No. You expressing your judgement is not a reason for me, even with a vague allusion to some questionable assumption that it seems based on. — Relativist

Hmm. Physicalism can be defined as entailing that everything which does or can occur can only be physical in its nature. (In keeping with part of @Wayfarer's latest post:) There's a question which Darwin's Bulldog, the Agnostic who first coined the term "agnostic", Thomas Huxley, once placed which is to date yet unanswered: what is "the physical" (or else that "matter" from which one obtains materialism) defined as, exactly **. Yet, in overlooking this very awkward lack of coherent reasoning in affirming the stance of physicalism:

Mind in part consists of thoughts. How are thoughts physical? One can of course state that the thoughts of a corporeal sentient being would not be in the absence of the respective corporeal body. But this does not entail that the given thoughts - say of a unicorn or of Harry Potter - are of themselves physical. I can get that that objective rock over there is physical, but how is my concept of a unicorn (which I can mold, make appear, and make disappear at will, and which might not be significantly similar to your concept of a unicorn) of itself physical?

Or, by extension, we perceive physical realities, but then - given the entailment of physicalism - how is a bona fide hallucination of itself physical? Say, for example, someone hallucinates seeing a burning bush; is the burning bush which this person sees physical?

But if not everything that does or can occur is physical, then physicalism so defined can only be false.

Then there's the definition of physicalism where everything supervenes on the physical. Which carries its own multiple philosophical problems. But I'll leave it at that for now. All this just intending food for thought. I have little interest in convincing you to reject or doubt your beliefs - and currently far more interest in properly justifying my own.

My reply to this will be that of panpsychism - this in the sense that awareness pervaded the cosmos long before life evolved into it (i.e., in the sense that the physical is, was, and will remain dependent of the psychical). This conclusion for me, though, is only a deduction from the premise of a non-solipsistic mind awareness-created world. — javra

You're indicating panpaychism is a logical step beyond the "premise of a non-solipsistic mind awareness-created world." I'm just asking why should entertain that premise. — Relativist

a) If non-solipsistic idealism is true, this then entails that everything is ultimately dependent on psyche in one way or another. My own stance is that of an objective idealism wherein there occurs an objective world of physicality as effete mind that itself evolves - which, ultimately, would not be but for the occurrence of disparate psyches.

b) If we are to trust the information which the empirical sciences present us with regarding the objective world - which, in short, is an extension of our trusting our own empirical senses - then there indeed was a time when the cosmos existed in the absence of all corporeal, biological life.

If both a) non-solipsistic idealism and b) the occurrence of a world in the absence of all life are taken to be true premises, then it becomes entailed that the occurrence of psyche is not dependent on the occurrence of biological life. This while the occurrence of multiple psyches - else of psyche in general - is yet requisite for any physical world to occur (this as per (a)).

This entailment then can be labeled panpsychism (all-psyche-ism) - which, I'll argue, is a modernized rebranding of animism ("anima" being Latin and "psyche" being Greek for the same thing: in a word, "soul" - with the Latin "animus" and the Greek "nous" being used to address "mind"), from which one can obtain concepts such as that of the anima mundi, among others (hence, an anima mundi that occurred long before biological life came into being)

If your answer is that this feels right, and/or provides you comfort, I have no objection. I'm not trying to convince you that you're wrong. I'm just seeking my own comfort- I'd like to know if there are good reasons to think I'm deluding myself with what I believe about the world. — Relativist

:grin: I wasn't being fully literal, but, all the same, at the end of the day yes: we all seek some sort of comfort in that which we search for and end up holding onto. A different topic for a different thread, but all reasoning can be said to serve this underlying purpose. If we search for truths for example, we are discomforted by not finding them, or else by finding reason to belief that what we stringently endorse as true is in fact not true (at which time we might welcome the pain of the catharsis which grants us greater awareness via better understanding). To harshly paraphrase David Hume: reason-derived conclusions are always enslaved to the intentioning volition's drive of obtaining emotive satisfaction. In this sense, reason is then always a slave to passion. Which, in a way, can work its way back to the motif of this thread: all that occurs is ultimately dependent upon psyche. The very reasoning which psyches utilize as tools for the purpose of obtaining what is wanted included, or so I will uphold.

---------

** In fairness, T. Huxley, the staunch agnostic that he was, held the same complain against materialism that he held regarding an adequate definition of "spirit" from which one obtains the notion of "spirituality". Here's a quote from him to this effect:

My fundamental axiom of speculative philosophy is that materialism and spiritualism are opposite poles of the same absurdity-the absurdity of imagining that we know anything about either spirit or matter. — Thomas Henry Huxley

When I say "independent of minds", I mean that the world at large exists irrespective of the presence of any minds at all. I believe the universe is about 14B years old, and there were almost certainly no minds within it for quite a long time. Can you give me a reason to reject or doubt this belief of mine? — Relativist

Reasons such as these?:

That mentioned, I agree that the sometimes tacitly implied notion of physical reality being somehow metaphysically independent of the individual minds which, after all, are aspects of it—such that physical reality could be placed here and minds there without any dependency in-between—is a logical dud. A close second dud is the attempt to describe minds, and all their various aspects, as purely physical (such that, for one example, all ends one can conceive of and intend are all physical in their nature). — javra

Yes, I can provide them, but I don't think reasons will here much help. We are all typically attached to the notions we are habituated to hold, in this case that there was physicality long before there was any type of awareness, ergo physicalism.

My reply to this will be that of panpsychism - this in the sense that awareness pervaded the cosmos long before life evolved into it (i.e., in the sense that the physical is, was, and will remain dependent of the psychical). This conclusion for me, though, is only a deduction from the premise of a non-solipsistic mind awareness-created world. And I do not claim to have any great insight into how panpsychism works - nor into any metaphysically cogent explanation for how life evolved from non-life (the physicalist explanation that "it must have" doesn't much console me either as far as metaphysical explanations go - I find it just as comforting as the explanation of "God did it").

OK, thanks for your reply. We disagree in multiple ways. But, since I don't much feel like argument at the moment, I prefer to leave it at that.

How can an external world exist independently of human minds AND be contingent upon human minds?

Being contingent upon entails a dependence, does it not? — Relativist

Yes "contingent upon" entails "a dependence" but your fist question equivocates what I have been proposing. With the equivocation taking place between the notion of "all elements from a multiplicity of elements of type X" and "one (or some) element(s) from a multiplicity of elements of type X - but not all". As an added example of this:

The presence of a heap of sand will be contingent upon, and hence will depend on, the presence of a multiplicity of sand particles in general - which are structured in a particular way. But it will not of itself be contingent upon the presence of any one particular sand particle, such that the heap of sand will remain present even if individual sand particles are taken away or added to it. No one sand particle on its own produces, or else equates to, the heap of sand. And so the heap of sand will occur independently of (i.e., will occur without being contingent on) any one individual, particular sand particle that partakes of the heap of sand. Take that one sand particle away and the heap of sand remains. The heap of sand can then be said to exist independently of any one individual sand particle from which it might be composed but, simultaneously, will be dependent on the occurrence of a multiplicity of sand particles in general. One could then incrementally replace each and every particular sand particle in the given heap of sand with the heap of sand persisting to occur unaltered throughout - even though it becomes constituted by utterly different sand particles. And the larger the heap of sand is, the less any alteration in its particular sand particles will make any meaningful difference to the identity, or else properties, of the heap of sand itself.

Replace "heap of sand" with "the physical world" and "individual sand particles" with "individual minds". The same relations will hold. This can thereby lead to the logically valid affirmation that, in a non-solipsistic mind-created world, the physical world occurs independently of me and my own mind, even though it will be dependent on the occurrence of a multiplicity of minds in general.

What we can conclude from the assumption that solipsism is false, is that there must be something which separates one mind from another, some sort of medium. But we cannot exclude the possibility that the medium is an illusion, or mind-created, as a sort of deficiency in minds' ability for direct communication with one another. — Metaphysician Undercover

And, at minimum, part of the medium you address has to be physicality, aka physical reality - that same physicality of which our brains are made up of and which when damaged disrupts the functioning of our minds. In an Eastern train of thought wherein all but either the atman or the anatman (depending on philosophical perspective) is maya and hence illusion (i.e., "a magic trick"), yes, all aspects of this medium with partitions awareness into discrete parts (e.g., me and you, etc.) can be deemed mind-created illusion - including all of physical reality. But so entertaining goes far deeper, I believe, than claiming physical reality to be on par to something one hallucinates or else can imagine at will or so forth. As individual first-person points of view we are all bound to the physicality that surrounds, and our very lives are dependent on there being a sufficient degree of conformity to it. This even if it is to be considered pure maya (i.e., pure illusion in the sense of a magic trick).

