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It seems to me that your reply is made up of many reductions and mischaracterizations, but it also contains substance. I have learned from reading your posts and often appreciate your compacted style.
Where you accuse me of dogmatism I must deny the charge. Instead of actually engaging some of my objections you classify them in a negative light.

When I said, 'Where you say, accept the fact of self-organizing-logic, I see the potential for tyranny.'

Your reply here was not only condescending, but fallacious: "Of course. The facts have to be twisted to fit your prejudices. You make that clear in every response."

Not at all. I am open to this, but I am wisely contesting its authority. It is a tremendously authoritative claim.

When someone starts talking about accepting self-organizing logic, they are going to bear the burden of proof.

When I said, 'Like Adorno, I believe the highest duty of philosophy is to prevent things like Auschwitz from ever happening.'

Your reply is another false framing of my position:

"Argument by virtue signalling. Seems legit."

The reason I address this is because my position on the purpose and duty of philosophy is more important to me than this entire conversation. You make it sound like I am trying to enlist some technique of rhetoric here. This is not the case. This was Adorno's position and it is also mine. I do not believe the duty of philosophy is to play abstract games, but use thought to affect reality in a positive way. Philosophy has no higher duty or purpose than to enlist itself against social horrors like Auschwitz or the Soviet Union. "The whole point of philosophy," said Adorno, "was to make sure that nothing like Auschwitz ever happens again." He was correct. I stand by it and will defend it.

Do you think it is likely that the vast majority of people will be able to participate in this conversation anyway, regardless of religion? — Janus

No. I agree with you. Denial is not just confined to religion, it is the normative process of human psychology.

If a general belief in religion yields a more harmonious, stable, integrated and better-intentioned populace, then where is the harm in such beliefs, as long as they are not manipulated by the plutocrats? — Janus

I should simply be able to say to a person like yourself, that you know better than to ask a question like this. Seriously, come on. Religion keeps people enslaved to power structures. You already know this. There are many many other problems with the innocent notion of "general belief." Now I suspect you are talking in the context of life at the end of the world? If that is the case, then your question is not a religious one, but a philosophical one, it has to do with hedonism, which I mentioned earlier. It is a serious question and one that must be addressed.

I think it is naive to imagine that all, or even most, or even many, of us are cut out to be intellectuals. — Janus

I agree with this. Thinking is the most psychologically difficult and painful act a person can do. To be a thinker one must be capable of suffering.

The other thing is that it is arguable that most people wish to be led rather than to lead. With leadership (or at least decent leadership) comes great responsibility. — Janus

We are back to the axiom of education.

And it in fact constructs its hierarchy on the emergence of grades of telos - physics at the bottom, human psychology at the top. — apokrisis

Hard to see how it could be any other way, though I suppose in social terms the relationship here is dialectical, one accounts for the quality of the other.

Functionality is Nature self-organising in ways that permit it to actually exist - as a persisting flow or process. It is simply an expression of the evolutionary principle. — apokrisis

What I am getting at is simply the question of thought's mediation. We used to eat each other. One could argue that because that was the way nature organized itself, therefor it comprised functionality. And in a real sense I suppose it did, but we can see a greater functionality beyond it. To observe human society at the point of cannibalism and then conclude that this is nature organizing itself... What am I missing here?

To want to paint it as dumb or intelligent is to believe nature must meet some human standard of behaviour. Or worse yet, the standard of some divine intellect. — apokrisis

This is not my position. My position is that nature is not a standard. My position is that intelligence can construct better procedures. What I am against is the dumb declaration that what we observe in nature is somehow a standard of intelligence in terms of social process.

It "automatically" subsumes any notion of what counts as being intelligent or valuable. — apokrisis

If by this you mean, what you observe, and then claim to demarcate as natural order, automatically incurs to itself intelligence or value, this is what I do not accept. I do not deny that we find processes in nature, but just because we find humans eating each other at some point in history, is not enough to claim that this automatically makes it a process of intelligence or value just because we find it bin nature.

