Morality as Cooperation Strategies explains fast moral thinking, not slow moral thinking. — Mark S

I think your sense of what is an explanation of what is a bit unrealistic. I think the adaptiveness of fast moral thinking (considered within an evolutionary framework) is more accurate as an explanation for human moral thinking.

It seems to me you're suggesting there's something interesting there that I'm too ignorant/dumb to see it. — Eugen

I used to think that it made sense to see people as being somewhere along a one dimensional line from smart to dumb, but that was 36 years ago. Now I recognize that all of us have different constellations of cognitive strengths and weaknesses that determine what ways of learning we are better or worse at.

Could you please shed some light onto it for me, please? — Eugen

I think it is largely a matter of intuitively grokking what Chomsky meant, and I'd suggest that the best way for you to do that might be to think about the problems you would run into if you tried to provide a full explanation of what it is like for you to see a sunset.

There is no hard problem because <<How is it like to see a sunset?>> is a non-question" :vomit: — Eugen

What Chomsky is doing with that statement is attempting to foster a recognition in his listeners. It didn't work in your case, but that's just the way it goes.

Matthew 13:1-8

Dude, I was sarcastic... of course I won't start the classic silly debate ''Hey, we can get to flying from parts that don't fly." — Eugen

Cool. So we can consider it a bare assertion when you say:

The hard problem states it's illogical to get consciousness from non-consciousness, and there is absolutely no answer to that to this moment.

Really? How come? I want details, please! — Eugen

Lay out your argument and I will point the fallacy out for you.

The hard problem states it's illogical to get consciousness from non-consciousness, and there is absolutely no answer to that to this moment. — Eugen

Sure there is an answer. The hard problem, as you state it, commits a fallacy of composition. (Or fallacy of division, depending on the details.)

I'm planning to create an OP, but it's going to take a few days. It's a deep topic. — Wayfarer

I'm looking forward to it. :up:

I'm aware of that book, but no, haven't read it. — Wayfarer

Bummer, it'd make it easier to communicate some things to you if you had. Yes, Kahneman is quite brilliant, and presents important things to understand about intuition, and does so a whole lot better than I could.

Anyway, maybe we could switch to discussing the argument from reason that you mentioned?

I will add that the principle difference between the neo-Kantian Cassirer, and standard view of physicalism, is that the latter sees mind and being as the emergent products of physical processes which are understood to be inherently non-intentional and non-teleological. — Wayfarer

Are you using "non-intentional" in the sense of intentionality or in a sense related to motivation, or other?

If in the sense of intentionality, then I could make a case that intentionality supervenes on neural networks. It seems likely it would take some charitable consideration and effort on your part to understand it, but it is well worth understanding for those interested in understanding themselves. (Particularly if interested in the nature of intuition.)

Of course we all have different brains, and as a consequence, different constellations of cognitive strengths and weaknesses. This impacts what we find interesting, and I'm certainly not suggesting you should be interested in the things I'm interested in.

Have at it. :up: — Pantagruel

Thanks Pantagruel.

Getting back to this:

I don’t think there is one. There are major gaps and conundrums in physics, even without considering the very tenuous connection it might have with how or if mind ‘emerges from’ neural networks, and the implications of that. I think the sense of what is physical, in this context, is post-Cartesian. This is the view that emerges from first of all dividing the world into the two domains of extended matter and ‘thinking substance’ and then by demonstrating the conceptual difficulties with the ‘thinking substance’ (a.k.a. ‘ghost in the machine’.) So having eliminated that problematical conception of the mind, there is purportedly nothing left other than ‘the physical’ in terms of which mind can be explained.

Do you think that is near the mark? — Wayfarer

I interpret the sentence I bolded to be suggesting that I am proposing a sort of 'physicalism of the gaps'. That is not at all the case. What I would like to see is more people developing the cognitive toolkit to recognize that an understanding of human thought and consciousness, as supervening on physical processes, is extraordinarily explanatory and not just a simplistic parsimony.

