Interesting thoughts.

What I was thinking was that, contra folk conceptions of a perfectly orderly universe that obeys timeless laws, you have "breaks" in the system that occur during key transitions within the system. Kind of like how when a computer fumbles and the processing goes haywire.

The point I'm trying to make it kind of difficult to explain. But basically we're often told (reassuredly) that the universe "doesn't care" about us - aka it's neutral and not benevolent or malevolent.

But this contradicts the very experiences we have. The universe is capable of producing beings who suffer. It might not be anthropomorphized but it nevertheless can be characterized as bad. Harmful, malignant.

We can feel alienated from the rest of the world, as if we're the only ones who experience anything and everything else is just dead, lifeless matter. But isn't it quite peculiar that our of a vast ocean non-consciousness, there exist little islands of consciousness? Wouldn't it strange if we're the only beings that have consciousness?

The self-reflexivity of consciousness is a very strange aspect of it. That we're able to introspect and feel as though we don't belong is baffling. How is it physically possible that we feel as though we don't belong? Again we feel this way because the universe allows this to happen - a self-conscious and introspecting reflexive agent is a possibility of the universe. We are simultaneously at home in the universe and yet completely alienated from it.

So I have to criticize Zapffe a bit when he says that consciousness is "not-natural". On the contrary, everything in the universe is natural (nature doesn't exist exist in the first place, it's an empty word). It's natural that people can feel unnatural. Kind of disturbing, like an instance of cosmic self-hate.

There is precedent for maladaptive evolution in sexual selection. I think of the peacock's fan, an evolutionary pain in the butt, that happens, we are told, when mere survival is less of a problem than obtaining a mate. Extravagant antlers similarly.
So perhaps big brain is more about social competitiveness than dealing with the environment at large. But as a side effect, it allows the radical manipulation a 'conquest' of the environment.

Too much success, though, is also maladaptive. Consider the rampant success of Dutch Elm disease, spreads like wildfire, kills all the Elms, destroys its own niche. Unfortunately, our niche is the whole planet.

Here we are unfolding our peacock fans of mind, even though there are no ladies to impress, because we have them all the time and can't help it. It's a pain, but we keep doing it, as if the 'understanding' of a species of ape is the crown of creation. — unenlightened

Interesting. This seems to support the idea that, when natural selection is not at its most brutal (survival or nothing), sophistication can really take off exponentially, like an out-of-control automobile racing down a hill.

I'll admit I never heard of such a theory (that the brain acts as a repressive organ and not a storage and functional organ), but I don't really see how it could be true. If it were true, you'd see car accident victims (with brain damage) remembering a ton of new things. Drugs would actually give us insight and not just "whoa dude" catch-phrases.

In a certain sense, the brain does act as a filter. We're constantly bombarded by countless stimuli, and the brain has to narrow the focus down to the relevant stimuli. We aren't consciously aware of our toes, or our scalp, or the back of our throat. We aren't consciously aware of the corners of our eyesight, or the rhythmic beating of our heart in the ear canal.

But to say that there is an entire world that our brain "represses" without our control seems to be quite extravagant.

It's clear that many animals are like us, at least in behavior. And if it's any indication from our own studies of our own species, it's that mental activity is largely behind behavior.

Check our /r/likeus for cute gifs and whatnot of animals doing things that humans do. It's cute but also very thought-provoking. Some of the things these animals do are astonishingly human. Had it not been for their physical difference in appearance, they would have passed as humans or near-humans.

In any rate, when we're talking ethics, we can't assume we know what it's like to be a bat, or an antelope, or a cockroach. We have to assume they can experience things, particularly suffering or a wish to survive, the things that make something of ethical value.

For most people who like 'dong a lot,' I can't help but think that they ought to do even more and put a bullet through their head. Je je — The Great Whatever

What the hell bro. I don't know what to say to this.

If you care about suffering, you'll do something about it.

From what I can tell, it's that idealism accounts for accidents only because what happens outside of our perceptions is dependent upon what happens within our perception. The unperceived is still given, but it is not given to the subject. idk this shit's confusing.