I am not a transcendental idealist, if anything, it seems you are positing a kind of natural idealism. When I refer to the mediation of thought, I am not referring to supernaturalism, if anything I am referring to criticism, most specifically negative dialectics. This is a continuing process not some Platonic finality. Thought can and does correct the chaos of the natural order.

That leads you to complain about the huge potential for the real world to be imperfect when held up against the shining example of the thoughts in the mind of some divine intellect. — apokrisis

This is strange to me, I don't see why you assume that thought is powerless to mediate? We are not talking about a divine intellect, we are talking about human thought. And neither am I saying that Hierarchy Theory is false, valueless or incapable of mediation. I am trying to ask critical questions against what I perceive to be a kind dogmatism, possibly even a naivety that has to do with an idealized version of nature.

The whole point of hierarchy theory - as an expression of natural philosophy - is to instead accept that the world creates itself through its own emergent self-organising logic. Nature is rationally structured because that is what works. So no need for creating gods. This is a metaphysics of immanent bootstrapping. — apokrisis

Yes, this is a metaphysics that I am calling into question. There is a non-transparent interpretation taking place here which seems to project itself as a finality. Where you say, accept the fact of self-organizing-logic, I see the potential for tyranny. I am trying to analyze it to see if this is the case. Like Adorno, I believe the highest duty of philosophy is to prevent things like Auschwitz from ever happening.

You are talking about hierarchies being a choice. And as humans, we do think we can design our own social systems. But how much freedom do we really have on that score? — apokrisis

You have already mentioned the foundation in this sense, physics and psychology. Of course, everything is out of our control in terms of the universe, but not in terms of our own provincialism. Marx understood that freedom was a product of determining the order of systems. In other words, one attempts to control the levers of determinism. One becomes conscious of how individuals are shaped by systems, one then tries to construct qualitative systems. I'm guessing we agree on this point, and by God, what other option do we have?

I think your comments reflect the unrealistic expectations people build up because they don't look close enough at actual human society and fail to appreciate the telos it ends up pursuing. — apokrisis

You are one of the most intelligent thinkers I have discoursed with on this Forum, and because of this I would not rule out what you say here.

To start saying Nature has to choose - either decide to be smart of dumb - is to lapse back into transcendental idealism. It is pretending that the human mind in all its proven short-sightedness is somehow also the divine ideal informing metaphysical existence. — apokrisis

Man is nature, nature is man. Again, I am not referring to mysticism, just the power of thought. History proves that progress can be made... of course, we are now tumbling into a kind of black hole insofar as the future is concerned. Knowing how to proceed at this stage of existential awareness is a most interesting and urgent question. I for one just can't resign myself to hedonism.

I wonder whether Paul wrote this letter after he visited Athens. I suspect his encounter with the Athenian philosophers didn't go quite as well as it's said it did. — Ciceronianus the White

I just love the picture of this.

Athenians: "Did you just say faith makes you right?"

Paul: "yes, that's right, I said the righteous live by faith."

:lol: :lol:

Why do I say this? Because religion is based on the denial of reality. Let me repeat: religion is based on the denial of reality. One cannot rightly discuss the potential end of the world with people who believe there is a magical world they will be carried to after. One cannot discuss the death of a planet whose vitality they believe lies in the hands of God. These are not adult conversations, these are confusions.

You asked about solving problems? You get me wrong, I am all about concrete and contextual questions that strive in this direction. We must begin having adult conversations, not conversations about phantoms and afterworlds. These only get in the way, they waste time.

Serious questions are thrust on the table in the probability of civilization's twilight. What happens to intellectual responsibility? Of course, it is strange to ask this question, because there has never been much of it in the world. It is the socially responsible intellectual who is also the most rare. Can one fight off hedonism at this level of awareness? What becomes of our discourse? (And it should be noted that the religious cannot even enter into this conversation, they do not live in the real world). This matters because they try to pontificate with authority here, claiming that a return to error holds the key to the world's salvation. Nonsense, when the adults enter the room we must think about our plight in terms of concrete circumstances. We do not have time to play these kind of games. Can intelligence still proceed forward though it perceives the negation of history? At which point does revolutionary resistance find itself negated by material impossibilities? The thinker can think until his last breath, but this doesn't make it wise.

