our scientific understanding of behavior is way too rudimentary at this point — Joshs

Well it's not all that rudimentary, and I think it's on my side. But let's say it is rudimentary as you believe: then it would also be way to rudimentary to be certain that multiculturalism is a good idea.

So those ethnonationalists in the places that are almost completely white literally have no direct idea what they are talking about, — Joshs

That's irrelevant, it's their choice under what conditions they want to live in their own country. They don't want to live in a multicultural state, and they don't want to be politically or demographically marginalized in their own homelands.

(Especially in the cultural climate of Hate Whitey that we have now. What do you think will happen when Whites become, say, 30% of the population, given the increasingly strident and open demonization of Whites - particularly White males - that's been going on over the past 50 years or so?)

they have little to no daily exposure to significant numbers of members of other races. — Joshs

Is there some reason why they ought to be subjected to daily exposure to significant numbers of members of other races?

You offer a pragmatic, conditional "ought." Fair enough, argue your case to them. But there is no moral "ought" such as would be sufficient to override their preferences, as has been done by the de facto implementation of mass immigration in Europe and the USA, always, at every step, from the 1920s to today, against the wishes of the majority.

and it is painfully easy to ask, why think that sense perception is reliable? — PossibleAaran

Great post! All I'll say here is that this is the nub of it: the only reason one gets so much as the idea that there's an anomaly (that casts doubt on one's model) in the first place, is because one is already relying on sense perception as valid enough to tell you that there's an anomaly; therefore, unless one is given reason to suppose otherwise, the subsequent model-testing sense-perceptions can have at least the same level of reliability. (And the "reasons to suppose otherwise" usually involve some break in the conditions for normal perception, with the possibility of correcting perception being already priorly accepted.)

IOW, if you think there's an anomaly at all, that information comes to you from sense perception, therefore (unless there's good reason to suppose otherwise - that's where the burden of proof lies) whatever perceptions you use to test your revised conception of reality must be on exactly the same level of reliability as the perceptions that gave you the very idea that there was an anomaly in the first place. The more certain you are that there was an anomaly, the more certain you must be that sense perception is at least in principle reliable enough to resolve the anomaly.

Going back to the arguments from illusion (and the gradual progression of Cartesian doubts in the course of the Meditations): the only reason why you think you were subject to an illusion (or why Descartes noticed he'd been in error about various things) is because of some corrective perception that reveals that your previous perception was an illusion. Therefore you're already implicitly allowing the validity of at least some sense perceptions: the corrective sense perceptions at least must be valid, for the illusion to be genuinely an illusion. Therefore you can't use the argument from illusion to globally doubt the validity of sense perception on the basis that sometimes you're subject to illusion.

You havent given me any links to biologists who dispute the claim that "We can all happily agree that human racial classification is of no social value and is positively destructive of social and human relations(not just as individual opinion, but as showing a consensus)." Where is this scientific consensus you're assuming??? — Joshs

Dawkins' conclusion is not a conclusion from biology, and as I said, I don't quibble with the biology. Dawkins' conclusion comes from Dawkins practicing junior sociology on the basis of his biological knowledge. Obviously my position is against the current consensus, but it's not totally without support from some scientists; and actually the current consensus wasn't always the consensus, the consensus was the other way until around the early to mid 20th century. How and why that consensus changed is another story (but it does have a lot to do with Boasian anthropology, another pseudo-science).

The current consensus is based on fear and conformity, nothing more.

And you never answered the question: do genes code for ethics? — Joshs

Missed that. Not "code for" in any specific sense, but certainly genes do have an influence on ethics, for sure, even if only because intelligence has a strong influence on ethics. Things like foresight, the ability to delay gratification, etc., are also related to ethics, and they definitely vary along racial lines.

If homosexuals are degenerate, is this a genetic deficiency or a lifestyle choice? I never knew anyone who considered homosexuals degenerate who wasnt operating from a religious morality. Of course, the medical and psychiatric profession once upon a time labeled it as a pathology, but here was a hidden theological element working there, — Joshs

"Degenerate" from the moral point of view, which doesn't require religion to back it up. It's perfectly understandable from the point of evolutionary psychology that homosexuality should be a fringe pastime, something not for the mainstream, not to be held up as morally laudable, but rather kept to the fringes and morally despised. And the decline of great civilizations has often been heralded by the loosening of morals. (Camille Paglia wrote some great stuff on this theme.)

There's a rather amusing possible irony here though: whatever genetic component there is to homosexuality (and I think it's probably exaggerated, but let's say there's some) was preserved and transmitted on account of the fact that homosexuals generally had to marry and procreate. Now that they marry each other, homosexuality may well die out :)

Perhaps you don't understand their theories as well as you think you do. — Joshs

I'm not obliged to follow everything these people say just because I like some of the things they say; and after all their positions are mutually contradictory in some respects too. Most of them don't really have much occasion to discuss race anyway, since their concerns are more on the general cognitive level - although you will find the occasional declarations of piety. Everyone has to frantically virtue signal assent to PC cult nostrums these days, for fear of losing their jobs.

Im not interested in pointing fingers, ,moralizing, accusing people of prejudice. — Joshs

And yet you did suspect me of prejudice didn't you? It's not a big deal, but perhaps it might be worth going back over your thought patterns in relation to that - why was it your go-to thought?

I have a selfish aim in this issue.You could call it technological. I want to create a social 'machine', the ideal environment, that nurtures, stimulates and elevates my intellectual and creative capacities to the greatest extent possible. — Joshs

Getting the "best bits" from all human beings regardless of race is a perfectly reasonable idea, but it's not much related to what I'm interested in: creating a liveable world for all human beings regardless of station, capabilities, etc. - except possibly in the long term (we do need "think tanks" after all). My concern is the kinds of problems people, particularly working class people are living through now as a result of immigration, the overweening top-down forcing of multiculturalism and globalism, etc. (I suppose my particular concern for the working class is a remnant of my socialist/working class roots :) )

But if you look at the English language , you'll notice that its the ultimate mutt language, — Joshs

That's not actually true about English, it's basically been the same language all along, it's not a "mixture", it's its own Germanic language, just with several accidental overlays (Viking loan words; Norman toffs speaking pidgin English, getting things slightly wrong, and that bleeding back to the population at large; neologisms from learned Church folks, etc.) The additions and fiddly bits do make English unique and interesting, but it's going too far to say that it's a "mixture."

It's roughly the same story with genetics. Anglo Saxons are not mutts, they're basically a slight variant of the same stock that's peopled Northwestern Europe since the end of the Ice Age. The real muttish mix occurred during the early Bronze Age, when the indigenous Northwestern European hunter-gatherers were invaded by Indo-Europeans - but Indo-Europeans were themselves of distantly similar stock, since they were descended from remnants of those very same indigenous hunter gatherers who'd been pushed Southeast by the Ice Age; they got left behind in the Southeast (Pontic steppes) while some of their fellows followed the receding Glaciers back Northwest. Some more muttishness occurs due to the mix of those Northern peoples with the prehistoric Levantine farmers who populated the fringes of Southern Europe, and there's also a slightly similar story with the Slavs being mixtures of Indo-Europeans and robust indigenous hunter gatherers from Northeastern regions (Siberia). But that's about it, in the large. Norse of various kinds, Celts, Anglo Saxons, Germans, French, they're all basically the same people, and they're still fairly closely related to Greeks, Spaniards, Italians and Slavs (relatively - again, relatively in contrast to any of those groups' relations to Semites, or Chinese, etc., etc.). The breeds have been fairly stable in their ancestral homelands over a long period of time.

Muttness is the key to adaptivity in biology, a constant self-overcoming via exaptation. Thats the meaning of Nietzsche's ubermensch. Purity is a deathnell for organisms. — Joshs

For the third time, I do understand the value of some degree of mixture and miscegenation; and the idea of colour blind meritocracy has always been understood to be beneficial (after all, it's leaving money on the table to forbid really clever people from another race from having some impact, provided they aren't working as a group against one's group - which is a tricky question when it comes to Jews). But compare and contrast the attainments of 18th/19th century Europe and of the USA as an 80-90% white country relative to their time, in comparison to the more mixed Europe/USA of today. Has anything comparable to the lifting of humankind out of poverty and the appearance of the very concept of "progress" that started roundabout the 18th century in all-White countries happened since? Has there really been as much actual innovation (all things being equal) as in those earlier periods, or are science, technology, education, etc., largely treading water these days, simply extending what came before in various directions, but not actually innovating? What happened to materials science during the latter part of the 20th century? Where are the flying cars we were promised? ;)

As always, it's a question of degree. By all means have your cosmopolitan centers and "vibrant" bohemian areas, no problem - they were there in the past too. However, as I said, that's not my main area of concern. My main area of concern is the descent into hell for the larger chunks of the populations (of all ethnicities) who are having to live with the increasingly disastrous results of the top-down imposition of multiculturalism as an abstract ideal, and mass immigration, on people who didn't ask for it, and who, whenever asked their opinion, rejected it.

There is only one really workable formula for economic vitality these days, and its a globalist multiethnic one. — Joshs

Economic efficiency is an important consideration, but it's only one important consideration among several. What's really foolish and insane is to gear the entirety of society around economic efficiency and innovation.

Dont take this personally, but you strike me as more timid than open. The ideas you like to emphasize are about avoiding and excluding, cloistering yourself rather than shattering inhibitions and venturing beyond the safety of the family. Sounds kind of boring to me. It s the kind of thing I've fled my whole life. — Joshs

Again, trust me, I used to think like you. I used to make the same kinds of arguments as you up until my mid 40s. I've gradually changed my opinion and I now think differently - not completely, absolutely differently (I still hold to the classical liberal ideal of impartial treatment at level of the individual, as I've said), but differently to the extent that I now think a lot of the latter half of the 20th century's received wisdom is rubbish, and a lot of older ideas that were discarded in that period are better.

