Maybe it's an attempt to keep the focus on race since the events of the summer. Every year this happens. Every year nothing changes. — frank

I'll ask again. Please explain in what way calling racial conditions in the US a war makes a solution to those issues easier or more likely.

according to the video, the classic Romans thought "genius" is synonymous with "individuality." — Nagel

Emerson uses the word in a similar sense in "Self-Reliance."

I shun father and mother and wife and brother when my genius calls me. I would write on the lintels of the doorpost, Whim. I hope it is somewhat better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day in explanation. Expect me not to show cause why I seek or why I exclude company.

Is there a race war underway? — frank

No.

I think it's safe to say that most Americans don't realize a race war is underway. — frank

Please explain in what way calling racial conditions in the US a war makes a solution to those issues easier or more likely. All they do is give one group of people an opportunity to feel self-satisfied.

both ‘will’ and ‘intentionality’ have broader meanings than simply human will or conscious intention. — Wayfarer

No, they really don't. Sure, maybe chimpanzees can will and intend. I don't know. Not amoeba. You are redefining words for your own convenience.

Chinese philosophy doesn’t really have a bearing on these questions which really are peculiar to the modern West. I think Schopenhauer’s conception of ‘will’ as a universal striving or wanting is much nearer the mark. — Wayfarer

I've experienced will in both a Western and Taoist context. They are the same thing. I haven't read much Schopenhauer. Seems like you and he are messing with the language together. Since this is philosophy, I'll acknowledge that that's the way things are done. Confuse everyone by changing definitions whenever you please.

On the other hand, if you've redefined "will" and "intent," you've also redefined "consciousness," into something that has nothing to do with human self-awareness.

Yes, I do. Of course, a bacterium doesn't *think* anything, or say 'oh shit I'm in trouble'. It's not a conscious being, or reflective, or intelligent. But it's a living organism, and living things are characterised by homeostasis. Note the action-verb in the definition of homeostasis: 'seeks equilibrium'. — Wayfarer

So, to be consistent you'd also have to think a plant has a will to seek the sun. You've completely changed the meaning of the word "will." Here are some definitions:

• the faculty by which a person decides on and initiates action.
• control deliberately exerted to do something or to restrain one's own impulses.
• a deliberate or fixed desire or intention.

So, you think bacteria decide and desire.

We can stop this. It's not as if I don't know what you are talking about. It's not as if I can't understand why you feel the way you do. I just think it is a misleading and non-productive way to look at consciousness.

Lao Tzu didn't even think people should be willful. Wu wei, action without acting, is acting without will. If I can do it, why can't a nematode?

Would I be right in guessing that is the sum total of your knowledge of that book ;-) — Wayfarer

Yes, although I have read other writings that discuss the same issues. I have also spent a lot of time paying attention to my own personal experience self-consciousness.

the ability to survive, the will to survive, are not present in inorganic nature. — Wayfarer

Do you think a bacterium has a "will to survive?" What does that even mean? It doesn't have a will to survive. It survives or it doesn't.

I had the view that everything in theory is reducible to physics and that everything is matter and energy. Recently I came across emergentism and holism and complexity theory. Which is making me confused. The statement that the sum of parts can't explain the whole and that higher order phenomenon even in principle can't be reduced to physics is quite disturbing to me. — Swimmingwithfishes

I also came from materialism. It seemed so simple. But alas, it's not. It's actually a lot more interesting than that. There is a place to feel at home, welcome here in our universe without heading off for mysticism or spiritualism. We are meant to be here.

Here's a link to a famous article written in 1972 - "More is Different."

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/177/4047/393

You'll find it referenced in just about every article you read on the hierarchies of science and emergence. If you read on beyond this article, you'll find that things may be a bit more complex than Anderson writes, but he lays a great foundation and he writes well and clearly.

Laws of nature and science are a really different matter. It may make sense to ask those questions in a separate discussion.

