What's the point is trying to let people know about this? — Manuel

One point is suggested by this excerpt from the Amazon blurb on Sapolsky's Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will:

Yet, as he acknowledges, it’s very hard, and at times impossible, to uncouple from our zeal to judge others and to judge ourselves. Sapolsky applies the new understanding of life beyond free will to some of our most essential questions around punishment, morality, and living well together. By the end, Sapolsky argues that while living our daily lives recognizing that we have no free will is going to be monumentally difficult, doing so is not going to result in anarchy, pointlessness, and existential malaise. Instead, it will make for a much more humane world.

You can't change what they think and if they do change based on what you say, then there is freedom to choose based on reasons. — Manuel

It's not simple to change the way people think, but we certainly do effect each other's thinking, and we have fields such as education that would make no sense apart from an understanding that people's thinking can be changed. Perhaps your paradigm, for understanding changes in human thinking, is a bit unrealistic?

And I wonder, "why are these brain atoms producing consciousness? What is special about them?" "Well maybe when you arrange atoms in that way they are conscious?" "But Not Aristotle," I say to myself, "that is entirely an ad hoc explanation and besides, why would the arrangement of the atoms matter?" And I am unable to answer. — NotAristotle

Suppose it occurred to you, that you could look into answers to your questions rather than just remain ignorant of the answers?

Suppose you were equally ignorant of why the arrangement of atoms in your computer results in different behavior on the part of your computer than the behavior of a boulder. Would you say it is totally an ad hoc explanation to say that it is the difference in arrangement of atoms in your computer that makes the difference? Or would you realize that you could study computer engineering and understand the details of why differences in arrangements of atoms makes a difference?

Now admittedly, one can't very well remain in her armchair and become well educated about such things. Trips to libraries and labs might be needed. However, why take such a fatalistic position as, "And I am unable to answer." Why not have more faith, in the ability of that gray stuff between your ears, to learn the answers to questions that you are unable to answer at present?

The burden of proof is on anyone who claims to have the answer. Nobody has the answer at the moment. It’s all guesswork on everybody’s part. Somebody thinks it’s physical? Prove it. Somebody thinks it’s proto-consciousness? Prove it. Someone thinks it’s fields? Prove it. — Patterner

Holds a cloth soaked in chloroform over your mouth and nose...

:lol:

Not even "a point" – nothingness. — 180 Proof

Can nothingness have a property?

I'm not being dismissive of it, I'm challenging it on the basis of arguments and citations. — Wayfarer

I've seen more than enough evidence of your cherry-picking scientific views for their consistency with the beliefs you prefer to have. It's a common characteristic in humans. I've done it myself, and had my life gone differently, I might be as inclined to do so as you are.

However, aspects of the way my life has gone have resulted in my gaining expertise in a number of areas where reality will smack you upside the head if you aren't willing to put aside what you want to believe, in order to develop a better understanding of the way things are in reality. I don't think I deserve any more credit or blame for having my view, than you do for yours. It's just a matter of the way things have gone.

I do however, have a lot more confidence that my view will stand up to testing, than that your view will. For example, I expect that as you read this your are dealing with aspects of your social primate nature. Do you think I am wrong?

But, of course, philosophy itself is useless, right? — Wayfarer

Of course philosophy isn't useless, but when someone's philosophy is dismissive of natural philosophy the results don't tend to be very good.

And that is where Nagel's critique of evolutionary reductionism is salient. To seek to provide an account of reason, on some grounds other than the rational, is to call into question the sovereignty of reason. — Wayfarer

Nagel has failed to recognize the poor thinking in things like Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism and Intelligent Design. So your appeal to authority is particularly unpersuasive in this case.

FWIW, that article on cultural evolution of our ability to apply logic is just the kind of thing that Plantinga's EAAN grossly fails to address. To the best of my knowledge Plantinga never recognizes the significance of our evolutionary ancestors being members of a social species to the EAAN.

Ha, have any of your suspicions been verified? — Apustimelogist

Oh yeah. I'd estimate my record at something like 15 and 3. (With one of my failures being dismissing my intuition that I was observing sock puppetry.)