In my faster world, — Joshs

Speed kills. ;)

But I understand and agree with some of what you say - as I said, economic efficiency is an important consideration. A measured amount of immigration, with assimilation, and cultural mixing, are beneficial. It's just that I think there's more of a balance to be struck with other considerations, and ethnic homogeneity and supermajority over large geographical regions is important too - after all, without that, there will be nothing "diverse" to mix up, will there? A "chocolate race" is not going to be a diverse race.

Increasingly, technology itself is going to come under scrutiny too. "Because it's there" is a good enough reason to climb a mountain, but is it really a good enough reason to pursue all sorts of science and technology and turn it into mass consumer product as a matter of course? Perhaps a bit of slowing down is in order.

My hunch is that your own experience of the alienness of other races preceded and justified your embrace of the genetic explanation. — Joshs

lol, no, I'm an ex-socialist, and extremely high on the "openness" trait. If you met me without knowing me, I guarantee you I'd pass the "ant smell" test for a liberal. Personally I'm quite happy living with people of any race who are more or less intellectual and moral peers. But I recognize I'm a bit of an outlier in relation to my people - or any people.

This is the problem with the lines of argument that come from opposition to ethnonationalism and the Alt Right, they're often characterized by a reflexive tic that seems to want to instantly pathologize any manifestation of ethnic solidarity - which is handy for avoiding discourse, but not very helpful for improving the situation. But if you do that, if you pathologize ethnic solidarity tout court, then you'd have to also pathologize, for example, Jewish ethnic solidarity, which is exceptionally strong, or Black ethnic solidarity, or Chinese, Japanese, etc. On the other hand, it would be passing strange if only White ethnic solidarity were eeeebil to the point of inducing horripilation, and all the other forms just fine and dandy, no? That would require some sort of extraordinary evidence and explanation. ;)

That said, yes, some people on the Alt Right are inherently prejudiced at an instinctive, emotional level - obviously that gut-level reaction is an inheritance from times when people who looked very different were likely to carry novel diseases. But that's the same for all races and ethnic groups, they all have some percentage of innate bigots.

But we should thank our lucky stars that there are some people like that - effectively, they are like canaries in a coalmine. And to mix metaphors horribly, because of their innate prejudice, they're in a position to wake up the boiling frog, sleepily dreaming the abstract multicultural dream, before it's too late.

If you disagree with the statement I quoted, — Joshs

I wasn't quibbling with the fact of occasional greater variability within than between, I was disagreeing with the final implications usually drawn from that - i.e. that "We can all happily agree that human racial classification is of no social value and is positively destructive of social and human relations."

So the practical consequence of a genetically driven vs strictly culturally driven origin of social differences would be in how they dictate expectations concerning the capacity of particular ethnic groups to approach the type and level of political and intellectual functioning of other groups.
For instance, use of government incentives to encourage one group to catch up to another would appear pointless if the cause of the inequality was believed to be genetic. — Joshs

Yes, exactly. Race doesn't have any important implications for interpersonal interactions, as I've said (the classical liberal rule holds). But it does for policy, and the lower average IQ of Blacks tells us that beyond a certain point, it's a waste of time and money to try to level the playing field (although of course we ought to do as much as possible up to the point where compensatory and leveling policies are actually effective, which requires that we constantly monitor proposed policies against ensuing results). Ultimately, race realism and denial of the equality myth is the death knell for the utopian strand of the Left - which is why it's so vigorously resisted, of course, and why people like Gould feel it's their moral duty to fudge evidence and rationalize reality away.

But "genetically-driven" is a bit of a strawman. Nobody's suggesting ethnic purity tests. It's the same kind of red herring as "define White." There might be some situations where the law would have to draw an artificial line where boundaries are fuzzy in reality, but that's what the law has to do all the time, and where to draw such lines is always up for reasoned debate between the people duly responsible for making such decisions.

It was stiflingly narrow-minded, and I perceived more social friction there than in my Chicago neighborhood — Joshs

I can't speak to your personal experiences, but that's not my personal experience. I think you're probably also looking at the statistics re. Chicago through rose-tinted glasses; racially-motivated Black anti-White and anti-Asian violence is perhaps a bigger problem than you think. Again, the statistics are often fudged on this because the precious narrative has to be maintained, even if it's at the cost of human suffering, of crimes being miscategorized, not properly investigated, etc.

Also, I think that a lot of the animus against "narrow minded" White groups is the result of a long chain of Chinese Whispers (if you'll forgive the term :) ) arising ultimately from that pestiferous and long-debunked Frankfurt School piece of trash pseudo-science, The Authoritarian Personality, as reflected in decades of narrative conformity in academia, in movies, tv shows, etc., etc. It is, literally, a prejudice many of us have as a result of indoctrination, a prejudice that sensitive nerdy types in school are especially likely to glom onto. (I know that because it's the jock-hating stance I started off with.) The reality is that Whites are the most open minded and meritocratic race of all, and always have been, ever since the Indo-European habit was to allow individuals of a conquered people to rise in their ranks socially, based on merit - so open minded, in fact, that their brains have fallen out :) This relative innate open-mindedness and willingness to be fair, is what's been unfairly taken advantage of by various ethnic interest groups and pressure groups over the past few hundred years. No more. Or as Thor would say - "ENOUGH!" :D

I already admitted that it's fine for there to be some areas where there's mixing, and I often point that out to my fellow Alt Righters (and they usually agree - most of them really, really, REALLY don't care about outliers, exceptions and fringes, again, very few are asking for purity tests or mass deportations or mass revoking of citizenship). I agree that it's healthy to have some areas and districts like that. I think it's actually quite important for a society to have an "underbelly", a counterculture, where degeneracy and nonconformity can thrive. But it must be limited, the counterculture can't become the main culture, and the Left's attempt to flip things like that has resulted in a great deal of human suffering and social dislocation (higher crime among certain groups as a result of the breakdown of the family, increasing female unhappiness, increasing male suicide). Heck it's even genetically healthy that there be some degree of miscegenation at the fringes of an ethnic group - it keeps the larger gene pool on its toes. But again, it's all a question of degree and relativity. There can be a bit of mixing, but there also has to be an ethnic supermajority. Cool, bohemian districts in cities are not upscaleable as a model for society at large.

Again, in a form of quick and dirty summation, I'd say that liberalism had reason and general agreement on its side so long as it emphasized negative liberty and the rights of the individual qua individual (the right, for example, of gays to live their lives free of bullying and physical violence), but the Left long overshot the mark when it tried to dismantle the pillars of social stability that arise from softer forms of social sanction (e.g. people expressing their dislike of homosexuality, or their support of teenage abstinence). That's for people to work out among themselves (and words are wind if you're secure in your degeneracy - there's the test).

Re. statistics, etc., and what they might or might not show, here's an entry point for criticism of multiculturalism.

No, I disagree with that statement. Within-race variation is irrelevant to questions of relative likeness/unlikeness between groups - it's a bit of a red herring that's often brought up in these discussions.

In a family, Uncle Bob can have quite a different look and temperament from Cousin Alice, but that doesn't affect the fact that they're part of a family of people who are more like each other than they are like another family. Similarly for the more diffuse concept of race: lots of variation within, yes, but it doesn't affect the fact that race x is identifiably different from race y, along all sorts of measurable dimensions. It's all relative.

Edge cases and outliers also don't affect the issue: in absolute terms there are probably quite a few Black people of the extraordinary absolute level of intelligence of a Thomas Sowell, but that doesn't affect the average, in fact, the fact that there's an average implies there will be outliers at both ends, one must expect them (and this counters the racist tendency to see individuals of another race as all clustered within a narrow "spike" at the average, that's the racist error, to thoughtlessly apply a stereotype to all individuals, instead of just using it as a loose guide to expectations).

However, it is the fact that the bulk of a population is distributed around a given average for any given trait, that matters (for public policy, and for what you can reasonably expect of a random member of that group, etc.). Although again, none of that touches the classical liberal principle that you must judge any given individual on the basis of their actions, not on the basis of your (reasonable or unreasonable) expectations.

It's really quite simple an unproblematic, and there really never was any need to make a fuss about it either way (we just have to make a fuss about it now because it's been absurdly denied for so long): race is a kind of extended, diffuse sort of family, and a family is a tiny nano-race. Most people (not all, but most) have a feeling for their ethnic group/race that's a more vague, diffuse version of the feeling they have for their family. And relative ethnic/racial homogeneity in a given region makes for a smoother-functioning society with a high level of automatic trust/predictability in social interaction; whereas a multiracial, multiethnic society is low-trust, with unpredictable social interactions and constant tensions and friction. There can be mixing at the fringes of course, here and there, but there has to be a solid majority of one ethnic or racial type in a given region (and for various other reasons, including the advantages and limits of the principle of strength in numbers, that has to be ultimately the size of a nation, a good few millions and upwards, at least).

Re. race and culture: while culture is to some extent detachable from race (both from the point of view of the principle that ideas stand or fall on their own merits, and from the point of view of cultural appropriation and mixing being part of the fun of life, and an important means whereby cultures mutually enrich each other), culture is fundamentally a biological outgrowth, part of the extended phenotype. e.g. some political organizations or forms of social structure are more congenial to some races or ethnic groups than others, and races/ethnic groups will typically naturally tend to generate and sustain different types of culture to others. For example meritocracy, individualism and egalitarianism are favoured by Northwestern European Whites in about equal measure, while Chinese also like meritocracy, but are more enamoured of clannish forms of social organization, are not so interested in individualism, and only occasionally flirt with egalitarianism, while being very big on "filial piety." It's a matter for close empirical investigation figuring out what's what in these sorts of areas. And again, these are just averages, with all sorts of edge cases, outliers, exceptions, etc.

I agree you can know by inference. What is the inference? Is it inductive, dedective, inference to the best explanation, what? I've been trying to get you to spell out this inference for me for some time, but you never say what kind of inference it is. It is hard to evaluate the strength of an inference when one doesn't know what the inference is. — PossibleAaran

I think I did in our previous long conversation. It's deductive inference. This goes back to my point that we posit (punt, bet, conjecture) identities (natures, essences, etc.) for things, then we deduce what ought to eventuate for experience if we have identified the thing correctly (i.e. if the thing has the identity, nature or essence that we think it has) and then we check experience to see if things pan out as we'd expect them to if the thing has the identity we're positing for it.

