:up:

Moving on to Persian Poetry and Philosophy. — Amity

The analysis of that poem reminded of something by another middleasterner whose poetry I've turned to a lot.

And one of the elders of the city said, Speak to us of Good and Evil.
And he answered:
Of the good in you I can speak, but not of the evil.
For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst?
Verily when good is hungry it seeks food even in dark caves, and when it thirsts it drinks even of dead waters.

You are good when you are one with yourself.
Yet when you are not one with yourself you are not evil.
For a divided house is not a den of thieves; it is only a divided house.
And a ship without rudder may wander aimlessly among perilous isles yet sink not to the bottom.

You are good when you strive to give of yourself.
Yet you are not evil when you seek gain for yourself.
For when you strive for gain you are but a root that clings to the earth and sucks at her breast.
Surely the fruit cannot say to the root, "Be like me, ripe and full and ever giving of your abundance."
For the fruit giving is a need, as receiving is a need to the root.

You are good when you are fully awake in your speech,
Yet you are not evil when you sleep while your tongue staggers without purpose.
And even stumbling speech may strengthen a weak tongue.

You are good when you walk to your goal firmly and with bold steps.
Yet you are not evil when you go thither limping.
Even those who limp go not backward.
But you who are strong and swift, see that you do not limp before the lame, deeming it kindness.

You are good in countless ways, and you are not evil when you are not good,
You are only loitering and sluggard.
Pity that the stags cannot teach swiftness to the turtles.

In your longing for your giant self lies your goodness: and that longing is in all of you.
But in some of you that longing is a torrent rushing with might to the sea, carrying the secrets of the hillsides and the songs of the forest.
And in others it is a flat stream that loses itself in angles and bends and lingers before it reaches the shore.

But let not him who longs much say to him who longs little, "Wherefore are you slow and halting?"
For the truly good ask not the naked, "Where is your garment?" nor the houseless, "What has befallen your house?"

From The Prophet - Kahlil Gibran

I understand that. I'm asking literally how does it exist. I'm referring to the HPoC. Always looking for how such things can exist in a physically deterministic reality. — Patterner

Ok, let's give neuroscience another couple hundred years, and maybe we'll find a better answer.

Correct. We don't know about the exact condition of neural activity of our brain but we know that it is deterministic. There is however a problem in the deterministic worldview so-called doubt. Options are real in the case we have doubts and a deterministic entity cannot deal with a situation when there are doubts. — MoK

Even if we ignore quantum indeterminacy... As you say, we don't know what is going on in our own brains in any detailed way, so how can you rule out subconscious bias as being what amounts to a coin flip in your head?

Also, I don't recall you acknowledging the the sort of indeterminacy that can result from system complexity. IIRC you have a physics background, so perhaps it would be worthwhile for you to consider the relevance of the three body problem to the complex molecular environment of a brain.

I certainly can't explain details of what happened in evolution to result in our propensity to feel guilt. I can only point out that we evolved as a social species, and it is reasonable to think that a capacity for feeling guilt is an aspect of what maintains our ability to function as a social species.

I agree. I'm not sure how guilt even exists in such a scenario. — Patterner

Evolved social instincts, conducive to success as a member of a social group.

My guess at the answer to the question is an evolved cheater detection module.

Attempted gaslighting...it is coming more and more evident that you're feeling like an abused girlfriend. Am I getting close? — NOS4A2

Hmm. Have you had many girlfriends who felt abused by you?

But no. Care to try again?

The artist, those of us who look at it, and posterity are harmed by your actions, which amount to vandalism. It's not up to you to deface someone's work. Imagine the deepfake show "Sassy Justice", from the creators of Southpark, with your ugly watermark on it. — NOS4A2

This is attempted gaslighting.

We can add to that the fact that you see yourself as being in a community of one and show no signs of having empathy for others.

Are you ready to take your best guess yet?

