A purpose of life is to be successful in the domains (ecologies) you find yourself in or have voluntarily chosen for yourself. This success is about being rewarded and rewarding others in this game we call "The Philosophy Forum" which is a subdomain of the game of life.

There are as likely as many purposes (or justifications for being) as there are ways of being.The tinkering space at the end of the chain of being is our sandbox. We can do what we want within that space toward whatever goals we voluntarily or involuntarily accept as worth pursuing. A lot of that work isn't really our own, we can inherit purposes (functions) and abandon them.

I like the idea of universal Darwinism as applied to cultural artifacts (memetic theory) but you don't have to perpetuate it. Take it, leave it, turn in into a cartoon, or whatever, talk about Daesin, Genetic Imprinting, Jungian Typology, Jonathan Haidt's Moral Flavors, Economic Inequality, Black Box Metaphors, Biophilia et cetera. Obviously you'll always have reasons to prefer one kind of being (one direction) over another but you may not need really need them. No one has good reasons for eating at the Cheesecake Factory (oh but they do).

I can go outside and clone colorful variants of Cordlyine fruticosa and Hibiscus rosa-sinensis. Why do I do it? Because circumstances have made it easy, because they are beautiful, for a similar reason people put pictures on their walls (they see something as they walk by), to have something to talk about with other people who are interested in cloning variants, because I'm avoiding doing something I ought to be doing like long term planning, et cetera.

A rational man's unconscious is irrational, an emotional man's unconscious is calculating. And of course they are both women! — unenlightened

The anima is just like the wife in the Grimm's fairytale, The Fisherman and His Wife.

Stepmothers are exceptionally cruel calculators.

In the Grimms' version of the tale, the woodcutter's wife is the children's biological mother and the blame for abandoning them is shared between both her and the woodcutter himself. In later editions, some slight revisions were made: the wife became the children's stepmother, the woodcutter opposes her scheme to abandon the children and religious references are made. The sequence where the swan helps them across the river is also an addition to later editions.[3] — Wikipedia: Hansel and Gretel

Best to pass blame onto to others whenever possible and to unconsciously adapt stories (narratives) to demonstrate our own intelligence and moral excellence.

A biographical clue, possibly, to Nietzsche being shaped by his own resentiment.

The Birth of Tragedy presented a view of the Greeks so alien to the spirit of the time and to the ideals of its scholarship that it blighted Nietzsche's entire academic career. It provoked pamphlets and counter-pamphlets attacking him on the grounds of common sense, scholarship and sanity. For a time, Nietzsche, then a professor of classical philology at the University of Basel, had no students in his field. His lectures were sabotaged by German philosophy professors who advised their students not to show up for Nietzsche's courses. — Marianne Cowan, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks

Ok but which one is Prometheus? — TheMadFool

Both, either or none depending upon the arbitrary condition you impose to identify him. Let me know why this is an unsatisfying answer to the paradox.

By what principle or law is Prometheus ever identical to himself?

@Rich

I was just running with what you stated about how we can only speculate, explore, imagine. Bat life is probably great.

Parents simply say, "We will call you..."

They do not say, "You will be identified as..." — WISDOMfromPO-MO

I guess your are invoking some likely average (normal) parental conduct in affluent Western countries. Whose parents are you talking about specifically? Yours? Do any parents actually let their children pick their names?

In old societies a name might indicate and perpetuate status or social class. What might you think of a new born child whose first name is Trump? Might it provide a clue about his parents. Is there injustice in the mere accidental associations of a name.

Just like kids (peers) on the playground say, 'we will call you fag' as opposed to 'you will be identified as fag'. I can see the latter in this context is worse if it sets up enduring discrimination based on institutional or tribal lines, as if there were some Lord of the Flies like emergent hierarchy. If for instance my peers tattooed or branded 'fag' on my body or forced me to wear a t shirt that said 'fag' on it, this is an even greater injustice if other kids can't form their own opinions about my character.

