect of reasoning--and reasoning devoid of being/awareness is, or would be, meaningless. Hence happiness, as much as “soul’s” suffering (however poetically “soul” is addressed), is an inherent aspect of our being/awareness ... thereby being inherently meaningful.

Don’t laugh, and I don’t mean to compare difficulties of addiction by this, but I can relate to some of what you say on account of my own nicotine addiction. Started smoking to … alleviate my stress, as they say; went from being Mr. health guy—five miles of running a day and all that—to over three packs of filterless per day almost overnight when I first started. Told myself I’ll show everybody else that I can quit in one’s years’ time; it’s been, um, over one year now and I still pretty much choose to smoke each new day. This despite the costs to my wallet and my body. Why? I’m certain that there are reasons in my skull somewhere, but I’ll be damned if I can make out what these cogent reasons are … again, not for the by now recurrent cravings but for my choosing to satisfy them.

Between us two addicts of various sorts, I think that acceptance of this not being right is a good first step. As to figuring out the buried reasons, maybe like others, I neither have the cash nor the trust to sit around with shrinks so as to bring them up to consciousness. Even so, at this point, I figure, the reasons don’t very much matter anymore. That advice I gave previously, it equally applies to me. It’s about forming new habits and reclaiming very old ones … and then letting these old reasons for our current choices dissipate themselves away. Still, I intuitively sense that blaming ourselves for choosing what we’ve chosen on account of these buried reasons only gets in the way of a healthy recovery. In a way, if you’d like, we’ve already had our fair share of punishment—not only by what got us here to begin with but also by the respective aftermaths of so first choosing our now addictions.

Yes, there’s a willpower required to stop, but for this willpower there is also required a goal which we earnestly latch onto and, on my part at least, a kind of letting go of fears that I don’t often look in the eye … those that the addiction numbs, issues and pains that I’d rather never be aware of again.

You know, among all the talk of forgiveness … there’s a kind out there that might be more important than all others, that of self-forgiveness.

More generally speaking, don’t care who you are, you are not devoid of all blame, not innocent of all wrongs. Some don’t give a damn—else perpetually justify to themselves why they’re righteous and why this accumulated guilt doesn't apply to them. But for those of us who do given a damn, self-forgivingness might be … well, yea, difficult, but then also an important part of healing and letting go of these downward spiral habits. Still, I strongly believe, we should be just with ourselves in not blaming ourselves for more than what we deserve; not merciful as though we’re giving ourselves a hand out out of self-pity, but fair.

Hey, just speaking my mind. Hopefully some of it clicks with your situation as well. At any rate, all this talk is maybe helping me out with more definitively wanting to quit nicotine again, in a hopefully more permanent sort of way. Have to now push myself to do some chores, but I’ll check back in later.

Just read you’re last post. I really wish there were some way I could help out, but I get that talk if often cheap. There's a Romanian saying that sums up what worked for me at least once in my life; loosely translated: appetite [sometimes] arrives subsequent to eating. Meaning: forcing or cajoling oneself to do something one does not desire, has no appetite for, sometimes stimulates you into gaining an appetite for the activity. I started listening to upbeat music while taking my sorrow and frustrations out on a punching bag, or while pushing myself in running or biking, and eventually my appetite for life came back. The point being, maybe if you push yourself to do something you formally liked or wanted to do, it might eventually help get you out of the bad times. Whatever works, but don't give up trying.

Well supposedly there's much optimism that these so-called entheogens will be approved for clinical usage in the psychiatric field in the near future -- aiming for 2020 perhaps. So who knows what will eventually unfold, and how the pharmaceutical giants will be impacted, if at all. Within the context of the prevailing paradigm it's hard to imagine that there won't be some profit motive in play. But I try not to be pessimistic or cynical about it, as that seems to be a depressingly pointless option, and what good does that do? — snowleopard

Though I should leave your last post to be as is, but, to be clear, I fully agree that a healthy, reality-grounded optimism is always a good thing to have. It would be nice if this new avenue was to become legally implemented for society at large. I’ve heard it is an optimal remedy for alcoholism, opioid addiction, among other things, as well as very beneficial for (I liked the way you worded it) mental dis-ease / dis-order.

And ditto to this:

Ironically enough though, we're discovering that there are 'drugs' that can be effective tools for actually facilitating healing, as new research and clinical trials are showing that some psychedelics, like MDA and psilocybin, may be the key to unlocking that baggage, by allowing access to the subconscious realm were it is locked up, so as to start the true healing process, in conjunction with more conventional gestalt therapy, etc. So far the early results are proving to be very promising, with respect to bringing about profound and lasting change that doesn't just mask the suffering, but digs deep to get to the source and finally resolve it. — snowleopard

Yes, I'm aware of this from a documentary or two. I agree it would be beneficial. But then, how would the pharmaceutical companies maintain stock profits if all their patients became cured? Kind of thing. This is worthy of mention, I think, but I don't want to get into the politics of current economy.