Interesting that rational and empirical analysis of the situation brings us to a state of resignation. Like Adorno I am a kind of rational romantic, which simply means I believe in the power of thought.

I fear its effects would be too slow — Janus

I believe this takes us in the direction of a philosophy of the future. That is just it, learning is too damn slow. Thought must construct a way to speed up this process, we don't have any other choice. As far as I see it, this makes scholasticism its own ideology. The question is no longer how to educate, no longer, how to communicate, but how to do it swiftly while minimizing the loss of quality. The more minds combine together to solve this problem the more success is likely to be achieved. My thinking has been in this direction for quite some time now.

Humans want to turn to computers to turn themselves into computers, but I do not see this as a solution, large quantities of information is not the same as quality thought.

One of my favorite quotes by Adorno.

"If there is any way out of this hellish circle—and I would not wish to exaggerate that possibility, being well aware of the weakness and susceptibility of such consciousness—it is probably the ability of mind to assimilate, to think the last extreme of horror and, in face of this spiritual experience, to gain mastery over it. That is little enough. For, obviously, such an imagination, such an ability to think extreme negativity, is not comparable to what one undergoes if one is oneself caught up in such situations. Nevertheless, I would think that in the ability not to feel manipulated, but to feel that one has gone relentlessly to the furthest extreme, there lies the only respect which is fitting: a respect for the possibility of the mind, despite everything, to raise itself however slightly above that which is. And I think that it really gives more courage (if I can use that formulation) if one is not given courage, and does not feel bamboozled, but has the feeling that even the worst is something which can be thought and, because it falls within reflection, does not confront me as something absolutely alien and different. I imagine that such a thought is probably more comforting than any solace, whereas solace itself is desolate, since it is always attended by its own untruth."

You want a rational argument in support of rationality? Think on that for a bit. — Banno

Come now, this is just too good. Thread closed.

It is my goal not to get caught up in anything personal here. I would not have started a thread on Hierarchy Theory if I didn't have a basic understanding of it. But that is just it, my understanding here is only basic, that's why this thread is title Preliminary Questions. I appreciate your discourse because you are well versed in Hierarchy Theory.

As per your army analogy,"the soldiers need to be good at acting on the ground in ways that produce a functional army. ...the generals in their field headquarters need to be good at acting in ways that also produce a functional army."

The question of functionality is just my point. One can produce a system that is functional, while at the same time lacking intelligence, thwarting of potential value, unless you claim that functionality is synonymous with intelligence and value inflation? That is, where you have functionality there you also have the maximization of value. This premise is difficult for me to embrace. My concern is whether or not the formation of a hierarchical system could produce functionality, while at the same time negating potential value?

What I am talking about is the natural logic of hierarchical organisation. It is the obvious way that Nature is going to arrange itself to achieve any function or finality. — apokrisis

I see that you are calling it "natural," but my point is that if true, 1) this wouldn't automatically make it a form of intelligence and 2) this notion of natural order could be used to justify a system of hierarchy, that though functional, would ultimately lead to the negation of value.

Finally, the "revolutionary humanist" monster showed itself! — Gus Lamarch

(imagine this in a high, English style dialect, framed in a tone of up and down expression): Monstrous, you say, because I drew out the implications of your own egoism? I do say, I mean, after all, you are the one who accused yourself of it. I mean, where ever did you get the notion that it would be a good idea to lead with it as a description of yourself?

In moments of secular weakness, I notice that people who really want to rescue these virtues and morals start popping up. — Gus Lamarch

But my dear man, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is far superior (and more specific) to anything that was ever produced by Christianity. You will not even live in your own Christian world. It's too extreme, suffocating, dogmatic, primitive, lacking any kind of philosophical intelligence. So what are you here engaged in, based on your own philosophy, juvenile provocations to appease the cravings of your ego. What you say is not serious, and neither is your manner of discourse, it is nothing more than an exercise in self-assertion to bolster delusional feelings of power. How could it not be, this is what you signed up for, mighty man, when you decided to reduce the world to the size of your ego.