There was a kid at school with the name, Gaman. His parents said, we will call you Gaman, properly pronounced like "gay man." He got a lot of flak for this and ended up using a different pronunciation when introducing himself.

The clone would acquire unique identity by the fact that both could interact with one another. There might be a battle to the death supposing that they are free for a moment or cooperate to overcome their condition.

In any case this multiplication would be a good strategy if the clones could cooperate toward finding a way out their situation.

Just by occupying a different spaces they are distinct.

I've heard that bats live in a state of samadhi their entire lives and that some hallucinate their reality by echo location.

Chiropteric ectasy is a grand state of being. Every bat is an individual seldom disabled by the abstractions of an ideal future. Chiropteric meaning by bat consensus is to be found in bat reciprocity, or bat on bat influence in an ecological sense. Whatever happens in the course of bat life, x arising then y arising, conveys bat objectivity.

Since all is one ultimately, there are no bats and no humans, no grandness, no oneness, no objectivity, no no ness, no yes ness. Things neither exist nor not exist, nor neither neither exist nor nor not exist, et cetera.

When pothos is presented on a vase painting (fifth century, British Museum) as drawing Aphrodite's chariot, we see that pothos is the motive force that drives desire ever onward, as the portion of love that is never satisfied by actual loving and actual possession of the object. It is the fantasy factor that pulls the chariot beyond immediacy, like the seizures that took Alexander and like Ulysse's desire for “home.”
Pothos here is the blue romantic flower of love that idealizes and drives our wandering; or as the romantics put it: we are defined not by what we are or what we do, but by our Sehnsucht: Tell me for what you yearn and I shall tell you who you are. — James Hillman Essay, Pothos: The Nostalgia for Puer Eternus

I think I first encountered the blue flower in this James Hillman essay.

In a botanical domain, Pothos refers to a ubiquitous house plant Epipremnum that wanders (is a vine).

There is an unknown epiphytic species (likely a true member of the genus Pothos) at my local botanical park that is quite unusual. The modified leaves are giant blue scales that hug the side of the palm it is wandering on.

So when I think of the blue flower there is also this epiphytic vine that reminds me of the scales of a dragon. It's an otherworldly psychedelic kind of plant.

All of the ideas amalgamate in my head in a beautiful (or romantic) way.

This "meme" is singular, grand and objective.

Its grandness comes from everything to which it is attached (potentially the entire universe).

This meme: "djmxki" is also, singular, grand and objective depending upon the consensus of the crowd.

Everything that is singular, grand and objective is also reducible, banal and subjective.

When an agent appears with a pitch fork in hand with a coercive moralizing toward whatever the value or truth of meme is, I may do what the average person does, or less likely what a "philosopher" would do when presented with the meme complex.

Novalis (latin for "new land") started the blue flower meme.

Is the Sawstika (Nazism) a kind of dark flower that grew out of the soil of German Romanticism?

I can't see the forrest for the trees but I can see some of the kinds of valuable frames one could make out of a set of trees.

$$$

All is bloom then and I have been struck mute (or possibly dumb).

Despite my stupidity I speak and write as if it were an addiction (oh, words, justify me in the eyes of my peers, let me get into the party of all parties, the dance of all dances).

If only my mind could bloom with intelligence, which gives the knife its edge to cut.

"Whereof we cannot speak we must remain silent. " Just as no bloom is my bloom, I merely pass on what people pass on to pass on the passing on. Just as the flower services and contains the entirety of creation.

When I dance, they point and laugh. Before I dance, I imagine myself dancing and people pointing and laughing. So I do not dance. Buf if speaking is dancing, like walking is dancing, then I simply cannot help it (oh but of course I can help it). Call the categorical curators to select the good blooms from the bad, toward some fleeting end.

I should not dance to mock the most excellent dancer.

Every dance is a mockery in the light of excellent dancing.

I should bloom to compete with the most excellent bloom in my class.

Every bloom is competing with the most excellent blooms in their class.