This one doesn't make sense to me. What is a "drop of water"? Why can't we say that the ocean is a single drop of water? And to me, "a drop" is an isolated quantity of water, so it makes no sense to talk about a body of water as if it is made of drops. — Metaphysician Undercover

As I've already acknowledge the analogy was imperfect and less then ideal. Still, a drop is typically understood as that amount of liquid which might remain intact and maybe fall as such from a stick which had been placed into the liquid. Place a stick into the ocean, lift it up, and one will remove drops of water from the ocean. But yes, it was and remains, again, a very rough analogy. Sorry to hear it didn't make any sense to you.

Sorry javra, I just cannot understand what you are saying here. This is what I get from it. If there is a complete absence of minds, then there is also the complete absence of a physical world. In that sense there is no mind-independent word. However, if there is so much as one mind (or a multitude of minds), then there must also be a mind-independent.

So how does the existence of a mind (or multitude of minds) necessitate the existence of a mind-independent world? If it is the existence of a mind, (or minds), which necessitates that world, how can it be a mind-independent world? — Metaphysician Undercover

Yea, the "how does a plurality of minds necessitate an objective world which is constitutionally determined by them" part is not that easy to tersely express. But importantly, if no solipsism then, necessarily, the world can only be brought about by a multitude of minds - and not by a sole mind. If there are a plurality of minds which constitute the world, then the disappearance/death of any one mind from the world will not entail the disappearance/obliteration of the world itself - for there are yet other minds from which the world remains constituted. So the world occurs in manners not dependent on any one particular mind.

I don't deny that there would be something outside my own mind, what I called the "medium" above. But why conceive of this as "a world", or "a universe", or even "reality", as all these refer to mind dependent things, if you want to think of the medium as mind-independent? But, since I believe in the reality of numerous minds, there is nothing to persuade me that the "medium" is not something inside another mind, therefore not mind-independent at all. — Metaphysician Undercover

To be clear, are you then saying that if the so-called "medium" of physicality in total - to include my physical body and its brain - is not something that is an aspect of my own mind it would then need to be something the occurs as an aspect of some other individual mind?

As to the initial question, (I take it that) there is an actuality, or set of actualities, which affects all observers equally irrespective of what the observes believe, perceive, imagine, want, interpret, etc. This I then term the objective world (objectivity can well mean impartial, and this set of actualities in being as just described would then be literally impartial in complete manners to all observers which are thereby subjected to experiences, i.e. to all sentient beings as subjects, aka as subjective beings).

Do you deny there being actualities which occur irrespective of what any one individual sentient being intends, believes, and so forth?

I'm guessing at the end of the day we'll end up disagreeing. but I'm still honestly curious to hear your replies so as to better understand your point of view.

We obviously perceive space and time, so why doubt that this is an aspect of the actual world? The mere fact that we have a perspective does not entail that this perspective is an illusion. — Relativist

Not to dispel the question you've posed, but only to observe that the way in which it is posed the issues are lot more complex than not.

Our perception of time sometimes drastically differs from that time we commonly deem to be objective, with the latter being measured via use of objective/physical tools, by which I mean anything from sundials to clocks. As one example of this, when we are forced into an event we are bored with time will slow down (relative to objective time) and when we find ourselves engaged in an event we are enthralled by time will speed up or fly by (relative to objective time).

So our time perception is not necessarily an adequate representation of the time that occurs in the actual world.

This can then go in any number of different ways - but please note that I am not by this denying the reality of an objective time as previously addressed (which for me is another can of beans altogether (especially since I take objective time to be relativistic)). Nor am I by this then claiming that that aspect of reality we can term objective time is not of itself ultimately dependent on the co-occurrence of a plurality of minds.

I really can't understand what you are saying here javra. Perhaps you could rephrase it? — Metaphysician Undercover

Fair enough. I'll try. First, we all know in our heart of hearts that solipsism is false. Therefore, ours is not the only mind that currently occurs in the world. Given this fact, we then entertain the metaphysical reality/actuality that there can be no world in the absence of minds (in the plural).

Via one convenient though imperfect analogy: We all know that an ocean is not one single drop of water. Given this fact, we then hold the conviction that there can be no ocean in the absence of individual drops of water from which the ocean is constituted.

So the physical world is itself here taken to be determined from the constituency of a plurality of individual minds - without which there can be no physical world. In rough parallel, an ocean is taken to be determined by the constituency of a plurality of individual drops of water - without which there can be no ocean.

Then, just as the given ocean will continue to occur independently of any one individual drop of water from which it is constituted, so too will the physical world continue to occur independently of any one mind from which it is constituted.

Take all individual drops of water away and no ocean remains. Take all individual minds way and no world remains. But adding or removing one drop of water from the ocean does not alter the ocean in any meaningful way. In like enough manner, adding or removing one mind from the physical world does not alter the physical world in any meaningful way.

The ocean is then drop-of-water-independent when it comes to any one individual drop of water from which it is constituted (or even from a relatively large quantity of individual drops of water - say as can be added by a hurricane or else removed by evaporation, etc.) - this even though the same ocean is drop-of-water-dependent in the sense that no ocean can exist in the complete absence of such.

In a roundabout way, the same can then be upheld for any non-solipsistic idealism: the physical world is mind-independent when it comes to any one individual mind (or any relatively large quantity of minds) - this even thought it is mind-dependent in the sense that no physical world can exist in the complete absence of minds.

This explanation via analogy is less then ideal by my appraisal, but it does I think adequately enough illustrate the necessity that in a non-solipsistic idealism (wherein the physical is thereby dependent on the psychical) the physical world will be independent of, say, my mind or your mind ... or any other individual mind or non-global-cohort of such for that matter.

As one possible summation of this, within any non-solipsistic idealism, there will necessarily be an external world that occurs independently of me and my own mind.

That doesn't address the issue I raised.

I believe there exists a world (AKA "reality") independent of minds. I also believe nearly everyone agrees with me. — Relativist

If you re-read what was my initial reply to MU, you'll see that I also believe there exists a world independent of individual minds, and so I too agree with you on this count - even if, as the case is, I simultaneously believe this same world is contingent on the occurrence of mind as a generality.

So I'm not sure how to further reply.

I think the idea of a mind-independent reality is really incoherent. Reality is something which minds create, as pointed out by the op. If you try to imagine the world as existing without any point-of-view, from no perspective at all, it becomes completely unintelligible, so it cannot be imagined. That's because "reality" as we know it, is point-of-view dependent. So the idea of a mind-independent reality really is incoherent. — Metaphysician Undercover

If what is addressed by the term “reality” (I presume physical reality which, in a nutshell, is that actuality (or set of actualities) which affects all minds in equal manners irrespective of what individual minds might believe or else interpret, etc.) will itself be contingent on the occurrence of all minds which simultaneously exist—and, maybe needless to add, if the position of solipsism is … utterly false—then the following will necessarily hold: reality can only be independent of any one individual mind. As it is will be independent of any particular cohort of minds—just as long as this cohort is not taken to be that of “all minds that occur in the cosmos”.

Which is to say that reality will be independent of individual minds in a so-called “mind-created cosmos” (just as long as it’s not solipsistic).

That mentioned, I agree that the sometimes tacitly implied notion of physical reality being somehow metaphysically independent of the individual minds which, after all, are aspects of it—such that physical reality could be placed here and minds there without any dependency in-between—is a logical dud. A close second dud is the attempt to describe minds, and all their various aspects, as purely physical (such that, for one example, all ends one can conceive of and intend are all physical in their nature).

"I've said, I don't deny the reality of there being an objective world, but that on a deeper level, it is not truly mind-independent." - Wayfarer

These two clauses seem to be contradictory. If there is an objective world external to ourselves, then it exists independent of our minds. — Relativist

Just say this quibble between you and @Wayfarer. As I've just tried to illustrate, the quibble can be resolved by differentiating "mind" as generality (which occurs wherever individual minds occur) and "mind" as one concrete instantiation of the former (such that in concrete form minds are always plural and divided from each other) ... this in the term "mind-independent". Physical reality is not mind-independent in the first sense but is mind-independent in the second sense, this in any system of (non-solipsistic) idealism wherein the world is contingent upon the occurrence of minds.

I already acknowledged that the force was known but not the (scientific) explanation for it. — Janus

The (scientific) explanation allows for no exceptions. How could the force of gravity have been known prior to the force of gravity being discovered - before which exceptions to the force of gravity were granted (again, as per flying witches)?

