I had social anxiety for years before I had a name for it. So I didn't know what was happening to me or whether I was normal. The word is not required for access to a mental state. However when you discover a word you can label yourself and tell other people. But this isn't sufficient. It is not enough to have a vague idea about what depression is.

Just because someone uses a word does not mean they are using it to its fullest dimension. The problem in philosophy is using words then giving them a weak or contestable or even inaccurate definition. Words cannot replace experience (which is multifaceted and phenomenologically rich.

I am not talking about the privacy of mental states here in the sense that they might be ineffable but I am talking about the failure of language to do them justice and the lack of ability to compare these states.

Lots of people with mental health problems face minimisation and skepticism. You might say "I can't sleep" And then someone (even a GP) will give an anecdote about how they can't sleep.

Now I know several people who have no problem falling a sleep (two of my sisters and my mother) So I know that there is a sleeping spectrum with extremes at each end and not being able to fall asleep is not trivial. So with a spectrum of conditions under one word there is the issue of the word not being sufficient.

The relationship between mental states and language is interesting and puzzling.I think language is limited in conveying internal experience not because thought can't be language but because it is representing subjective states.

Words like "Tree" will have their meaning largely influenced by a shared external perception. But words applied to internal states are informed by private experience and a network of beliefs an so on.

I said the case of colour was trivial. It was an example however of how people respond differently and/or their brain behaves differently to the same stimuli. If the brain models perceptions then it is likely to be different for everyone in the context of prior experiences etc.

But in the cases of issues like anxiety, dreams beliefs we have no shared access to these states.
There is also plenty of room to be skeptical of the external world even if you are a realist (see physics). It is always possible to be deceived. But that isn't the issue here.

You could create an unconscious robot that was able to "perceive" the external; world and agree with you about what it contained. You don't have to commit yourself to a belief in other minds to be a realist about the external world because it is not hidden subjective data.

I believe we need experiences of things to talk about them in many cases, however that establishes the centrality of personal experience not that an external world exists. However we are not discussing any of that here but about access to mental states.

It is puzzling that we can have shared experiences of an external world but cannot share our mental states in the same way like we are living in two worlds simultaneously.

Subjective differences may have an external/neural cause like different neural circuitry but that does not support realism because it reinforces the fact that we have different perceptions. As Thomas Nagel said "Objectivity is a view from nowhere" There is no external fact that can be experienced objectively.

Yes, but what are words except visual scribbles and sounds? — Harry Hindu

They are neither. When I am thinking I have no sound waves hitting my ear. Blind and deaf people learn language. The only thing that creates language is semantic content.

Image is a visual metaphor and vision is only one type of experience.

You have done what I was saying and misrepresented experience. I don't have pictures or sounds in my head when I am thinking. I can bring up a visual image like "Colourless green ideas sleep furiously" which is bereft of meaning but I am not usually envisioning orthography.

Visual images rarely come to me. If they do I am trying to remember a place or event or dreaming. But even in the case of memory words have a more powerful effect than the images and I have a narrative about the image I have recalled.

You can't simply assert what someone else's experience is in any kind of valid way. That is not science or philosophy or phenomenological analysis.

If I was lying about the nature of my mental states how would you know anyway?

I am not claiming we can't talk about mental states but that we can never compare them to know if we are referring to the same thing. It is the problem of subjectivity and I think we need to explore the ramifications of this privacy and try harder at accurate phenomenology.

(Especially for the sake of developing better mental health support)

I was interested on what a young woman said in a philosophy podcast. She said she had never experienced sadness until her mothers premature death.

Did she know what sadness was before then? As someone from a troubled background I have always experienced anxiety and sadness and I can't put myself in her shoes.

People who suddenly experience mental distress are often surprised because it was nothing like they imagined including skeptics of depression who have apologised profusely after for doubting the condition.

So these people seem to be failing to know mental states until they finally experience them.

I am talking about comparing mental states not comparing verbal reports of mental states. I agree that you can talk about mental states and clarify some issues. But people like Pinker and Dennet don't seem interested in this, especially with Dennet's Hetero-phenomenology (incoherent skeptical method) and The Churchland's (incoherent) Eliminative materialism.