Of course, but there has been an unhealthy trend toward treating expert opinion as no more credible than the opinion of a blogger on the internet- especially among Republicans. — Relativist

I wish I could say it is a rare occurence among 'philosophers'.

Yet the gadget works 99% of the time, and when it doesn't we find out the problem and issue a recall or release an updated product. — Harry Hindu

Well, whether the product "works" can be a matter of degree as well. Suppose the gadget is a voltmeter. Whether it works to measure voltage with the accuracy and precision desired can be an important question, and at some level the accuracy can only be a guess because for practical reasons what a volt is, is going to be defined by some metrological body (in the US NIST) which will only provide a limited level of uncertainty. Furthermore, the uncertainty provided by leading national metrology institutes is very much a function of the NMI's ability to account for quantum factors.

The macro world and quantum world have not been sufficiently merged into a consistent whole. — Harry Hindu

You might be surprised at the extent to which practical matters bump into quantum limitations in today's world.

You speak as if you are getting at things as they truly are, or are you saying your statement is only true to a degree? — Harry Hindu

Suppose I design some complicated electronic gadget, and sell it to someone who has a use for what the gadget does. Most commonly the purchaser of the gadget doesn't know the gadget to anything like the degree that I do.

But then my knowledge of the gadget is far from complete, because to make the gadget I bought subgadgets to build the gadget out of, and I don't know everything that the subgadget designer knows about the subgadget. Furthermore, as we descend the gadget/subgadget/... hierarchy we are going to run into the uncertainty principle.

How do we know that we have incomplete knowledge if we didn't already know what was missing? — Harry Hindu

Because the knowledge people have about things (including other people) is not a black and white matter, but a matter of degrees.

If one knows the exact initial condition of the coin when it is tossed and the situation of the environment, such as wind, then one can know the outcome of tossing the coin. — MoK

Which brings us back to the role of ignorance in attributing things to free will.

We don't know anything remotely approaching the exact initial conditions of our brains and all the environmental factors which play a determing role in what happens in our brains. Furthermore, there is lots of good evidence for the powerful role of subconscious processes emerging in our conscious thought.

How is a "mind" a better explanation than subconscious processes?

How often have you seen someone completely change their world views after exposure to a philosopher's ideas? — Tom Storm

I would say, based on contemplating neuroscience and life experience, that dramatic changes in a person's worldview is something that takes a considerable amount of time to occur.

It must happen. — Tom Storm

I'm skeptical.

If we accept that neural mechanisms are deterministic then subconsciousness cannot toss a coin. — MoK

Can coins be tossed in a deterministic world?

If so, then why can't a neural mechanism do something analogous to tossing a coin?

This is what I was getting at, but you presented it much more clearly. :up:

I look forward to MoK's response. — ToothyMaw

@jgill

Good job, both of you, of articulating what I was trying to point towards.

What is the point of your comments, really? — NOS4A2

What's your best guess?

When first confronted with the matter, I do not think that anybody right in his mind agrees on this. It is just too controversial. The first reaction is usually, disgust. It takes quite a while before someone can actually accept this kind of thinking. — Tarskian

Any thoughts on why?

Is it a blow to people's egos to face the limitations of human thought?

It definitely varies, as is typical of social primates.

No, I would say that our freedom allows us to decide when we are ignorant about the outcomes of the options. — MoK

I'm having a hard time seeing what you mean.

If we fail to recognize that we are ignorant in some regard do we lack freedom to the degree that we fail to recognize our ignorance in that area?

:up:

See the interview here, he grew up in my neighbourhood. — Wayfarer

Thanks to reading that, I've realized that Chalmers and I share a philosophical perspective.

...the natural bush environment is gorgeous.

We are lost because we are free, so say the existentialists — Gregory

:up:

I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of uncertainty about different things, but I am not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here. I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as I can tell.