The problem it articulates is that of intention - that life, even the very simplest forms of life, seem to possess an intentional aim, namely, to survive and propagate. And it's hard to imagine how 'the intention to survive' could even be concieved in terms of chemical replication. — Wayfarer

Now we are in the realm of evolution as described by Darwin. Survival has nothing to do with intention or purpose. If certain characteristics or behaviors make an organism more likely to survive than an organism without those characteristics or behavior, and if those characteristics or behaviors can be passed on genetically, the organism will be more likely to survive until it can reproduce and pass those characteristics or behaviors on to its offspring.

What concerns me about the scientific analysis, is that it often can't help but be reductionist: to declare that life is simply a complex transactional relationship between various classes of molecules. I can see why that kind of analysis appeals to engineers (like yourself!), but I think it leaves something out. — Wayfarer

This is from the Amazon description of Nagel's Mind and Cosmos:

And the cosmological history that led to the origin of life and the coming into existence of the conditions for evolution cannot be a merely materialist history, either. An adequate conception of nature would have to explain the appearance in the universe of materially irreducible conscious minds, as such.

I don't buy the views expressed in either your or Nagel's quotes above. They seem disrespectful to me. They seem to deny that consciousness is integral to, an intimate part of, our universe. Consciousness is nothing special any more than neutrinos, cockroaches, or I are. It's just one of what Lao Tzu would call the 10,000 things. Just stuff.

One of the questions to ask, is if the origin of life occurs naturally as a result of the concatenation of favourable circumstances, why doesn't it continue to happen? — Wayfarer

Good question, although I don't know if it's relevant to this discussion. Here's a first guess - the world is already full. No room for newly generated organisms. I'll do some reading to see what other people say.

It is generally portrayed by media outlets that the origin of life can simply be explained by Evolution - yet the only known mechanism for evolution that we have discovered in the universe simply cannot do it. — Gary Enfield

No reputable biologist in the last 100 years, if ever, has proposed evolution as described by Darwin as the mechanism for the origin of life.

Abiogenesis has failed to show that all of the 22 necessary amino acids for life can be generated from the same chemical mix/start point, because chemical environments necessary for some amino acids would be harmful to others. They also require a certain mix of base chemicals to achieve the chemical make up of DNA and RNA - chemicals - and those chemicals were not thought to be present on earth - but only in surrounding space at best. — Gary Enfield

...forming just a simple average protein (involving a thousand or more amino acids) from just the necessary 22 amino acid components, (out of a selection of 500), by chance alone, — Gary Enfield

You have misrepresented the current scientific understanding of potential mechanisms for abiogenesis. No current biologist proposes that cells are built up from constituent chemicals "by chance alone." The only ones I've seen who do are creationism apologists trying to undermine the credibility of current science. Have you read any modern science-based literature on abiogenesis? Suggest "Life's Ratchet," recommended by @apokrisis a few years ago. It changed my understanding of how the world works.

Perhaps your reason 3 is the most important to consider. — Jack Cummins

The ones closest to my own experience are Reason #s 1, 5, and 7. I don't have any feeling that there is an unseen order. I was trying to make a complete list. That doesn't mean I buy them all.

The working definition of religion which I will offer is one offered by William James in, 'The Varieties of Religious Experience' :
'Were one asked to characterise the life of religion in the broadest and most general terms possible, one might say that it consists of the belief that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto.' — Jack Cummins

I'm not sure James' definition matches mine exactly, but I'll stick with it because, well, we're supposed to use the assumptions provided in the original post.

Why do people need religious beliefs and ideas? — Jack Cummins

Reason #1 - Let's not call it a need. I think it's a capacity and a tendency. People see God for the same reason they see the rest of reality. Our minds are built, evolved that way. We look for patterns.

Reason #2 - Maybe there really is a God independent of humans.

Reason #3 - Maybe there is an unseen order.

Reason #4 - People tend to personify things. This is one of those capacities and tendencies discussed in Reason #1. God is the personification of the world.

Reason #5 - The world is a wonderful place. Humans feel grateful. We need to have someone to be grateful to.

Reason #6 - We're afraid of dying and want to believe we'll live forever. I don't like this one. It's the one used by militant atheists to sneer at religion and religious believers.