In a trivial case we could both agree that the car is red but I could be perceiving as blue and that is my red. I may perceive the colour as jarring and garish and you may experience it as soothing.

But in trivial cases like this not much is at stake but in the diagnosis of mental illness or in pursuit of accurate psychology the differences become crucial and that is where a direct comparison would help otherwise we end up in endless unverifiable disputes about the phenomenon.

I have studied philosophy of mind at university and psychology and I often had a problem with peoples definitions of mental states and I couldn't recognise or agree with their depiction of them.

In the study of memory it has gone from their being one continuous memory store to finding out that there are a large range of types of memory and brain abnormalities/lesions etc have shown that one type of memory is independent from another.

These findings cast doubt on our ability to define mental states unless we practise careful phenomenology and look at data on brain disorders etc. And overall this should encourage serious caution in making wide-sweeping claims or naive intuitions.

I think there is a problem in that knowledge is about the past.

If I say "My mothers names is Anne" That could be false because my mother could have changed her name by deed poll to Susan. But It was true in the past that her name was Anne.

The laws of physics are a limited case because how many things refer to the laws of physics?
"If Germany won WW2" does not depend only on the laws of physics but on a huge range of occurrences including mental states and Historical contingencies.

If the laws of physics are certain or definite does that mean that they have been around and will be around for eternity? How many events are like this where the outcome was determined through eternity? That is to say how many laws are there with the same force.

And then there are contextual facts. Hitlers personality probably ensured that the Germans would never win WW2. If Hitler had a different psychology etc then he wouldn't be Hitler because the person we know as Hitler was defined by certain psychological traits and genetic inheritance.

So it could be "physically" impossible for the Germans to win WW2 and the only scenario in which they could have would be so radically different as to not to refer to the same things. Likewise if we said
"If Hitler had a better childhood"
Is it really possible for him to have had a different childhood without him being a different person altogether, because his parents circumstances and personalities etc would also have to be different. So I don't see that you can simply change one factor, but rather the whole causal chain would need altering.

What is it that is supposed to rest on counterfactuals?

If I say, "if I were to strike this porcelain dish with a hammer, then it would shatter," or "if I had struck this porcelain dish with a hammer, then it would have shattered," both of these utterances seem to be truth-apt (that is, possessing a truth value), yet what do they "correspond" to? — Arkady

This notion of the truth seems to revolve around the meaning of words as opposed to states of affairs.

A fact it has been said is a fact regardless of argument or anything we say. So for example imagine you were in the matrix and made the claim if I strike this (..) It will shatter"
Now in reality nothing shatters in the matrix because it is an illusion.
So I don't see how words can ever capture the truth or rather facts unless you can say "This is definitely a fact beyond refute". But there is always room for skepticism and new theories.

If someone claims "if you touch the fire you will burn your hand" they are probably probably basing that on induction. I don't think they are committed to stating law but they are assuming a regularity but not committed to an absolute truth.

The problem I have, is with counterfactuals, that are not usually about things that may be physical "laws" but about whole series of events which have numerous factors involved and where the number of possibilities explodes. In these scenarios the likelihood of a claim having any truth value is vanishing it seems.

But still reality will be the final arbiter and language is unlikely predict the limitations of reality fully.

I think that science is not the best discipline to explore the nature of arguments, because it relies on evidence. But philosophy, for example, relies mainly on arguments.

Even if some scientific claims were justified by valid arguments, evidence is still invoked or expected.

However, it seems that in philosophy, arguments are trying to ascertain things. But they then seem to only ascertain negatives and restraints, such as "That premise doesn't follow".

If we want to go from provisional facts about reality to action, then it seems that we need to cross the "is-ought" barrier. Do facts imply anything about how we ought to act? I am fatalistic. I don't see how my own thoughts and desires can effect the truth or essence of reality. I would like to be able to turn my arguments into "oughts" but am nihilistic about the possibility.

For example, I don't think that claims about climate change - however valid - can legitimately lead to the claim that we ought to prevent climate change. So, I think that arguments often slide between facts and desires or fallacious conclusions. For a determinist, reality or nature will just unfold in a remorseless determined way, regardless of our protestations. It is hard to know how we can validate any goal directed interference in nature other than with subjective individual desires.