There are no two ways about it. Human exceptionalism stinks. — Janus

That's not an enumeration of how humans are lesser than non-human animals. It also completely overlooks what I've previous addressed, namely: the far greater powers and cognitive abilities of humans relative to all other known animals. As though there is no comparative value to be found in these. As you say, :roll:

Again I disagree. The force was known. It would have been observed everywhere and even felt in the body. What was different was the explanation for the force. — Janus

And I again disagree with your disagreement. With one reference already provided in support of this. The notion of gravitational force as a scientific law was unknown until the 17th century, right about Newton's time. Before that, it was conceivable by people that witches could fly on broomsticks - but not afterwards (at least not by those who ascribed to this newly discovered force of gravity). Do you have any references to the contrary?

What you've said there boils down to saying that no other animals have symbolic language. — Janus

No, it doesn't. It boils down to lesser animals being of lesser value in comparison to humans. One can kill a mosquito without qualms but not a fellow human, kind of thing.

Well we are lesser than other animals in many different ways. Need I enumerate them? — Janus

Are you addressing things such as "humans are of lesser height (than giraffes, for example)" or that the individual human is of lesser value than the individual non-human animal?

If the first, it's already known. If the second, please do enumerate at will ... such that the life of some non-human animal is to be valued more than the life of a human.

Gravity defined simply as the tendency of things to fall was and is experienced by everyone. It is hardly something one could be unaware of. Speculations about it and the other things you mention are not in the same class for the obvious reason that the other things would not have been common experiences or to be skeptical even experienced at all. — Janus

Sure, but neither does this dispel that the force of gravity was unknown till a few centuries back nor does it in any way differentiate humans from non-human animals (which was sort'a my point): both commonly experience the tendency of things to fall. That stated, do you then claim that non-human animals know about gravity?

lesser animal — javra

:roll: — Janus

I've already made my case for this terminology here.

Can you think of a scenario with a rational thinker who doesn't know about gravity? — Patterner

The scientific sense of the term "gravity" which we now make common use of is first recorded in the early 17th century. Yes, people before this mused about why things fall back down to Earth, but then you also have musings about witches flying on broomsticks, people walking on top of water, yogis levitating in the East, and the like. So, among many other possible examples, I'll answer that that first hominid (or group of such) that invented the wheel was just such a case of rational thinking unaware of what we now know to be (the physical force of) gravity. But then neither has any lesser animal that has ever calculated a jump been aware of gravity.

Going to a train station at a certain time every day for ten years, expecting to see a certain man get off the train, even though that man has not gotten off the train once in the 3,650 days you were there in the last ten years, is not rational. — Patterner

And yet many a rational human yet plays the lottery hoping for the big win - this sometimes for well over a ten-year span during which no such win has occurred. Is it rational to deny the possibility of winning the lottery? Or, given the entailed limitations of knowledge, the possibility that the person who used to get off the train at such and such time and location will someday once again appear as they did previously?

In a way, I write this to point out that rational thinking includes inductive and abductive thinking, which are far less certain than deductive thinking.

A question I ask out of curiosity:

In my own appraising that many a lesser animal has the capacity for forethought: What forethought can occur in the absence of any and all rational thinking - this as regards the present and past so as to best infer the future?

and also, Aristotle's 'De Anima', translated as 'On the Soul'. I love the connection between Anima, Animal, and Animated. — Wayfarer

Aye. Me too very much so. To be fair, Aristotle spoke in Ancient Greek whereas "anima" "animal" and "animated" are Latin based. But the associations are fairly blatant to understand, at least from where I stand.

A controversial thought, but if incorporeal beings of far grander stature - here thinking of polytheistic deities or else angels and archangels - were to be, what else would they be but more universal animas (souls) whose animus (mind) would be that much more evolved than any human's? Hence, if one were to entertain a great chain of being, it would start with the anima of bacteria or thereabouts and progress onward through the anima of humans into animas whose bodies of Logos would consist of non-physical Logos. No stark metaphysical divides anywhere to be found, just differences of degrees that then result in classifications of different kinds. This difference in kind amid an every fluid scale of degrees being in keeping with one nature of Logos being that of ratio-ning one something from the other.

This, of course, is just one hypothetical to be found among many others - that of an utter non-spirituality included. But I'm here intending to draw attention to the realty that there needs to be no sharp metaphysical divide in being/anima/psyche anywhere from bacteria all the way to deities in order to entertain views such as those professed by many a spiritual reality, both Western and Eastern.

Not sure how this thought will fly hereabouts. For the record, I'm not here endorsing any theology, but I am endorsing an absence of sharp metaphysical divides between all "animated" beings that coexist. And that this can just as easily apply to materialist interpretations of biological evolution as it can the concepts regarding the great chain (or, more aptly, ladder) of being. But, hopefully, I'm just preaching the the choir in saying all this.

What is needed is engagement of a particular kind, so that one can grasp that animals in many ways will engage with us in many (but not all) of the same ways that we engage with other people.

[...]

That's very vague, but I'm trying to gesture at the idea that this is not just a matter for abstract reason. It's about how to live with beings recognizably like us. After all, that's how we come to treat people as people and not "just" animals". — Ludwig V

... else how we come to understand that we ought not treat any other group of people as sub-human animals ... neither granting leeway to those who deem this to be so on "Nature-given" grounds or on "God-given" grounds, for both streams of reasoning leading to this same mentioned conclusion can, when more impartially addressed, only be utter bullshit. Black and Whites, for one example, being equally evolved not just biologically but also in their intellectual abilities - socioeconomic constraints of the current world aside.

All this maybe being a different set of issues for a different thread. But I very much liked your post. Thank you for it.

:grin: Yea. I think I've already mentioned in this thread that I often muse of lesser animals being nothing more and nothing less then lesser "anima-endowed beings" ... which, if one gets the gist of this train of thought, would then also entail their having their own lesser animus - this by comparison to that of humans.

IOW, a lot like us, which is why we love them. — Vera Mont

:grin: :up:

And very interesting to me. Do you have more to share about animals and laughing? That surely involves a degree of thinking. But what is thinking without words? — Athena

I guess I do, but then much of it wouldn't be in keeping with this thread's topic. To make things more philosophical, though, first off no human concept is perceptual. I make a somewhat more in depth argument for that here - although the chapter in general is not the easiest of reads. The very concept of "animal" for example has no look, no tactile feel, no smell, taste, and no sound. Yet we understand the concept nonetheless and, in English use, associate the auditory, visual, or tactile (for the blind) symbols of "animal" as a perceptual word to the non-perceptual concept we associate the perceptual word to. In like manner "3", and "III", and "three" are all perceptual givens that reference a commonly referenced fully non-perceptual concept.

Words of course allow us the ability to manipulate concepts to great extents. But words are not required for concepts to occur within anyone's awareness. If words were sufficient for expressing all concepts, many if not all artistic manifestations would be direly redundant.

To again address lesser animals, my last dog, for example, had no problems in understanding "(go) inside" and "(go) outside" in relation to particular rooms, the house itself, the car, etc. And this is a relatively complex concept, for it addresses relations between non-specifics. It's no big deal nowadays to claim that lesser animals, dogs included, gain a theory of mind as they mature: My first dog, whom I greatly loved (just like the other two) and who did have an Alpha personality (a Bouvier des Flandres weighing 120 pounds healthily) knew how to (try to) deceive us. I'd say "come" at a distance after he'd misbehaved and he'd sit his ass on the ground and calmly stare in all directions except toward me, as though he was not hearing what I was saying. I've got far better anecdotes of deception but these would take far longer to tell. At any rate, a theory of mind can only be conceptual - addressing the conceptualized perspectives of the other mind and how to act and react relative to these, such as when attempting to intentionally deceive the other. Other than maintaining that lesser animals are automata (wherein one encounters the philosophical problem of other minds as it applies even to other humans), there's no reason to infer that lesser-animals are devoid of conceptualizations and hence of concepts.

Great apes exhibit eureka moments - which don't occur absent thoughts. An example I hastily found:

The young female gorilla watched another older male attempt to collect ants from a hole in the ground, only to see the ants bite his arm, scaring him away. The female gorilla tried to put her own arm in the hole, and she too was bitten. But instead of giving up, the young ape then had her very own ‘eureka’ moment. She looked around for a suitable implement, and selected a piece of wood approximately 20 cm long, tapering from 2 cm wide at one end to 1 cm long at the other. She then inserted the stick into the hole, withdrew it, and licked off ants clambering over it, avoiding being stung. — http://www.virunganews.com/wild-gorilla-creates-a-food-tool-in-eureka-moment/

The one example I distinctly remember from undergrad studies was of a chimp faced with a banana hanging from a rope - this in a taken video. He stood there in the yard for a few minutes appearing to do nothing after trying and failing to get the banana. Then he all of a sudden stood up without hesitation and purposelessly walked to collect a few items which he next put under the banana in a pile, then climbed on top of, and then proceeded to easily take the banana from the string.