Reason #7 - People have direct experience of God, or at least something. Something that comes before thought. Before concepts. Something unspeakable, such as the Tao.

Reason #8 - Cause the Bible, and our parents, tell us so.

Reason #9 - Some or all of these.

At least one part of your story is not in tune with current understanding.

I think that we evolved slowly over a period of 350 million years. — Ken Edwards

3.5 billion years.

No ather animal has self awarenes. — Ken Edwards

This is probably not true.

Eternal life in exchange for Philosophy Forums and Hershey bars with almonds? — Ken Edwards

It was fine until they took out the whole almonds and started putting in pieces.

The question still remains, why do you set up an explicit chain of inference? Can you epistemically justify doing it? — Curious Layman

The explicit chain of inference is justification. If not, what is?

Why you don't do it when building your opinion about the world? — Curious Layman

My opinion, what I called a model, of the world comes from the sum total of my experience. For me, it isn't made up of statements that are true or false. It's a picture. That doesn't mean it can't be wrong, but it's not all wrong just because part of it is. It constantly changes based on new experience.

It seems your definition of foundationalism only applies to the physical world. For instance, do you set up an explicit chain of inference when making a moral decision? — Curious Layman

Moral decisions, in my experience, are not rational, although I guess they could be. A rational argument starts with assumptions. In a non-moral decision about the world, those assumptions may come from induction - experience with the world. With a moral decision, the assumptions come from inside. Here's what Lao Tzu wrote:

Therefore, when the Way is lost, only then do we have virtue;
When virtue is lost, only then do we have humanity;
When humanity is lost, only then do we have righteousness;
And when righteousness is lost, only then do we have propriety.

To dramatically oversimplify, the Way, or the Tao, is the world unmediated by human thought. Virtue, or Te, is our experience of the Tao. The rest of the moral behaviors are in a descending ladder - humanity, righteousness, and propriety. Virtuous behavior comes through direct human experience of the Tao.

True moral behavior comes from inside.

At some level, when someone asks what something means, they're asking what it points to, e.g. "moon" points to that big round thing in the sky. That's the test I use. What does life point to? I can think of two choices 1) nothing and 2) itself. Either is fine, but let's go with 2 - the meaning of a life is the experience of that life.

When I'm going to make a specific decision based on specific information, I have to be able to set up an explicit chain of inference connecting what I know and how I know it. I used to do this all the time writing engineering reports. I guess that's foundationalism.

When I'm evaluating the plausibility of new information in general, I'm more likely to do it based on intuition, which, for me, is a reflection of all the other things I know and how they fit together. I carry a model of the universe around in my head. When I hear something new, I hold it up against the model and see if and where it fits in. I guess that's coherentism.

Why are you starting this new discussion when you have one that's almost exactly the same already open?

'mercan. — Banno

Murican.

Thanks @Noble Dust

I haven’t been on the forum for about a year. That’s not the first time I’ve disappeared for a while. Generally it’s because they ban someone I care about. Sometimes I just run out of things to say. This time – both. I miss it here, so I come back from time to time just to hang around. There are usually a few posts I want to respond to just to tell the posters what boneheads they are. The forum clearly still needs me. It’s never seemed to me that’s a good enough reason to come back.

A few weeks ago I came across your poetry discussion. I love poetry and thought maybe this would be a good time to come back…. But I’m very lazy. Well. Yesterday I was reading a Finnish detective novel (in English). They referenced a Finnish poet – Henry Parland, so I pushed on the page, clicked on the button, and there I was – Here’s one of his poems:

My hat
was run over
by a trolley
yesterday.
This morning
my coat took a walk
to some place
far away.
This afternoon
my shoes
happened to get assassinated.
— I’m still here?
that’s just
i t.

This is why I can only read books on Kindle now. Sometimes the most fun I have is following a chain of links that started in whatever book I am currently reading. The poem was included in an article in “Poetry” magazine called “"Poetry Not Written for Children that Children Might Nevertheless Enjoy,” written my Lemony Snicket. Here’s a link:

[url=http://]https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/article/246328[/url]

It has a bunch of poems in a similar vein along with smart, amusing commentary. How could you not want to read an article with a title like that? I like the way Snicket writes. He is clear, simple, and graciously educational.