How would the transcendental idealist or simulationist deal with the fact that accidents happen all the time? I could get struck by lightning and never see the bolt before it kills me.

Of course it's not a big deal if you accept a kind of primary vs secondary quality distinction. The bolt of lightning would have primary qualities regardless of whether or not I perceive the bolt.

But transcendental idealism seems to argue that what we do not perceive is in some kind of "proto" state, or a state of pure potentiality and no effable characteristics.

I feel like idealism might have some substance behind it, but it seems to fail to account for accidents, as well as the experience of discovering something new.

Other than idealism, property dualism (a la Spinoza) is one of the better positions imo. In certain formulations it might seem like panpsychism; for example we could theorize that the mental is merely a relationship between two material objects. The experience of red is the secondary quality that derives its existence from the relationship between the perceiving subject and the object reflecting radiation.

I don't really understand Aristotle's psychology, maybe that has something to it.

Peter Zapffe and Julio Cabrera. Also Philipp Mainlander.

So sure, my argument is that everything is "made of apeiron", which sounds like talking about a primal stuff.

But the difference is that your notion of this stuff is that it is already concrete. It is already formed. It already obeys a conservation principle and a locality principle. — apokrisis

That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about primal material. It's not concrete, you can't hold it. Concreteness is complex, prime material is simple. Phenomenologicaly it is vague, metaphysically it is as simple as it can possibly get.

As Plotinus said, the "One" can only be arrived at by figuring out what it isn't. And so the same thing applies to the Aristotelian Substance, for it cannot be predicated upon but merely identified as a necessary component of Being.

I'm not interested in your narrow definition of what counts as metaphysics. I merely point out that I defend the very first important metaphysics model in philosophy - Anaximander's hierarchical symmetry breaking tale of the apeiron. — apokrisis

Apparently you're willing to sacrifice all other metaphysical theorizing though for a vision that is quasi-empirical and belongs more in the field of science than speculative philosophy.

because it's trying to pose it as an empi[ri]cal state. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Exactly. Phenomenologically, substance is vague. But it isn't actually "vague".

Although I'm sympathetic to the idea that vagueness is a real feature of reality. Just not the hypostasis. The hypostasis is always there. Vagueness is a contingent feature of the empirical, and thus observable, world.

Also Spinoza is bae.

Ye gods. Outright mysticism. — apokrisis

You're calling Plato a mystic. OK.

Otherwise your hypostatic reductionist framework is in deep shit. Isn't that a rather personalised invocation of final cause? — apokrisis

I adopted the hypostasis view because it makes sense and then adopted the necessary components like substance later.

I hear a bark, I believe there to be a dog. I recognize metaphysical reductionism, therefore I believe there to be a prime substance. It would be silly to not recognize the existence of a dog. So why is it silly to recognize the existence of prime substance? It's existence is narrowed down by what it is not, and the stuff we see around us are like "echoes" to to speak of its existence, just as the bark is an "echo" (notification) of the existence of the dog.

In the Neo-Platonic view: if what is meant to explain something is complex, it requires further explanation. That's the reductionism I'm speaking of here. It can't be an infinite chain of complexity. There has to be something simple in which everything emerges from.

So again I'm not against systems or processes. I recognize that a spider web cannot exist without its structural integrity from all its lines and nodes. But I also recognize that these lines and nodes are complex in themselves and cannot exist without silk.

And so the point of metaphysics is to inquire about what the most simple basis of reality is. Its joints.

Well the obvious retort is that vagueness exists vaguely. And we can speak about that intelligibly as being the antithesis of the crisply formed world from where we ask such questions. — apokrisis

At what point does something go from vague to crisp? Is it vague, vague, vague BOOM crispness? Why does this happen? And how does this happen outside of time?

So sure, one has to use a little poetic licence to introduce the idea. But it is of no real interest unless it can be mathematically modelled. Just like quantum foam, virtual particles, zero point energy, spontaneous symmetry breaking and the many other useful physical concepts that depend on a notion of "pure fluctuation". — apokrisis

What is poetry and what is not?