So, in a way, you can have the survival of the fittest desire or ideology, and the restraints will be the restraints of nature's possibilities. Society utilised massive slavery for centuries and flourished, but that ideology was defeated (at an appallingly late stage). Arguments against slavery made little impact for centuries. So we could end up with any type of weird dystopian society that nature allows, regardless of counter-argument.

Answered in wrong thread

I don't see how you could have such an argument without evidence. Science seeks to explain things that exist. I don't see how you could argue something into existence.

When something already exists you can try and explain it and use arguments but evidence is the final arbiter. Things like cells and cell mechanisms and DNA were discovered by new technologies such as powerful microscopes.

I see an argument as a formal structure such as a mathematical claim in physics. The argument doesn't commit someone to believe something, but is a tool for thought and analysis.

To me, a hypothesis is a bald statement. It doesn't need premises and a conclusion. But I am not fussed with the idea that a hypothesis could be an argument. My issue is with whether arguments can replace evidence.

My idea is that arguments don't decide the truth. I am not sure what a hypothesis is exactly, but I would say that it was an interpretation of evidence. It may involve arguments that claim what follows if the hypothesis is correct. Sometimes theories are partially correct and useful, and sometimes manipulations can be done without causal explanations. I think that science makes a different type of use of arguments then other disciplines in which they are more formal tools. I'm referring more to arguments in debates.

I am talking about arguments and not data. Data is evidence. If there is evidence, then the argument is less relevant. In the case of arguments about evidence, that would be arguments about interpretation of evidence.

Democritus proposed an atomic theory of matter thousands of years before compelling evidence of their existence was found. A theory can exist without evidence for a long time. Atoms aren't simple to detect or model. But atoms always existed despite their inaccessibility. (Although maybe they will turn out not to exist eventually, lol)

Arguments against religion are different to arguments against God or a creator deity. I would agree that religions are fatally contradictory and have limited-to-no evidence. The response by some religious people will be to deny the infallibility of a religion.

I don't see what data there is that you think rules out a creator deity or the afterlife. If data was so unequivocal, there would be no need for arguments. However, interpretation of evidence is contentious. I am not arguing here that no arguments are relevant, but that they can't equal facts. The problem with evidence is that it can be utilised unsafely in arguments.

Say, for example, a bigot said that gay people have an illness, because they are more likely to suffer depression. If homosexuality caused depression, you would have to rule out other causes by looking for further evidence. So, for example, you could compare data on gay people living in liberal societies and those living in hostile societies. Any difference could implicate society as a cause of the depression.

So, I think that even when evidence is used in an argument, you need more evidence to prove a point. What concerns me is people going beyond the evidence in any direction. I think the value of studying arguments is looking for fallacies and not in proving something.

And how do you come to that decision? You convince yourself through argument. Am I wrong? — Madfool

You can come to that conclusion through experience when arguments fail.

Not really. Hypotheses are more like suggestions or speculations. Arguments are more a case of claiming what follows. Arguments rely on the truth of the premises.

That doesn't follow.

Once we decided arguments had limited scope we would rely less on them. I think they do matter in some situations but not in ascertaining the truth.

I have had a lot of arguments online and they don't seem to have had much impact apart from frustrating me.

I am not sure what method could discover the truth. A theory or argument can make predictions and these seem to validate theories. Consciousness seems to present a problem if we can't get outside of our own consciousness and have the metaphorical "God's eye" viewpoint.

The responses in this discussion have actually made me now wonder whether the truth is achievable. It just seems inaccessible. I suppose we should just be wary of absolutist or "final" claims. I think the culture of arguments or media combat is destructive and divisive because of the desire to appear to have won an argument with little nuance among this.

I am not advocating realism, I am just looking at the role of arguments in knowledge. My position is more anti-realism. I think that whatever the facts are, they probably can't be captured in theories and arguments.

However, I am also assessing the trend for arguments to be presented as decisive. You could make an argument concerning a fact, but the argument itself could be fallacious. Or you could make a sound argument, but the premises are flawed.

If there are no absolute facts and only perspectives, then arguments would probably be used to promote pragmatism or scepticism, etc. I think the value of philosophy is in testing the assumptions of claims in different theoretical perspectives. Particularly in terms of the ramifications of a finding, methodology or theory.