So for example, if it's a piece of paper, which like all material things, is defined as having the property of existing while we're not perceiving it, then (we deduce that) a camera ought to inform us of the fact that it exists while we don't perceive it.

As I said in previous conversations, it might not - the camera might reveal nothing, in which case we look for confounding factors (e.g. someone's playing a trick) or we adjust our posit (it's not a piece of paper but something else, perhaps a new kind of object that doesn't exist when we're not perceiving it).

You see, there's no mystery about the thing having the property of unperceived existence or permanence, because pieces of paper, material things, are such things as have that property. The question is only whether the thing is a piece of paper, a material thing, or not.

Wow, a lot of questions there! Some peacemeal responses:-

I'm on the classical liberal/libertarian wing of the Alt Right. I view the Left/Right divide so far as economics goes with some degree of equanimity. I lean towards economic libertarianism, but I'm not totally hostile to some elements of socialism or social democracy in a nation, a lot depends on what's naturally congenial to a given folk, and to some extent there's a trade-off between economic efficiency and other considerations, as well as a general trade-off between the costs and benefits of any proposed economic or political measure, and a balance to be struck (wrt any given question) between progressivism (trying to improve things) and conservatism (keeping things that work).

In terms of religion and philosophy, well, I'm 58 so I've been around the houses. I started life straight out of the gate at 6 years old rejecting my native Catholicism and secretly being an Atheist, and till my early 20s I hated Christianity with a passion, but I've softened a lot towards religion generally and Christianity specifically over the years. I'm also aware that most barefoot rationalists make strawmen out of the arguments for God, and that the actual classical arguments (Aristotelian, Thomist, etc.) aren't quite so easy to dispatch, so I'm more of a Huxleyian or perhaps Spencerian Agnostic these days. I'm just easy on the topic, particularly since I've also done meditation and had mystical experiences myself. There's a lot we don't know, and I don't begrudge people making a bet about that vast Unknown, and living by it, so long as they don't get any on the furniture. However, myself, I'm still of the Feynman mindset - it's ok not to know, and one doesn't have to stuff something, anything, into that Void.

Yeah, I'm long familiar with the people you mention, and fan of some of them too - Pinker, Dennett, Haidt, etc. Wright or Ridley? Probably Ridley, I find his unbounded optimism congenial. There's a lot in that type of thinking that can help people of all political persuasions find common ground, or at least, if not exactly common ground, at least ground on which civil discussion can be had.

In terms of deep philosophy, I'm broadly Aristotelian, but also somewhat Nietzschean (so a bit like Ayn Rand in that respect), plus I'm now (after years and years of thinking he was a poseur) persuaded that Wittgenstein was a very great - though of course highly idiosyncratic - philosopher, who was basically in the process of reinventing the Aristotelian wheel before he died (with On Certainty). His approach to the philosophy of language, as well as Austin's type of ordinary language analysis - these are a great foundation for philosophical thinking. But I do think philosophical theory is possible too (Dennett's "engineering" understanding, based on Sellars' "how things in the broadest sense hang together in the broadest sense").

My overall metaphysical view, especially as it relates to philosophy of Mind, has been for a few years now more or less Riccardo Manzotti's Process Externalism, and I'm pretty much an Externalist all round (semantic, epistemological, etc.). Embodied Enactivism would also fit here, and I agree that's generally the way forward for many reasons. (I read Varela/Thompson - as well as Johnson - many years ago, and triangulating that with Dennett's review of them - it's really a toss up between whether you want to keep the traditional lingo like Dennett does, or want to venture into using newer coinages and process-oriented concepts, which I tend to favour. In that light, it's not so much Dennett's ideas that are long in the tooth, it's the traditional lingo, the jargon, in terms of which we think of epistemology and philosophy of mind that's passed its sell-by date.)

I also think that there are some reasonable points made even by gender theorists, even by Marxists sometimes, and a lot of the names you mention, like Hegel, Kierkegaard, etc., even Postmodernists or Pragmatists like Rorty also sometimes say profound and interesting things; it's just the ideological element (the desire to give society a makeover according to abstract principles, usually the abstract, unquestioned principle of egalitarianism, which is the fag end of Protestantism) that I dislike. Humanity is not a topiary garden to be trimmed just so to suit any abstract ideal, one must deal with the material as one finds it, one must work with the grain (in the Daoist sense), and if one wishes to change it one must nudge it along with compassion and care, always appealing to the rationality of the individual whose mind one wishes to change.

In that vein, I'm not really sure that defining things is all that helpful. What's more helpful is trying to notice patterns in the world. And to me now, it seems like race, biology, etc. are a much more important factors in all sorts of ways than received opinion thought for much of the 20th century. It seems to me now that a lot of the ideas that were current then (which I grew up with in part) have been blind alleys, and that the progress of science has shown that some of the older common sense ideas, developed over the course of centuries by observation, that were rejected during the 20th century, were actually sound. But science also offers the possibility of advance too, and not everything from the 19th/20th centuries was shit - the basic classical liberal framework, which treats individuals impartially and fairly, is sound, and was a definite gain. But much of what came after classical liberalism, especially in the 20th century, was hubristic overshoot in various directions, particularly in the direction of egalitarianism, which if it means anything beyond just a restatement of the classical liberal principle of equal treatment regardless of station, talents, or capacities, is a lie, a great, stinking, whopping lie. Equality of outcome is a foredoomed goal (unless you're talking about a colony of clones, of course! :) ).

Boredom is a symptom of laziness and lack of application. It's the result of living a consumerist life exclusively, instead of living with a balance of consumption and creative output. (Mania and obsession would be the opposite error, too much creativity and not enough cud chewing.)

The secret to happiness and the avoidance of boredom is not a mystery at all, and has always been well known:

1) pick something you're good at, out of the basket of things you're good at (any human being has a bunch of things they have some talent for, and although usually one talent stands out a bit above the rest you can potentially earn a living with any of them depending on circumstances);

2) choose goals that are just on the edge of your capability, so that you could either succeed or fail;

3) have measurable criteria for success or failure;

4) do the thing and succeed or fail.

5) Either way you'll be happy and not bored, although of course you'll be happier if you succeed. Also you'll develop skill in the thing, and the exercise of skill is in itself pleasurable.

Rinse and repeat.

The only known alternative is the Buddhist/Epicurean idea of ataraxia or nirvana, but that isn't really a method of pursuing happiness, rather a method of getting behind the entire mechanism of "the pursuit of happiness" to a state of inner tranquility.

It's possible to do both, since inner tranquility is attainable even in the midst of action and striving, as explained in, for example, Marcus Aurelius' writings. (This is related to the point about skill: the exercise of skill can induce a "flow state" which is a kind of mini, temporary version of nirvana.) But you need a good grounding in a fulfilled life to do both, whereas you can leap straight into nirvana without being someone of any great attainment.

No, I think it's quite settled that Gould, Lewontin and Rose are Marxist shills, it's just that a) the evolutionary biology people are too polite to say so outright, and b) a lot of people in the humanities are themselves Marxist shills, or at least have the traditional sense of "no enemies to the Left." so they just keep the "debate" going artificially.

For example Gould has been caught with his pants down re. his critique of Samuel George Morton on intelligence and skull measurements, the centerpiece of that execrable pile of piffle, The Mismeasure of Man. That should be enough to instantly disqualify him from any serious discussion. (Lewontin and Rose are hacks in a similar vein, though I don't have to hand right now the relevant critiques for them.) And tracing the nature/nurture debate back to its origins with Franz Boas, the whole idea that there ever was any substance to the nurture über alles claim has always been nothing more than a bunch of smoke and mirrors from particular noisy and influential Leftists down the years.

There is no debate among serious scientists or philosophers on any of these issues: race is real, gender is real, 70-80% of variability in intelligence is down to genes, etc., etc. Social constructionism is bunk, at least if you take the hardline version (obviously lots of culture is socially constructed in an uncontroversial, superficial sense).

But the laughable thing is that none of these facts have the dire implications that their detractors seem to think they have (or at least seem to be insinuating they have, to people who might care about such implications): none of these facts alter the fundamental classical liberal principle that you can only judge an individual on the basis of their revealed actions, not on the basis of the average traits of their group.

Essentially, students in the humanities have been sold a pup for the past 30-50 years, during which time academia was gradually taken over by a crabbed, quasi-religious political cult. In another few decades, people will look back on this past period in wonderment, at how things could have gone so badly awry in academia, at how entire institutions could have been taken over by such a queer, particularist, convoluted view. (Of course we know the method: nepotism mixed with intimidation, at first moral, and eventually outright violent, as we are seeing today.)

The reason I can't do it is because my memory might deceive me. — PossibleAaran

No, the problem is deeper than that, it's that you can't tell whether your memory is deceiving you or not, in fact you don't even know what memory is because, again, the concept of memory, like perception, like colour concepts and shape concepts, only makes sense in a public world where one person's memory can be checked by someone or something else, by something that's understood and accepted as existing outside the private individual's experience.

How did you come to learn that this thing popping into your private experience is a memory, as opposed to some fresh, sui generis experience? How did you learn the use of the concept of memory? Is there Russian doll array of homunculi inside you, each checking the memory of the previous?

And doesn't memory itself often involve the past existence of the presently unperceived? My earliest memory is of playing with a toy train at Christmas. Neither the train nor the room exist now; I'd have as much difficulty knowing about those things' non-existence outside my present experience as I supposedly have re. knowing about the existence of something outside my present experience.

IOW both the existence AND the non-existence of things outside my present experience are as problematic as each other - which is to say, not problematic at all.

I can know that X has some property P only if I am/was aware of that property at some time — PossibleAaran

False, you can know by inference. That's what happens with things like the camera test. You might have never seen the piece of paper in question, but be shown a photograph of it that demonstrates its existence.