Why is it of no real interest? Because you don't find it exciting or personally interesting? Because it's not useful?

If these concepts depend upon pure fluctuation, then this pure fluctuation needs to be explained further. Otherwise you're resting science on poetry.

You are raising quibbles that have long been left behind in science and math informed metaphysics. — apokrisis

What I don't understand is, if this great narrative of naturalized metaphysics was so successful, why it's not well known today. You would think that this kind of thinking would have been implemented early if it was indeed sophisticated and coherent.

So either it was ignored in a millennia-old intellectual conspiracy, or it didn't make sense. That, or it's a recent trend emerging from the chaos of 19th and 20th century theoretical physics and the subsequent loss of orientation. Or everyone is lazy and screwing everyone else over with their bullshit so they can keep their tenures (both naturalized and non-naturalized philosophers). Or, if it's because this movement exists within an (esoteric) circle, it's not the fault of everyone else that they don't get it. Coherent communication is key.

Are these quibbles actually answered or are they left behind, pushed into the corner and forgotten about? What seems to be the case is that these people you speak of have literally left behind these questions in favor of ones that are more useful or stimulating while continuing to use the term "metaphysics" when they're really doing philosophy of science or science itself. They're not concerned with the debate over universals, they're concerned with how similar behavior emerged regardless of universalism or nominalism. These questions aren't relevant to what they wish to study. Which is fine. But it's confusing when you say that this is metaphysics when the overwhelming literature surrounding metaphysics does not match with what they do.

And you find this a self-evident and undeniable truth because? .... [please fill in blank]. — apokrisis

Because it's what makes sense to me. I've stated my reasons and tried to make it as clear as I could.

I mean has science found some such ultimate basis? Surely what science is finding that wind the clock back to beginnings and it all goes quantum vague (indeterminate). — apokrisis

I view metaphysics as the study of being qua being. Essentially it speculates about what cannot be observed. Indeed, it speculates upon the necessary conditions for observation to even occur. Being, not beings.

A shadow cannot exist without a body blocking out the light. The properties of the world are like shadows and depend upon a body that has no properties.

And is it even an intelligible clam? Just because most of what we know from our own scale of being seems to have a substantial underpinning, how can it be turtles all the way down? How can there be a first definite stuff with no cause? Doesn't that do the ultimate violence to the very notion of causality you hope to employ. — apokrisis

That's the point of Substance. It can't be turtles all the way down, under this scheme. There needs to be a first definite "stuff" out of logical necessity, similar to the logical necessity of God in Aristotle and Aquinas' theology. It's why asking "what caused God?!" misses the entire point of the argument - under the metaphysical scheme from which they are operating, God is a necessary component. So the issue here is to explain how the metaphysical scheme is problematic, not necessarily attempting to dissolve an issue within the framework.

Peirce's semiotic approach - which grants that beginnings can be vague, an unstructured sea of fluctuation - is the one that fits a generally informational and developmental metaphysics (of the kind to be found in physics and cosmology today). — apokrisis

This is what I'm talking about. What the hell does an "unstructured sea of fluctuation" mean apart from poetry? How can something fluctuate without structure? What does it even mean to be vague, and why did this vagueness suddenly break?

If you want to identify this vagueness as Substance, then you're on my side. Vagueness is the hypostasis of reality, from which all beings are birthed from like an "apeiron" as you like to say. But this immediately runs into problems, I'd say, because there's no explanation as to how this vagueness exists, as if its vagueness isn't dependent upon anything else and is just floating around somewhere in non-spacetime. And if you accuse me of misusing the term "floating" (since there's no space or time in which to float in), then this point equally applies to you're use of an "unstructured sea of fluctuation".

We don't need to do cosmology or physics to understand that there needs to be a fundamental Being.

Vagueness would then be the phenomenologically-closest thing to describe Substance as, since Substance can't even be ascribed any properties like vagueness. Our knowledge of Substance would only be out of logical necessity and not out of direct empirical observation, as this would be impossible. It would be out of a narrowing of possibilities, just as Aristotle and Aquinas narrowed the possibilities and came to the conclusion that a God exists.