However, a large percentage of my successful recognitions of sock puppetry involved individuals with some degree of personality disorder, which makes for relatively stereotypical behavior patterns. My ratio when there aren't personality disorders involved is definitely lower.

Did the law of the excluded middle come into being as a consequence of evolution? Surely not - what came into being was our capacity to recognise it. And a great deal of the basic 'furniture of reason' can be understood in those terms - they're not the products of biology, but can only be understood by a sufficiently sophisticated intelligence, which h. sapiens possesses. — Wayfarer

Even if we accept the impossibility of recognition of the value of the law of the excluded middle as a result of biological evolution, despite you simply asserting it, here is a paper suggesting it was a matter of cultural evolution. Lucky thing that we are social primates.

To conclude, cooperative anticipatory planning selects for reasoning abilities, which can apply to all domains of thinking, and reasoners urged to follow public norms for thought. With this result, let me return to the issue of deductive logic.

5 Outlook
Given the evolutionary explanation of hominin reasoning just outlined, what about positions like Schechter’s, which claim that there has been selection for deductive reasoning? As mentioned earlier, such positions mainly suffer from a lack of empirical evidence. Imagining “it would be most useful” is not an evolutionary argument. (Perhaps the situation is different with our tancestors—but, again, this is no help in explaining the phenomenon at issue.) So, what real arrangement of things would foster behavior sequences, which could only be planned by deductive reasoning rules? Which kind of entanglement could make necessary truth preservation a prerequisite? As argued in Section 2, there is no theoretical reason to think such a prerequisite was necessarily required during hominin evolution. So far, there also seems to be no empirical evidence for such an artifact in the niches of the Middle Pleistocene hunters. Hence, there is neither evidence for deductive rules as a universal “model” how the human mind works when engaged in reasoning activities nor much reason to believe in deductive logic as a yardstick for reasoning in general.

Nevertheless, we have deductive logic. Why is that? I would propose the following as a probable explanation. If my account is on the right track, the cognitive prerequisites for deductive logic indeed evolved during hominization. To wit, it is being able to reason domain-generally and being inclined to follow public norms in reasoning. However, as also argued above, such norms for reasoning get always established by local circumstances—based on needs but established as cultural artifacts.Footnote15 If true, the norms for deductive reasoning had to be established in a particular niche due to particular demands.

Following one historical exposition, the deductive method appeared late in human history,Footnote16 first invented, probably, by members of the Athenian elite 2500 years before present. It arose as a specific argumentative practice within debates: as dialogues with the element of persuading one another (Dutilh Novaes 2015: pp. 595–597, 2012; Netz 1999). Here, this method is advantageous. Granted both participants of a dialogue agree on a shared set of premises, any conclusion drawn by deductive steps from this set should be regarded as entirely compelling. Given a logically valid form, no counterexample can be given which would show that premises could be accepted, but the conclusion would remain open to being denied. Because no countermove is possible, the opponent must accept the conclusion or should revise one of his premises otherwise.

From this perspective, deductive reasoning is like reading, writing, or calculating a socially learned practice. Deductive reasoning is neither an evolved biological “constant” nor a “universal” of Homo sapiens’ mind. It is a cognitive ability to be inoculated by a certain practice and only open to those members of a population who has been brought to a specific learning environment. Hence, deductive logic must be inherited by a tradition, and only those who have learned it will be able to reason by deductive rules.Footnote17 In this sense, it is like any other piece of mathematical notation. We are not “hard-wired” to use analytical algebra, but once this cultural artifact is there and part of our niche, we can put it to use for all kinds of things. The same goes for deductive logic, as I propose here.

...but we're being awfully sloppy here... — J

Agreed, I was thinking as I wrote that previous post, that if the discussion were to get serious, I'd have to do a fair bit of clarification. For example, I don't consider consciousness to be a thing but rather a process.

Still, in light of the scientific evidence on the side of physicalists it seemed worth bringing up the question of why it is physicalists that are supposed to have the burden of proof.