[For me true romance would be lovers working together at their shared, highest ambition. They might co-write a movie or a scientific paper or play in a band together. But this kind of compatibility is like winning the lottery.] — foo

Yeah, I remember some writer somewhere saying that the ideal relationship is when you have the couple moving in parallel to a shared goal, as opposed to focussing on each other. Having kids is obviously the most common shared goal for humanity, and a powerful one, with lots of depth and room for development - and in fact that process of a shared project of raising kids is what seems to lead to the deeper kind of love that's born of mutual respect that you sometimes see with old couples. (Note, this is perhaps why arranged marriages can be successful too - if the parents are wise, they can pick compatible partners, and then the business arrangement deepens mutual esteem over time.) But you could in theory have other shared goals too.

On that matter of arranged marriages, I've often wondered what the distinction is between marriage based on romantic love (or elective affinity) that's so common in the West vs. arranged marriage, which is so common in the rest of the world. I think with the latter, the arrangement is based on sensible, practical economic considerations and the like, with some eye to the proposed couple being simpatico at a psychological level. The selection method of romantic love, on the other hand, seems to rely on trusting some kind of innate ability for nature to decide wisely - I have in mind something like maybe the hormonal "smell" of a partner triggering some kind of deep-seated calculation in the brain, that the child resulting from intercourse will be well-formed? Something like that anyway. IOW, maybe our brains are wiser than we know in that area.

But other than that, I think generally that the "sexual revolution" was pretty disastrous. Sex is not a toy, it's a nuclear weapon, and that's why societies have always hedged it about in various ways with various taboos and restrictions. It was wise to look at the matter rationally, and perhaps tinker with reforms here and there, to protect individuals' negative rights better; but it wasn't wise to just ditch all the evolved patterns completely.

Well yeah, it's pretty obvious that Feminism is anti-science at this stage (it became anti-science some time during the early 1970s when Marxist Feminists co-opted the broader movement - amusingly, losing working class female support in the process).

There was always some degree of bad faith, some pseudo-history and pseudo-science, in Feminism, but so long as Feminism was pursuing equal rights in a classical liberal framework that didn't matter so much. Now that Feminism is just one intersectional facet of the broader PC cult, it's necessarily anti-science and it necessarily has to falsify history to maintain its dogmas in the teeth of the evidence.

Social constructionism is just the most awful rubbish. 20 years from now people are going to look back on this past few decades' abject conformity and bowdlerization and marvel at it, just as we used to laugh at the Victorians putting doilies on piano legs when we were kids in the early 1960s, or as we look back in horror at the period of eugenics, or the time when psychiatrists used to lobotomize people or give them electro shock therapy.

It's both allegorical and represents his views on women.

The opinion "don't forget thy whip" comes from a female voice in the text. The implication is that women prefer the man who won't take any shit from them.

The root of it would be the human female propensity to both hypergamy and cuckoldry. The flower of it is the female tendency to lie, act and dissemble, which is the level that Nietzsche is dealing with.

It's all basically about the way humans reproduce and evolve. The best option for a female is to get a kid by the highest status "alpha" male around and persuade him to invest time and energy in helping her raise the kid. If that's not possible, the second best is to get a kid by the alpha and then get some poor schmuck "beta" male who's none the wiser to invest time and energy raising a kid that's not theirs (hence "cuckoldry", it's the same strategy as the cuckoo bird uses). If that's not possible, third best, the consolation prize, is to settle for a kid by the beta and get the beta to help look after it.

Human males have their contrary strategies, philandering/avoiding commitment, and requiring bona fide faithfulness in women. (Incidentally the root dishonesty of Feminism is that it highlights that latter strategy in males, while pretending that it's some bizarre male thing that comes out of nowhere as a dominance strategy, thereby downplaying or not admitting to the female tendency to cuckoldry to which that male strategy - of requiring faithfulness and obedience in the female - is a defensive response.)

Hence the "war of the sexes" - this is what it actually is, and it all unfolds pretty logically and inevitably from sexual dimorphism and the differences between the mechanics of sperm and egg production - eggs are rarer and more precious, therefore require more careful use and investment strategies; human children also require high investment. Therefore the female has to a) get the best quality sperm, and b) get some male or males to co-operate in raising the kid. But it needn't be the same male.

Notably, this process is often unconscious for the woman, and if you challenged her she'd be surprised or deny it. This is because whether any of the three strategies is successful depends on both the physical beauty and character of the female, and women hate to be reminded of how much their reproductive success depends on their physical beauty, especially since it's time-limited (and of course this is a really cruel aspect of nature, and one can hardly blame the woman for wanting to avoid its implications). Also, having an upstanding character and taking responsibility for anything is a pain in the ass, whether you're male or female, and if you can get away without it, so much the better. But it's easier for women to get away with it. Hence Nietzsche's connection to acting, lying, dissembling, etc., as quintessentially female traits - those are the female equivalent of males being assholes.

The final result is that females are and always have been pretty much the gatekeepers of the human reproductive process, they are generally the selectors of males, while making males think they're selecting females. This is just the way the human genome has unfolded - and it's the reason for our dominance of the earth, as men have been "shit tested" and their stock improved by high standard female selection generation after generation. The man who's smart enough to see through female hypergamy and not be cuckolded is the kind of man that women want, i.e. women ultimately look for men who can "master" them. i.e. the type of man who doesn't take any shit from women is the type of man women want and are turned on by; the weak man who allows himself to be pushed around and bamboozled by female "glamour" and female rhetorical persuasion is despised by women.

All this (minus the evolutionary biology explanation of course, just on the level of honest, time-tested observation of behaviour) was the general opinion of most intelligent people back in the day, both male and female, when the sexes felt themselves opposed to each other as equally canny "frenemies," each with plusses and minuses on their ledgers.

Whether we in the current year have truly progressed by suppressing those ideas, or regressed, is still a moot point. The rising rate of depression among women and the rising suicide rate among men might be a clue.

Sure I do. — Rich

No, you don't, and the way you're talking here demonstrates that you obviously don't, otherwise you would understand that the questions you're still asking are already answered by the theory. That's not to say you can't disagree with the theory, but you'd have to actually engage with it, instead of continuing to repeat questions that the theory has already proposed answers to.

Who or what is programming humans? — Rich

I'm beginning to think you're either dishonest or you're not reading very carefully and just being triggered by odd words here and there. I said in the very post you are quoting:-"we are not ourselves programmed by anything external to us in that way" and then I go on to explain how we come to behave in a way that's similar to thing that are programmed.

So it just happened over a long period of time? Any theory other than this? — Rich

Do you not understand the theory of evolution? Roughly speaking:

1) DNA is like a blueprint for the self-assembly of a body/brain structures out of nutrients, an organism. That includes whatever "control center" organisms may have for parsing the environment and making decisions as to what to do next. Various parts of the DNA code for different "building blocks" of the organism, various components, etc.

2) Any given body/brain structure will "fit" its environment (be able to cope with its environment in various ways) better or worse than some other (e.g. one structure might have slightly faster reflexes, at a certain extra energy cost; faster reflexes will help it avoid predators, at a certain extra energy cost; it's up to the environment whether the faster reflexes are worth the extra cost - both the feature and its cost are relevant and both will bump up against the environment).

3) Body/brain structures that survive long enough to reproduce and pass on to their offspring their DNA, will ipso facto pass on the building blocks and components, the "neat tricks," that helped them (the parents) fit their environment; those that don't, won't.

4) All the various components were the result of random mutations in origin, but so long as they help the organisms survive and reproduce, they keep getting passed down to the next generation, while at the same time if they don't help the organism survive and reproduce, they aren't passed on; eventually, over a long period of time, you have an accumulation of "good tricks" that work well together; well-knit bodies, fast reactions, decision-making control centers (brains) that make good decisions, etc.

5) IOW, the "best bits" stick together and make survival and reproduction more likely, the more likely reproduction is, the more likely a given particular "build" for a given bit of organism will be passed down through the generations and be inherited by future generations.

Essentially, there's a random element that throws things against the wall, those elements that stick and work well together get passed down the generations and accumulate, resulting eventually in highly tuned organisms that fit their environment very well.

Exactly, the only problem it's how life as we experienced it developed. — Rich

No, life is not a problem, we understand roughly how life developed, or at the very least we have placeholder explanations, and proofs of concept. The archaeological record is not perfect (for obvious reasons) but it's good enough to prove the theory, we can watch evolution happen in real time with creatures that have fast reproduction cycles (like fruit flies, etc.), and the biology and chemistry are understood well enough so that we can actually tinker with DNA at a micro level. The initial step from inorganic chemistry to organic is still somewhat mysterious, but that's just because we don't have access to the same timescales as nature did. I suspect that part of the puzzle will only be solved definitively if and when we come across a planet somewhere out there where we can catch that intermediary step in the act. But every other step on either side of that gap, we know very well.

The problem is and remains the subjective aspect of consciousness, not life as such.

Re. the question of the Bible, etc., there is no contradiction between science and religion unless one takes the Bible (or any other holy text) absolutely literally. I don't see any reason to. I'm not hostile to religion or to Christianity, but while I can understand the Bible as a revealed text filtered through human error, I can't take it seriously as a document every word of which is true, it just doesn't make sense to me that way.

(I'm aware that I've said we should stop several times now, but each time you've said something that makes me think maybe we can continue, but if you do take the Bible absolutely literally then I think we really will have to knock it on the head.)

Then what is making the decisions? The bot? How did that happen? — Rich

How does a computer or a robot "decide" which move to make next in a game of chess? It's clear that computers can be programmed to make decisions in a very real sense (i.e. they have to scan their environment, and come up with some options in relation to their goals).

Now of course we program the computer or the robot with its goals, and we are not ourselves programmed by anything external to us in that way. But the general idea is that similarly sophisticated - in fact much more sophisticated - decision-making machinery has gradually evolved over very long periods of time (via differential selection and reproduction) in living creatures, only it's not made of silicon but of neurons, fat, hormones, etc. Hence, "moist robot."

