I agree with most of what you've stated.

However, these are separate and distinct from immoral actions which can happen regardless of intention. — Sam26

Can you exemplify something of this nature. I can't think of any example right now.

Intention although important is not always the deciding factor. One can have good intentions and yet still commit an immoral act, as in accidental harm that should or could have been foreseen. — Sam26

Say a person is clumsy and accidently knocks over a book on the coffee table while walking. Do we blame them for so doing? Of course, if the item is both one of great value to us and becomes destroyed in being so knocked over, many of us would feel heightened degrees of anger at the occurrence and, some, will then readily blame the individual for the outcome.

I’m not claiming that this isn’t a murky area for both philosophy and for law. I do however maintain that where there to be intention in so knocking over the item, regardless of the item’s value to us, the scenario would now become drastically different. So I yet uphold the importance of intention to ethics.

There is also an important point here, that is, that all immoral acts have the property of harm, but not all moral acts lack harm, some do some don't. — Sam26

I find myself fully agreeing with this. I should add: especially when "property of harm" encompasses intention to do harm.

Under my ethical view, person A has harmed person B, so person A has committed an immoral act. The harm can be objectively established, the act of pushing the man to the ground. — Sam26

Hmm, think of the same scenario of perceivable behavior but with a different set of imperceivable intentions: Person A violently shoves person B to the ground (this being the exact same act with an identical degree of harm upon person B in crashing to the ground) but, in this version, the act is performed with the intention of saving person B’s life from the assassination attempt of person C. The discernable outcome of harm (and of a saved life) remains the same; the sole difference now is in the private intentions with which the act of shoving person B is performed by person A.

Here, I presume, we’d both uphold the same outcome of harm to person B in being violently shoved to the ground to be a moral act on the part of person A—this solely due to a different intention, and not in outcomes of harm.

To me, then, the justification for ethical or unethical behavior does not reside in the behavior and its outcome but, rather, in the realm of willed intention in carrying out any given act. Though, I again acknowledge, typically the two (the intention and the physical act) are associated; hence, we typically discern the imperceivable intention(s) of another via the perceivable behaviors that they engage in.

And if it can be determined that no harm was done, again, it's not immoral. I don't see how any act can be deemed immoral if it doesn't cause harm. I would say that it's analytic to any immoral act that it causes harm. The harm has to be done to an individual or individuals (e.g. a society). — Sam26

As a general rule I agree. Still, as regards intention and the outcome of harm in relation to the philosophy of ethics:

There’s the abstract, hypothetical scenario of a bad/evil intention inadvertently resulting in a good outcome for the individual(s) toward which the intention was directed. The question then being, was the willed act moral, immoral, or morally neutral?

I grant that this occurring would be exceedingly rare. As to concrete examples, the only one that now comes to mind is as follows: person A violently shoves person B to the ground out of malice resulting from unjustified envy; unknown to either, person C a moment prior shot a gun with intention to assassinate person B (insert bad/evil reason for the attempt to assassinate person B here); due to being shoved to the ground, person B’s life has been saved (say, for which person A then takes credit for). Has person A engaged in moral/good behavior?

One can also present the converse where the intention is wholly good but inadvertently results in a bad outcome.

I'll admit that I presume we all have a guttural answer to both, that the bad intention makes the person guilty of wrong and the good intention makes the person not guilty of wrong. To me this speaks in favor of innate awareness of right and wrong in relation to will, from which action is commonly upheld to proceed.

Which questions can be answered by Realism? Can they also be answered by Idealism, the dream hypothesis or the evil demon hypothesis? If so, in what sense are the Realist answers superior? Does the superiority of its answers entail that Realism is more likely to be true than the alternatives? — PossibleAaran

As one example, were a single light in the home to no longer turn on when I flick the light switch, the realism of an external world would indicate that there is something physically amiss with the light switch, the respective lightbulb, or with the wiring that dwells in between. The real problem might not be perceived nor thought of at first, yet the web of causal relations which such realism affirms facilitates my being able to discover what is wrong so as to resolve the problem. Other hypotheses, such as a Cartesian evil demon (or the materialist counterpart of being a BIV), could be conceived as alternatives to the reality of an external world. Yet, devoid of upheld belief in the very same external world, these alternative hypotheses would at best only encumber my ability to remedy the stated problem. This then can be expanded to why electricity operates the way that it does, to the question of where the electricity in my home originates from, etc.

The question to me is one of why uphold something like the Cartesian evil demon rather than an external world? I.e., what justifies the upholding of such a conviction?

Tangentially, to be more explicit about my understandings of idealism and realism, granting that these terms hold different meaning to different people:

The umbrella term of idealism does not equate to any particular subclass of belief which can be so classified, such as that of Berkley’s immaterialism. One can, for example, uphold a real, physical, external world as effete mind within an idealist system. Charles Pierce is known for so upholding. Thinking of more Eastern perspectives which we would likely term idealist, one could alternatively choose to uphold the external world to be a waking dream that is—in one way or another—resultant from the unconscious processes of all individual minds (the philosophy of Jung here also comes to mind) … yet even when so doing, and when presuming it to be the veil of Maya for one example, the external world would yet be real in the sense that it occurs in all its causally linked intricacies even when its intricacies are not perceived or thought of (what occurs at quantum levels, for instance … or, better yet, what occurs behind your back when you're neither looking nor pondering the matter).