As to humans and our purposeful fire use, I know bonobos did not invent the match stick, but check this out all the same:



One can of course try to bend over backwards to explain this factual occurrence as having consisted of no concepts and thoughts on the bonobo's part, but I'd find it more ontologically believable if one were to try to stipulate that this one bonobo was actually an extraterrestrial alien which had descended form a UFO and took the disguise of a bonobo for fun (and I wouldn't be all that enamored with the latter explanation).

Human language creates a scaffolding for greater concept manipulation, and hence for far more abstract levels of thought than any lesser animal is capable of. But language is not required for either acquired concepts or thoughts.

So, what is thinking without words? I'd say it consists of forethought regarding what one best do given two or more alternatives so as to actualize that which one wants, hence intentions, hence holds as a goal. And to claim that this must then be utterly unemotional in order to be valid reason, or rationality, is to be full of self-hypocritical baloney: no human that has ever been has ever found themselves in states of rational thought utterly devoid of some emotion or other, be it contentment, curiosity, or some other.

Well, that's my overall take on this thread's subject at least. But, to be honest, I get bored in repeatedly presenting the same facts regarding lesser animal's observed behaviors - as just one measly example, that dogs can understand hundreds and great apes thousands of words, with each word entailing its own understanding of a concept - to only find these same factual presentations repeatedly overlooked for the sake of the given counter argument.

...something that might anecdotally be termed a sixth-sense. — javra


I rather fancy the idea that there might really be a kind of field effect, analogous to but different from electric fields, that is only detectable to organisms. Maybe something like the akashic field, or the morphic field. — Wayfarer

:up:

do other animals laugh? — Athena

BTW, one can easily find a bunch of videos and articles on great ape laughter online via a search for "great ape laughter" or some such. When its intense enough, it often enough sounds like a broken up yell or scream, which if not broken up vocally would indicate a good deal of aggression, canines exposed as a form of intimidation and all (apes can do a lot of harm with them). This being in tune with laughter (and what is in ethology termed the "play face") being non-verbal forms of communication that have evolved from emotions and states of mind associated with playing - which in essence almost always involves some sort of mock conflict and, hence, often, mock aggression. This approach then will hold human laughter to be a non-verbal communication of mock aggression which, then, can be either pleasant or unpleasant to undergo, depending on contexts. E.g., the difference between laughing at the absurdity (i.e., laughability) of an idea someone expresses or of otherwise laughing at the worth of the very person themselves. (my independent research and experiment projects as an undergraduate concerned this and like topics, pivoting on the evolution of the human smile; interesting stuff to me)

There's a dissonance between those two statements - not exactly a contradiction, but close. How do you get from one to the other? — Ludwig V

I've tried to illustrate what I've stated and so far uphold via examples. Using those previously provided, on what grounds would you disagree that a bacterium is a different kind of lifeform relative to an ameba? ... This despite their being evolutionary continuity in-between (most of which is now extinct) and, hence, , for example, degrees of awareness-ability between the two otherwise distinct lifeforms.

That looks very like trying to have your cake and eat it. — Ludwig V

Even so, see the just mentioned.

Yes. Whether there is anything substantial behind it is an interesting question. But if they do, they are superior to us in that respect. Just as homing pigeons and other migratory species have superior navigational abilities to us (in that they don't require elaborate technologies to find their way about the globe). So why do you insist that they are lesser? — Ludwig V

To address the first portion of this, not all lesser animals (say all cats or all dogs) give evidence of something that might anecdotally be termed a sixth-sense. This just as not all humans experience events that might anecdotally be termed a sixth-sense. (Example, one of my grandmas occasionally had REM dreams which she interpreted in ways such that she was certain of things that would occur in the future and, generally to the best of my knowledge, she was able to - coincidentally or not - predict some future events in this way. Tangentially, this can get into a more in-depth philosophical question, one for which I have no answer: how many co-incidences does it take to make one entertain the possibility of a causal connection?)

As to why lesser animals (rather than, say, fellow animals of equal status to us): to mention just one pivotal reason, no other known lifeform, either as an individual self or as a collective, has a total selfhood (hence, a body-mind totality of being) which is anywhere near in holding the same degree of power - by which I here strictly mean "the ability to do and to undergo" - that human selfhood holds ... and, one would hope, the same then entailed degrees of responsibilities for this very same power. And this despite the sometimes extensive range of perceptual abilities which humans are not endowed with but which some lesser animals are: to include magnetoception (e.g., pigeons), electroreception (e.g. sharks), infrared sensing (e.g., certain snakes - which ought not to be confused with vision (e.g., with our use of infrared binoculars)), and so forth.

Of course lesser animals hold concepts of which they experientially learn. No mature canid or feline, for example, is devoid of an understanding of what is and is not their territory - and this can only be a non-concrete but abstract understanding regarding concrete percepts, and, hence, a non-verbal concept. But their concepts come nowhere near the complexity and magnitudes of the concepts humans can entertain. And, with us being a species other than the other species out there, we are of a different kind, despite the evolutionary continuity addressed.

But all this ties into notions of value. There are two senses of being "evolved". "An adult human's mind is more evolved that that of an infants" - is one such usage. Here, whatever the standards might be, an adult human's mind is closer to these standards than is that of the infant's. In this same general sense, humans are more evolved than bacteria as lifeforms. The other notion that stands at a stark crossroad to this is that of "evolved" signifying "adapted to the ever-changing physical reality all life on Earth inhabits"; and in this second sense of the word, all life presently living is equally evolved, bar none. Evolutionary biologists know of this second sense of the term all too well, but even an evolutionary biologist will not hesitate to kill a mosquito, for example, in some sort of then rather twisted belief that the mosquito's life is of equal value to the life of a human. An individual mosquito is then of lesser value than an individual human - thereby again leading to the term "lesser animals" (or, as I like to sometimes muse, lesser "anima-endowed beings").

To be fair Eliade makes it pretty clear he is talking about Shamanism not shamanism - as in not the true name associated with Siberia but a global phenomenon. — I like sushi

Yes, true, thanks of the embellishment. Yet the term "shamanism" - rather than witch-doctor or medicine-man for example - does originate in the Siberian region. From best recollections: This together with the interpretation of the shaman initially leaving the village where he becomes a type of outcast, then there being ripped to shreds by the spirits and deities till all that is left is his bones, wherein he is considered to be dead yet still spiritually living, then needing to reassemble himself as a living person (a time and phase traditionally termed "special" insanity), then after having healed himself (and presumably the spirits that surround) reentering the village as a bona fide shaman. Certain Australian Aboriginal mythoi can be likened to hold similar general accounts but here they will be a multifaceted singular jewel remaining rather than the bone (upon which the flesh and skin is attached). One can find a similar enough mythos in the Ancient Egyptian story of Osiris - who was cut into innumerable pieces and then reassembled by the goddess Isis. If find all such accounts - which, as Eliade illustrates, can be quite global - to symbolically describe ego-death and one of its potential aftermaths. All the same, shamanism as previously just described is, tmbk, specific in its origins to the Siberian region. I'd gladly accept being corrected on this, though.

[Edit: JC's wanderings about in the desert and the Buddha's near starvation under a tree could each likewise be likened to a type of such shamanistic experience, else of ego-death - such that, for one example, the individual in each case was tempted in a plethora of ways away from "enlightenment" by the spirits that surrounded. And after their enlightenment/revelation/personal-apocalypse (i.e., unveiling of truth) they then walked back into their respective village, so to speak. But I nevertheless have a very hard time in then addressing either individual as "shaman" ... this largely due to the connotations the term tends to hold. At any rate, since I was already opining ... :smile: ]

I think I see where you are slightly misunderstanding what I am saying. This is why I tried to steer clear of one particular example. The story is the competitive element here NOT the personhood. — I like sushi

I'm by no means one to shy away from or else deny the role of competition in the evolution of ideas. Still, to be concise about things, I do find that there often occurs a bifurcation when it comes to competition: on one hand there is competition for the benefit of one's ego (which often is unconcerned for underlying truths, say akin to ancient sophistry) and on the other there is competition for the benefit of greater understanding of truths, if not of Truth with a capital "T" (which often deems the welfare of one's ego to be of a secondary importance, if even that much). Empirical scientists of today all compete, for a more concrete example, but while some compete for the sake of status or financial profit, in short for greater "power-over" (and thereby sometimes twist if not fabricate truths :cough: those who deny global warming :cough:) all those with sincere interest in their profession compete cooperatively for the sake of better uncovering truths, this for the sake of obtaining a type of "power-with" (such as in relation to the scientific community at large, if not for the sincere benefit, and hence increased power, of all humanity). It to me seems to only be in this second sense that anyone can in any way be competing with their own selves for optimal discovery (pushing themselves harder, so to speak, toward this end).