How, in a world where power seems to be always in the hands of those who control material resources, or what stands in for them, do we convince those in control, to relinquish some control, and give back to society sufficient of their wealth to enable the adequate education of all? — Janus

This question is exactly direct to the issue. Tragic that the class structure makes it so we have to petition those in power in one form or another. This has to stand as an argument against such a system's intelligence. Very difficult is it to see how such organization would be the result of an advanced species, as it amounts to self-negation. The situation is truly dire, millions live in poverty, technology and land are horded and leveraged against the well being and freedom of other humans. This is tyranny.

The question you ask is a live one... how do we approach those in power? We need space to live! We need access to the earth! Private property negates man's ability to meet these needs.

But I've read it in Hegel — Gregory

Then you will have to cite it.

Humans figured out that democracy was a good idea because it could balance those two aspects of social organisation - local scale competition and global scale cooperation. — apokrisis

My questions are meant to probe Hierarchy Theory in terms of its general framework, not the specific findings of any one theorist. While I agree with Democracy, my questions are along the lines of, is it possible for a Hierarchy theorist to arrive at an alternative conclusion, meritocracy perhaps? As I understand it, we are talking about the successful arrangement of complex information? What is informing the calculation of success here? As I see it Hierarchy Theory would not specifically mean the conclusion of Democracy.

With Hegel you have thesis, antithesis, and conclusion as synthesis. — Gregory

No friend, this is the most common distortion of Hegel. This is refuted in Jon Stewart, Hegel Myth and Legends. :smile:

There Is No Crime for Those Who Have Christ: Religious Violence in the Christian Roman Empire (Transformation of the Classical Heritage)
Michael Gaddis

"There is no crime for those who have Christ," claimed a fifth-century zealot, neatly expressing the belief of religious extremists that righteous zeal for God trumps worldly law. This book provides an in-depth and penetrating look at religious violence and the attitudes that drove it in the Christian Roman Empire of the fourth and fifth centuries, a unique period shaped by the marriage of Christian ideology and Roman imperial power. Drawing together materials spanning a wide chronological and geographical range, Gaddis asks what religious conflict meant to those involved, both perpetrators and victims, and how violence was experienced, represented, justified, or contested. His innovative analysis reveals how various groups employed the language of religious violence to construct their own identities, to undermine the legitimacy of their rivals, and to advance themselves in the competitive and high-stakes process of Christianizing the Roman Empire."

Now this is just it, isn't it? When religion, in this case, Christianity, aligns itself with imperial power. This is when the real tyranny begins. In the United States Christianity is always trying to align itself with the power of the Federal Government and the State. It has been doing this for years.

The founders knew that religion would thwart freedom if ever it should become political, hence, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..."

The theocrats are at the gates and beating on the doors.

"No crime for those who embrace our cult ideology." Zeal for God trumps worldly law, and yet all law is worldly! Christianity is just an incompetent form of it.

The claim that God's law trumps worldly law is an attempt to create a false dichotomy, it is an attempt to construct a category that is immune to criticism, pure authoritarianism. I don't see our zealous egoist seeking to submit himself to fundamentalist sects, which is to say, he does not live in a Christian world and neither does he seek one out. He will not even drink the poison he is so zealously recommending.

What would that tyranny look like? — apokrisis

Tyranny could possibly look like a hierarchy systems model that organizes society in such a way that it ends up negating value. A so-called scientifically justified class structure. As I said in my introduction, "one must be able to locate the thwarting of potential, developmental value."

However, it should be made clear that all human systems of organization, including religion, face this same dilemma. It is not unique to any one system.