So a more radical alternative is already demanded as reductionism can't ground itself. — apokrisis

On the contrary, metaphysical reductionism is a necessity. Scientific reductionism, probably not. But we shouldn't confuse the two as the same thing.

If what I said is an assertion, then everything you said is an assertion as well. I'm coming from a certain view point, and you are coming from a different one. At this point we're both talking past each other.

Give me a understandable explanation of why my reductionism is wrong, preferably without using unnecessary jargon, and I'll change my views. I'm not opposed to systems and processes, but I don't think they are the underlying reality. They're second-order phenomena. Why should I abandon this hypostasis view and adopt your position, and what does your position hold that is different from mine?

The biggest reason why I have so much difficulty discussing things with you is that I have no idea what the hell "vagueness" is supposed to mean or be, nor "structure" in the metaphysical sense, or what the evolution of space and time means outside of an empirical phenomenon happening within space and time.

So there's processes in nature, like a fish tank filled with water and other stuff. But the fish tank isn't a process in the same way a ripple on the water is a process, or the hum of the filter is a process. For each time we postulate a process, we need to postulate a stage in which this process is occurring. Otherwise we're left with a vague and empty term that we cannot possibly imagine. Which in fact was the definition of Substance - that which is predicated upon but cannot be predicated itself. We can't imagine substance, we can only use analogies and appeals to logical necessity. And so if we can't conceptualize Process, then it becomes the exact same thing as Substance - both are the hypostasis of reality. There's no point in calling it Process, then, because it only brings confusion, since Process is something we can conceptualize (like a wave, or system, or what have you) and if the underlying hypostasis cannot be conceptualized, then there's nothing similar between a wave and the so-called primordial Process.

Of course we can say "everyTHING is in flux", and claim that no concrete particular is static. We can say that the entire universe is ever-changing and moving. And so we begin to fall into Heideggerian metaphysics.

Well I think processes are dependent upon a hypostasis. It doesn't make any sense to talk of structure, vagueness, proto-objecthood, process, or what have you without an underlying hypostasis.

It reminds me of Meillassoux's correlationism. I'm in the middle of reading his After Finitude, so I'll have to post some more later, but Meillassoux definitely has ideas about digitalization, ancestrality, and what have you.

What? Are you saying a liking for systems thinking is like homophobia? — apokrisis

No.

And sure we can say something about a sparrow. But again, don't mix synchronic epistemology and the diachronic ontological issue of universals. — apokrisis

The metaphysician isn't concerned with how universals evolved. He's concerned with whether or not universals exist. The evolving structure narrative can be explained without universals.

So you make pointing at particulars seem like something we can freely do at any chosen moment. But that is to confuse epistemology and ontolology if you are hoping to talk about the complicated and hierarchical structuring of nature that sees a sparrow emerge as a natural kind - a genus - let alone produces some particular bird before us. — apokrisis

Where does this sparrow emerge from? How is this "ancestral" generality not a particular? The fact that we can identify it and communicate about it shows that it's something. Maybe not like a sparrow, a chair, or a hydrogen-fusing hypergiant star, but something regardless.

(sexual ethics essentialism???). — apokrisis

Yes, you said that many today are disregarding universalism because of social issues - universalism is closely tied to essentialism, and essentialism has a rather blotchy history of labeling non-conformers as dysfunctional.

I mean sure, we can have "higher-level" pleasures or what have you, but at the end of the day it's pain or pleasure. That's what drives our decisions.

Why is nominalism incompatible with this narrative? There might be a historic narrative of universalism, but nominalism, albeit clunky, isn't totally out of the question. There doesn't seem to be anything against a scientific nominalism except for a tendency to associate tradition with truth.

(being that part of science's success that quixotically wants to reject its own philosophical grounds for social reasons.) — apokrisis

You talking about sexual ethics essentialism here?