Look over there!!!! -------------> ✾

Enjoyable rant but I'm afraid it simulates a poetic drive (ache) in me to break out of the constraints imposed by adherence to the stricter modes of reason (a 'bloomin' ontology) and conduct as exemplified by others here in the forum.

If only I could sweep the scene with a contagion of ecstasy moving toward the annihilation of self (or selves).

The ache that would ache itself to death in service to the flower blooms.

My ache blooms. The wound blooms just before death, red qualia seeping into the fabric of a shirt.

The blooms in the vase upstairs, as a bundle, is a metaphor for the blooms in this thread.

The vase is a tomb of blooms, a sacrifice of beauty to appease and calm the ravenous. An amalgamation of brains for an amalgamation of zombies.

It (the bloom) teases and torments me with the promise of something unobtainable.

A blooming contradiction: it fulfills temporarily while requiring more in the future to reach the same bloom of fufillment.

The bloom is substituted for what it is not, that which is unobtainable.

Blooms bloom in the baloom. Bloomalysitic bloomduction blooming bloomunctions. A bunch of bloomony. Set the bloomony in a boomessal for the boomites so they bloomizzle.

Searching for a better telling of the parable of the two-colored hat.

It resembles the Blind Men and the Elephant.

The end of John Godfrey Saxe's poem:

"So, oft in theologic wars
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean;
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen!"

"Particles tend to dissipate more energy when they resonate with a driving force, or move in the direction it is pushing them, and they are more likely to move in that direction than any other at any given moment." ~ By Natalie Wolchover, Quanta Magazine on January 28, 2014 (A New Physics Theory of Life)

Now bear witness to a moment of reckless, idiotic, energy-dissipating, nihilistic substitution:

People tend to dissipate more energy when they resonate with a driving force...

Daniel Dennett's carbon footprint is huge compared to mine because he dissipates more energy. Other organisms resonate with him to dissipate more energy. What luck!

If we drop Bitter Crank into the Democratic Republic of Congo his fear will guide his reason in a spectacular way.

The question is what does he know about the place he has found himself in and will that help him get to where he wants to go.

Knowledge and instinct are complimentary if and when they work together well.

Why isn't it immoral for parents to impose identity on their children then? They're just another form of coercion. It seems this is far more crucial to the future ability to consent to contracts than a birth certificate and a social security number.

Evil carries with it a dangerous sense of absolute judgement, a word once used by ideological or theocratic tyrants to mark their enemies as targets. It once might have rendered heightened emotional feelings of intense disgust and resentment in those obeying the will of these authority figures.

The word evil is a bit anachronistic.

Selfishness in the service of conserving the self is a necessary part (biological motivation) by which societies are constructed and maintained. Reciprocal altruism is driven by selfishness.

What about the Allegory of the Ship, what with the steering wheel and the way finding and the division of labor.

Whether you sail for God or the nation, or a nation under God, for the captain chasing the white whale on the Sophia, or with your humble friend the Victorian Naturalist, Arwin, it doesn't change the science and adventure of way finding and the body of organization it requires.

No amount of wishful thinking is going to change the ending to Moby Dick...

Everything else is worth doing.

Maybe someone is making a wages versus salary distinction.

Getting grades is on a per assignment point-based system so it resembles working for a wage more than it does a salary.

Toward a History of Philosophy by Jose Ortega y Gasset (page 71)

Tell me what Pascal's 'imperative of stupidity' is when you find out.

Daniel Dennett warns against promoting the denial of free on the grounds that it has behavioral ramifications. If we invoke determinism as a justification for bad acts, in alignment with our secret wishes, confirmation bias is at play. What might be the societal effects if the average person did not believe in free will?

Does fear of punishment deter people from committing crimes? Yes.

Does positive reinforcement (socially conferred rewards) promote types of behavior? Yes.

There are likely societal situations were the fear of punishment is exaggerated to a point were it actually interferes with an average kind of agency. If I thought I was going to burn in hell for all eternity because of some small transgression in my past ( reinforced by parental fear mongering and threats) degrees of agency might be diminished, until it is overcome by some revolutionary crisis or not.