It is probably important to stress what an argument is doing in a discussion and not to present an argument as a route to a fact. I think a lot of people resent the relentless scepticism and questioning of philosophy. But I think that by challenging assumptions you probably get nearer to some kind of truth.

The point is to correctly describe what happened. That our parents are responsible for us existing. That it wasn't inevitable that we were created.

I don't think philosophy can be coherent if it ignores the reality of how we came to exist in the first place which has serious ramifications.

I think philosophical questions are forced on us. I don't think we philosophise out of curiosity or for entertainment.

There is a specific reason why we are here and as creatures who can reason and reflect why would that act of creating an apparently new sentience be a side issue?

I am saying force into and not forced to.

We can't chose to come into existence.

I think creating children raises ethical issues indeed. The ethical issues might arise from lack of consent or any number of other things. When you create a child they will have their own desires and will, and you know that before you create them. So I don't see how you can create a person without risking compromising their future will, or create a child in his or her own interest.

When the child comes to exist they are subject to a lot of coercion. It is not like when you create a child they can immediately assess life and gently opt out. It is usually the case that a child will be indoctrinated to accept life and is unlikely to contemplate suicide until after a prolonged period of suffering. So there is a lot of force, especially in my case where it wasn't until adulthood that I could evaluate life after intimidating religious indoctrination.

The important thing is to recognise the causal implication of creating a child. Humans can predict outcomes and possess extensive knowledge on reality which they can reflect on. So we know about a whole range of outcomes to having a child and can reflect. It is unlikely anyway could say that they thought X would not happen. We know our child will die. We know someone like Hitler had parents (The absurd extreme outcome) We know our child will like be sentient and have their own desires.

This is not an allegation we could level at other procreating species.

Being forced into existence isn't being forced to do some it is the whole process of starting to exist.

How do things come into existence?

Does everything already exist? If not then new things come into existence. But how? In science it would be through physical forces.
........
Being forced to exist would be, to be prevented from committing suicide, but being forced into existence is going from a state on nonexistence into existence.

The status of non existence for humans is both thr status of not existing as an individual body and not existing as a consciousness. It is an act of force by deliberately or careless fertilisation and egg that forces us to start to exist.

Yours appears to be a semantic quibble.

Otherwise how could anything come to exist if there was no force? A builder has to use force to turn bricks and wood into a house. We can't create ourselves but our parents can create us.

Sometimes the process of creating us is very purposeful. For example with fertility treatment where someone wants a child and the process is done with comprehensive intervention where the doctor intelligently manipulates the gametes towards a fertilisation and the parents desires are very explicit.

So it is the opposite of a biological accident but a serious intention to make someone else exist (on behalf of the parents desires).

I think the key route to nihilism is our parents creating us for no good reason leaving us with lots of unresolved issues. When you catch the bus from A to B you usually have a sense of purpose because it is a journey that you know why your on. Life isn't like that.

I don't know how we could coherently chose our parents.

I have never had children so no one could choose me as a parent. So If noone has procreational sex then "souls" couldn't access this world.

I think even on on a completely physicalist or materialist/scientific world view it is in the parents hands to create new people and is not inevitable or determined.

So I think our philosophical questions including about existence should be centred around this. I would only have child if I knew the meaning of life and not thrust them into a confusing and dangerous reality. I feel the pursuit of Objectivity has devalued human agency

Being forced into existence is not the same as being forced to do something. It is a case of going from a state of nonexistence to a state of existence. If you already existed you couldn't be forced into existence.

I mentioned that on one theory we are made of preexisting matter however our consciousness is unique. In one sense aspects of our body preexisted us such as DNA and matter but these were shaped into a new person. Like how a potter turns clay into a vase.

In the case of creating a new human you are somehow endowing matter with new consciousness. It is an act of force that is not necessary but based on a parents will unless through rape or carelessness.

How individual consciousness arises puzzles me and I fear like Rich suggests may be we chose this person we are (on a dualist view of mind body) because it is bizarre how we become conscious of being just this one person seeing all of reality through our subjective consciousness.

If we didn't chose to be this person somehow we became conscious of being and fated to be this person.

The reason I raised this issue is because I have argued elsewhere that we are forced into existence by our parents.