To assume that I am both conscious and just a physical thing and then to conclude that consciousness is just a physical thing would surely be begging the question. — NotAristotle

Not to speak for @Philosophim, but I treat it as a working hypothesis, and wonder whether you can present any falsifying evidence (while not expecting you to be able to do so).

Spend enough time with such a perspective and it becomes like waiting for people to present evidence that the Earth is flat.

What of your own question begging?

Because, again, consciousness is not a physical thing. — NotAristotle

This may be true, I'd say the difference between a motto and a commandment is the scale of it and the heavier weight of the commandment. — mentos987

"Commandment" can be an awfully semantically loaded word, if what you mean is something more along the lines of "something likely to be beneficial for all of us to subscribe to in a social contract."

So you argue in favor of physicalism? — baker

Yes.

What do you mean? That people who mindlessly peruse FB have mush for brains? — baker

No, I mean the sort of physical identity that is of relevance here would be something like, "Having all of a person's the electrons, protons, and neutrons in the exact same relative locations and with the exact same momentums at some instant in time." (Of course not a knowable state, even if a physical possibility, but for the sake of the p-zombie argument - a good enough description of the sort of scenario under consideration.)

I'm impressed with Michael's patience in the face of incomprehension — bert1

Same.

There reaches a point where a person is no longer amenable to reason or evidence. Look no further than election denial, climate denial, 2nd amendment enthusiasts, flat earthers, etc. Doesn’t matter — there will always be some excuse to go on believing what you wanted to believe in the first place. — Mikie

The following excerpt from a Robert Cialdini book seems relevant, both to your observation and to various threads going on about morality, and discussion of promises.

https://medium.com/@charlesleon/consistency-and-commitment-9f2f9d38e188

Oh, this is an actual question about another poster?

No I am not him. Why did you think that? — Apustimelogist

I supposed it is a matter of surprising coincidences. The last time I saw a post from @Srap Tasmaner was a short while before the first post I saw from you and what you were saying seemed like it could well have been a continuation of a line of thinking he had been engaged in.

There is also similarity in posting style.

That, and sock puppet spotting has become a weird hobby of mine, and I've developed a significant degree of trust in my sock puppet spotting intuitions. On the other hand, experience as an engineer has taught me the value of test to failure, and not least in the case of my own intuitions.

Thus my question.

The solution? In Until the End of Time, Brian Greene wrote:
And within that mathematical description, affirmed by decades of data from particle colliders and powerful telescopes, there is nothing that even hints at the inner experiences those particles somehow generate. How can a collection of mindless, thoughtless, emotionless particles come together and yield inner sensations of color or sound, of elation or wonder, of confusion or surprise? Particles can have mass, electric charge, and a handful of other similar features (nuclear charges, which are more exotic versions of electric charge), but all these qualities seem completely disconnected from anything remotely like subjective experience. How then does a whirl of particles inside a head—which is all that a brain is—create impressions, sensations, and feelings?
— Greene — Patterner

What does Greene follow that up with?

I don't get the impression, based on the following Greene interview, that he would agree much with the way you are using that quote.

Where the mistake is made is in thinking that these Christian Fundamentalists are comprised of the true primitive Christians, truly as they began and have existed for thousands of years. — Hanover

Well of course societies have continually evolved, and the form literalist Christianity has taken has varied. Are you sure there is anyone here making this mistake?

It's supposedly "hard" because we don't yet have a place in the physical sciences for the idea of phenomenal consciousness. — frank

I've never heard anyone say that, who wasn't rather naive about what is going on in the physical sciences. See the link I posted above. It is certainly informative about ways my phenomenal consciousness differs from that of others.

Your wave example doesn't help. It wouldn't explain why the wave is associated with some particular experie ces in the same way that current descriptions of vidual cortex activity cannot tell us what experiences we are having. — Apustimelogist

I see growing scientific evidence, that learning more about phase relationships between brainwaves and neuron firings will enhance our understanding of the nature of our perceptual experience at the least.

Lots of relevant stuff here. (And pointers to more relevant stuff.)