So said Richard Feyman. :wink:

We owe a lot to our good teachers. I was lucky to have several outstanding ones. — Vera Mont

:100: :up:

Something a bit like that happened to me on the Gr. 13 English final. They gave us a dozen titles to choose from, one of which perfectly fit a story I was already writing in my head. By the time I finished, there were only a few minutes left for the other questions. I answered less than half of them, and was sure I'd get a lousy mark.
I got 96%. My teacher liked the story so much, she wasn't bothered about the grammar and structure questions. She even invited me to a summer course in creative writing. (Couldn't go; had to get a job. I'm still sorry I missed it.) — Vera Mont

Very cool teacher. :grin:

IIRC, my prof wrote on my exam book, "What happened?", and gave me a B. My prof was an aspiring science fiction writer himself. He personally handed me back my paper on the use of mythology and folklore and thanked me for writing it, and that might have bled into my exam grade. :wink:

...nor have I given any indication of my empathy. — NOS4A2

Yeah, that was kind of my point.

There is. It’s called ‘scientism’. — Wayfarer

:rofl:

As if the practice is uncommon among philosophers in general.

Re sanity: I felt mentally disturbed when writing Red, White and Blue. In that I felt my inner self was being exposed. I was immersed not only in the story but simultaneously discovering...perhaps hidden aspects...who the hell is this writing? It's not me! — Amity

Something along these lines plays a major role in my tendency to avoid writing in isolation. (As compared to riffing off other people's writing on an internet forum, for example.)

Writing in isolation has gotten me into some disturbing states of mind where I have tuned out the world around me to a frightening degree. I suppose that if I made it a habit to write for half an hour every day, and then at the end of the half hour always did something that required me to pay attention to what is going on in the world around me, (repetitive jaywalking perhaps) I might be able to reduce the phobia I have with regard to writing.

I suppose there is an element of autistic hyperfocus for me, that tends to take me down deep rabbit holes. I remember one exam in a college literature class consisting of four essay questions. I don't remember what the first exam question was or what my answer was. But the first question triggered such a flood of stuff I 'had to' write down, that by the time I looked up from answering the first question, three quarters of the exam period had gone by.

It started as a challenge: Here is an opening paragraph; write the next paragraph. The story emerged over several weeks and took some amusing turns. — Vera Mont

That is something I could have a lot of fun with.

Simply because you don’t share your boss’ motor-cortex. You are responsible for what you do while your boss is responsible for what he does. It’s simple physics and biology. — NOS4A2

It is simplistic physics and biology that treats humanity as if each individual human is her own pocket universe, and ignores the interactions between people which result in us changing each other's thinking to some degree.

Perhaps it is misguided on my part, but I am loath to provide you with knowledge (power) of such interactions, due to your general lack of understanding of, and empathy for, people. So don't expect me to argue the point.

...one thing a picture is entirely incapable of depicting is that it is true. A picture can show how things might be, and things may indeed be that way, but the picture cannot include itself in its depiction and vouch for its own accuracy. — Srap Tasmaner

I agree that a picture is not capable of depicting that it is true. However, I question the practical import of that to some extent.

In my experience it can be important for me to recognize whether a picture is consistent with my observation of the way things go in the world. (My profile picture can serve as an example of a picture that is 'not consistent' with the way things go in the world.)

Sketching connections — Pierre-Normand/ChatGPT o1

Interesting (to me anyway) that this suggests a 'visuo-spatial' element to Chat GPT o1's process.

We don't have any specific reason to choose one option over another one when we have doubts. Therefore, our decision is free* in this case. — MoK

Would you say that having freedom is dependent on being ignorant about some things?