For example, when you put certain ingredients together in one and the same glass they might begin to interact with each other so that a new property emerges, which you might find more tasty than the separate ingredients. It's a matter of physics and biology. Any physical object or property is predisposed to have physical causes and effects... — jkop

It seems to me that things could not arise if reality did not have the appropriate dispositions but then these dispositions seem implausible especially consciousness and related mental things.

If a substance didn't have a disposition then it would seem there was no way for something new to arise from it. For instance say that there were only two sounds the musical notes C and D then Handel's Messiah couldn't have been written. Or if a planet only had a few elements on it life couldn't arise.

But science popularisers seem to be postulating a picture of increasing complexity from simplicity so that we only have to invoke some simple underlying rules....although now we have the multiverse idea and also increasing complexity has been seen at odds with entropy.

It seems puzzling to me how something could come to exist either from nothing, or come to exist from something without the appropriate dispositions. Maybe everything has always existed.

In my own life I think my earliest memory is of sitting on a potty at around two yrs old. That is my first conscious memory but it is not like I suddenly came into existence then rather there is a period of ambiguity and the unknown prior to then. I am puzzled about how we transition from never having been a conscious entity to personal awareness. Our bodies have physical antecedents such as genetics and reused matter but our consciousness doesn't have that kind of continuous chain of transformations.

I think that it is, or should be, easy to distinguish between the two types of argument. (But maybe it is just easy for me personally?)

I feel that Ignoring the distinction between two definitions for the same words is a deliberate ploy. I think that when discussing issues like consciousness,self, science, morals et al there is a deliberate failure to clearly define the subject or quibble about definitions. Sometimes you have to argue for an absolute age before the person succumbs to an agreed upon definition

I can't remember a time when I have said something like "your argument is wrong because you are a terrible person"

Imagination is a strange faculty. Imagination seems to reside in consciousness and not as a physical thing in the external world. So it is in a strange realm. So I can imagine things that aren't physically realisable. Like a flying horse. But then some of these imagination can be realised physically and that gives them a realness.
I feel puzzled by the imagination. For instance we act by imagining the future and so act based on a vision of the future which is like not living in the present, or we act based on the past (induction, memories etc).

I think the imagination produces useful fictions but they get reified. So for example religion has been highly motivational and we have beautiful Cathedrals, art and music etc. That seems to give a realness to religion Creating new specific spiritually targeted phenomena. But to what extent does this elaborate realisation of the imagination into the external world validate it or bring about realness?

I am not sure that atheist would accept that the success and creativity of religion validated it. I think you could justify any product of the imagination based on this kind of success as opposed to its truth.

In a way I think to many facts sap the imagination. However I think certain facts should sap the imagination if they discover harmful fantasies.

I have the position that facts can entail things such as if someone tells you that the building is on fire acting like it was not would be irrational. Saying I know but I don't care would no necessarily be so.

If facts didn't entail anything then we could just ignore them and try and build a fact free society but we often have to return to what is the case (such as the presence of gravitational forces)

(it is easier to respond to things like gravity that impose themselves on you and harder to know how to deal with more complex discoveries.)

I haven't got an overriding motivation other than basic survival to evade pain and discomfort but coloured with an overriding sense of depression and pointlessness.

However I do try and read a lot and listen to academic podcasts, debates and YouTube lectures.

I am agnostic about meaning. I did a degree which involved philosophy of mind and analysis of physicalism and social discourse etc which has left me with unanswered questions that leave me uncertain.

Not knowing is a peculiar kind of situation. For example if you are contemplating suicide and you don't know what it will be like. Will you survive the death of your body. If you knew exactly what the nature of your death was like than you could act in light of that. I don't have strong enough desires or adequate knowledge to reach motivational conclusions. (I have lots of thoughts swirling around my mind)

I grew up in a Fanatically religious background and spent thousands of hrs in church (it seemed like) a lot of emphasis was placed on the afterlife. The idea was that life got its meaning from the promise of the afterlife and meeting God. There was also the threat of hell spelled out every week..

In a sense I see Christianity as nihilistic because it degrades the point this life. However that background made me philosophical for an early age and when I left it I had to question the meaning of everything and try and find another meaning. For instance I went from hundreds of moral strictures (don't work on Sunday, don't watch television and listen to the radio) to no moral guidance

I feel Christianity was an elaborate justification and motivation but like The Emperors new clothes. I think leaving religion is that kind of event that exposes to you that there are elaborate social fictions.