On the other hand, realism, as I interpret you to have defined it, can well apply to both idealistic and materialistic systems of belief, as well as to anything in between—with the leading disagreements here concerning what is fundamentally real, upon which all other reality is founded. For example, it is common knowledge that Plato, an idealism-leaning philosophical skeptic, was a realist. It seems logically sound to me that Buddhists, by virtue of upholding Nirvana to be, are all realists--regardless of possible divergences as concerns other aspects of ontology—for Nirvana (and the four Noble Truths) would yet be even if all sentience were to somehow be, or become, unenlightened (in the Eastern sense of this term) … in other words, the Buddha didn’t invent an axiom of Nirvana but, instead, discovered Nirvana's existential presence via enlightenment (this, of course, in Buddhist worldviews). Materialist realism is, of course, yet another variant of realism—one that strictly upholds an underlying physical reality (here thinking of QM, the vacuum field, etc.). In all cases, there are one or more things postulated to be even when not perceived, thought of, or talked about by anyone.

Kuddos for a well thought out OP. As you mention, Skepticism as term and denotation carries with it a multitude of often divergent meanings, each endowed with its own bundle of understandings. Many paradigms—be they adopted or rejected—thereby become expressible via this one word.

In relation to the OP’s questions, as for myself, I liken philosophical skepticism with the simple, commonsensical affirmation that no one is ever perfectly infallible. It doesn’t prove the unmitigated certainty of any belief—regardless of whether these are positively or negatively affirmed. Instead, it endows the intellect with tools via which emotively held, non-contemplated absolutes (or, in this sense, dogmas) become replaced with beliefs upheld on grounds of their greater quality of justification—justified beliefs that then, in turn, become emotively lived until even more coherent beliefs may be established through similar noncontradictory justifications. So, as I interpret it, the stance opens up the doorways of the intellect, of cognitive perception, to most everything holding conceivable alternatives—and the alternative one upholds to be true, this at expense of all other alternatives then being judged false, becomes so upheld due to coherent reasoning—and not, for example, due to blind bias (again, dogma in this sense of the word). In other words, it makes one more perceptive by comparison to the tunnel vision of not mentally seeing the alternatives that otherwise can be discerned.

BTW, to me this stance has no bearing on the possession of knowledge … not unless one denotes knowledge as something that is directly or indirectly equivalent with some epistemological absolute: be this absolute certainty, absolute justification, absolute awareness of what is true and/or real, etc. To me the lack of epistemological absolutes does not then signify the lack of reliable epistemological givens. It is only in this equivocal sense that phrases such as “I know I know nothing,” can make any sense to me.

As I have been thinking of it the last few days, Scepticism is a problem for Realism - the view that there are objects which exist even when no-one is perceiving, thinking or talking about them. — PossibleAaran

That there factually is an external world can well be upheld by a Skeptic on grounds that it is the most cohesive means of justifying most of the whys and hows that apply to any particular experience of the external world. This especially when considering issues of causation.The reality of an external world, in other words, can be well upheld to provide the greatest explanatory power to the greatest number of questions that could be asked of something experienced to pertain to an external world. Still—in contradiction to some of my good natured nemeses here about—for a Skeptic to uphold the factual reality of an external world is not for him/her to also necessarily uphold that the external world is metaphysically primary to the metaphysical reality of psyche; i.e., just because individual minds are subject to the physical external world does not then entail that physicality is primary to psyche at metaphysical levels of reality (nor does the latter alternative entail theism).

Basically wanted to mention that this was a nice OP and add some comments. If I’m replied to, though, it might take a while till I answer in turn.

My best reply to your post:

In relation to sameness being a property of temporal continuity: A guy builds a toy ship made up of legos. His wife gets upset at his wasting of time with the toy ship and smashes the ship to bits. Many years later he builds himself the same ship out of the same lego pieces. It will be deemed the same ship by its builder despite there having been no temporal continuity between instantiation A and instantiation B. Therefore, temporal continuity is not necessary in order for sameness to hold presence.

In relation to meaning being identical to phenomenal information: There’s a phenomenal object A and a phenomenal object B. Object A is the same relative to itself. So is object B. The relation of sameness remains unaltered in relation to objects A and B, this despite both objects holding different phenomenal properties of information. Hence, the relation of sameness—in this case, as a cognitive abstraction that one can hold awareness of—is not itself identical to any particular phenomenal information that may be discerned as being the same relative to itself.

I’ll be taking a leave of absence, though. It was good debating with you, even where we don’t agree—such as on this issue.

A materialist would say that the mind is made of the same stuff "out there".

An idealist would say that the world is made of the same stuff "in here".

Then aren't they both saying the same thing? — Harry Hindu

For all practice purposes yes (unless either the materialist or idealist is off his/her rocker and has lost touch which reality). The reason for debate between the two schools of thought, however, isn't about practical issues, but about metaphysical issues, each school of though holding is own spectrum of metaphysical possibilities. As one example, the spectrum of possibilities regarding how existence of awareness ends (if at all). Despite this difference of perspectives, both ought to know darn well that bullets in the brain is not a good thing.

Tell us what it could mean [...] — Janus

I am but a little tyke, and have big aversions to debating with authoritative nobility. Sorry, yous.

I do not believe that different subjects ever share the same meaning unless the meaning is within the physical object which is shared between them. — Metaphysician Undercover

To try to avoid a back and forth of endless opinions, I’ll offer a more metaphysical argument.