I think the human condition doesn't really allow us to really "specialize" (which I believe is merely a buzz word/propaganda of the industrial age, which like the term "Work smarter, not harder" since thinking harder is in itself more work requiring you to work harder) to make us think that working a 9 to 5 job will provide us with an opportunity to have a better life than if we try to work and think for ourselves. — Declemets

Actually we are rewarded for useful specialization in an industrial society. I may be able to be an architect of sorts but I cannot design a skyscraper without heavy investment in my education. Though maybe intelligent design software is right around the corner for a lot of really skilled professions, by which we just punch in desired features and boom! you've got blue prints ready to submit to the contractors.

We might be entering a postindustrial DIY age based on the widespread use of artificial intelligences, which will free more of us from the heavy investment in specialization.

____________________

Maybe discussing the legal rights of children ought to be, or the way we treat children, is a way to proceed.

Question: Are children the property of their parents?

What are the ramifications of ownership and the freedoms afforded to private lives of families in rearing their children? The treatment of children by their parents is quite diverse. Some kinds of normal treatment would be termed "abuse" from a different point of view (spanking?).

If we look back to the first industrial revolution, children were treated very poorly because they didn't have the ability to defend themselves. They were treated as slave labor.

Normal parental neglect might have a major influence on the adaptive traits a child will carry into adulthood but there is no considerable legal overreach into the minutiae of rearing children. There might be a continuum of degrees agency (fitness within society) for adults depending upon key experiences during crucial phases of development.

Before we proceed with debating whether fictional automatons should be given human rights maybe we should do some research into the best way to raise a kid.

If we are automatons already, we should understand what makes us good automatons rather than bad ones.

Maybe automatons (artificial intelligences) could correct the actions of parents which serve to undermine the social fitness of their children.

This idea stems from the story of Pinnochio. He is a child but must learn to become an adult. He is an automaton that must learn to become something else.

Everything happens for a reason.

Everything that happens, happens.

Life has gone through a process to adapt to most stuff that happens in service of generational continuity, thus our calibrated emotional response to better or worse conditions.

One might say that all the deaths (extinctions) that happened in the course of our evolution, happened for a reason.

Just like:

Peacock tails happened for a reason.

Osso Bucco happened for a reason.

Ebola happened for a reason.

Whose or which reason did they happen for?

Please don't say God.

Which reason did he(it) happen for?

Just listened to Psychology of the Flood (Jordan Peterson Lecture)

Brilliant talk.

This is how life began. Memes replicating in a thread over many millions of years blindly corroborating to swim against the flow of entropy.

There are some features of this replication you can't break, unless you are a hacker of sorts.

"The critic's symbol should be the tumble-bug: he deposits his egg in somebody else's dung, otherwise he could not hatch it." ~ Mark Twain

A tumble bug often lands in a pile of shit twice, unless it is the shit of Heraclitus (diarrhea).

Questions and stances embedded in the OP stated for the sake of brevity:

Do humans posses a capacity of autonomy regarding morally relevant decisions?

What is the difference between moral knowledge that is acquired intellectually (or culturally transmitted) and moral knowledge that is the result of experience?

Claim: Experience yields a greater degree of autonomy compared with theory because one understands why something is bad rather than accepting someone else's word.

Generally the exercise of autonomy, as exercising choice between many options and being able to tell good ones from bad ones, increases with experience. But we are leaving out intelligence. Someone who is very dumb but has loads of experience may not have much agency as someone who is very smart but lacks much life experience.
________________

I gave the example last time. A person who is told not to touch a hot stove because it burns will not learn the significance of such advice until that person has touched a hot stove.

A soldier who drills everyday with a patriotic view toward fighting in war may have a radically different view once war is experienced. I listened to adult sibling describe her brother as he had been before and after an experience in war and it brought me to tears. If it afforded her brother any greater moral autonomy beyond the "truth" of what war entails versus its myths I'm unsure. Some naive choices (if you can call them that) have grave consequences. He may be fit to give advice to more naive individuals, to increase the idea that there are other options open to young men.