How often would it occur in Nature where hierarchy theory is all about self organising systems? — apokrisis

I have a hard time embracing the idea of self-organization in terms of Nature. Further, it is not clear to me that Nature's movement (I purposely did not call it organization) provides a model of intelligence for human society. I believe thought may be the only thing suited to such a procedure. If you are talking about mimicking patterns you claim to find in Nature, I would need more than just the fact that you believe you found a pattern, and therefore it automatically becomes normative, designated a form of intelligence.

I'm not claiming that the world is or is not a simulation. Frankly, I don't know and, in fact, nobody does. — TheMadFool

Right, which makes the question a waste of life. There are things within this Matrix that intelligence must come to terms with and will only suffer from if it remains ignorant. Ideological and class structures are examples of vital consciousness.

That's how hierarchy theory works. It is about the dialectical interaction between parts and wholes. And the two have to complement each other for the structure to persist. — apokrisis

I thought it was about organizing complexity into hierarchical structures? The notion of "complement" could be problematic here.

So the whole - the global scale of the system - has to provide the constraints that shapes the right kind of parts. And the parts have to have the right kind of shape to meet the goals of the whole. The parts, in all their freedom, have to be acting in ways that re-construct that whole, in other words. — apokrisis

"The right kind of part," this is where it gets into it. "Right kind of shape to meet the goals," [of the system]. Surely you admit this is not a straight-forward or uncontroversial process? I am not claiming that hierarchy theory is false or that it should not be utilized, these are just my preliminary thoughts. What concerns me is a kind of instrumental tyranny. How does the system avoid this? What criteria does it use to determine what is "right?" How does it come to generate its idea of "goal?"

I imagine at the end of the day, depending on how this is calculated (and I'm not sure that pragmatism is good enough here) the creation of a kind of tyrannical hierarchy. Why is this not a potential danger of the system?

Coherence is found in what we say, not in how things are. Things just are the way they are. If what we say about them is inconsistent, then we've said it wrong. There will be another way of talking that will remove the inconsistency. — Banno

Here here, "Knowledge unconditionally presupposes that the reality known exists independently of the knowledge of it, and that we know it as it exists in this independence." Prichard

And yet, here you are, living on the world it helped build... — Gus Lamarch

This is a fallacious and simplified generalization. The world we live in was in large part built by science. If you remove this you have serious problems, you end up in the dark ages. Further, it was the Humanistic negations that were applied to Christianity that account for quality in the sense you are speaking. I am not saying that religion didn't play a role in man's social evolution, I am saying that it did not play the role you are trying to assign it. Trying to claim that religion, specifically Christianity, is the ideology that accounts for the quality of the modern world, is itself an ideology.

The only hope for humanity seems to be the enlightenment of the masses. I hope for that but do not expect it. — Janus

In my opinion this is precisely the concrete aim of revolution. It is not the binding together or workers to form a dictatorship, but quite simply, the broadest possible expansion of social education. Education is the necessary pre-revolutionary work of a quality revolution. So there is a serious question that we are confronted with as thinkers, how do we do this? How do we maximize the power of our own lives in the direction of expanding education? We already know this is the great need, the question then becomes how to realize it in the most comprehensive and qualitative terms possible?

However, this question drives us back to the question of property, of space, which is required to produce qualitative existence. Education presupposes material factors in order to achieve quality, without these basic needs it will fail. There are serious questions here, not just question of abstract theory, but questions of praxis.

Back when I used to be an Aristotelian, every time I encountered relational contradiction I would cut it out of my life. This made relationships impossible, but ever since I became a Hegelian I have learned to embrace contradiction, and that has made all the difference. :lol:

This is my point that I derived from the paper. It is not the point of the paper or the author. Please stop derailing this thread. Either read the paper or move on to another thread. Thanks.

Where I bear the burden of proof there it is my responsibility to sustain and clarify my position. I do not bear the burden of proof for the fantastic claim that Jesus is God. Those who reject this standard can themselves be rejected without standards. End of story.

Inductive reasoning. — 3017amen

The only thing I can deduce from your evasion is that you know very well you cannot sustain your fantastic claims. I have attempted to engage you on more than one occasion. The burden of proof is not something that can be shifted by the desperate need to get out from underneath it.