To the extent this generalized (and I grant, likely oversimplified) perspective is granted, I then doubt that egotists' sophistic competition for new ideas can lead to improved reasoning anywhere near as much as the sincere hunt for the truth(s) that await to be found, both physical and metaphysical. The very same overall dichotomy I'd then ascribe to humanity's history of conceptualizations regarding divinity, or spirituality, or god/s. Some emerged out of competitions for power-over others and yet others emerged out of competing views, competitions to this extent, for what is genuinely true - such that truth (and thereby awareness of what is real) becomes the prize that is to be won (and not an ego's greater power-over that which is other which bolsters one's magnitude of egoism). And, of course, there then can be rivalry galore between these two overall ambitions and resulting forms of respective competition.

In short, I don't find that all notions of divinity, spirituality, and god/s are there strictly due to oneupmanship - which, if true, would entail that all such accounts are strictly about granting some egos more power over other egos and that none of these concepts were in any way obtained via sincere inquiries into what is true and thereby real. Most interpretations of Buddhism, as one example, don't in any way strike me as being about oneupmanship - but, instead, as addressing being about as egoless as is possible.

Work that one out! — Wayfarer

:grin: I know of more than a few anecdotes of lesser animals giving all appearances of having a sixth-sense, as it's often termed. From cats finding their way back home after having been driven many many miles away and dropped off by themselves to dogs that (as was videotaped) start waiting for their owner's return home by siting in front of the window staring out of it, this at various times that synchronize with the variable time the owner leaves the workplace, etc. But, if there were to be any such sixth-sense, it would either never be empirically verifiable in a scientific manner - not for humans and certainly not for lesser animals - were it to be spiritual or, else, it would then become something physically explainable and therefore mundane. Cool quote though. And, yes, there are a number of anecdotes of elephants having at times incredible degrees of communication ability via the infrasound they make use of - which seems to possibly be part of what happened in the quote you've mentioned. Still, while some might give effort to interpreting what these anecdotes might or might not signify, there are some humans who'd still affirm that only humans are conscious beings, etc. :palmface:

It has been suggested that because there is some continuity between h.sapiens and other species, then the difference is only one of degree rather than of kind. That is what I’m taking issue with. — Wayfarer

We once, a long long time ago, had a debate about whether bonobos which have learned to communicate with humans via human-devised symbols could be asked the question "what occurs after death" (or something to the like) and give a meaningful, or else cogent, conceptual reply (which I take to not necessitate a "well reasoned" reply). My stance was and remains that, while I don't know, it to me remains within the scope of (lets call it) physical possibility that they might then entertain some conceptual notion of the same end of physical life we hold in mind - thereby having, or else obtaining, an awareness of their own mortality. (Just that, much like many a human, they might not be pleased with so contemplating.)

With that said, I myself happen to be in accord with what you here express. Differences in degree do indeed produce differences in kind. A bacterium is of a different kind than an ameba, both being of utterly different kinds than a cat, for example - this though evolutionarily speaking the differences between in issues such as that of awareness, or else of behavior, is a matter of degree. Maybe needless to then add, Homo Sapiens is a species of an utterly different kind than that of any other species on Earth with which we co-inhabit (most especially with all the other hominids that once existed now being extinct). I'll hasten to add that our species is nevertheless yet tied into the tree of life via an utmost obtainment, else utmost extreme, within a current spectrum of degrees - this as, for example, concerns qualitative magnitudes of awareness, of forethought, and the like. But this in no way then contradicts that we humans are of an utterly different kind than all other living species on Earth. Relative to bonobos and chimps very much included. Since we're on a philosophy forum, no other animal - great ape, dolphin, or elephant, for example - can comprehend the concepts we can when addressing the many diverse philosophies that have occurred. Thereby, again, making us of a distinctly different kind from all other lifeforms of which we know.

I'm sort of pondering on what grounds anyone might disagree with this (I should say, anyone who accepts biological evolution as fact).

I would say because of cognitive dissonance. I don't find it hard to see that many higher animals could experience that. — Wayfarer

I happen to very much agree with that. Though I'm uncertain as to how this might relate to reasoning among lesser animals in your own view.

To me, for cognitive dissonance to occur, there is required some modality of reasoning. As just one example, there is required a non-linguistic understanding that if this then that. Having such non-verbal if-then reasoning would bring about the dog's madness via an extreme cognitive dissonance wherein it becomes impossible for it to discern what action (that of either touching the one door or the other) leads to what consequence (that of obtaining food, which would be pleasurable, or of being electrically shocked, one can only presume quite unpleasantly so) prior to commencing any action.

From where I stand, other then the misapplication (else misconstrual) of purely poetical metaphor in expressing that "an AI can experience extreme cognitive dissonance and thereby go mad", I find that while AI might malfunction, they cannot go mad strictly due to experienced stressors such as that of extreme cognitive dissonance. In conjunction with this, I so far find that AI - unless they were to gain some first-person awareness whereby I-ness/ego becomes ontically established - does not and cannot engage in reasoning (this in non-poetic/metaphorical terms). All this on par to what can be said of a thermostat. Maybe paradoxically for some, all this however being unlike the bona fide reasoning of lesser lifeforms - which again occurs in various diminished extents relative to the average human. (With some humor, I say that some animals from corvids to octupi exhibit far more reason-driven intelligence than some non-average - and yet not mentally handicapped - humans. ... myself included at times :grin: )

Good point. I don't remember (its been some 30 years since I've heard of this experiment). My best hunch is that the hypothesis tested for might have had something to do with symbolic representation among lesser animals. But, in truth, I don't now know.

Or I could just say it’s all a system of stimuli and responses with no inner life, self-awareness, decision-making capability or rational capability.

We could say the same thing about animals. — Fire Ologist

Since you’ve addressed canids, you are claiming that packs of wild canids (wolves, cayotes, dingos, etc.) engage in no reasoning whatsoever when entrapping their prey (which can sometimes cause sever injury to them, if not their death – with a moose as one example of such prey - and which are in many ways unpredictable in what they do) and then bringing it down?

Can’t so far find a reference to this experiment online, but during my university years I was told by a professor of a scientific experiment where an otherwise friendly dog was made to go insane: biting all humans that surrounded and biting itself while foaming at the mouth. The experiment is easy to understand, and maybe even empathize with. From my best recollection of how this experiment went: A dog is accustomed via operational conditioning to obtain food after touching its nose to a door that has a circle depicted on it. The dog is then faced with two doors: one with a circle where it gets its food and one with an ellipse which, when touched, transfers an electric shock to the dog. The dog via brief experience then always touches the door with the circle and always avoids the door with the ellipse. The experiment then makes the circle more elliptical and the ellipse more circular. The dog has no issues in yet going to touch with its nose the door with the more circular figure. This until the two doors – more properly the circular ellipse and the elliptical circle – become indistinguishable by it. At this culminating point, the heretofore friendly dog goes insane as described.

Granting that this experiment did in fact take place, why would the dog go mad – this as most likely would any human child if not also adult human faced with the same contextual constraints forced upon them – if the dog engaged in no reasoning whatsoever when selecting the door with the more circular ellipse over the door with the more elliptical figure?

What some might well find to be horrific experiments on lesser animals – with dogs as one very commonly used species (in part because they’re easy to obtain, such as from shelters) – are maybe far more common than typically known. And in all these at times sadistic experiments on lesser animals (with very many being far more sadistic/horrific than the one I’ve just mentioned), there is assumed a potential benefit to humans down the line - to human brains and human minds. (I’ve worked in a neuroscience lab where I had to perform partial lobotomies on birds and then, after some time, perfuse them (while they were alive, of course) so as to extract their then paraformaldehyde-hardened brain for slicing and then observation of neurons under the microscope – this, in short, to better study the neuroscience of language acquisition and application. I’ve said “sadistic” because I’ve observed firsthand how some, but certainly not all, fellow experiments obtained pleasure from the suffering of the birds during the process – this rather than in any way empathizing with their condition which we had inflicted upon them. Doubtless that empathizing with their condition would have been uncomfortable if not painful for them.)

And yes, sometimes such experiments on lesser animals are the only means we have at our disposal for better understanding the structure of the brain and the correlating mind without harming humans. (And, in fairness, sometimes they are utterly idiotic, to not here also address ethical considerations.)

That said, what sound reasoning would there be in all these many experiments on animals were there to be no continuity between the minds of animals and those of humans? Here to include the mind’s utilization of some form of reasoning, however diminished by comparison to human reasoning it might be. Example: what could we possibly learn about ourselves as humans by placing rats in T-mazes and the like were there to be no continuity in cognitive faculties among lesser animals and us?

---------

To be clear, this is not to deny that we as humans are of a different level of cognition than all other animal species - making us as a species quite exceptional. In so asking, I only uphold that there is however no absolute divide between the cognition of humans and that of lesser animals.