In highschool I witnessed a pig slaughter and butchery. They stuck a knife in it's throat and let it bleed for quite a while. I put my hand into the warm chest cavity and felt the organs. I had made up my mind that I was not going to eat its meat out of sheer disgust. The gamey smell of guts and singed hair was enough. Later I attended the cooking process and the smell changed completely (frying pork skin and fat) and my appetite was stimulated. There is the fact that such an experience is encoded in my memory when I think about the hidden processes which I'm apt to ignore. If the consequences of my choices are hidden, then the first-hand experience with any of those processes will inform my choices.

I was sifting through this trash heap with CasKev and all I could find that I liked was a sparkly sequin.

Also, there is something (an agent) hunting us on the trash heap (I hear it over the ridge), so get ready to defend yourself.

Someone post directions to a trash heap worth sifting through so we can get outta here.

Sapientia was peeing into the wind (always here to lighten the mood with his antics, or is he trying to lure the thing over the ridge by scent marking).

Jordan Peterson distances himself from Campbell, since the latter became somewhat of a new-age guru.

Whereas Campbell says 'walk through the gates past the threshold guardians to follow your bliss'.

Peterson says, ' train first in the old ways before you walk through the gates past the threshold guardians to follow your bliss'. Christianity is a guide to becoming fit. Christianity embodies the preferred values by which you should conduct your life.

If you 'follow your bliss' willy nilly it might lead into the mouth of chaos, like a baby bird who was just eaten by a cat as it left the nest. Stay paranoid, work-hard, bootstrap, or we might end up like Venezuela.

But might that not be what you are secretly wishing for: catastrophe and death (or the risk of catastrophe and death).

Culture is broken and the life waters have left the cistern. Go out and get some by traveling across the borders of the known.

Edit: Deleted my post.

How to compose a successful critical commentary:

You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.
You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).
You should mention anything you have learned from your target.
Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism. — Dennett on Rapoport's Rules

The comments competed for attention, like Daniel Dennett's memes, and one now reads: 'whether it is wise to explore what is given or to start anew'.

When in Xia do as the Xians do.

The Xians inherit an uncomfortable chair from their elders which is the only chair they are allowed to sit in by law until a certain age. After a period of seven sitting revolutions the chair is abandoned and put in a glass case, to be gifted to the closest of kin who haven't yet been inducted into the sitting period of PainOhw. Older Xians pride themselves on keeping very comfortable chairs for their age appropriate guests. From an outsider's point of view, Xian chairs have become an cultural obsession. Those who have not completed the ritual of PainOh age are discouraged from sitting at all in the houses of their elder peers, unless an uncomfortable chair is present.

Young Xians are known to proclaim outloud, as they sit in their uncomfortable chairs, 'this chair is surprisingly comfortable'.

Sounds like Jordan Peterson.

Ok. Given the simplicity of example I think I understand why.

Between two people set to find solutions to diverse sets of problems, the one who acquires working solutions quicker on average is likely engaging algorithms with less steps and therefore generally more intelligent.

Please do translate for us.

If one computer runs slower than the other but again takes the same number of steps, they're still equally intelligent. — Efram

So if a computer takes 10,000 years to finish its procedure rather than 1 second, all else being equal, they're still equally intelligent? Imagine how many more computations the latter can make while the former is still calculating problem 1.

This wouldn't apply to humans in a competitive scenario. We'd always call the faster person more intelligent, even if all the procedural steps were the same.

I accept your distinction about unfalsifiable claims.

Why would you assume that you know how your lucky shirt works?

Maybe your lucky shirt just increases the probability you will win by 1%. Could you scientifically verify that your lucky shirt increases the probability that you will win by 1%?

Maybe your lucky shirt is solar powered and the sun went behind the clouds at the most crucial moment.

Maybe your lucky shirt is paired with unlucky shoes but you were ignorant about all the unlucky variables.