Sure, but I won't bother to do so unless Bob Ross commits himself to your position, namely that there is parity between the rational justification for an object's height, and the rational justification for a moral claim. If he honestly thinks that both of these things are similarly unjustifiable, then I will consider responding to your post. If not then I will not consider it worth responding to. — Leontiskos

Ah son, I've been involved in so many discussions with Christians like you, that I'm pretty unimpressed with threats to take your ball and go. Do what you need to do. Stomp the dust off your feet, or whatever.

I'm kind of a "He who has ears to hear, let him hear." sort of guy. So no sweat if you need to tune me out for awhile.

Still, perhaps I've instilled some subconscious recognition in you, of your tendency to look at things simplistically. Who knows? Perhaps some day you will have some recognition of how you have looked at morality simplistically.

Figurative interpretations has been accepted since ancient times:

https://biologos.org/common-questions/how-was-the-genesis-account-of-creation-interpreted-before-darwin — Hanover

Sure, there have always been some intellectuals who attained figurative views. However consider this Augustine quote:

Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men.

This quote doesn't make much sense except there having been a context where Augustine was under the impression that there were an embarrassing number of Christians who aren't such critical thinkers.

So the evidence presented by Biologos itself, provides evidence of literalists going way back in history.
Does it really make sense to jump to a simplistic conclusion, about the thinking of religious people historically, on the basis of the views of a few intellectuals?

You don't even believe one can be rationally justified with regards to the height of an object? lol... — Leontiskos

The fact is, you have to settle for an approximation. Even if you were to get NIST to provide you with a measurement of your height, NIST would qualify their measurement result with an uncertainty.

So how is your belief, as to what your height is, rationally justified without settling for a simplistic answer at some point? I believe you settle for simplistic propositions without realizing that you are doing so. Do you think you can prove me wrong?

I’m trying to understand exactly what this problem is about. From my understanding, the biggest mystery is that we currently don’t have nearly enough knowledge in neuroscience to explain why some neural networks lead to conscious experience and others don’t.
But what if we did have that knowledge, would it solve the problem then?

Imagine we found some sort of wave that certain neural networks create, that is related to consciousness: whenever we observe this specific wave, conscious experiences comes along as well. Would that solve the hard problem of consciousness or would it still leave philosophers wondering how exactly that wave represents the conscious experience?

If the problem remains, then we have the same problem with a lot of other things like time, space,… However we try to rationalize it, no one can explain time and space, it’s just there in everything we know, there are building blocks of our world. The only way we can picture a world without time is if we imagine that time would stop. But that thought itself includes time. And it's the same with consciousness: consciousness is there whenever we think about it, any explanation would be self referencing.

So my question is: is the root of the hard problem self reference or is it our critical lack of knowledge in that domain? — Skalidris

I'd say some of both.

Assuming it is even possible to record the full detail of the physical activity occurring in human brains without killing a person, we aren't near to having the technology to do so. So the lack of knowledge is a significant issue.

If we did have such knowledge, what would we be able to do with it? A physical system can't simulate a physical system as complex as itself. On physicalism there is no reason to think that we could consciously grasp the full details of what occurs in our brains.

Not to say that there isn't (or won't be) progress being made in improving our understanding, but that there will inevitably be limits.

Rational justification doesn't work that way. Propositions are true or false. Conclusions are rationally justified or they aren't. "True for me," or, "Rationally justified for me," is a nonsense assertion. — Leontiskos

Such black or white thinking. I presume you have some belief about how tall you are. How is that belief rationally justified?

Philosophy is not the love of wisdom... — Lionino

Speaking for yourself, I presume?

We evolved, and exist, in this universe, with its consistent principles. Meaning they are within us. I think counting is our recognition of these attributes, these consistent principles, of the universe. It makes sense that we recognize the principles of our own existence when we see them outside of ourselves. It wouldn't make sense if we were surprised every time we added 2 and 2, and came up with 4. — Patterner

:up:

So I am an inadequate atheist in a sense - I never found the notion of gods coherent, attractive or useful, even before I heard any of the arguments. I wish I could say I had a deconversion experience, but it never happened. — Tom Storm

LOL

I wish I hadn't needed one.