As per Heraclitus’ flux, we can never be privy to the same phenomenal information twice. Where, then, does the very apprehension of sameness in relation to that perceived fit in?

We can never perceive the same river in terms of the same phenomenal information. Yet we can nevertheless acknowledge that what we perceive and interact with is the same river over time, or that we as multiple subjects do in fact perceive the same river at the same time.

To emphasize: where does the meaningful understanding of “sameness” come from, then? For it certainly cannot be obtained from our raw awareness of phenomenal information; the latter is never the same. On the other hand, to presume reliance on abstract reasoning to explain the presence of this innate meaning of “sameness” by which phenomena is interpreted is foolhardy. One can try to do so if they think they can: this merely through the use of phenomenal information perception devoid of any prejudice of sameness. To keep this brief, you then also deny that toddlers can hold notions of sameness (e.g. the same parents); and that any form of meaningful sameness can be held by animals (e.g., the same caregiver)—and this is to boldly deny reality.

I am not here addressing the linguistic concept of “sameness” which can be analyzed by adults like any other mental object. I’m instead addressing what is the inherent means via which we can perceive sameness (same river, same apple, etc.) in a world in which no phenomenal information ever remains fixed or repeats with identical attributes.

For the record, so far my hypothesis is that sameness is a Kantian-like a priori property of awareness—itself as property being a meaningful understanding regarding what is and what can be, one with which we are birthed with. Be this as erroneous as it may, however, the very awareness of sameness cannot itself be derived strictly from physical information—else one will debate against the very notion that everything phenomenal is in perpetual flux.

To use the currently popular definition of information on this thread, awareness of “sameness” is a difference that makes a difference, and is thereby an awareness of information. Yet sameness, though it can take innumerable phenomenal exemplars, is of itself a meaning that is other than—and a priori to—the phenomenal information which we discriminate as either “the same” or “different from”.

It is also mental information which we all share in common by virtue of being human, and—again—is not an intrinsic aspect of physical information (which is forever changing).

All this being a more metaphysical means of arguing that not all meaning is identical to phenomenal information.

Abstractions can only be expressed as "concrete particulars of physicality"; what can they be apart from that? Even when you think an abstraction, the thinking of it would, according to current neuroscience, consist in a concrete particular neurological process.

Is something being a "product of mind" somehow different from it being a "product of brain"? If so, what precisely would that difference consist in? — Janus

This is a bit of a merry-go-round. Communication of an abstraction via concrete physical particulars is not the abstraction that is being communicated via concrete physical particulars. Else there is no difference between a) abstractions and b) concrete particulars.

As to brain and mind, if you find no difference between the two, we do not have enough common ground to debate with. To entertain your question as poignantly as I currently can, decomposed rot of organic matter can be a product of brains but not of minds; the imagining of this can only be a product of minds but not of mind-devoid brains.

To so much as even entertain a relation between brains and minds is to first acknowledge the reality that there is a difference between the two. Very sardonically stated: I can hardly wait to be explained how hallucinations, too, consist of physical information (this via the exact reasoning you’re just proposed so as to uphold that all abstractions are of physical information) … such conclusion being a literal lack of sense.

Lastly, there in fact being a relation between a mind and a living brain does nothing to establish what ontology of mind is real—physicalism being only one such possible ontology of mind amongst numerous others.

No, I’m assuming that abstractions a) are not concrete particulars of physicality and b) are products of mind. How are they not?

How can an abstraction be communicated or understood except in physical terms? If you think it could then perhaps you could offer an example. — Janus

My question isn't about the communication of abstractions, such as we are now engaged in, but in relation to the abstractions themselves: how are abstractions physical?

Imagined abstractions are always abstracted from, and imagined in forms derived from, the physical world; the experience of the physical world is the source of all our imaginations and abstractions. — Janus

It's a presumption not yet evidenced to be true in all possible cases. A telos, for example, would be abstract, non-physical information not itself abstracted from the physical world. A different argument to that of this thread, though.

All the same, how is an abstraction physical information? This even when in fact abstracted from physical information.

All mathematics deals with number and quantity and without physicality there can be no number or quantity, so... — Janus

1 imagined abstraction of some non-physical world (e.g., a heaven or hell) + 1 imagined abstraction of some other non-physical world = 2 non-physical givens consisting of non-physical information. Unless one upholds an epiphenomenal physicalism, there is no physicality involved in this equation—especially since what was counted were abstractions and not concrete particulars. (This will hold even where these abstractions do not correlate with any actual state of affairs—maybe even more so.)

That's right, my argument is that all interpretations are subjective. Because of this, no two interpretations are the same. — Metaphysician Undercover

The problem though, is that the same word has different meanings dependent on the context of usage. — Metaphysician Undercover

Going back to why you uphold this to be so:

Here again, we have the issue of "the 'same' meaning" assigned to different phenomenal information. As I explained, I take this to be contradictory. If the two distinct phenomenal occurrences really had the same meaning to you, you would not be able to tell them apart, because it is by virtue of differences in what each of them means to you, that you distinguish one from the other. — Metaphysician Undercover

Your core argument again is that for the same meaning to hold presence nondifferentiable phenomenal information must be apprehended.

So I don’t yet understand how your arguments can support the reality of different subjects sometimes sharing the same meaning.

No two subjects will ever experience identical phenomenal information at any given time, this because each will be a unique first person point of view (nor will the same subject ever experience two identical bodies of phenomenal information during the entirety of its lifetime—but I’ll drop this second line of argument for now as regards stable meaning over time).