Yes. It ALL sounds tongue in cheek :) It is simple yet possibly a key instrument in so many factors including the development of Reason itself perhaps? — I like sushi

Granting that I"m properly understanding this quote, I don't identify the conceptual drift toward monotheism(s) with the key instrument to the development of reason. Instead, I tend to identify monotheistic notions of God with the average human impetus, or desire, for some authority that overshadows all others. This, in turn, can either lead to authoritarianism, if not despotic yearnings and practices, which I view as bad/unethical/etc. or else toward egalitarian universals of being: with "natural laws" quickly here coming to mind as one version of this (be they found in materialisms or in monotheisms or else in spiritualities such as the Logos of the Stoics ... the latter, quite obviously, standing at a stark crossroad to most monotheistic worldviews wherein a superlative personhood as absolute authority is championed from which the logos ("the word") stems).

In short, I disagree that the development of reason is to be associated with the "ultimate personhood" issue. (Whether one to any extent agrees or disagrees with it, Buddhism is certainly entwined with a vast amount of reasoning, for example, and there is no ultimate personhood in it.)

And the latter are not part of the predominant Western tradition as mentioned. Hence why I stated there is no Primary equivalent in Eastern traditions (note: I use the term 'traditions' rather than 'religions'). Brahma is an especially concept that really does not fit into the Western conceptions of God.

I should perhaps have outlined the Monotheistic nature of Western/Middle Eastern traditions shifting dramatically away from pantheisms and birthing the concept of God as an amalgam of 'ideas' under the hood of a singular form. — I like sushi

I can get this, though I find it overlooks the yet quite persisting perspective of "Nature worship" to be found in a significant quantity of Western traditions (with various forms of Neo-paganism as one blatant example). A Buddhist or Hindu, for example, does not engage in the same trains of thought as do Westerners when it comes to this, such that Buddhism and Hinduism can at best only be described as forms of Nature-worship only from the vantage of Westerner's projections. This much like they could all be declared as "pagans" by some monotheists.

To this effect, having read Eliade's "Shamanism" some time ago, you'll find the notion of nature-worship quite well alighted to the concept of shamanism, for example. And shamanism, though nowadays in some cases extended to Eastern traditions - say, for one example, by addressing the original Buddha as a shaman of the East - is well enough rooted in Western practices and perspectives: shamanism historically stemmed from Siberia with enough affirming it to originate from traditions along the Caucasus Mountains, and from the latter we get the term "Caucasian" which, at least in the USA, is often used to strictly denote white people of European decent.)

At pith, Nature as something deserving of worship is deeply rooted in Western traditions (with Western notions of Gaia and of Pan as just two examples of this), rather than in Eastern traditions. And although a relative minority nowadays, we all intuitively know that tree-hugges are nature-worshipers. And while the perspective isn't commonly professed, a far greater quantity of people in the West hold affinities to such nature-worshiping perspectives.

This outlines the modern Eastern and Western differences. Underneath though I guess I am suggesting personification or not we are viewing the slow and steady progress of human intellect toying with higher concepts and occasionally becoming seduced by them to greater or lesser degrees, with greater or lesser focus on this or that cosmological concern (life, death, morality, harmony, justice, nature etc.,.). — I like sushi

Again, contemplating the strictly Western notions of (non-monotheistic) Logos, as one example, is to itself be addressing "higher concepts" that concern the cosmological concerns you specify. No superlative personhood required.

I think this kind of encapsulates the idea of a kind of Theological Olympics. — I like sushi

Yet in nature-worship perspectives there doesn't occur the conviction that "there can be only one (at the expense of all others)", this as the competitions of the Olympics might insinuate. The only "one" here would then be Nature itself - the one uni-verse or else one cosmos - as well as, potentially, some either explicitly or implicitly held notion similar to (if not identical to) what in Platonism and Neoplatonism is addressed as the Good, which, again, can only be singular. Yet nature-worshiping traditions of Western origin (mostly of the West's past yet some still persisting to the present) they yet are.

Edit: I in all this neglected to explicitly addresses the traditions of Native American (First Nation) Indians. Which, although not directly descending from the Caucasus Mountains via Europe, are all nature-worshiping perspective distinct from typical Eastern views all the same.

I’d say that there can be no concept of divinity without a concept of spirituality, and no concept of God devoid of a concept of divinity.

Based on what I’ve read you saying, when the term “God” is interpreted (as you intend in this thread so far) as an all-this-and-that personhood, this then becomes a personification of divinity such that the “biggest” possible personhood is that of God’s. Note, however, that this very understanding stands in stark contrast to notions such as those of pantheism and panentheism for example – wherein everything that we moderners understand by “nature” will itself be (both macrocosmically and microcosmically, and everything in-between, all of ourselves included) denoted as “God” with a capital “G”.

Consider the typical monotheistic view: Divinity is not equivalent to nature, and God is the supreme personhood that dictates both all divinity and nature.

Then consider the typical polytheistic view (which grew out of animism (which, oddly enough, is just a different wording for panpsychism in that both concepts affirm that everything is endowed with anima/psyche, i.e. soul)): the gods - here with a small “g” - are all at one with, else aspects of, nature (i.e., of logos, or else the anima mundi, and so forth).

These two just mentioned perspectives present diametrically opposite worldviews: the first where divinity ≠ nature (e.g., such that the super-natural is divided from and hence not nature), and the second where divinity = nature (e.g., such that the super-natural is that aspect, or those aspects, of Nature which consists of Nature’s upper, or uppermost, layers – such as in terms of layers of Heraclitus or else Stoic logos – basically translating into the non-mundane/profane aspects of Nature, the latter being where we humans typically (else, always) find ourselves dwelling.)

From this vantage, in further considering the divinity ≠ nature worldview, one could potentially go from “my dad can beat up your dad” to “my deity can beat up your deity” to “there is, or else must be, a deity (i.e., a personhood) which is supreme and cannot be beaten by anything other”. A bit tongue in cheek maybe, but psychologically believable all the same, I think. This being in relative keeping with the OP.

Still, this tends to overlook the diametrically opposite worldview of God wherein God = Cosmic Divinity = Nature. (A perspective that can be found in many non-Abrahamic worldviews as well as in Abrahamic ones, with at least certain forms of Kabbalism as example of the latter). In this worldview of God = Nature the following childhood paradox of God loses its validity, for it fully translates into: “If Nature is all-powerful, can Nature create a rock that is too heave for Nature to lift?” You’ll maybe note that in this understanding, God = Nature per se holds no personhood and cannot be personified as something that “can lift a rock” (as though the rock were something other than itself). In this latter worldview, then, the gods (again, with a small “g”) maybe could each lift their own share of rocks, but no individual god equates to the cosmic totality of being which in this worldview is pantheistic God/Nature.

I could think of yet other interpretations of God (maybe in keeping with what stated) but I yet find these two just mentioned quite pertinent – at the very least to Western history. And let’s not forget that monotheism evolved out of polytheistic cultures, with henotheism as an in-between.

I've answered your question. Did you not see the answer? — Leontiskos

Nope. Care to re-quote it?

The question here is whether you contradict yourself in claiming to accept all three stipulations while simultaneously claiming that it is okay to intentionally harm others (or, put differently, whether the stipulations entail pacifism). As I have shown, the three stipulations do logically entail the conclusion <It is always impermissible to harm others>, and therefore you contradict yourself by claiming that you accept the three stipulations while maintaining that it is sometimes permissible to (intentionally) harm others. — Leontiskos

As I've previously explained and illustrated via example, it is not contradictory to maintain the three stipulations of the OP - for intending the least of all wrongs when no other alternative is in any way available to you is a good, and not a bad. Maintaining the three stipulations can become contradictory when reinterpreted in the fashion you have. But, as I've previously expressed and exemplified, this is not how I myself interpret the OP's three stipulations.

<It is always impermissible to harm others> — Leontiskos

This, though, to me is incomprehensible, for it entails things such as the following: it is - this at the same time and in the same respect - always impermissible to both a) eat food and thereby harm other selves by requiring their death so as to sustain one's own life and b) harming one's own self via the self-murder (i.e., suicide) of starvation by not eating food. And this so far to me is a clear-cut case of contradiction irrespective of how it's interpreted.

Now you want me to enter into a debate about whether one should choose the least of all wrongs. — Leontiskos

No. I was merely interested in your answer to the questions I've asked of you, and this repeatedly.

I am not a consequentialist, and because of this I do not think one should do what is wrong. — Leontiskos

Again: Is it right to choose the least of all wrongs when no other alternatives are available to you? If so, then so choosing the least of all wrongs is doing what is right - rather then doing what is wrong.