(sorry for being long winded here)

I think evolution possibly makes sense of our motivations in a derogatory way as in service of mindless survival not truth. That possibility demotivates me. Also what I see as a lack or rationality in societies and a lack of justification demotivates me.

In summary I think that certain "facts" should have implications" And that the implications of "facts" are being ignored.

I am concerned about justification for action and values. I am highly demotivated and also I need to have a good reason to act. On one hand life seems futile which makes action pointless. (I think existentialist philosophers reached this point and contemplated suicide or incorporated into their worldview.) And on the other hand there seems to be no way to justify an action based on there being no right way to act partly because there is supposed to be no teleology (the evolutionary claim) and partly because there is no arbiter or methodology of validating actions.

The brute problem is what should I do next? And what is my reason or justification?

Richard Dawkins described us as "Giant lumbering Robots" governed by our genes. On that Evolutionary ideology what ever justification we give an action essentially we are just promoting the survival of our genes. So for example you might try and make a better world but that won't benefit you but just similar genes to yours. What ever you do that is deemed "positive" is likely to be positive only for the mindless survival of genes similar to yours.

If this theory was true I think it is a negative discovery that undermines our motivations. If we are not simply here to help similar genes to ours survive then what else are we here for?

If there is some other metaphysical reason for our existence (which I don't rule out) no one has found it. Hence we can either be brute determinist reductionist or stuck in a nihilistic position of not having adequate knowledge about our plight.

Fortunately, we don't have to work everything out on paper. Our reasoning can work through a decision, talking into account responsibilities, recent and more distant experiences, and other factors, in just a few seconds

I think your scenarios are too benign and based on limited scenarios. You seem to be making assumptions about your imagined person that aren't warranted. As if their motives are common place. I think common place actions or decisions don't require great thought. Something like choosing a career or planning to marry someone would have more life changing consequences, but there are numerous decisions to make and values to form some of which you have weeks to think about. But I don't think any calculation can validate an action. You will simply be acting on subjective preference.


Sam Harris tried to found "ought's" in statements like If You have a headache you ought to take a pain killer". However it is rather the case that if you want to end a headache you ought to take a painkiller. There are best ways to achieve things if you have a preference to do X.

How ever this leads to absurdities such as "If you want to kill lots of people you ought to buy a rifle" You can't assume that the person making a decision has the same worldview and desires as you.


Personally I am highly demotivated so I am making decisions from a place of nihilism. If I was highly motivated then my preexisting preferences would probably be sufficient to arbitrate in decisions. I actually think that the more you honestly question things the less justification you find. For instance a religious fanatic can find decision making easy because of absolutist beliefs but the more skeptical you are the less justification for action you see.

I cannot imagine a morality that was not based on emotion. That is to say I can't imagine someone either being unaffected by someone being tortured or someone having a positive response when someone is tortured and reaching a valid moral opinion.

Most of my moral evaluations are accompanied by negative emotions.

But if it is simply emotions guiding my actions there seems little room for truth.

I am not concerned with morality here. Morality happens to be the realm where people most desire ought's. In fact I am sure you will find that most people believe that there are clear rights and wrongs. I am very confident in making moral judgements without needing dogmas and am close to being a moral nihilist.

I am concerned here with going from any fact to any ought's not just moral ought's but including any claim such as "This is how best to run a school" or "Children should have an education"

I don't like your attempts to psychologize me. It seems like ad hominem.
The problem I have is that societies are not built on facts. I would have little problem if every society was sceptical and pragmatic and cautious. The problem is being a values skeptic in a relentless world which has little fundamental reflection.
Now I don't think there is anything wrong or inappropriate with anyone being depressed about life and demotivated. You haven't justified your apparent implication that I should be happy with (a pointless) existence

I don't support evolutionary psychology however it offers a reasonable paradigm to explain peoples behaviour in combination with Freud. Peoples evolved biases can work as defence mechanisms in service of continued reproduction. So people would benefit from not examining the truth to closely and maintaining positivity leading to breeding . Hence depressive realism. I see optimism bias and Just world fallacy all over the place. However what I don't understand is why I have not ever succumbed to these things. I have always felt somewhat alienated from other peoples beliefs and values. I think E.P. is to deterministic.