Then, how does your argument not result in a solipsism regarding the body of meaning that any individual subject holds?

Seems to me this very conversation would then be nonsensical as a conversation since no meaning whatsoever would be common to us (i.e., the same relative to each of us). For starters, we perceive the phenomenal information on what I presume to be our individual screens differently—and our understanding of the phenomenal information’s meaning will furthermore be dependent on vastly different contexts of experiential historicity (which can theoretically impart both vastly different connotations and denotations to the phenomenal information observed).

Here again, we have the issue of "the 'same' meaning" assigned to different phenomenal information. As I explained, I take this to be contradictory. If the two distinct phenomenal occurrences really had the same meaning to you, you would not be able to tell them apart, because it is by virtue of differences in what each of them means to you, that you distinguish one from the other. — Metaphysician Undercover

Looks like we might be addressing different things in reference to meaning.

It seems that by the same arguments you’ve articulated, no two languages could share any meaning whatsoever, since the two languages are utterly different in their phenomenal information—and, as your given argument goes, for them to share the same meaning is for whatever so shares the same meaning to be indistinguishable phenomenally. But this would result in the conclusion that all translations are fully untrue in their correspondence to any meaning conveyed in the original language.

I’ll argue that meaning itself has multiple layers such that, for example, the core meaning to “yes”, “da”, and “si” is identical to itself while there is additional meaning which, for instance, endows recognition of the specific language utilized to express the core referent of meaning. This, then, is noncontradictory to the reality of language translations (granting exceptions where meanings may overlap but will not be the same in different languages).

What's to be shocked about? If it's only that the world at atomic scale operates differently than how we are used to seeing it at human scale, I don't see that as shocking at all. — T Clark

If you’re into the metaphysics of causality at all, there is no way that this experiment will not be shocking. Again, it’s about the reality of causal mechanisms, not about theories of such.

As to it being “out there somewhere”, consider that the cellular level, even large proteins (enzymes and the like) have been shown to exhibit quantum effects—never mind individual molecules of nucleic acids (genes). And we are made up of cells, body wise [ edit: as is our our neurally plastic brains ... a part of our body ]. But of course, they don't appear to exhibit these effects when we observe these cells under a microscope and, I’d argue, not to the cells themselves as living systems. But it's a very fuzzy borderline.

Courtesy of PBS:

I think the concept of hermeneutics fits nicely with this idea: We each have our own meaningful self interpretations while partaking in a common "essential" hermeneutical way of being human. — bloodninja

Though I'm not yet well versed in this branch of philosophy, having browsed up on it, I very much agree.

You could make an argument that DNA constitutes 'man's essence', insofar as there is one. Were a single piece of human DNA discovered by another advanced civilisation on another planet, they ought to be able to infer almost everything about the creature the DNA comes from. And h. sapiens, being a species, can't breed with other species. — Wayfarer

I’ve my issues with the notion that DNA (all chromosomes) can be translated into phenotypic characteristics of body and mind merely via analysis of the genome. For starters, a genome depends on interactions with environment to develop into a phenotype. So far, despite the big hoopla of mapping out the human genome, I’ve been evidenced right on this. And, I don’t know but I’ve been told: well, according to one professor’s shpiel, human DNA is similar enough to chimp DNA that it’s very likely one could get a hybrid going (if so, whether it would be mule like or not, i.e. capable of biological reproduction, is not known … hopefully for obvious reasons). Needless to say, though, there’s quite the behavioral divide which prevents such a thing from naturally happening, on both sides I’d add. Not even bonobos and chimps reproduce, due to their own behavioral divide, and the more peaceful bonobos are notoriously sexual things.

Anyway, had a new thought about the essence of Homme—one I think you might also be OK with: we are, as someone aptly named our species, by in large alike in our relatively large magnitudes of sapience/wisdom. Quite the ego-boost, come to think of it; our human essence: wisdom.

I happen to think that the term 'phenomena' applies to 'the manifest domain', i.e. approximately the area of study of the sciences. It's a very general term for whatever exists. But by this definition, numbers (and the like) are not phenomena, or among phenomena, as they're not in the phenomenal domain, but the intelligible domain, [...] — Wayfarer

Yes, and in today’s world, in large part due to the great modern influence of physicalism, “things that appear” (i.e., phenomena) is deemed fully identical with all possible experiences. Hence the common standard interpretation of “everything that exists is phenomenal” due to the modern intellect’s interpretation that the only experiences (and, thereby, information apprehendable to awareness) that exist are only obtainable via the physiological senses.

I’m intending to maintain otherwise … while I won’t argue a link to Humean empiricism (not quite physicalist empiricism) I do argue that it’s tied into the experiential.

Maths, while important, are to me not as important as meaning, however—since I figure that meaning is a priori to meaningful maths, i.e. maths that can be discerned as such.

[numbers] being the domain of things that can only be grasped by a rational intelligence. — Wayfarer

You should know a bit about me by now, so here it goes: it has been demonstrated that some animals can count--and hence function via recognition of numbers (the first article that popped up in a google search: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20121128-animals-that-can-count). And I don’t think you’d feel comfortable categorizing lesser animals as holding any rational intelligence. Other than the greater apes and a few other of the more intelligent lesser animals, neither would I. A different, and very convoluted, topic though. But again, to me it boils down to information and awareness of information, and I'd agree that lesser animals don't have awareness of maths. Numbers is a different issue.