Through the study of history as I mentioned. — 3017amen

What was it specifically about this study that gave you the knowledge that Jesus is God?

I was just curious about whether or not your adamancy about defining “god” before discussing has ever actually resulted in a definition that you were not atheistic about. — DingoJones

I personally don't have a problem with deism or pantheism. These live in the same world as atheism.

It includes using historical sources such as written documents, oral accounts, ecological markers, and material objects including art and artifacts. — 3017amen

You have not made your position clear. You claim that Jesus is God. You know this how specifically?

You just need to read the paper if you're interested in it. I have refrained from comment because the things I want to comment on do not directly interact with his main thesis, "to offer a more complete and concrete theory of the mechanisms behind consciousness and to show how consciousness and high-level thought relate to each other. Secondly, to attempt show that those physical mechanisms are sufficient for the subjective experience of consciousness. And thirdly, to form a basis for future research into artificial general intelligence."

This papers deserves serious replies. It provides the foundation for an up to date discussion. My interest is more in the direction of cognitive science, and this paper did touch on things I consider to be relevant: "High-level thought involves multiple steps and intermediate states. Working memory serves to hold those intermediate states."

This is damn important because it tells us that High-level-thought is not the result of will power, it's a matter of cognitive equipment functioning properly and working at a high level. This matters, because we keep on dealing with intelligence as though it were simply a matter of will power or greater effort on the part of the student. What one's State Machine is, becomes that way through a concrete material social process, there is no way around this, and it makes a huge difference when it comes to the way we view humans and approach education.

Historical accounting. — 3017amen

I have no idea what this means? You are telling me that a historical person is God and you know this because you read it in old documents?

Jesus. — 3017amen

How do you know that Jesus is God?

No, because you are asking me to produce my own negative. Fuck off.

Are there any gods that you wouldn't be an atheist about? — DingoJones

Again, trying to smuggle in the premise. Define God and then our conversation can begin.

Do you believe in a God?

I am an atheist. The moment you assault me with the word God is the same moment I demand that you explain what you mean by the term. I do not jump to conclusions, I will arrive at them once you have defined your term. If another atheist wants to jump to conclusions without a clarification of the term, they have gone too far, they skipped a step, they are not thinking about what is being presented to them.

Furthermore, anytime an atheist makes a positive statement of no God, they unwittingly put themselves in a precarious and untenable position of proving same. — 3017amen

It is impossible to make such a statement without first defining the term God.

Would it be possible to add a short summary in the form of bullet points? — Outlander

I don't think so, though I shouldn't answer for someone else. I'm almost finished with this intricate paper. It would be very hard to reduce what he has here to bullet points because the argument builds on itself stage by stage. This is a sweeping overview and contribution to theory. The author proves that he is not an amateur in this area. Anyone wanting to directly engage this thesis is going to have to have intricate knowledge of the subject. It's very likely the author has indeed "produced something that will contribute significantly to the fields of artificial consciousness and artificial general intelligence, and perhaps even to the fields of cognitive science and neuroscience..."

If you're entrenched in your belief structure, and use it to determine relevance, and it fails, then you could end up walking away from information that can alter your life or view of the world. Thinkers must do better than hedonism, they must have the ability to apply "intellectual standards." What you see as, going around in circles, could just be your inability to allow your belief structure to be altered by contrary information, it could be the result of a lack of objectivity in your analysis. Hence, you could end up reinforcing delusion by saying to yourself, "this isn't going anywhere, this person is just going in circles." This premise, spoken to yourself, would allow you to characterize their position in such a way that you can evade it without actually having to engage it. This is why the burden of proof is central to all discourse.

If you want to make your case you will have to do better than ad hominems and self-assertions.

I did ask you a few questions that you never answered (for which you bear the burden of proof):

'You mean a real, concrete absolute, verifiable just like the moon? Or do you mean that humans believed that God was absolute? [Nihilism] Preconditioned by what?'