But I am not going to enter into this debate in full. — Leontiskos

I will not plead for you to give your honest answer to the simple question I've asked. And I'm interested in honest debates where both understand themselves and their views to be fallible - this rather than infallible. So, unless there will be further need to reply, I'll call it quits for my part.

BTW, I'm leaving the debate open, but if the counter hinges on the notion of "someone" in the third assertion (harming someone is X) this will open a can of worms as to what "someone" gets to be denoted as.

One one hand, for one example, here strictly addressing humans: Are those which some humans deem to be sub-human humans, such as slaves, on a par to the someones that are not slaves but slave owners? So, can a pacifist flagellate a slave and still be a genuine pacifist - this in respect to those who are someone on a par to themselves?

Else, can a pacifist engage in psychologically torturing another someone on ground that they in no way violently harm the other's physical being? Presuming not, what then about nagging (as one type of mind/brain fuc*ing) another someone; is this not a milder form of the same type of harm to the other that can be expressed via the concept of "psychological torture"? So, is a pacifist still a pacifist if they perpetually nag others about certain issues; say, maybe, such as about needing to be pacifists (which do no harm whatsoever) themselves?

This, again, to me gets into issues of what selfhood consists of. Which I find difficult. But, maybe unlike some others, I do maintain that lesser lifeforms are endowed with their own selfhood ... which they too defend as best they can and which can likewise be harmed.

This post being neither here nor there. It's been mentioned just in case the issue of harm were to be declared only pertinent to "someones" as this term is typically understood, such that harm could then only be validly claimed of persons, i.e. humans.

Edit: Here is a more formal version, which may help you see your contradiction:

1. It is morally impermissible to perform an action that is X.
2. It is morally impermissible to directly intend something that is X—even for the sake of something good.
3. Harming someone is X.
4. Therefore, pacifism is true.

(2 is strictly speaking superfluous, but I think Bob was going for the exhaustive division noted above.) — Leontiskos

In reply to this edit: Since you're being ultra-formal in reasoning, what pacifist (either directly or indirectly) causes no harm to other life in their persisting to live by consuming nutrients via food?* In the absence of such a pacifist, your reasoning (maybe in the interpretation of premises affirmed) can only be fallacious (... goodness intending though it might be) - for even the most stringent of pacifists will indeed by necessity engage in the harm of selfhood pertaining either to other living things or to their own life.

* This as per my previously given example:

Ought I harm that farm animal by killing it as humanely as possible so as to eat and thereby live? Or ought I harm that farm animal by killing it in as inhumane way as possible so as to eat and thereby life? (Same could be said of plants by they way, lifeforms that they themselves are.) Or ought I harm no other living being so as to eat and thereby live and, in so not doing, basically commit suicide via starvation? These are all wrongs, but they vary in their degrees. — javra

----------

I'd still appreciate answers to my two previous questions regarding your views, to be found here and here.

BTW, you latch onto your individual understanding of the three stipulations and the perceived logic that then ensues, but you have not yet answered the question I've asked.

To be more blunt about it: is it good to choose the least of all wrongs or is it bad to choose the least of all wrongs?

A simple and direct question that ought to hold a simple and direct answer.

Then you are directly denying #3. — Leontiskos

Nope, I uphold it. But then, once again, we're likely interpreting it in significantly different ways,

When would harm be an ultimate, absolute, pure, complete, etc. "good"? Oh, here presuming a lack of subjectivism ... wherein it can so be because some subjective being so declares it to be. I liken the likes of Hitler and Stalin to such beings.

The stipulations logically entail the conclusion that harm cannot be done. You say you accept all three stipulations but then go on to say that harm can be done. It seems that if you want to hold to harm consequentialism then you will at least need to reject #2, no? — Leontiskos

We then obviously hold rather different interpretations of #2:

2. It is morally impermissible to directly intend something bad—even for the sake of something good; — Bob Ross

Is it a bad to choose - or else to intend the manifestation of - the lease bad from all alternatives that are available to oneself at the juncture of the given choice?

Irrespective of what your anticipated answer will be, I again deem the choosing of the least bad to be a good in an of itself, rather than a bad in and of itself. In so deeming, I then further deem the choice thus made to be the intentioning of something good - here in the sense of "best" - rather then the intentioning of something bad. The latter "intentioning of a bad" I strictly reserve for intentioning any alternative other than that which is least bad. Concrete examples are a dime a dozen. As one measly example: Ought I harm that farm animal by killing it as humanely as possible so as to eat and thereby live? Or ought I harm that farm animal by killing it in as inhumane way as possible so as to eat and thereby life? (Same could be said of plants by they way, lifeforms that they themselves are.) Or ought I harm no other living being so as to eat and thereby live and, in so not doing, basically commit suicide via starvation? These are all wrongs, but they vary in their degrees.

Feel free to comment on the last paragraph, of course, but please do provide an answer to the question I've asked.

This is pretty stark consequentialism, is it not? Especially your final sentence? — Leontiskos

Maybe I don't fully follow your quite terse reply - but in terms of all actions having their consequence ... sure, why not?

Is there any rational or ethical disagreement with what I've stated in the quote you provided?

Self-defense is usually defined in a way to include the defense of other innocents as well. — Bob Ross

I'm not familiar with such a (most especially "usual") definition. See for example self-defense as its defined by a global wiki.

What references do you have for the definition you present?

Did you read the OP? The OP is exploring what justification exists for self-defense's permissibility given certain stipulations. — Bob Ross

(Just saw your update in the OP.)

I might have not been clear enough:

I accept all three stipulations, though their interpretations might (I don’t yet know) somewhat differ between us. So I thereby endorse #3 in an ultimate sense of what is bad.

Yet my primary resolution to the issue (placing the issue of selfhood(s) and its comparative value aside) was expressed here, albeit in question form:

And is it not a good to choose the lesser of two wrongs whenever no other alternative is in any way available to you? — javra

In short, when the only available alternatives to one are all of differing degrees of wrongness, or of badness, then it is virtuous (and hence good) to choose that alternative which is the least wrong, or bad, among the available alternatives. This in contrast to choosing an alternative which is more or else most wrong, hence bad.

Choosing not to choose between the alternatives in this situation would also be, by my reckoning, a non-virtuous act - for, in so choosing not to choose, one then of one's own accord allows for the possibility of the more or else worst wrong to be actualized.

I deem this same reasoning to then likewise apply to abortions, to surgeries, etc.

Given the following stipulations, I am wondering if there is a way to salvage the principle of self-defense; and would like to here all of your responses.

The moral principles and facts being stipulated are that:

1. It is morally impermissible to perform an action that is in-itself bad;
2. It is morally impermissible to directly intend something bad—even for the sake of something good;
3. Harming someone is, in-itself, bad.

It seems to me, under these stipulations, that one could never justify self-defense—e.g., harming someone that is about to kill you—because it will always be the case in such examples that one directly intends to harm that person for the sake of saving themselves. — Bob Ross

Has anyone yet mentioned that self-defense is nearly by definition a preventing of harm to one’s own self?

A murderer wants to murder you. On what grounds is allowing the murderer (whose intentions are most always deemed unethical to begin with) his desire of harming your own being to be deemed anything but bad?

So, harm in some ultimate sense is a bad thing. OK. If so, then in the case of conflicts such as the one specified, harm to someone is inevitable: either to you, to your assailant, or to both. Given the murderer’s intention of murdering you, what then makes the harm to the murderer’s self of greater wrong than the harm to your own self? And, again, the murderer is unethical while you (I can only presume) are not unethical (at least no where near the same extent).

And is it not a good to choose the lesser of two wrongs whenever no other alternative is in any way available to you?

--------

The OP’s question runs far deeper, though: what grants a given self more value, or worth, than some other self whenever any conflict between selves occurs?

More concretely exemplified via just a few examples: what make one’s loved one more important than the stranger down the street as a self; what makes a human self more important than a dog’s selfhood; what makes a virtuous person’s self (say a Mother Teresa or a Gandhi) of more worth than the self of a person filled with actively occurring vice (say a Hitler or a Stalin); and so on and so forth.

This isn’t an easy question to answer as far as I know, but it does determine what harm to what self is prioritized over the lack of harm to the other self - this in our judgements of right and wrong - whenever conflicts between selves occur. And I sincerely believe that only in this issue’s answer can be found an understanding of what justifies self-defense. Tricky issue, though.