It's not necessary, for this explanation to be valid, to have to explain the origin of life, or the universe. Also, there's no contradiction between the theory of evolution, or a mechanistic explanation of brain functions, and religion, if that's what you're worried about: the classical arguments for God's existence (Aristotelian/Thomist) are arguments for God as the sustainer of existence here and now, so therefore He would be the sustainer in the here and now of the existence of the mechanistic systems in brains, etc. too. Using evolutionary systems and mechanical principles would be just the way God rolls, so to speak. Whether the universe had an origin in time or didn't, also makes no difference to the arguments that demonstrate the necessary existence of God, or of any Absolute or creative principle (e.g. Logos).

As I said, the key difficulty is simply about the subjective aspect of consciousness - the objective view is unproblematic, either for science or for religion.

Here's a brain dump on the topic. This is the fruit of about 50 years noodling around on the subject from all angles with all sorts of "systems", teachers and traditions, so take it FWIW.

Meditation is often presented in a vastly over-complicated way, sometimes overblown, sometimes under-estimated. It's quite simple in principle (though it's got tremendous depth, and does require commitment, in practice). There are two aspects to it, or two sides to the coin of it (I'm using the formulation of Mahayana Buddhism, but it's really the same in all systems, because it's grounded in commonalities re. how the brain/mind works):-

1. "Calming" meditation - quite simply, this is just getting the body into parasympathetic activation mode, while the mind remains alert and awake. The nervous system has two modes of activation, sympathetic and parasympathetic, sympathetic is the normal waking state, in which the mind and body are geared to interacting with the world around you. Parasympathetic activation is the body "shutting down" in order to self-repair - most obviously in sleep, but sometimes just dozing off can get it too. The key is that in meditation you have activate the parasympathetic nervous system but also at the same time keep the mind awake and alert - and that's tricky, because normally when the body "drops" into parasympathetic activation (it's a notable sensation that you can sometimes catch in the act while falling asleep), the mind shuts down too (i.e. one falls asleep). The required alertness is obtained by sitting upright and keeping the spine absolutely straight, but while the body is relaxed, and that is effected by getting the right tilt to the pelvis, which is effected by using a cushion and sitting cross legged (in one of several possible ways) with the knees lower than the hips. There are lots of other options, but this is what one might call the "classic" method that's common across many traditions.

In the calm state, you are alert and awake, aware of what's going on around you, but not reacting to it, and the mind is naturally fairly empty of thoughts, while the body is deeply relaxed, with the breath naturally slow, refined, minimal and even. Also, the body is somewhat "blank" in terms of sensations - one might say it's the proprioceptive equivalent of "brain grey" for the visual system when the eyes stop saccading, or have the same input wherever they saccade (e.g. if you either fixate on an object, or stare at a blank wall). The more practiced you are at calming meditation, the more naturally empty of thoughts the mind will get, and quicker too (i.e. at first it might take 5-10 minutes to get the "drop", eventually it's instant, and profoundly deep, as soon as you sit down to your accustomed posture).

There are many, many ways to mechanically get the body into a parasympathetic state (e.g. body scanning, focusing on the breath, counting breaths, fixating on an object, staring at a blank wall, etc.) and there are all sorts of refinements, but that's the basic idea.

2. "Insight" meditation. This is what you "do" while you're in the calm state, and there are roughly two types of things to do in the calm state: 1) rational investigation, and 2) passive observation of subjective experience.

Rational investigation is, for example, analyzing the philosophical teachings of a traditional school like Buddhism or Daoism, or even something like the method of Cartesian doubt, but in the sense of how they apply to you and your personal experience, rather than as mere arguments (as we would do with philosophy here). Essentially one "tests" the teachings in one's own experience, with one's mind as a laboratory of sorts. Particular attention may be paid to the question "Who/what am I?" and this is one of the most powerful methods, as it attacks the central problem directly. But meditations on transience, death, etc., are also valuable.

Passive observation is to simply be aware of the world without thinking of what it is, what it's called, without conceptualizing it. You suspend your knowledge of what this "thing", your experience, is, but you nevertheless attend to it carefully in the here and now. One charming simile used in the Tibetan teachings is of a child wandering a temple. The kid doesn't know what the hell these golden statues of gods, etc., are, but it's hypnotized by their beauty. That's the thing you want, that suspension of naming and conceptualization, that not-knowing, while still being minutely focused on the texture of experience in the here and now.

By either route, or alternating both, and with sufficient depth of calm, at some point - usually, though not invariably, after a period of intense fear, or of feeling like you're close to losing your mind - it occurs to you that you don't exist in the way you've been accustomed all your life to thinking you exist. It occurs to you that you are not an independent entity imprisoned in the body, sitting somewhere behind the eyes peeping out at the world. The ordinary everyday sense of "I", "me", etc., vanishes, or one might say it becomes diaphanous, or insignificant. At the same time, there's a concomitant realization that "your" consciousness isn't personal, but rather impersonal, i.e. it "belongs" to the Universe, it's not just the body's consciousness, but also the property of the Universe at large.

Initially, this experience can be either bland or an absolutely stunning revelation, it's different for different people and at different times. How it's described in different cultures and in different times varies as well - some cultures have been plain and analytical about it, some have been more florid and "religious" in describing it. The emotional feeling-tone of the insight in its full form is one of immense, profound peace, "the peace that passeth understanding." (Note: this is different from the sense of calm that arises with parasympathetic activation, it's a mental phenomenon, the result of having come up to the buffers, so to speak, to a full stop, with no more questions, with all possible questions of the "big" variety answered.)

It's the same realization whether the context is religious or a-religious, theistic or non-theistic, or rationalist. (The religionist simply views the experience as revelatory of a direct link to the Divine - the bit of God, who is omnipresent, that's in you, so to speak; the rationalist can take a more abstract view that it's simply a kind of intimacy with the Universe at large, or even more simply, an absence of the sense of separation.)

Notably, insight can be had without the benefit of calming meditation, in ordinary everyday circumstances, or in peak/flow experiences (such as skilled sports, or drug experiences) or in moments of stress, grief, fear, etc. - but it's usually fleeting, evanescent, and often passed over as of no significance, or rejected as something fearful (some forms of what's been called "depersonalization" are probably insight experiences). Calming meditation stabilizes the insight so that it's more fully grasped. Also, insight deepens calm, and calm facilitates insight - they go together rather nicely and help each other along.

Having this experience is only the beginning - obviously the ultimate aim is to live in the world from this perspective. And that's where the "teachings" of all the great religions come from. Were we simply rational animals, ethics would remain at the level of virtue ethics. The larger dimension of ethics, the sense of universal brotherhood, etc., comes from this area, comes from people who have experienced this type of experience. (Of course these are not contradictory - universalist ethics must be built on a solid foundation of virtue ethics, otherwise it becomes an insane kind of hyper-altruism. In fact the practice of virtue ethics is a necessary preliminary practice for meditation in most traditional systems, since if the mind is constantly disturbed by reflection on wrongdoing, it's difficult for it to get into a calm state.)

One thing to watch out for, a major pitfall, is this: the disappearance of the ordinary sense of self is not itself the goal, and it's a common trap to think it is, to make an enemy of the ordinary everyday sense of self, and to strive to be in a "state" of no-self all the time. That's a false goal, pseudo-enlightenment. In fact, it's perfectly fine to have that ordinary, everyday sense of self. The trick is to know at all times, with unshakeable certainty, that it's not real, even while it seems to be. That is full, final enlightenment, at least according to some Buddhist and Advaita traditions. Having the experienc eof the disappearance of the ordinary sense of self is a big help, a big initiation, and with that experience one finally has one's foot in the door, so to speak; but the disappearance per se of the ordinary sense of self is not the goal. Again, traditional teaching similes come to our aid: in the dark, one mistakes a coiled rope for a snake. Upon investigation, one realizes it's a coiled rope, and one then remains unshakably certain that it's not a snake, but a coiled rope, even if it still looks like a snake.

This is basically what it's all about. As I say, it can be elaborated in various ways and there are lots of possible ramifications that can be explored, and it's something you can get better at in various ways, but this twofold procedure is the core "thing" of meditation, and the "royal road" that's common to many traditions in the East

(Note: the West had similar teachings in antiquity - for example, there's a practice called "incubation" which was used as a form of healing and psychotherapy in the ancient Greek world, which involved lying down in a dark place and simply giving up - under supervision and with the guidance of trained attendants. Parmenides' teacher was said to have taught him "silence." The West's teachings had to go underground as a part of "occultism" during the time of Catholicism's doctrinal and political hegemony, and often got garbled as a result. It should be noted that, like some Chinese Daoist systems, and Tibetan systems like Dzogchen, the Western systems tended to favour "astral travel", which is basically lucid dreaming entered into from the waking state. This "astral travel" is what "magick" is all about - it's what generated the various "apocalypses" and "visions" you find in things like the Gnostic teachings, as well as things like the "visionary" proem to Parmenides' philosophy, which reads, quite literally like a straightforward account of a vision, and is itself an introduction to the philosophy, rather than just some flowery, irrelevant preamble.)

Yes, just a small gap like how the heck the whole thing happened and is still happening? — Rich

No that's not the gap, the gap is the problem of subjective consciousness. But that's not the same thing as mind in the sense of the controller of an organism's actions. That looks like it's almost certainly all explainable in terms of neurons and hormones (whatever the final explanation is). Anything that's to do with physical doings of the body - which is to say, speaking, acting, etc., is explainable as the brain tugging on various strings, it's a mechanical process, and to the extent that the mind (whatever it is) finds expression in the material world, that's all explainable in the same way.

The Hard Problem is the existence of what seems like a subjective view on the world and how that's connected to the mind as body-controller.

I do think there's a resolution to it, but while I think Dennett does actually deal with it in his own way, he's never been able to explain it in a way that gets it across to people. The gap is just "More work needed here" - rather than "and a miracle happens here."

So what is asking questions of each other, molecules? And what are molecules comprised of? It's so just waves. — Rich

Eh, I give up, I just tried to explain that in the passage you quoted there, if you're not going to engage with the argument there's no point carrying on.