You miss the point of science talking a hierarchical naturalistic view on the question. It does mean you can go out and measure universality in terms of generalised simplicity vs particularised complexity - gravity vs sparrows. — apokrisis

This strikes me as a scientific model. The star is condensed and then explodes in a supernova. The pupa transforms into a butterfly. The tree goes from complexity to degeneracy as it decomposes. And generalised simplicity becomes particularized complexity - none of these actually tell us whether or not universals exist because all of this can happen under a nominalist scheme, because neither are empirically weighted.

Generalised simplicity and particularized complexity seem to require properties themselves, namely, generality, simplicity, particularity, complexity, etc. These might not be real properties, only descriptions of a state of affairs. But the state of affairs is general, simple, particular, or complex or what have you depending on the history of events, and events transpire depending on what properties exist. Explaining how generalised simplicity becomes particularized complexity doesn't really tell us whether or not universals exist, because at any moment of time, a property is instantiated in virtue of the fact that something exists.

I don't see why we should expect that a physicist in say 400 years' time will see universals as the same as we do now. It certainly hasn't worked out that way so far. — mcdoodle

There's a difference, though, between what universals exist, and whether or not universals even exist in the first place. For the metaphysician it doesn't really matter what the different universals are, what matters is whether or not we can identity a property as a universal. For metaphysical positions are largely empirically equivalent: whether or not universals exists, things at least appear to be similar.

How universals, if they exist, are instantiated in the world would be a job more suited for science: we can see how hierarchies evolve, how systems communicate, how the general structure of the world emerged from a heat bath in order to dissipate entropy. But I don't see how any of this would ever be able to change our views on the existences of universals. Nothing changes if I adopt a trope theoretic position or a nominalist position, because metaphysics is not an empirical science in the sense that physics is. Its goal is to explain what's "going on behind the scenes" so to speak, outside of the immediate reach of scientific instruments, the features of reality that everyone is exposed to in every second of their conscious awareness. These questions are "epistemically metaphysical".

I'm hesitant to say this but I doubt the vast majority of practicing physicists know or care of the various positions on similarity and constitution. It's the job of philosophy of science and metaphysics to elucidate these prior theoretical devices, because physicists have more important things to work on.

Other than Aristotle what are some good resources on four cause causation, in particular its relationship to science?

In general, the inference scheme 'everyone thinks x' to 'x' is invalid. People having an opinion doesn't make the opinion so. If everyone believes the world is flat, it's still round. — The Great Whatever

I think John is more concerned with the method of finding truth. Or, in this case, estimating truth. I don't think he's going to deny that group agreement is fallible. It's just that group consensus is the best thing we have going for us, as well as keeping the door open for any changes.

By mere fact that we are conceived, raised, and survive through social means- how it can it be otherwise that we do not take into account the other? — schopenhauer1

Levinas, I believe, identifies our first acknowledgement of the Other when we figure out it has a will of its own. In a more scientific sense we might identity this moment as the point in time in which the toddler recognizes that there are other people and that it is not omniscient nor omnipotent.

Happiness can occur during pain, but it is through a prism of pain, and thus it can be said that a painless form of happiness is preferred to a happiness but through the prism of pain. — schopenhauer1

I liken it to a tree with fruit.

If we're to call them metaphysical, then we ought to distinguish between the metaphysics Carnap was criticizing and his apparent "metaphysics" that bears so little resemblance to the aforementioned metaphysics that it might as well be called something else. More like linguistic analysis.

Here's a link to a book on externalism, or the extended mind, btw: http://www.imd.inder.cu/adjuntos/article/604/The%20Extended%20Mind.pdf

I got you fam. (Y)

As a follow up, your question also reminds me that for some time I've had the thought that Aristotle may prove useful in further clarifying and possibly widening Schopenhauer's metaphysics. I wrote some brief notes to myself on it a while ago and can share them with you if you want. — Thorongil

I'd be interested in reading what you have. I can't say that I ever thought that a connection could be made between Aristotle and Schopenhauer, considering Schopenhauer is indebted to Kant, and Kantian metaphysics is strikingly anti-realist in comparison to Aristotelian realism. If anything I would have thought Schopenhauer and Plato would have been similar...but Schopenhauer with his transcendental rejection of the immanent world paired with Aristotle's embrace of the teleological immanency? I don't know...