I can just hear someone in the back of the forum yelling, “yours was an awesome post!”, and I agree with them.

Trying my best to figure out something to debate about, what would your take be on the hypothesis that meaning, of itself, is non-phenomenal information?* So, for instance, in the examples of the OP where the same meaning applies to different phenomenal information, the meaning itself is non-phenomenal information (and hypothetically the same) whereas the various means of obtaining it will all be phenomenal information and thereby uniquely different.

A different example in my attempts to keep this simple: “four”, “4”, and “IV” serve as three different bodies of visually phenomenal information yet they all convey the same non-phenomenal information (the same meaning being identical to itself in all three, phenomenally different cases).

So the meaning of “4” has a form different from the meaning of “5”, for instance, but its form as meaning is noumenal: and thereby ontically distinct from the phenomenal information it is conveyed by to those who can so interpret the meaning of the given phenomena. (Alternatively, from the phenomenal information of the imagination one uses to convey the meaning to oneself.)

*As I mentioned to you on a different thread: here phenomenal is defined by anything apprehendable through the physiological senses and anything of the imagination that takes the same forms, e.g. sights, sounds, smells, tactile feels, proprioceptions, etc. (the list is a bit longer, e.g. physiological pain, vestibular sense of balance and acceleration, etc.).

BTW, the aforementioned is a basic premise I hold; wanting to test out the waters with it, so to speak.

I don't know what an "essence of man" would be — Bitter Crank

Sounds like a cologne name translated into English. Some Homme by somebody or other. (Don’t want the bring up the Twilightzone episode of “To Serve Man”)

Myself, don’t yet know. I’m however more comfortable in reframing the question into “is there such a thing as human nature” … the nature of man being close enough to the essence of man, I’d think. To say yes is to be endlessly pondering what this might in fact be, especially considering all the diversity that can be found and the many shared attributes with lesser lifeforms (awareness, toolmaking, sounds used to communicate, and the like). On the other hand, to say no is to deny there being such a cohort as humankind. So I heavily lean toward a “yes” answer to this improvised question, but have no idea as to what the particulars might be.

Both. — Rich

I agree; via the reformulation of the question that makes more sense to me: we all have our own individual natures even while we all partake of a common human nature.

I’ve been thinking about this some. As before, I agree that your position serves as a very good rule of thumb. I feel I could easily complicate this issue, but I don’t believe that so doing would result in the obtainment of a more satisfactory answer. Because of this, I’ll back away from the conversation for the time being. All the same, at the end of the day, we’re in agreement in regard to the Golden Rule being a good.

No-- but then the foundation for this question has not been established. Is information-- in and of itself-- endowed with color? With a sense of humor? With musicality or elegance? — Srap Tasmaner

What would the foundation be? As to your questions, I again uphold it takes awareness to interpret information thus.So, devoid of awareness so interpreting, no.

Okay.

Are you quite certain that when I try to figure out what I'm looking at and what it might mean to me, that it is information I am interpreting? — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, in a non-absolute-certainty sense, to be clear. BTW, information holds multiple viable interpretations. My preference is the non-mathematical interpretation of “that which endows form to” … you might think it a bit Platonic. Did you have a different interpretation in mind? If so, I’m curious to see if there would be no overlap.

As I understand it, autopoesis was coined by Maturana and Varela, but I don't think it was something that was thought to be explanatory at the level of individual species but as a general characteristic of metabolic systems. — Wayfarer

Right, but I don’t interpret a squirrel (or any individual lifeform) to be an individual species. TMK, it was conceived to be a characteristic of living systems, as in individual lifeforms, including the individual cell.

javra - squirrels are not self-creating - they come from mama and papa squirrels. :-) — Wayfarer

Funny, kinda. So homeostatic processes are not self-generating/creating … this as defined by the notion of autopoiesis?

I don’t know if you do this intentionally or not, but you get bogged down in details as regard individual particulars. I’m asking a metaphysical question in relation to general ontological givens. To simplify my question even further:

Is information—in and of itself—endowed with awareness?

If yes, this needs explaining since it currently seems illogical to me.

If no, than I argue you have (at some abstract threshold whose particulars need not be here established) a duality between a) awareness to which information holds meaning and b) awareness-devoid information. Here, all meaning will pertain to awareness, which is an aspect of mind. Hence, if any notion of information or lack thereof is in any way meaningful, it will be so due to the presence of minds which interpret the given information.

I’ll for now drop the issue of causal agency—though to me it is a necessary correlative of informed awareness. So yes, to me even a bacterium holds some minimal degree of causal agency between alternatives given that it is endowed with any degree of awareness of stimuli to which it reacts—otherwise it would be a fully entropic entity. It’s not an easy conclusion to establish, and most certainly not mainstream. And in hindsight, as you say, it does appear irrelevant to the thread’s discussion.

BTW, as to whether information is physical or not, be it via an objective idealism or via a dual-aspect neutral monism, my stance is that some information is physical and some is mental. So, I disagree with the notions that all information is physical.

Now there can be something similar without life (or an extension of it like the thermostat), in, say, an avalanche. Little input, big output that spends a lot of free energy. And there's an obvious connection in the way life keeps its "subsystems" balanced at criticality. You can get sensitivity by creating tiny avalanche conditions and then waiting, maintaining those conditions, and then resetting after each tiny event. Like a thermostat.