Of course he says mind is unreal. That’s his entire shtick. Searle and Nagel said his first book should be called ‘Consciousness Ignored.’ No kidding. — Wayfarer

Yeah I know. And I think several others have said similar things independently. But they're wrong. To explain life in biological terms, instead of using the elan vital concept, is not to ignore life as a phenomenon, any more than to criticize Feminism is to criticize women. To ignore one theory about a thing, while explaining a thing, isn't to ignore the thing.

I think I understand why this response keeps cropping up though, there is a gap in Dennett's explanation, and it's related to the idea of the "Hard Problem" and thought experiments like P-Zombies, etc.

They “exist in a special way,” which is to say, ultimately, not at all.

That's the kind of extremist rhetoric that Dennett is trying to wean us off by pointing to examples that don't have a clear cut answer as to whether they exist or don't - e.g. centers of gravity, money. Both of these are illusory "in a strict sense" (for a given meaning of "strict"), but they are real enough to be indispensable, and real in the sense that they are quick and dirty ways of referring to complex, abstract patterns of co-ordination.

IOW, Dennett is arguing that free will is real enough to be indispensable in an analogous way to how centers of gravity and money are indispensable, and the worry that their "strict" illusoriness either ought to, or might induce people to, give up their everyday usage, is misplaced, as misplaced as the notion that people ought to, or suddenly would, stop using money when they realize it's just an abstract representation of exchanges of real value on a ledger.

This is actually a Wittgensteinian point too, also reiterated by Austin: "real" isn't necessarily a binary concept. It can be and is sometimes, but it's not essentially so always.

You have to meditate on the absolute absurdity of quantum wave-particles asking questions of other quantum-wave particles. — Rich

Compare: "one would have to meditate on the absurdity of quantum wave particles killing/eating/avoiding/procreating with, other quantum-wave particles". Those terms describe emergent properties that quantum particles don't have, that doesn't prevent them from properly referring to large scale (in relation to the quantum scale) properties of objects (made of quantum particles, like animals) that I presume you'd have no problem talking about.

Exactly what scientific evidence is there that little Moist Robots are zooming around in the body. — Rich

The idea is that the whole body/brain is a moist robot/control system, not sure where you're getting the idea of them being something inside the body. Perhaps you mean the idea that Dennett talks about elsewhere, of the body being made up of little robots?

I agree that any one-to-one correlation between neurons and consciousness would be absurd, but that's not the way most people think of the correlation between mind and its physical substratum. (There are several ways of thinking about it, and it's still up in the air, but the idea of framing some kind of correlation or identity isn't intrinsically absurd.)

It's pretty clear by now that at the level of behaviour, you can in principle have robots behaving like humans behave (for example Boston Dynamics is creating robots right now that look uncannily animal-like in their behaviour), and behaviour is part of the concept of the mental (e.g. I wish to move my hand and move my hand). Now I'll grant that there's a huge difficulty, a seemingly "Hard Problem," when it comes to the subjective features of consciousness, but if all the third-person features of consciousness can be accounted for by brain activity (e.g. we observe: animal sees other animal, reacts, robot sees door, opens it, etc.) then it's not inherently implausible to think that there may be a way of understanding the subjective features of consciousness using the same science.

One robot would probably not wend its way through complex traffic; if all the robots were linked in a community, however, so that the robots knew what the other near-by robots were planning on doing next, traffic itself would become "intelligent". — Bitter Crank

I think that would still be competence, or machine learning, it would still be something the AI was programmed to do. But to me intelligence - of the kind that we might worry about the thing having ideas of its own - has to do with reflection, which means that an intelligent being is situated in a nexus of other beings like it, and it has a sense of how it looks to them, and it has a sense of it mattering how it looks to them.

I base this speculation on the fact that all the most intelligent creatures we know up to and including ourselves are social creatures (with the exception of the octopus, but even the octopus seems to have brain-like structures for each of its tentacles) - apes, wolves, corvids, parrots, etc.

As for me, I still retain the same Mind as I had since I was a baby. — Rich

How would you know? What would make more sense is to say that you have the same theory of what your mind is that you had since you started thinking about what your mind is. In that case, Dennett isn't asking you to change it entirely, just to revise it and modify it in the light of science.

Ignore biological science. — Rich

Why?

yeah but as a necessary illusion. Talk about ‘condescending’. The point is, if mind is real, Dennett’s entire life work is undone. — Wayfarer

He's not saying mind isn't real, he's saying it's not quite what we think it is (although it's partly what we think it is, it does have some of the features we think it has, just not all).

all Dennett's is doing is replacing Mind with the carefully chosen substitution character Moist Robot — Rich

I disagree, what he's actually doing is trying to bridge the "Scientific Image" and the "Manifest Image." The cute/catchy analogies and metaphors are tools for thought, he's not some sinister, machiavellian figure who's trying to replace our ordinary mental concepts with snazzy new ones, or substituting fashionable, catchy new ones for the old ordinary ones by sleight of hand, he's using these metaphors, analogies and catchy ideas to help us think about how our ordinary mental concepts might be related to our scientific understanding of the world.

Because after all we do have this problem that science seems to be telling us one thing, and our ordinary mental concepts seem to be telling us another - so how do we reconcile the two? Dennett's general theme is that when you look clearly at what each Image seems to be telling us, maybe it's not actually telling us what it seems to be telling us; maybe the Scientific Image doesn't have the dire implications it seems to have, and maybe by some slight revisions of our ordinary mental concepts, we can see how they can be reconciled with the Scientific Image.

You will note, for example, that he's pretty staunch in defending the concept of free will as necessary for society, necessary for us to use, valuable, and saying that we shouldn't stop using it - unlike many other scientists and philosophers who are running around telling us that free will is an "illusion" and that we must stop thinking in terms of free will.

His middle-ground is that yes, it's an illusion in a certain precise sense, but it's a benign illusion like money, and it's still hugely important and necessary, and we still need to work with it and use it, just like we do with money. "Free will" doesn't refer to a single thing that has its own ontological existence distinct from physical things, but rather to a set of complex conditions at the scientific level, yet we still need to use the single term to get a handle on that complex set of conditions, or rather: the use of the single term is still the best way for human beings to get a handle on that complex set of conditions.

Is this a real issue? Or is it a manufactured outcome from a manufactured problem that will never occur in reality and being bent to political purposes? Somewhere in between? Thoughts? — Uneducated Pleb

It's difficult to say. I veer back and forth on this topic, sometimes I read things that make the AI/robot revolution seem imminent, in which case yes, I think it's a huge potential danger, economically and in many other possible ways, and we really should be putting the brakes on and thinking things through. We ought not to just blithely do tech things simply because we can. "Because it's there" is a fine enough excuse for climbing mountains, but I think we need to be a bit more responsible with technology and have a bigger discussion. In that sense, even if AI isn't imminent, we should be having the conversation, and the smart bods should be thinking through all the possibilities they can in relation to ethical AI, economic ramifications, etc.

We need to do our best to survey the possibility space before we careen headlong into it.

On the other hand, sometimes I read things that make me think the claims for AI are still vastly over-inflated, just as they've always been, and that we're actually nowhere near what the claims would make us think is just round the corner.

Sometimes I think a mix of both - maybe it's coming, but maybe opposition to it is as short-sighted as Luddism was in its day; on the other hand, maybe this is the one time where Luddism is actually the appropriate reaction.

At the moment, I'm in a place where I think that machine learning isn't actually intelligence, so we're still in the area of more and more sophisticated expert systems that are competent but not comprehending, in which case all the danger is still with the programmers/users, not with the AIs themselves or what they're intrinsically capable of.

I think intelligence has much more to do with sociality than people think who think of it as something that can be implemented in a single box, so to speak. That said, maybe it's possible that a community of robots, or a community of programs in a single box, might produce intelligent robots or intelligent programs. But I think it does have to be the result of a community of interacting peers in some sense, and it's not something a single thing can come up with or develop by itself. For one thing, I think the possibility of lying is the kernel of what develops into the capacity for reflection, and for that to evolve, there has to be someone to lie to and something at stake (something to gain from lying, something to lose from being found out).

Have you ever seen or experienced a Moist Robot in your body? — Rich

How can you see or experience a metaphor, or analogy?

"Moist robot" is just a humorous way of thinking about yourself in terms of biology, engineering and computation. A human body is like a complex machine, just made of squishy bits and bones instead of metal and plastic. The complex machine has a lump of special fat up top, encased in bone, that is able to register and model the environment (plus itself in the environment) in its substance, just like a highly advanced robot would in silicon (already we can see things coming together in this way with the Boston Dynamics robots). I don't see how it's problematic.

I get the feeling that you somehow think Dennett is trying to take away your toys (so to speak). I've seen people react this way to Dennett before, and I'd like to understand what's going on with this type of reaction. Could you unfold a bit more what you think he's doing wrong?

No. I think it fully validates it as pure comic fantasy. Dennett's is just spinning tales from pure imagination. People who want to role-play bots (I use to role-play play Superman as a child) love it. — Rich

Dennett is spinning tales from pure imagination? What makes you think that?

Do any of you have any idea what that/those truth(s) is/are? — TheMadFool

Well the cogito is a pretty good candidate for indubitable truth, but the trouble is it doesn't necessarily connect to any other truths, it leaves you in a position where you have to preface every claim with "it seems to me that ..." - but of course we want to know whether is, not just seems.

As others have said, the process of doubt is usually limited, it depends on prior acceptance of some truth(s). To doubt, you need some truths as a lever. If you extend doubt infinitely, then you automatically limit yourself to the cogito, in fact to strict solipsism, and you stay there so long as you're infinitely extending your doubt.

So that said, the "indubitable" truths that we work with on a day-to-day basis are mostly simple, perceptual level truths, truths that are based on the animal level of perception that your ancestors used to survive and pass on their genes with. That's not a guarantee of absolute certainty, and they're always subject to correction, but they're the closest things we have to absolute certainty in the empirical realm.

I think a lot of it (particularly with Descartes methodology) is a confusion between the processes of ordinary knowledge-gathering and the processes of mathematical/logical thinking.