The brain is however a deterministic entity so it cannot freely decide when there is doubt. — MoK

There are multiple senses of the word "indeterminism" and indeterminism in the sense discussed in the following article is relevant here:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/300312282_Indeterminism_in_System_Science

You will only be able to see a very brief abstract if you aren't signed into ResearchGate, but here is an excerpt from the introduction:

It is my strong belief, expressed in an earlier paper (Elstob 1984), that the assumptions of
deterministic metaphysics will not yield a full understanding of the nature of mind. I suggest that what we need to do is develop a strong new metaphysics that places indeterminism in a central position. I see indeterminism as a key aspect of becoming in nature, of emergent processes, and of creative evolution. I believe that a metaphysics of indeterminism can be constructed that will give understanding as valuable as those produced from deterministic ideas, even though – because of the indeterminism – we cannot get from it the same degree of predictive and manipulative command of nature that determinism offers. I do not wish the overthrow of determinism, but I do want to see more clearly in what contexts it is properly applied. I want to see determinism and indeterminism both properly understood as real aspects of the world.

Therefore, there must exist an entity, the so-called mind, that can freely decide. — MoK

Brains are enormously complex entities that aren't deterministic in the sense that, given complete information about a brain and some rather enormous amount of the environment in which the brain exists, we could make perfect predictions about what will happen in that brain in that environment.

Furthermore, the things we do arise from a combination of conscious thought and subconscious thought (or subconscious information processing if you prefer).

So I disagree that we need to dualistically posit a mind as you suggest.

Language is the shadow cast by the mind into the world. People often mistaken the shadows for the light or simply think the shadows can tell them more about the light than the light itself. — I like sushi

:up:

The paradox arises because we had to trust that scientific (or more generally empirical) knowledge that we have sensibility and representative faculties to begin with (which is also mediated fundamentally by our a priori knowledge)—so we are trusting that our experience can give us knowledge of the things-in-themselves to some extent even though we thereafter must conclude we have no knowledge of the things-in-themselves.

Do you see what I mean? — Bob Ross

I'd say I have "some degree of incomplete knowledge" of what you mean. :wink:

I think you are using a definition of "knowledge" that I would find unreasonably rigid, and as a result you see a paradox where there is none, but I'm not wanting to go into that in depth, and others here are likely better equipped than I to discuss that with you, so I'm going to bow out of the discussion. At least for a time.

Firstly, the phenomena are a result of the cognition of sensations and not things-in-themselves; and those sensations are limited by our sensibility. — Bob Ross

I'd suggest seeking scientific understanding of what the sensations are a result of. It seems you might need some understanding of the role the things themselves play in your experience of sensations.

What are the details of the light that reflected off the thing and into your eye?

Do you see consideration of such matters off limits for this discussion. If so, might it be that you are trying to understand things in overly simplistic terms?

Secondly, any given phenomena stripped of the a prior means of intuiting and cognizing it is left perfectly unintelligible... — Bob Ross

Translating into wondererese yields, "If the functioning of a person's brain is disabled, the person won't have intelligible thoughts." My response to my interpretation is, "Right. And???"

I'm afraid you would need to elaborate for me to understand what you see as a problem.

How do we reconcile these problems as indirect realists that accept that our conscious experience is representational? — Bob Ross

Drop the black and white thinking in the sentence below...

Kant begins with the presupposition that our experience is representational and proceeds to correctly conclude that knowledge of the things-in-themselves is thusly impossible. — Bob Ross

..and recognize that we can have some degree of incomplete knowledge of things-in-themselves?

The hardest part for me is language. — Vera Mont

I can see how that would be difficult. Keeping multiple made up languages in my head simultaneously sounds especially difficult.

I just came in here for a brief respite from fighting over animal intelligence. — Vera Mont

Think you can escape so easily huh? :wink:

Do you know how much research and meticulous planning goes into inventing a planet? Damn real, it becomes a character: it haunts your dreams for months on end. — Vera Mont

Are there any particular aspects of creating a planet that stand out?

I once wrote a paper on the use of invented mythology and folklore in works of fiction like Watership Down and LeGuin's Left Hand of Darkness, and the richness that can be added to a story by such invented mythologies and folklores. Just that one aspect of inventing a fictional world sounds exhausting to me.