[...]

So yes I lean toward seeing the use of information about your environment, rather than just being shoved about by it, as a hallmark of life. But the information is still obviously physical, just as living things and their environments are. And I don't immediately see the need to describe this use as interpretation. — Srap Tasmaner

One important difference between a squirrel and an avalanche is that the first is negentropic while the second is entropic. Otherwise expressed, the squirrel is autopoietic (self-creating) while the avalanche follows strict paths of least resistance toward an end of optimal equilibrium between all given inanimate entities. Or: the squirrel as given does its best to preserve its self-identity while the avalanche as given has no impetus to preserve its self-identity.

Yet these details overshadow the basic metaphysical point I was addressing. The point being that of causal agency: some givens hold causal agency (e.g. it is the squirrel that hides its nuts and remembers where they’ve been stashed so as to maintain its own livelihood) while some givens are devoid of causal agency: e.g., from the first pebble that commences it to the grand finale of optimal entropic equilibrium, the avalanche was all part of a complex causal chain that neither begins nor ends with the avalanche itself—at no point was there an avalanche-agency that commenced the effects of the avalanche of its own impetus.

To make choices—to hold causal agency—is to necessarily be aware of alternatives (otherwise, no choice can exist). Hence, it is to necessarily hold awareness and, thereby, to necessarily interpret (give meaning to) information. This is one type of given: that of agency. On the other hand there is information devoid of causal agency.

Traditionally, at least, physicalism has attempted to reduce all that is to lack of causal agency. Where causal agency is deemed to be ontic, however, there is obtained an irreducible duality between causal agency and non-agency.

It’s a bit of a catch-22 for traditional physicalism. Either causal determinism and all that we experience as in any way being causal agency being strict illusions (a different metaphysical argument, I suppose) or causal agency and an irreducible duality between two different types of entity or structure or process.

So I’ll ask this in a different way: does information in and of itself hold causal agency in your opinion—thereby holding awareness of different alternatives? If so, please justify you’re stance, for this position seems illogical to me. If for no other reason, because awareness of alternatives is an aspect of mind—and not of the physical. (I so far take if for granted that you know yourself to hold such awareness-required causal agency between alternatives -- such that you acknowledge the presence of causal agency.)

Then black holes are about information loss - so only erasure in being lost over an event horizon. — apokrisis

The hypothesis I learned of is of a polar explosion of information which thereby flattens galactic stars into their common disk shape form. But again, I'm not in a position to debate the matter.

But then where does that leave spontaneity, creativity, novelty? Is this ontic structural realism the new determinism? Or is material cause - the ineffable thingness that is missing from the formal account - now the pure indeterminacy, the pure uncertainty, the pure notion of "an action", that lurks just out of sight of the phenomenology?

Is material cause now the ghost in physics's formal machinery? — apokrisis

Right, all this gets into the metaphysics of causation. I don't personally find it an easy issue to delve into.

I did present one causal conundrum in my previous post on this thread. So far, I believe this conundrum touches upon the core source of disagreements in relation to the physicalist / non-physicalist theme.

When a squirrel makes that "cat near my tree" sound, I don't think we need to call that rationality. It's involuntary, but it is exactly the kind of transformation we're talking about. (I'd rather talk about thermostats, but everyone will want to talk about the thermostat designer instead.) — Srap Tasmaner

Nevertheless, as to the duality between some X which is interpreting information and the information itself: Is the squirrel here deemed an inanimate interpreter? Is the thermometer deemed an animate interpreter? Or, else, is there somehow deemed to be no meaningful difference between animate givens and inanimate givens?

All three questions at the very least appear to address nonsensical metaphysical positions.

This just touched upon issue gets into the metaphysical issues of causal agency: what can be said to be endowed with it and what cannot. If my memory serves me right, this is similar enough to somebody’s comment about “that which breath’s life into the maths”. (I don’t recall who said this or in what context.)

Point being: To do away with the underlying duality between some X which is interpreting (often termed conscious agency) and the information thus interpreted so far seems to me nonsensical. And it is this metaphysical duality which is meaningfully addressed by the terms “animate” and “inanimate”.

How does one logically do away with the metaphysical need for the just addressed duality?*

*But, please note that mind as information is itself strictly information, and not the agency-endowed X(s) which is engaged in the activity of interpretation: for example, the unconscious mind which brings about memories at proper times might itself be replete with causal agency or agencies, but a memory itself as information will not of itself be a causal agency (rather, it will be information interpreted by some agency X). Hence the duality just mentioned will not be that of a Cartesian dualism between mind and body—both of which are strictly information (when addressed as givens devoid of causal agency).

Ditto.

Physicists would want an it from bit Universe in which the information is a conserved quantity. — apokrisis

One relevant issue that I find interest in is the ontic possibility of novel information creation and information erasure. As it happens, there are some physicists who uphold the possibility that information itself might be both created and erased within Black Hole gravitational singularities (to be clear, non-allegorically). I know it’s speculative, and for the sake of disclosure my current interest in these branches of physics is solely limited to what I glimpse from documentaries on the topic.

All the same, I have an affinity toward this roundabout interpretation of information: one where it is ontically possible--given the proper events--for information to be created and erased.

Nothing to debate here on my part. Just curious to hear if you’ve taken this possibility of information creation/deletion into account in any way.