BTW, leaning on issues of self-preservation doesn't to me seem to offer much help: the murderer is attempting to preserve their total selfhood (with mind and its desires included) in attempting to murder you on par to you attempting to preserve your own total selfhood (likewise with mind and one's own desires included) in attempting to not be murdered. To in any way prevent a self-identified murderer from being a murderer is then, technically at least, to harm the murderer's selfhood - such that it is no longer preserved via means antithetical to the self's desires. But, then, this gets into issues of what a selfhood is defined by: knowing oneself to be "the most financially wealthy person in the world", for example, requires the self-preservation of this identity/selfhood ... this in parallel to how a person who knows themselves to be domineering (with a murderer as one possible extreme example) requires the self-preservation of one's rank as a top dog that can thereby do anything they please, so to speak. All this is to say that a self is more than just a physical body, and that self-preservation thereby addresses more than a physical body's continuation of being. So the question of what a self is plays a major role in the issue of what self-defense is, of when it is virtuous, and of when it might not be (say, Hitler's actions in self-defense of his total being as a fascistic dictator.)

I am a moral sceptic. I can pretend to believe this or that for the sake of an argument but in this case it is pretty hard to respond more without getting bogged down.

I am convinced we can move beyond the current 'moral' paradigm. What that would mean to anyone else if I could explain better I am unsure. — I like sushi

I find that quite fair. It's been good talking to you, btw. :up:

But the question: Do you believe it is possible for future generations of humans to become more moral by comparison to the morality of humans today? — javra


Jordan Peterson has an interesting opinion on that:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/cIDopS5C1Ck

A wallflower guy might benefit from some training in narcissistic psychopathy, you know, sort of to balance him out a bit.

In other words, don't be too nice. — Tarskian

Here’s an antithetical opinion: whomever makes a strict equivalency between morality and niceness can only in some way be an immoral individual. For instance, morality can require that one kill a murderer so as to prevent the injustice of, say, an innocent child being murdered; this in contrast to passively watching the murderer brutally murdering the child and doing nothing about it so as to not have blood on one’s own hands or, just as bad, so as to not risk one’s own death. And to intend to kill is to not be “nice”.

But, when it comes to the moral killing of another human, in the words of Winston Churchill: When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite. For example, to insult the man, to unnecessarily brutalize the man, or else to piss on the dead man’s corpse after killing him is to be an immoral killer of another man – in contrast to being a moral killer of another man. Most soldiers know all about this, irrespective of whether they choose to be moral about their activities in war or not.

Inside I am John Lenon's Imagine, but outwardly I know it is better to stem liberal views because they can often cause way more harm than we intuitively expect. — I like sushi

There’s a reason for the affirmation that the path to hell is paved with good intentions. I get that: the axis powers of WWII wanting to pave the way to a global utopia, ditto with communism, to not get into so many cults whose cult-of-personality ends up doing monstrous things, or else the intentions of Christian Nationalism, and so forth. As I previously said, I can sympathize with many of your views, including this one. But I do not find the truism of this just affirmed maxim to then indicate that one should not hold good intentions to begin with.

But the question: Do you believe it is possible for future generations of humans to become more moral by comparison to the morality of humans today? — javra

Have I in anyway managed to cover this question to your satisfaction? I doubt I have! Feel free to reform it in some way as I cannot possibly begin to answer it without writing a few thousand words. — I like sushi

I don’t know how else to phrase things in a succinct manner. To me there can be no utopia in the absence of a heightened morality shared by all, or at least most, constituents of the addressed society. I again find the possibility of a world devoid of rape and murder to be contingent on a great number of societal (both economic and political) changes toward more ethical and less corrupt systems. In the absence of this requirement for greater morality, what one ends up with is dystopias, which are a dime a dozen. So I’ll just restructure the previously given expression: Is the morality of humans as a whole only something that can either get worse or remain the same for all time yet to come or, else, can it improve relative to its present day and past manifestations?

If this doesn’t help, we might well be dealing with disagreements regarding any number of underlying metaphysical issues, such as with the metaphysical issue of whether morality is relative or not. In other words, if the good is something we make up as we go or else is something universal to all sentience. And I’ll back away from any such discussion for the time being.

Even with this there is a question of how we can possibly measure morality let alone dictate what degree of morality is optimal. — I like sushi

To me this is a wrong framing of the question. One cannot in any way accurately measure quantitatively physiological pain, much less physiological pain. Yet they do occur qualitatively and we all (mostly) can discern that having a splinter in one's finger is vastly overshadowed by having that finger amputated without anesthesia, this in terms of pain - both physical and psychological. As to optimal morality, I don't see any endpoint in sight where morality becomes optimal - unless we start philosophizing about metaphysical issues and thereby entertain such notions as possibilities of a universally obtained Nirvana, which would be an endpoint to morality. But in more practical terms, the sky's the limit to better morality.

A perfect example of how doing something that seems good, like protecting children from trauma, actually results in something bad. Making mistakes and having 'traumas' as children is a good thing. Children need to learn how to deal with difficult situations rather than be protected from them. The assumption that such parenting would lead to more 'morality' in society could just as easily do the exact opposite. — I like sushi

I wasn't addressing parents' reprimanding their children or the like but to all various forms of child abuse. I for the life of me can't see how, for one example, the raping of children can be a good thing (such as on grounds of preparing them for adulthood), yet it occurs far too often. Parenting aside, with sex trafficking of children on the rise in more developed societies today. Again, pointing to a lack of scruples.

if such an ideal comes at the cost of increased discrimination then is it utopian? — I like sushi

Or are you basically framing this as a more progressively moral society will extinguish all of these inequalities to the point where we all see each other as being equal? If so, this is 'leveling the playing field' and I think it would fall apart fairly quickly in larger populations for reasons I have outlined. — I like sushi

As in being equal in potential if not intrinsic value, not in height, sex, abilities, etc. And yes, as has always been the case so too it shall always be: one rotten apple will more easily spoil the bunch. It's why a functional society will always discriminate against rotten apples such as mass-murderers, for one extreme example. Maybe more pertinent in some ways, for tolerance to be ongoing there needs to occur a discrimination of, or intolerance toward, intolerant people - here with a slight equivocation in terms of "intolerance" - otherwise the formerly tolerant society perishes via its own complacency.

I still affirm that a tolerant society in which no one rapes of murders is by today's standard a utopia.

In short, what you are proposing is a ideal but does not look anything like a utopian ideal as it is looking at societal problems as being ONE problem and in pursuing with the same vigor as a utopian ideal would leave other pressing matters floundering in its wake. — I like sushi

Ah, but I can see no way in which such a society can come about sans a restructuring of some sort of both (always human devised) economics and politics. As just one example, today's globalized economy of "greed is good" is antithetical to a moral society wherein greed is disparaged and one seeks to help out one's fellow man - rather than hording as much financial and social capitol for oneself at expense of others whom one couldn't care less for. The valuing of greed is antithetical to the valuing of empathy - and the valuing of greed is intrinsic to the lives of all today: if not directly then by constraining what one can do with one's life via societal (which I take to include both economic and political) pressures.

If something we would refer to today as a utopian ideal was to come into existence in our lifetime, via some unknown paradigm shift, I absolutely do not believe anyone would purposely have instigated it. — I like sushi

Within our lifetime I find it exceedingly doubtful, if not laughable. Still, I agree with this conclusion. It would by entailment need to be purposefully enforced by everyone (or at least the vast majority) from which the society is constituted.

If things go our way we claim authorship, yet if things go against what we say we are even more quick to distance ourselves from immediate participation (the neuroscientific evidence for this is pretty conclusive)*. — I like sushi

And yet I deem self-honesty to be deeply entwined with scruples. The less honesty one has with oneself the less scruples one has. Trump as but one prevalent and unfortunate example of this.

As to the very notion of utopia, it reminds me of these lyrics from a song by Sting: "To search for perfection is all very well, but to look for heaven is to live here in hell." All humans have faults and so no human can be perfect, this by sheer fact of being human, if not, more generally speaking, a living being; e.g. perfectly innocent (in the sense of perfectly devoid of blame and hence perfectly guiltless). This then thoroughly applies to all members of any society, be it past, present, or any future one. But just as things in a society can get worse, they can likewise get better - over time, of course. (BTW, plenty of people seek redemption from their past and present vices - one can even say it's sane to so want - but far too many expect it to come from the skies as thought by the wave of some magic wand rather than through the hard work of it being actualized, to whatever extent, from within in one's future interactions with others and with oneself.)

A society - to drive the point home, say a global society - wherein humans neither rape nor murder is by today's standards a pure utopia (a nowhere place). I'd like to live there though I know I never will. Granting its future possibility, though, once humanity might get to such a place, new utopias will then present themselves. Again, here paraphrasing, to aim for perfection in incremental steps is all very well, but to assume a place where egos occur with no suffering is to always live in misery. So to me, there is no such thing as a final utopian dwelling to be validly envisioned. If this is what you conceive of by the term "utopia", then I agree. But, again, who would deny that a world devoid of rape and murder is not sheer utopia from today's vantage? That it's a worthwhile aspiration, however, is another matter - one that I personally endorse in so far as more of us ought to be looking into possible means of better approximating such, currently, nowhere place, i.e. utopian ideal.