Which leads to the question: "if the universe necessarily produces all this meaning and value, in what way is it meaningless and valueless?" — Count Timothy von Icarus

Meaning and value are things naturally evolved minds project on things in the environment, since survival and reproduction is fostered by seeing things in the environment as meaningful and valuable. Obviously there is no requirement that people recognize their projection of value for what it actually is, (and most don't, and no one does all the time) in order for such subconscious projection to be adaptive.

How would you distinguish between something having value, and your mind subconsciously projecting value on that thing? Does not what you find meaningful and valuable change over time, and how would that be possible if you were somehow perceiving objective value?

It seems to me that the fixation of New Atheism on fundementalism has to do with it being an easy target, and it's an easy target because it makes explicit claims about the types of facts that scientific inquiry is well adapted to explore. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'd think it is much more about recognition of the toxicity of fundamentalism. Remember the role 9/11 played.

I appreciate your courage, openness, and insights.

For me here I think it gets hazy because since in my example everything is completely identical except for this gamete part, it seems to me I could plausibly say they are the same person. — Apustimelogist

Speaking of identity, I can with a high degree of confidence say that you are the same person as "Srap Tasmaner". Care to verify or falsify my intuition? :nerd:

It is an example of how it can be simplistic to talk in terms of necessity regarding genetics.

My only purpose here was to try to make the nuance clear. — Banno

Pointing out nuances has been one of my purposes in this thread as well, for example my pointing out tetragametic chimeras earlier.

In 2002, after applying for government assistance in the state of Washington, Lydia Fairchild was told that her two children were not a genetic match with her and that therefore, biologically, she could not be their mother. Researchers later determined that the genetic mismatch was due to chimerism, a condition in which two genetically distinct cell lines are present in one body. The state accused Fairchild of fraud and filed a lawsuit against her. Following evidence from another case of chimerism documented in The New England Journal of Medicine in a woman named Karen Keegan, Fairchild was able to secure legal counsel and establish evidence of her biological maternity. A cervical swab eventually revealed Fairchild’s second distinct cell line, showing that she had not genetically matched her children because she was a chimera. Fairchild’s case was one of the first public accounts of chimerism and has been used as an example in subsequent discussions about the validity and reliability of DNA evidence in legal proceedings within the United States.

https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/case-lydia-fairchild-and-her-chimerism-2002

Hand waving. Are you saying it is an induction, like "all swans are black"? If not, what? — Banno

As I said, it is a sentence of your creation. It seems to allude to inductions that are frequently made these days, but I don't see any need to pigeonhole your sentence as you seem interested in.

It's not an observation; so in what way could it be considered empirical? — Banno

It alludes to reasonable expectations we could have based on a wide range of empirical observations which have been made regardless of not in itself stating an empirical observation.

Because I'm suggesting it is not empirical, but a choice about how you would use the name "schopenhauer1". — Banno

Well it certainly isn't a choice about how I personally would use the name "schopenhauer1". I use the name " schopenhauer1" to refer to some dude on the internet I have a fairly fuzzy concept of, though I am quite confident that he has a fairly unique genome.

By way of trying, what status, what sort of sentence, do you think the one labeled K1 has? Do you think it an observation? Something that is empirically verifiable? — Banno

It is a sentence you came up with. It is a simplistic assertion. No, it is not an observation. As it stands it is too vague to be empirically verifiable.

Anyway, I've never taken much of an interest in the details of language that you are interested in, and undoubtedly I'm not going to be very good at playing guess what Banno is thinking on subjects such as this.

Do you consider being scientifically informed an aspect of being well educated? I seem to get mixed messages on that subject from you.

I suspect schopenhauer1, ↪wonderer1, too, think they are making an observation, but it doesn't look that way to me. More generally, if folk do not accept that we bring things about using words - that there are commissive utterance - they will have a hard time understanding what is going on here. — Banno

I don't really know what you are imagining here. Of course there are commisive utterances. I don't see what that has to do with this thread.