I went to see Matrix with my kids. I got really annoyed at the red pill/blue pill scene - I thought it was frankly sacrilege. Why? Because it is a metaphor for something profoundly important, which, I thought, had been seized upon by pulp-fiction hustlers to make a buck. — Wayfarer

Very true. The two things that got to me most, personally, was their interpretations of Goddess and God and their Hollywood minded favoring of personal love between two beings over and above the preservation of the whole world’s integrity (the I’ll say “to hell with the health of humanity at large” so as to save your individual precious life, dear … not quite what the ideals of selflessness are about, as I so far see things anyway).

Although it's interesting that films like Matrix, Inception, etc, are so popular, I think they speak to an intuition we all have about the possibility of the world being a grand illusion. — Wayfarer

I too can’t deny the impact the fairytale story has had on the general public consciousness in terms of possible interpretations of reality. (I don’t see a whole lot of philosophical merit to Inception, though.)

Hmm. It is ironic that a lot of you guys are reacting in horror at physicists who might take it literally that reality is just a pattern of information. It is after all just a modern version of idealism. You have physicists who are denying materialism and saying things are pure information. Reality is even observer created if you go to the quantum extreme.

So here we have science prepared to talk openly about a concrete idealist ontology. And everyone gasps in shock. No they must be wrong. Matter is obviously real. The Matrix could only be a simulation hanging off an electrical plug. — apokrisis

You appear to confuse humorously sardonic remarks with horror. Hell, bring these new interpretations of information on!

Who knows, given enough information interpretation, maybe that ancient notion of the “the One” might itself come to be interpreted as a core component of physicalism. Why not again? (this gets to that other, non-rhetorical, question I posed in relation to neo-physicalism v. non-physicalism: “what’s the difference?”)

Could the creation of violent music be an act of love (in any sense) as opposed to the music itself being an embodiment of love? — Janus

If one presumes something along the lines that love is ontic Truth and that ontic Truth is always expressed through some form of love, then: the creation of violent music can be an expression of love when it seeks to express some truth of the human condition, this for the sake of the truth’s expression, imo.

"[So who puts the blame?] Man through his actions. But this isn't to say that the blame is something in addition to the sinful actions that is actually put on top of everything else. It's already included in the package." — Agustino

This doesn't make sense. — Noble Dust

To add what I view to be an added metaphysical dimension to this conversation in terms of causality:

At the very least technically, blame is (one type of) responsibility *, and responsibility pertains to that (he / she / it (angels, for example, are all gender-neutral “its” last I checked)) which creates: i.e., that which causally brings about effects via its own being and impetus.

Then, responsibility in general (and blame in particular) is that obtained through the free-willed act of choice between different alternatives (the choice being the effect one causally brings about).

To clarify that I here personally intend a non-deity/psyche God, I’ll refer to this referent as “G-d”.

G-d is then the a priori reason—or source—for all free-willed action. Yet G-d is absolute, unconditional love. Hence, all free-willed action that is not oriented toward the alternative of closer proximity to an absolute, unconditional love (maybe also here expressible as an absolute harmony of being) is not itself caused by G-d but by the humans in question: choosing alternatives which go in any number of other directions but that of closer proximity to G-d.

Here probably putting words into Agostino’s mouth (may he correct me to the extent that he see fit): it is therefore, and thereby, us humans which expel the love which is G-d via our own freewill, this then being our responsibility and, thus, our blame … these being effects resultant of our own causation and, hence, creation (and not that of G-d’s).

* Its odd to me how we don’t have a succinct word in our lexicon for praiseworthy responsibility, one that rivals that of “blame” for sinful responsibility. To get a bit esoteric in hypotheticals, it could be due to an interpretation that when we act via freewill in favor of alternatives that lead us closer to G-d, we then act as an instrument, or as a vessel, of G-d—that G-d then act through us, so to speak. But I can’t say that I’m certain about this hypothetical interpretation. Still, why “I am to blame” but not “I am causally responsible for that freely willed act of virtue which I chose”? Strange to me.

Well, though of course there are other culturally imposed modifications on human behaviour, the objective biological evidence I referred to would seem to indicate that the premier underlying factor motivating partner selection historically has been physical appearance. — Robert Lockhart

Appearance, at one level, gives evidence of biological health (here strictly in the sense of carnality). Everyone is a bit shallow in one sense and I presume it deals with this issue of biological health represented by image. A body sans mind is, however, a dead, decomposing carcass. So biological health is also partly dependent upon (not so much the presence of an aware consciousness, but) the very character of the consciousness of the given body. Character is, to some, the defining factor as regards attraction, here greatly overriding most all ideals of the healthy body image (which, btw, changes with cultures and the passing of generations). This is where a person’s beauty is no longer superficially judged based on image.

It’s a complex relation between physical health and character. Made even more complex by the wide variety of people who deem what is attractive to them. Plenty will deem big boobs and fat wallets as the epitome of attractiveness—and these people will often label these attributes beautiful.

Character, furthermore, is often partly represented by the attire worn. Some find very, very short (i.e., easy access) miniskirts to be beautiful; others find elegant attire to be as beautify and sexually attractive as things can get. Neither has to do with biological health but which the character of the individual who so dresses. This aspect of character, nevertheless, being yet conveyed via image.

What some deem to the the most important aspects of character—such as honesty, compassion, and the like—will almost never (if ever) be portrayable via appearance. Some, whose attractions for partners are at all times literally superficial, may give lipservise to these traits but will not actually be attracted to them, i.e. will not find any honest beauty in them. Yet it can well be argued that these non-representational aspects of a person are most in tune with the non-phenomenal truths of the aesthetic.