I don’t like long posts, so I’ll stop here.

S is my friend. It has been so moving to me how he has changed over the last year or so. I can't believe you banned him now but didn't two years ago. @Baden, @jamalrob, you have no loyalty. You should be ashamed.

I love the forum, but I'm done with it.

Hoyden - a boisterous girl

Adjective - hoyendish.

I have an affinity for hoyendish girls.

I really aspire towards greatness, but I can't seem to grasp it. — Noble Dust

Those who aspire to greatness probably shouldn't spend their time arguing over new names for an internet philosophy forum.

I don't feel qualified, but I'm up for the task. Reminds me of the days when I accidentally became...the arbiter of truth in some bizarre thread of yours? What was that again? — Noble Dust

I remember that. It was some game someone else set up where you can change the rules of the game and the last set of rules has priority over all the older ones until someone adds new rules. All my attempts to lead you to greatness seem to fizzle out.

.

Exactly! That seems to make sense because fitness (whatever that is actually thought to be) does nothing to guarantee reproduction on an individual level, but simply makes it more likely if averaged out over sufficiently large populations; so there is no correlation of fitness with genetic inheritance on the individual level, but only on the group or species level. — Janus

Fitness does definitely promote reproduction on an individual level - that's how natural selection works. To vastly oversimplify, an individual with some trait that gives it a survival or reproductive advantage is more likely to pass its genetic makeup on to descendants. Then there are more offspring with that advantageous trait. They then pass it on and the frequency of that trait in the population increases, thus helping the population adapt to changing conditions, i.e. evolution.

Organisms don't evolve. Species evolve. Maybe some other levels of genetic organization evolve. The mechanism by which species evolve is by the action of individuals that have some survival or reproductive advantage passing it on to their off-spring.

“Given facts about population growth, *if* the human species lasts for a long time into the
future, then the great majority of humans who ever live will turn out to have
lived at a later time than now, in a more advanced society than this. If that’s the
case, then you should view it as surprising that you would find yourself living in
this primitive time, rather than in the advanced future with the high population.
On the other hand, if the human species is not going to last much longer, then it
wouldn’t be surprising that you’d be living now rather than in the advanced
future. Therefore, the fact that you find yourself living now is *evidence that*
the human species will not last long into the future.” — PhilosophyAttempter

So, let's change the game a bit. We'll use cards. There is a well-shuffled deck with 1,000,000,000 cards.

First condition - I take a card from the deck. It's the 10,009,361 of clubs. There is only a one in a billion chance of picking that card. Shouldn't I be surprised? No, of course not. After all, it had to be something. Actually, I'm very surprised! Where the hell did you get a deck of cards with a billion cards in it?

Second condition - Before I draw, I make a prediction of what the card will be. I predict the 452,467,292 of hearts. I draw and pick the 452,467,292 of hearts. Am I surprised. You bet your ass I'm surprised.

What's the difference in the two conditions - It's that the result was predicted in advance. It's not surprising that I was born, as a matter of fact, the probability is one, otherwise I wouldn't be here to respond to your post. You have just recreated the faulty logic of the strong anthropic principle.

The 'species' doesn't think, react, hunt, shop, cook, and eat. — Bitter Crank

Or, more importantly, die or fail to reproduce. Yes, of course species become extinct, but that is a long-term manifestation of the action of many organisms over many years. If my memory is correct, the average life of a species is a million years or more. Another question - how many species die out without a successor species? For example - birds evolved from dinosaurs, i.e. dinosaurs didn't die out, at least not all of them, they became something else.

See my @StreetlightX's post and my response above.