Not sure what you have in mind, nor of how well this rough idea might fit. Carl Jung talked of synchronicities wherein one’s mental states of belief and apprehension synchronized with otherwise unusual coincidences in one’s inanimate environment—thereby resulting in new awareness of meaningful and relevant into. Were one to entertain the philosophical hypothesis that all physical reality is itself a near perfectly stable synchronicity between givens, then—I’m supposing—even the most mundane and profane of our interactions with inanimate reality could be deemed a form of communication. The world informs us of things via photons bouncing off of the retina, etc., and we inform the world back via our actions toward it. Thereby resulting in a communication between inanimate and animate. Something like this?

Gotta warn you, this roundabout sort of thing gets relative close to the notion of logos as interpreted by Heraclitus. The world’s logos, our individual logos of subjectivity, and so forth, all of it being different parts of the cosmos/uni-verse.

Generally though, I too tend to limit “communication” to meanings intentionally transferred from one sentient being to other sentient beings. For example, bees communicate to each other, but saying that sun communicates location to the bees seems to me a bit off mark.

It was as if the conscious choice to move on from it, was like permission to let go and stop holding onto that baggage, allowing it to be unpacked, sorted through, and then disposed of, so to speak. It was a painful process, to say the least, but in the end, more than worth it. — snowleopard

Man, I could make use with some of that willpower myself every now and then. Congrats. A lot easier said than done, but definitely rewarding when accomplished.

Albeit, that suffering may have inspired some poetry, as is often the case for artists of all kinds ... thinking of Van Gogh, or Beethoven, or any number of other examples. — snowleopard

A little rant:

In my younger days I used to rail against anti-depressants to anyone I could debate the subject with. “It’s in our genes and must be fixed chemically.” Bullshit. I guess just as some people are birthed without appendages some might be birthed with genetically fixed mental ailments. But when you see a bunch of people returning from war with missing limbs and proclaim that they were born that way, there’s something sinister at work. Same with depressions and the like: they a response to a long list of prior experiences. And having the pharmaceutical companies peddle more drugs to more people, now even to kids, is not going to resolve the near epidemic of depression we as a society are going through. OK, all this imo.

To me there’s suffering and then there’s strife. The two are not the same—and neither is fully escape-able for any life. When suffering becomes strife—rather than apathy or learned-hopelessness (since it hurts to not succeed, even learned-hopelessness can be a heuristic to minimize one’s dolor, I’m thinking)—a good deal of wisdom and beauty often ensues from successfully overcoming one’s challenges in life. At least the practical kinds for all of us unenlightened ones. Strife was the impetus for some of the greatest wonders that humanity has to offer: in the arts, the sciences, an in philosophy, wherever it fits in.

I can’t imagine a world where the two you’ve mention and many others would have all been given anti-depressants. Well, personally, other than imagining a zombie like humanity where nothing meaningful every gets addressed … a Fahrenheit 451 kind of reality.

OK, spewed off again about this issue; no longer as Quixotic about it but it still seems to me to matter. For the record, I agree that medications can be a very useful crutch faciliating one’s capcity to walk, and all individual cases are unique. Still, societally, our increased quantity of depressions are not due to a human gene mutation that just occurred in the last few decades … or so I maintain.

Long story short, my obnoxiousness aside, I agree. The strife propelled by suffering is often of benefit to our being human. I’ll take the Stoic depth that occasionally looks into the void over fluffiness most any day—especially if there’s some humor occasionally involved.

[...] and the consensus seems to be that life would not have meaning if it were devoid of suffering. — Posty McPostface

The term “suffering” can imply a lot of different things. I like it's etymology: roughly paraphrased, the need to support some unwanted weight or burden (under + I carry). This as compared to the approximate etymology of happiness: to be lucky in having things go as you want them to (fortunate). My etymological interpretations are obviously debatable, but thinking of things in this way helps me out.

For the forms of suffering I’m currently thinking of, suffering is merely nature’s way of telling you there’s something wrong—be if physically or psychologically, including depressions. Some of these wrong things in life can be changed more readily than others, and others cannot. Still, in my life of varying experiences, thinking of suffering in these terms has helped me not succumb to suffering in the long term … for this mindset presents suffering as a given which one can do something about, even if only in the slightest way, by remedying that which is existentially wrong and the cause to ones suffering.

Then, if suffering is nature’s way of telling you there’s something wrong, than not suffering could likely be more meaningful. As in: being on the right path is more meaningful than being on a wrong one.

Yea, it’s a perspective at any rate.

just so ya know. Nicely said, imo. :smile:

I’m aware that anything I might say will be trite. So I’ll say this trite thing: It’s part and parcel of the empathetic life not to be dead inside, with both its ups and downs—ups and downs that most empathetic people share. To those who even remotely cherish empathy, more empathetic people are needed in the world. And it can be painful when these empathetic folk no longer are as numerous due to, well, joining the clan of the non-empathetic people that are out there. This isn’t not about cheering you up. It’s about wanting strength in you during the hard times that presently are.

A partial song lyric I never ended up putting to music: “turn you’re sorrow into anger and your hatred into love”. … anger at all that’s fu*ked up with the world; and self-loathing or antipathy can be a form of hatred.