In ordinary knowledge-gathering, you're actually making discoveries, you're learning something new about the world, new information. But this has to mean that empirical knowledge is always provisional.

In maths and logic, on the other hand, with a complex or difficult problem, you feel subjectively like you're making a discovery, like you would in the everyday process of knowledge-gathering, but what you're discovering was already implicit in the axioms, etc., that you start out with, so you're not in fact discovering new information, just unfolding what was implicit. (It may be new information to you, but that novelty is strictly subjective.)

What this means is that the standard of certainty in maths and logic cannot be applied to empirical knowledge, except in the sense that in empirical knowledge-gathering, you are creating an internally-consistent projection or model of how the world is, that you then test against eventuating reality. There's mathematical certainty, deductive certainty, within the model and the implications for testing that you can draw from it. But you can never be certain that the model you're using is the right model for the occasion.

And that's where empirical doubt is always possible, and it's basically the putting side-by-side of two internally consistent models. IOW, an anomaly crops up in experience, which means that there must be something wrong with the model you've been assuming to be true up till now; so then you figure out some other possible model for the world, and match your two models against each other, and filter the right one out on the basis of homely, perceptual level truths (measurements, meter readings, etc.) that you are less doubtful about.

Do you think using an analogy from a comic strip invalidates the points Dennett is making?

I think this is a pretty good idea, but you have to be careful because obviously there are many contradictions between the various ideas about God, gods, deities, etc., in general.

The resolution would be that which is expressed in the parable of the "blind men and the elephant". Each blind man is touching some portion of the elephant; then perhaps one erroneously describes the whole thing as "a flexible tube", another as "two giant curving teeth", etc., etc.

In an analogous way, it may be the case that the various religions are seeing the same "thing" through a glass darkly.

But also, while there are some contradictions between the various religions, there are also some commonalities - e.g. all the major religious messages do seem to lay a lot of emphasis on this "thing" being to do with love, with being kind and compassionate to each other, etc., and also often with at least some of the traditional virtues (brave, thoughtful, proud, honest, etc., etc.).

So I think it's possible and rationally justifiable to take Ndoki's wager with that sort of ecumenical or "perennial wisdom" sense of the Divine. So long as you're a good person as most cultures tend to have described, and as most people seem to instinctively have a grasp of, then you're probably safe, and since being a good person is also what's recommended in naturalistic views, then so long as everyone's a good person, then (more or less, in the round) everyone's probably going to be ok.

But there's always that possibility that the One True Religion is the religion of the Alpha Centaurians, who claim that you will go to Hell if you behave in the way we would characterize as being a "good person" :)

It's Scott Adams' amusing coinage, picked up by Daniel Dennett. It's a quick way of thinking about ourselves realistically from the outside, objectively. Obviously it's not how things feel, and it doesn't mean we're being pushed into our decisions by some alien force or that our decisions are "robotic" in the colloquial sense.

There's two levels to the question, there's a common sense idea of free will and a highfalutin' sense of Free Will.

The highfalutin' sense, which, as you point out, is tied in with ideas about the soul and theology, that does seem dubious (though it's not totally out for the count, it of course depends on prior views about the existence of God, etc., and I'm the kind of rationalist who believes that question is far from settled).

The common sense idea is often supposed to be incompatible with determinism, but it seems compatible to me. The common sense idea is simply that we do seem to ourselves to make decisions.

When science looks deeper, it finds that we are sophisticated "moist robots" with internal decision making machinery that parses its environment and decides what to do next. The machinery also has a model of itself, its body and the environment (and that would be what comprises our conscious experience, i.e. our conscious experience is the very existence of that internal modelling process, as a relatively discrete physical object, or rather ever-shifting set of physical processes, a "brainstorm" in Dennett's coinage).

So the thing that's made the free choice is you the moist robot, with your own internal machinery that parses your environment and decides what to do next. The fact that all that machinery is deterministic machinery doesn't make any difference to the fact that the choice belongs to and is expressed by the moist robot and not any other portion of the universe. (Note also that the choice is also free in an interpersonal or political sense, when it's not coerced, and that is intimately a part of the concept as well).

Things like the Libet experiments don't make any difference either - so what if the moist robot's inner model of its body, internal computer and environment "gets the message" shortly after the moist robot's machinery has already made the decision? It's still literally your decision.

The puzzle really arises because our consciousness, our conscious experience of self, is of being a commander of the crew of our body. The reality is that we are a virtual commander, i.e. the sense of being a separate something "inside" the body is illusory. (This is what people discover in meditation and mystical experience, the illusory nature of "I", "me", etc., if that's conceived of as being some mysterious thing inside the body peeping out from behind the eyes - although of course that discovery doesn't invalidate the interpersonal use of those terms, which simply serve to help distinguish one moist robot from another, while moist robots are in each other's company.)

So long as free will is tied to being this supposedly real, separate soul-thing that inhabits the body, then yes, the concept is dubious and stands or falls with the validity of the soul/God concepts.

But if the soul is a virtual thing, like an icon on a computer screen that represents a whole bunch of stuff that looks nothing like the picture on the icon, but yet it's functional - then the concept of free will just seemed to apply to the virtual entity, whereas it actually applies and functions perfectly well in referring to the totality of the moist robot, with its internal machinery, with its internal model, and its own virtualization of itself, its command routines, etc., within that internal model.

And in the larger, Laplacian sense of determinism, well we know enough to know that's not really true, natural processes are deterministic, but often unpredictable, and that's why the deterministic processes in the brain have to figure out what to do next, on imperfect information. If their computing power were infinite, then there would be no choice and no decision, strictly speaking, "what to do next" would just fall out ineluctably from the computation. But our brain's computing power is limited, hence it has to make a choice between options, none of which has been formulated on the basis of infinite knowledge about start and end states, with access to infinite computing power to calculate any "chaotic" equations down to absolute perfection.

Again, you keep helping yourself to terms that can't possibly have any fixed meaning from a Schmerceptionist point of view. Even "white," "thin," "square" - what the hell can those words possibly mean to you, if you're conceiving of what's happening for you right now as schmerception? Then it's not "white" but "schmite" , not "thin" but "schmthin", etc., etc .

But if it's those, then it's also "schmexisting un-shcmercevied" as well - i.e. by reducing the way you conceptualize what's happening right now to shcmerception, you have automatically forbidden yourself from ever having heard of the possibility that anything COULD POSSIBLY EXIST OUTSIDE your present schmerception, so therefore, not having heard of the possibility (so to speak - i.e. without already preconceiving what's happening for you right now as perception with the normal backstory) you have no criterion that you can use to test the possibility; so whatever sense you think you're attaching to "exists unperceived", you're actually borrowing from the higher, more presupposition-laden level of perception, while at the same time believing you're applying it to the presuppositionless level of shcmerception.

IOW, you can only get to a place where you can doubt the existence of unperceived things by narrowing down the way you conceptualize your experience to it being schmerception, but if you're conceiving what exists for you as bare shcmerception, then the words you are using in that context can't possibly have the same meanings as they do if you're conceiving of your experience in the ordinary way (as perception of a stable physical world that exists whether you're perceiving it or not, which therefore contains objects that also exist whether you're perceiving them or not; a world that also has other people who use language in stable ways with shared meanings - like "white", "thin", "perception" - that you were inducted into from a young age).

So in that case, you literally don't know what you're talking about, i.e. you don't know what the object of perception is, you're simply labelling portions of schmerception with tracking labels. (And then you get to Wittgenstein's point - you can't be sure you're using the same tracking label in the same way now as you did 5 minutes ago, in fact you can't even help yourself to any normal notion of time.)

This is why, in fact, the philosophical reduction to schmerception is kind of a half-baked mysticism. In effect you are doing in an incompetent, flickering way (flickering like a candle in the wind) what people who train for years in meditation do in a highly focussed way. It's incompetent because your mind isn't trained enough to not unconsciously flicker back and forth between a sense of "what is" that helps itself to ordinary language terms, and a sense of "what is" that really does just take bare shcmerception as bare schmerception without any presuppositions.

A "punt" is a colloquial term for a bet, a wager.

Does the paper exist when unschmerceived and unphotographed? How can you tell? — PossibleAaran

There can be no "paper" for schmerception, nor does "photograph" make any sense either. You might be able to single out some portion of the schmerceptual field (my "present kaleidoscope" idea) in some way (perhaps by awareness of shifting boundaries or something like that), but you can't help yourself to the idea that the "paper" portion of the shcmerceptual field has any physical qualities at all, far less the possible absence or presence of the possibility of existing unperceived. Therefore the question of whether "it" "exists unperceived" doesn't even make any sense UNTIL you bring in the normal physical backstory - but then if you do, then you're talking about perception as normally understood, the normal meaning of "exists unperceived" applies, and the normal tests are sufficient.

This is what I mean by the Chinese Finger Puzzle idea - the criteria grow or shrink with your presuppositions, if you shrink the criteria to being criteria for schmerception qua schmerception, then you've imprisoned yourself in a fly bottle of your own making, that you can't get out of until you relax the presuppositions back to the normal backstory.

Another way of saying this might be that the more you chase absolute certainty, the thinner the possible content about which you can be certain. (Which is something we already learned from Descartes' meditations - the cogito is a dead end, or as Schopenhauer said, solipsism is an impregnable castle, but we can easily bypass it because nobody sallies forth from it, or words to that effect).

If that account is right, the best we can say about the paper is that it exists when schmercieved. — PossibleAaran

Not really, because at that level of presupposition, at the level of punting a nature or character, we're already taking it for granted that there's some "outsideness" quality to be discovered, about which we're punting some possible nature or character, meaning that we've already left the narrow, presuppositionless realm of schmerception, we're already positing that there's more to the world than just schmerception, just the present kaleidoscope.

woops! Sorry, corrected (butterfingers :) ).

I think our discussion has spun off in too many different directions to be useful. I'll try to simplify, if you will follow me in this. Imagine a dialogue between you and I:

PA: What reliable method is there for determining that things exist unperceived?

GG: If you want to know whether a piece of paper in the drawer exists when you aren't perceiving it, put a camera in the drawer and take a picture.