This is not really the case, although it is often thought to be. Natural selection acts on any entity or entities which exhibit variation, reproduction and heritability. Although individual organisms fit this bill nicely, these constraints are broad enough to be applicable to genes, populations, and even species. That this is the case is captured in the idea that natural selection operates at various levels of selection. Thus for a long time it was argued that genes were the only units of natural selection, and not organisms at all. This has changed in recent times with the acknowledgement that all aspects in a developmental system can be subject to selection, up to and including the entire system itself. The unit of natural selection doesn't even have to be alive. You can use natural selection principles to come up with new circuit boards or even architecture. — StreetlightX

I take your opinion seriously on this. I remember the thread you did on how genes work as a complex interaction of many genes related to a complex system of traits. I go back and read it from time to time. It really changed my understanding of genetics. I remember you reject a one to one relationship between genes and traits.

Down to business. Before your thread, my understanding of the situation was that there are qualified scientists who do believe that there are levels of selection other than organisms but that it was a controversial issue. My prime source for that information is Stephen Jay Gould's writing. Since he died in 2002, I don't know what changes in theory have taken place. After reading the article in the link you sent, it seems that my understanding is still correct. I read through it quickly, but I'll go back to read it in more detail.

Some thoughts and questions - The article identifies four actors in the evolutionary process 1) interactor, 2) replicator, 3) beneficiary, and 4) manifestor.

Interactor and replicator - I don't think I understand these issues very well. I need to go back and reread the section. Off the top of my head, it seems these would be in conflict with the issue I mentioned above - the fact that it is a system of genes that causes a system of traits. Again, let me think some more.

Beneficiary and manifestor - These seem more like semantic questions than scientific ones. In my post, I acknowledged that evolution acts on species and other levels, but that natural selection acts on individuals. Evolution emerges out of the action of natural selection on individual organisms much as the market emerges out of the behaviors of individual economic actors.

This is really interesting. I'll come back after I've read some more, and thanks for the link.

Hayseeds of the Bread Basket Unite. The urban parasites have nothing to lose but their bread and butter, their pate foi gras, their fried chicken McNugguts; their almond milk, salad greens, chick peas, and steak tartare. — Bitter Crank

Yes, my favorite is a Big Mac - two all beef patties, special sauce, pickles, foi gas, onions on a sesame seed bun.

Instead of entering into a cold and indifferent world where one must contrive one’s own meaning, morality, and destiny - to the absurdity of a hopeless mortality - one enters into a world with all of these metaphysical concepts pre-established in the fabric of reality. It is, indeed, the idea that “essence precedes existence”, rather than “existence precedes essence.”
Instead of straining toward a feigned delusion as a mode of subsistence, one is settling into benevolent design as a mode of true fulfillment.

This concept is intriguing, and even exhilarating. Not as wishful thinking or blissful ignorance, but as a philosophical and logical validity. Apparently, it is just as reasonable to presume theism as it is atheism. And, it seems to me, starting with theism can infuse significant hope into our perplexing existential realities. — CS Stewart

Some of us with no religious beliefs do not see the world as cold and indifferent or death as hopeless or absurd. Contriving our own "meaning, morality, and destiny" is what humans do. We're built for it, by whatever builds us - God, evolution, or something else. We grew up with the universe and we belong here. That's one of the things I didn't like about @Daniel C's formulation in the original post. Whether we created God or God created us, it's not because the world is a bleak place. I've come to think that at least some of our religious impulse comes from something you mention - gratitude. Gratitude for what we've been given.

Most of the work the average person does has nothing to do with their survival. With this being the case, it doesn't make sense to talk about survival of the fittest/fit, or whatever. Some hayseed living close to the land, self-reliant, will out survive the infants consummately dependent on each other through the market/boob lactating its milk/money. — Anthony

Ahem...Hayseed?

It's perfectly reasonable to consider the effects of natural selection on people living in a technological society, even if people live and reproduce with weaknesses that would have killed them in past times. Our current society seems to be a pretty stable one. Obviously, it could be disturbed by many factors, e.g. climate change or nuclear war, the way the dinosaurs seem to have been killed off by an asteroid. That's life...er...evolution.

'Fitness' is a species-level designation in evolutionary theory, and not an individual one (or species-in-an-ecological-niche if one is being strict). If you're asking about the 'fitness' of individuals, one is no longer talking about evolutionary theory, but something else. Per that theory, if the species is not fit, it is extinct, or on its way to extinction. That's it. — StreetlightX

As I indicated in another post, the primary mechanism of evolution, natural selection, acts only on individuals. I'm not sure if that contradicts what you are saying or not.