To each their own, no?

But I agree that it becomes a problem when—due to the advertising pressures of the marketplace—the overall populace becomes solely fixated on image … and thereby loses touch with the beauties of character. Some, given perspectives such as those aforementioned, can argue that it is a global degeneration of what supposedly makes humans human: our humanity (and if this latter term here needs defining, it’s likely not worth the hassle … as I currently believe you’d agree)

"The really hot physicists these days dispense with the stuff, and manage with just structure. So worse than information is physical, they claim that physicality is informational." — unenlightened


Correct.
John Archibald Wheeler writes:
“It from bit”. Otherwise put, every “it” every particle, every field of force, even the space-time continuum itself derives its function, its meaning, its very existence (even if in some contexts indirectly) from the apparatus-elicited answers to yes-or-no questions, binary choices, bits. “It from bit” symbolizes the idea that every item of the physical world has at bottom a very deep bottom, in most instances an immaterial source and explanation; that which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes-no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a participatory universe.

Wheeler, J.A.: Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links, Complexity, Entropy, and the Physics of Information. In: Zureck, W.H. (ed.). Addison Wesley, Redwood City (1990).

But instead of worse, even better: information can be physical and/or psychophysical. — Galuchat

This is somehow amusing to me. In terms I think even preadolescent kids might understand, it all amount to: who has the metaphysical rights to the ontology portrayed in the movie “The Matrix” (sans the part of being unplugged from the Matrix)? The physicalists or the non-physicalists?

Which to me necessitates the question: What’s the difference!

Yet this latter question is to me more important that it may at first seem. What then are the tacitly maintained differences between neo-physicalism and non-physicalist approaches to the same basic understanding of ontology as information rather than as stuff? It may not be that easy to answer … but I’m currently betting that the physicalists will uphold that death leads to the nonbeing of awareness, whereas the non-physicalists will uphold otherwise. Any other differences?

[BTW, while I can enjoy the movie as a movie, I don’t look upon it as a prophetic body of bits as to what ontology really is. To state the obvious, the movie series is not a thought-out philosophy but only a modern mythos.]

It is absurd in the grandest sense. — schopenhauer1

Though I’m taking the quote slightly out of context, that the presence of being "is absurd in the grandest sense” I can very much acknowledge. There is no rational answer to why there is being rather than nonbeing (the very issue eludes the PSR). I’m fully on board with this conclusion of absurdity in respect to brute being. The next question is, “now what?”

Various options come to mind as hypotheticals: like the bioengineered creation of a new enzyme or chemical that would render all life biologically non-reproductive. Whamo!, right?: Instant peace for all that is Will … But wait ... This very presumption of an obtainable peace for Will through the obtainment of nonbeing all of a sudden makes the very absurdity of brute being no longer absurd: for it now has an escape from its predicament of brute being, a tangible salvation, and, thereby, a potential purpose worthy of pursuit. This same exit clause then renders the very absurdity of brute being null and void.

Still, there is no metaphysical proof I know of to substantiate that the nonbeing of all Will is in any way possible.

Then, of course, there might be other goals of Will that may be worthy of pursuit. Schopenhauer borrowed heavily from Eastern religious paths but omitted their notion of Moksha, for instance, which is also stated to be about peace of Will but is not about a state of nonbeing.

Also, maybe paradoxically, because some of these other potential goals of Will are not about states of nonbeing, here the grand absurdity of being’s presence will be thoroughly embraced despite these “salvations” from Will’s conundrum: for here there will neither be escape from being nor will there be the promise of an understanding regarding why being instead of nonbeing.

Hey, you know why many of us don’t like addressing this topic, why it’s so taboo, in other words: it can easily result for too many in the conclusion that suicide is the only exist. I get that’s not what you’re saying. Then again, there’s now a worry in me that some kid somewhere will become the next 007 villain by living his life trying to bioengineer that enzyme I was talking about.

All the same, we may not fully agree on all of this. Like others, still hoping we can at least find some common ground. The absurdity of being is. What are we going to do about it is the issue that we may still find disagreements on.

With the proviso of actions out of learned habit. — Rich

Trying to keep things as simple as possible. With habit, it can well be argued that former consciously willed actions between teloi have become repeated so often that they become automated relative to conscious awareness. Actions from learned habit can then be argued to still be constrained by the a priori existence of teloi. Same stimulus, same choice of which way to go between alternatives, only that now it’s become a learned instinct. Or so I’d maintain.

But then what meaning does constraint have except that it is relative to a possible action? So how is the actual possibility of that action not prior to the existence of the constraint?

Unless there is something trying to happen, then it makes no sense to speak of that which is preventing it happen. — apokrisis

The possibility of action is the possibility of causal agency. In a culture heavily habituated to notions of causal determinism this is often overlooked, or else looked upon as illusions we live by. This especially holds where we know the physical to be inanimate (devoid of causal agency) and then further uphold the ontology of physicalism (everything is physical and, so, inanimate).

The possibility of causal agency, in turn, cannot be devoid of ready existent teloi which bind, limit, and thus constrain that toward which possible actions can move. So no possibility of action can exist prior to the actuality of teloi which constrain what the causal action moves toward.

The action will always be concurrent with the actuality of teloi, but the teloi will be a priori to the possibility of action.