PA: A camera is an extension of perception. Your camera procedure shows that the paper exists when photographed. Does the paper exist when unperceived and un-photographed? How can that be reliably determined?

I am not sure what you would say at this juncture. — PossibleAaran

It depends on what you mean by "extension of perception." The photograph could be taken and it might never be seen by anyone. Would it still be an extension of perception then? So obviously the camera's being an extension of perception isn't an intrinsic feature of the camera, it's a corollary of the camera's being used as an extension of perception.

But if it isn't an intrinsic feature of the camera, then surely taking a picture can function as an independent test of the existence of the object, while the object is unperceived. Whether the photograph is in its turn unperceived or perceived, it independently "testifies" to the existence of the object via causal chains (light, etc.). The material, causal processes that result in the photograph of the paper in the drawer are not themselves perceptions, and you can't magically make them such simply by calling the camera "an extension of perception."

All this bizarrerie can be gotten rid of by understanding that we punt essences, natures and characters for the objects we perceive, and by extension for the wider context of the perceptual process (the world in general). We just throw possible natures, possible essences out there and see what sticks - and by this, I mean that we can devise tests on the hypothesis that the object has the nature we project for it, and if those tests pan out then we can say (with whatever degree of confidence, depending on the rigour of the tests) that the object has that nature. And howsoever rickety and lacking in absolute certainty that process is, well we're stuck with it, we have nothing better, and the standards of the process are the standards of the only process we've got, there are no other standards to fish around for.

What's not the case is that we are given the nature of the object in perception.

What one might call the "bare kaleidoscope" given in present perception has no implications of it, or any portion of it existing outside the present apprehension of the kaleidoscope. That much is true.

But that just means that everything above imputing "bare kaleidoscopiness" to the kaleidoscope is itself a punt of some kind, a projection - even calling the kaleidoscope, or a portion of it, a "perception." Because calling the kaleidoscope (or a portion of it) a "perception" actually carries with it the normal backstory implications (of unperceived objects existing while unperceived). But at that point, since you've already started punting, you can't then help yourself to the previous lack of implication that any portion of the kaleidoscope exists outside of present apprehension - you gave up that right as soon as you started calling a portion of the present kaleidoscope "a perception."

Or to put it another way, the lack of necessary implication that any portion of the kaleidoscope of present experience exists outside its present existence as part of the kaleidoscope, lives and dies with one withholding judgement that the present kaleidoscope is anything more than the present kaleidoscope of experience, without any further qualification. As soon as you go beyond that, to giving the kaleidoscope any character that might refer to anything outside it (even if you were to go the Berkeley route of it being "in a mind, any mind"), then you've lost the right to say "this might not exist outside perception," because you've already started punting beyond the present apprehension, you're already starting to impute nature, character, etc., that goes beyond sheer momentary, present apprehension.

Claiming that a seed causes a tree is no more real — praxis

It's the very essence of real for science, whereas the tree being the final cause of the seed is not real for science, final cause is simply not a thing as far as science is concerned. (Again, as science has been understood since about the 18th/19th century until very recently.)

Are you saying that there is no understanding of 'perception' which doesn't entail that the thing perceived exists unperceived? — PossibleAaran

No, you can have specialized senses of "perception" but e.g. something like Schrodinger's Cat is a thought experiment based on possibilities opened up by scientific understanding (and anyway, it's not settled science yet, there are interpretations of the science that don't have any weird implications like the SC thought experiment does).

Moreover, if it were so, then there would never be a need for me to check whether something I saw earlier is still there now. It would make no sense, for example, to see a sand castle at T1 and then wonder later about whether it exists when you are in the coffee shop, or whether it has blown away in the wind. I can just say "well, it follows from the meaning of the word 'perceived' that the sand castle I perceived earlier must still exist". — PossibleAaran

Those kinds of changes aren't related to perception but to the existence of objects already considered as part of the causal backstory to perception (e.g. things decay and get washed away, etc., but they don't pop out of existence when unperceived).

It is plain as day to me that my own ordinary understanding of the word 'perceived' entails only that the thing perceived must exist at the moment I am perceiving it. It says nothing about any other moment. — PossibleAaran

No, it's the perception that exists only while perceived. But the perception is not the thing perceived, the thing perceived is the thing perceived, and things perceived are such things as exist also while unperceived (and that can be checked by the numerous ordinary means).

Another point to make is that your view about the ordinary meaning of "perceived" is an empirical hypothesis. It says that ordinary members of the population use the word "perceived" such that perceiving X entails that X exists unperceived. Recent experimental philosophy has made it clear that ordinary language users don't always agree with philosophers about what a word means and made even more clear that the best way to figure out what ordinary words mean isn't just to take a guess from the armchair, or even to talk with other philosophers about what it is 'intuitive to say'. The best way to find out is to actually go out and ask questions to ordinary folk which indicate the meanings of their words (you could see, for example, any study by Stich, Machery or Weinberg). Hence, my suggestion is that we cannot really tell whether the ordinary meaning of 'perceived' is what you say it is, or even that there is a ordinary meaning. — PossibleAaran

I'm not sure what fallacy this is precisely, but it reminds me of the Continuum Fallacy, so I'll call it that :) No language (with the possible exceptions of French and made-up languages like Dothraki) has that kind of clear delineation, living languages are a resultant or precipitate, the result of human action but not of human design, and there are always individual and local variations, misunderstandings, outliers, edge cases, idiosyncratic usages (just as there are idiosyncratic pronunciations), but that doesn't mean there aren't relatively stable meanings everyone understands. If it weren't so it would be impossible to understand each other. As it is, it's only a problem now and then, when we might have to clarify some particular point, or define terms in a complicated discussion.

Even if the ordinary meaning of 'perceived' were as odd as you suppose it to be, I don't think that is of any importance at all. I would simply reformulate in new terms. I held previously that humans have two reliable sources of belief about the present and future (memory has to be included for the past, but this can be omitted for now): perception and inference from sense perception. If perceiving X entails that X exists unperceived then I shall reformulate my view. Instead, I say that humans have two reliable sources of belief, Schmerception and inference from schmerception. Schmerception is what is happening when various properties and/or objects are brought before your conscious awareness. We could say that Schmerception 'gives' items to you in awareness. Schmerception doesn't entail that what is schmercieved exists when unschmercieved, since being consciously aware of some object or property at T does not entail that the object exists at any time T1, when it is not something you are consciously aware of. Perception is not, although I thought it was, a reliable way to learn about the world, since "perception" turns out to mean this odd and mysterious thing where perceiving something at one time entails that it must exist at other times. Perception, so understood, has nothing to do with my conscious awareness of the world, since that conscious awareness doesn't entail that the things I am aware of exist unperceived. I am not really sure that perception is, if that's what it means. Perhaps perception is just Schmerception of things which also exist when unschmercieved. Perhaps, but then the fundamental method of finding out about the world is schmerception, and perception is a thing I can do only if there are things which exist unschmercieved. — PossibleAaran

Again, this falls under the thing I was saying of painting yourself into a corner of your own making. Schmerception is a viable concept (it's actually the same as non-dual or "mystical" understanding or perhaps the radical empiricist view, that I mentioned in an earlier post), but Schmerception can't help itself to talk of "objects" and "properties" in the same way as perception would. For example: how do you know you can legitimately draw inferences from Schmerception? The game of drawing inferences from perception depends on the causal backstory of a world that exists unperceived, but if you've taken away that presupposition to give you Schmerception, then you've also left open to question the idea that you can "reliably" draw infererences from it. So paradoxically, your effort to get better reliability has led to greater doubt!

I understand the attempt which you are trying to make. You are trying the ever popular method of building our ordinary worldview into the meaning of our ordinary words. Doing this is supposed to make us feel better about those views. It is supposed to somehow prevent sceptical challenges to those views, since the sceptic will be unable to meaningfully state any challenge to those views using ordinary language. — PossibleAaran

No, it's not that, it's not that you can't challenge the view, it's that you're not giving any good reason to doubt the view. You're not actually presenting a sceptical challenge. The idea that things might pop out of existence when unperceived is just an imaginary notion, there's no reason whatsoever to take it seriously, and all the reasons we do have mitigate against it.

Thus, I can't meaningfully ask whether there is any reliable way to determine that things exist unperceived while using the ordinary notion of 'perceived'. The problem is, if I am really sceptical about ordinary views because those views don't meet a standard which I deem important (reliability), I won't be impressed by the thought that those views are built into my language. — PossibleAaran

What are you talking about? Perception is the very standard of reliability, there is no other, better standard; you certainly don't know whether Schmerception would be any better!

If you're not sure whether something exists unperceived by you, then (with increasing degrees of rigour) ask a friend, or do the camera test, or a video test, or if you're really doubtful (perhaps you suspect someone's jockeyed with the video feed) you can do a more sophisticated sort of scientific test. That's precisely the sort of area where "reliable" lives.

So what if they are built into my language? Other cultures use other languages and their language might not be such as to have my ordinary views build into it. If so, how can we reliably establish which culture is right? The appeal to language obviously won't do. This was made very clear in a paper by Stich entitled Reflective Equilibrium, Analytic Epistemology and The Problem of Cognitive Diversity. — PossibleAaran

All languages are guaranteed to have some basic ideas built in, because human beings have evolved from creatures that had to embody an answer to the basic features of the world, and that just gets carried over to language. Language isn't all that relative - it's the same as the argument above, yes there are differences and idiosyncracies, and different ways different languages handle things, but any language that didn't have the basic causal backstory would lead to the humans using it not surviving to reproduce.

We can look for the final cause or the efficient cause. — praxis

"We" can in the language of common sense, but science can't, it acknowledges only efficient cause as real. (Although as I said, there are some noises to reintroduce quasi-Aristotelian concepts back into science, but it's a fairly recent development.)

A charismatic leader doesn't even need to be an authority, they can merely appear as one to fool the gullible into swallowing their oh so "real" narratives. — praxis

Wow, who'd've thought. Any more stunningly original observations where that came from?