'Evolution' applies to groups, not individuals -  genes, species & ecologies (Darwin), not organisms & persons (Spenser) - the latter merely expressing traits adapted to proliferating the former. — 180 Proof

To clarifiy - natural selection acts only on organisms. That action may or may not manifest itself as an evolutionary change in a species or other taxonomic grouping.

As a hypothetical imperative, I suppose, if one's goal is to "survive very long and/or reproduce", then one should work, or collaborate with others, to bricole (or engineer) tools which help facilitate that goal. This is irrelevant, however, to "fitness" or the lack of it with respective to the adaptive pressures of natural selection. (vide Dennett, Dawkins, Gould, et al). — 180 Proof

Helping your brother or niece survive and reproduce, even if you don't, is a way of ensuring the survival of your bloodline. As such, it should be worth evolution's attention as much as if you had had children of your own. I'm not sure, it sounds as if you aren't taking that into account. Maybe I misunderstood.

your post seems to suggest that reproducing is the meaning of life? You imply without it, what is the point. Many humans CHOOSE not to have children. Evolutionarily (is that a word, haha), those people (me) are unfit. But so what? — ZhouBoTong

I recognize you aren't endorsing@Purple Pond's position. I am responding to your summary of PP's ideas. The meaning or purpose of life is an expression of human values. Evolutionary processes have nothing to do with values - it's just the old universe chugging along. One of the big battles fought on the fields of the evolutionary wars is the fight to keep teleology (The explanation of phenomena in terms of the purpose they serve) out of evolutionary theory.

Yes, the Tao - another example of a highly abstract idealistic metaphysical theory. — Daniel C

It's not abstract, it's the most concrete thing there is. It isn't a theory. I call it "metaphysical" so it will be clear I'm not saying it's the right way to see the world, it's just one of our choices. It isn't right or wrong, true or false. As I've said many times, like all metaphysical concepts, it's useful or not. You might compare it and contrast it to the concept of objective reality. I come from science and engineering. I find the Tao a much more useful concept than objective reality, which is often misleading.

And, yes, Taoists recognize that, by using all these words to talk about the Tao, they are never talking about the eternal Tao, which can only be experienced and never discussed.

Except that there CAN'T be three of you, according to the Tao Unified Cosmos theory. — god must be atheist

We are just three of the 10,000 things. Or maybe three of one of the 10,000 things.

As for the "Tao Unified Cosmos theory," - it's not really a theory, it's a metaphysical approach. As the Tao Te Ching says - "The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao," or, to paraphrase, the Truth that can be theorized about is not the eternal Truth. It is undivided because it is unspoken. The minute you speak, you bring the 10,000 things into existence.

While many humans are fit enough to continue the life cycle of finding a partner and producing healthy offspring, many don't make it. — Purple Pond

According to one source, 87% of women and 81% of men reproduce. Here's a link:

https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/26797a/what_percentage_of_humans_reproduce/

I don't know if those numbers are right, but it does seem that the great majority of humans reproduce.

If this is confusing - it confuses me - think about a time you have attempted to share, say, some Bach or Beethoven with an adolescent (younger children, especially young children, can be transfixed - stopped in their tracks - by those composers), only to have that adolescent not comprehend even a little bit what he's hearing, certainly incapable of any appreciation. — tim wood

I was thinking about this again. Isn't the attitude expressed in Adler's procedures exactly what drives some young people away from reading? To me, with young people it would make more sense to focus on the experience - what they find enjoyable, intellectually stimulating, or moving.

I have three children. My daughter, the eldest, was a reader from the beginning, as am I. My two sons were not. I always felt bad about that, that they wouldn't experience the pleasure and value of reading. Also, it made it harder to buy birthday and Christmas presents for them. Then, when they were in their late teens or early twenties, they started reading on their own, for their own reasons. I love it that I can have discussions with them, especially my youngest. They have sophisticated understanding of literature. They also write well, which was a surprise, given their academic history.