If I had to weigh up the implications of every action I would not have time to act. The problem of action is Like that of Buridan's ass there are lot's of equally valid options and if not equal an array of questions to be posed about each actions.

But what I am saying is that there is no way of knowing if what I am doing is right or appropriate.I think one's own desires are irrelevant. We can easily tell our self that what we are doing is appropriate without anyone to counter our internal narrative.

I think there is a very serious problem that is not as trivial as people are trying to frame it. We are not talking about me deciding what I want to have for Breakfast. We are talking about big decisions and widespread life altering philosophies.

It is one thing for me to make emotion driven small actions to amble through life and another thing to have no justification for the structures of society. And for example I want to be able to say that the murder of millions of people in The Holocaust was absolutely wrong and that we should never do such a thing again.

I am an antinatalist and not only do I think societal structures and common beliefs are highly dubious I think the least justified action is having children. I also think facts have ramifications. Whilst I don't believe external facts can lead to ought's I think they do cast doubts on widespread beliefs.

So for example say people did not believe the Titanic was sinking but the factual evidence was that it was sinking then their false beliefs could be altered by facts. That does not mean knowing the Titanic sinking means that you "ought" to try and save your life. So their are facts that make peoples beliefs false and hence they are motivated by false beliefs. I think it is one thing to not have clear ought's and to be pragmatic and another to act on false dogmas.

I agree that science is studying our minds/cognitions and senses. I think there is a false sense of objectivity that is damaging where we separate ourselves from the world and exploit it as opposed to integrating ourselves into reality, so we end up feeling alienated.

But unfortunately it seems that viewing reality as objects seems to be more effective than a psychological analysis. I suppose the arts are the way we explore our mind in relation to the world. However it seems that there are truths "out there" that we find through induction and that we should therefore seek the truth if it is available whilst not neglecting the realities produced by the arts.

I find life frightening because it seems irrational. I feel that to be more rational is to see other peoples behaviours as produced more by emotion than reason. I don't know if societies are fundamentally dysfunctional or whether I should be more resilient.

I see the arts as exploring reality in a free and it seems quite healthy way but I see life as being lived on false beliefs not the product of either logic and rationality or an appropriate utilisation of emotions.

I don't believe feelings are a source of truth nor my desires and preferences.

Imagine I enjoyed being selfish and causing pain or I was a nihilist (I am a bit). Or Imagine I desired to be immortal. I can't see why these feelings would be a valid guide of action unless I didn't mind being cruel and pursuing irrational goals.

If emotions or feelings are to guide us then I believe they should be appropriate and not arbitrary or an arbitrary relationship to external reality. But "external"£ facts don't seem to offer a grounds for appropriate feelings.

I think rationality or more specifically logic is a good source of guidance for appropriate actions in that you can challenge yours or someone else's beliefs on the grounds they are incoherent. In a way, that seems to be way philosophy doesn't seem to go anywhere because it can provide sophisticated deconstruction of arguments but not offer ought's or solutions to issues like morality and mind.

Evolutionary psychology comes closest to claiming "objectively" what motivations we should expect to have but they are deflationary accounts of motives. I have no idea what motivates other people. To me life advertises itself as undesirable and optimism is less based on facts than pessimism.

In away I see scientific discoveries like telling someone there is a fire in the building but no knowing where the escape exits are.

I don't see on what basis there is to act. Including a basis to know whether an action is right or wrong. I don't see valid grounds for creating societies.

It makes things meaningless, pointless and arbitrary.

Also I think societies are based on false objectivity or rather on principles that are taken for-granted without warrant.

However I think that sciences inability to deal with certain phenomena is a problem in terms of the type of knowledge we think we can have. Obviously there are a lot of things happening other than can be described by or reduced physics but there seems no arbiter or arbitrator like method of resolving disputes. So it is not just the case that there seem to be no "ought's" but that there seems to be no way of discerning certain truths that may exist.

I did not really want to make such a long post so I will summarise the basic point here.

How can we go beyond observations of what is the case to derive claims about what ought to be the case?

And I am interested in the validity of motivations other than the truth.