I can dismiss property dualism, or at least panpsychism because it seems that if panpsychism there would be no way to know where my consciousness starts and another begins, but what I experience is that I'm a being in a body. And there is still all the issues common to substance dualism (for example, how do tiny conscious things interact with physical brain?) — anonymous66

Externalism brah. The mind isn't an isolated specimen.

I made this a while ago, posted elsewhere, but here is a rough sketch of what I believe is the value of a life:



In other words, the value is equal to the personal pleasure minus the personal suffering (which is multiplied by a certain constant, since suffering is more pressing than pleasure), minus the net suffering caused by the individual on other persons (multiplied by the same constant), in which pleasure and suffering are measured by intensity, duration, and likelihood of happening. The amount of pleasure the individual causes other people is left out, since it can lead to instrumentalizing the individual.

I believe Peirce actually thought that matter was just condensed mind.

Logic works for us not by accident but because the Universe itself operates "logically". — apokrisis

Does Peirce think propositions are a real aspect of objective reality? Kind of like causal dispositions?

One can act out of self interest without acting in the interest of obtaining pleasure or avoiding pain, it seems to me. Then again, perhaps this is impossible. I'm not sure. — Thorongil

I'm not sure if harming oneself out of self-interest is even coherent. Surely, we can go through some tough times for the greater good, the overall goal, but that's still self-interest. Even a masochist who gives themselves pain is still doing something they want to be done (even if this is not the best thing for them, something a nihilist would reject since it's an impersonal value).

There's different kinds of nominalism, which can make it confusing. One kind of nominalism rejects abstract objects. The one you were referring to is actually a form of immanent universalism (re: Aristotle, contra Plato). Another form of nominalism rejects any universals entirely, whether they be transcendental or immanent, something that Ockham and Quine thought. There is no such thing as "red-ness" or "round-ness" or "mass" or anything like that - all that exists are particular individuals. The problem with this form is that it inevitably fails to explain why things are similar in the first place. Even trope theory fails because it doesn't explain why tropes are similar.

Whereas univeralism doesn't have to explain this, because all instantiations are of the same entity, either as an immanent universal (in which the universal is "stretched" across its various instantiations) or a transcendental universal in which the universal is abstract but instantiated in the real world as well.

I think a nihilist would be correct to reject "the existence of impersonal values" . It doesn't seem to make sense to say that values exist apart from being held. — John

Collective personal values may make an impersonal value. Impersonal values tend to describe states of affairs: if you have to pick between scenario A that has 10 people experiencing great pleasure and scenario B which has 20 people experiencing great pleasure, it is clear that scenario B is impersonally better than scenario A. There seems to be a value to collective personal values.

So the nihilist might say that there is no difference between the two states. The anti-realist would merely have to say there is no objective difference in value between the states. The nihilist, though, being an anti-realist, would have to not only presume that there is no objective difference but also argue that they feel no motivation to pick scenario B over scenario A.

The trouble with value nihilism is that the nihilist still has to make a decision. And unless they're going to make decisions at random and without any deliberation, their nihilism starts to fall apart.

Yes, nominalism gets it backwards. Things are not similar because of our language, they are similar because of their ontological makeup. The names we place on qualities are names of universals.

Is it not be the case that a nihilist rejects the existence of impersonal values? It would be impossible to live as a nihilist and believe that one's pleasure and one's pain are value-less and meaningless. Our choices depend on our evaluations of a situation.

From this it seems that nihilism inherently devolves into crude hedonism. It doesn't matter what the source is, since morality would not exist and aesthetic judgement would be unwarranted. It would be entirely in-the-moment, what are you experiencing right now.

I'm not interested in truth which seems overrated: an important-sounding value you put into a system if you want. I like clarification and insight. I doubt there is truth, I suppose: philosophy seems to me non-progressive, and I like it for that. — mcdoodle

I suppose this means you aren't very interested in, say, analytic philosophy? Analyticism does not use phenomenology very much, it's more intuitions and logic.

Well, TIL