Sure there are gaps and conundrums in all sciences and not just physics, but despite there being unknowns in many areas, I think it is important to understand what Sean Carroll was attempting to communicate with his article, The Laws Underlying The Physics of Everyday Life Are Completely Understood.

The connection between physics, and the information processing that occurs in neural networks, is no more tenuous than the connection between physics, and the information processing occuring in the device you are using to read this post. However, the ability to recognize the explanatory power of neural networks in understanding human thought, supervenes on a fairly broad knowledge of science generally. So I don't hold out much hope of this being persuasive to people who lack the knowledge base required for such recognition to occur.

Still it seems worth trying to communicate this idea, despite the difficulty in doing so, and perhaps talking about things at the level of psychology might be somewhat effective at conveying aspects of my thinking on this subject. Have you read Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow?

Any objection to your thread being used as Wayfarer and I have been discussing?

So, the odd thing is that even if we can have intuitive intellectual knowledge of reality, we cannot be certain that we can, no matter how certain we might feel about it. — Janus

:100: :up:

Do you think that is near the mark? — Wayfarer

No, I don't. However, before I go into detail, do you think one of us should start a new OP? Or is there an old thread of yours appropriate to discuss things in?

:up:

You'd probably need to start with a definition of 'physical' which I suspect will be very difficult to derive. — Wayfarer

I wouldn't be approaching things from a foundationalist perspective. As an anti-foundationalist I'm fine with settling for, whatever passes for the consensus of physicists, as a definiton of physical. I think we could have an informative discussion while leaving the definition of physical a bit fuzzy.

Hence the requirement for noesis, philosophical ascent. The culmination of those states is in 'seeing things as they truly are', of arriving at an insight into the totality, an epiphany or a great 'aha' moment. This is not necessarily confined to mysticism. There are episodes in the history of science where individuals had sudden noetic insights into the nature of things which lead to great breakthroughs in scientific understanding. An example would be Copernicus' realisation that the orbits of planets were elliptical whilst searching for the Platonic ideals in his observational data; Nikolai Tesla's mystical vision of the Sun and the interchangeability of matter and energy which preceeded Einstein's discovery of the same fact. There are no doubt many other examples, at least some of which resulted in the overthrow of the current paradigm... — Wayfarer

Damn you! You are not going to allow me to escape having this discussion, are you? :wink:

So suppose I said I had such a "sudden noetic insights into the nature of things which lead to great breakthroughs in scientific understanding"? Now I admit that the "which lead to" bit, only fits with a bit of squinting. I didn't propagate my insight to any significant extent. So my insight only lead to relevant scientific breakthroughs, in the sense that other people gaining similar insight over the last 36 years has resulted in a lot of scientific progress.

Now suppose that insight was about how minds emerge from the physical interactions occurring in neural networks.

How would that discussion go?

Perhaps there is a mode of certainty that transcends discursive understanding. — Pantagruel

Some kind of "intellectual intuition?" — Pantagruel

I wouldn't say "intellectual intuition" so much as well "trained and tested intuition", though admittedly some might see those as fairly synonymous. Have you read Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow?

Isn't it past your bedtime?

All that being said, I think that's a whole different thing than what I typically call determinism. — T Clark

Yeah, I know I haven't taken the time to layout the the way I'm using terms, and it's unsurprising that we are talking past each other to some extent. So as some clarification...

1. I consider it quite plausible that the world is indeterministic in light of what I know of physics.

2. I have a lot of history of arguing for 'determinism' in the context of discussing free will. Undoubtedly that is coloring the way I've approached the discussion.

I should have pared down what I quoted.

My response was intended as allusion to, "not like selling drugs".

I got the wife comment.

No conscious invertebrates? Don't they have to deal with lots of information flowing in? — RogueAI

The article also says...

The arthropod eye, on the other hand, has one of the best-studied examples of selective signal enhancement. It sharpens the signals related to visual edges and suppresses other visual signals, generating an outline sketch of the world.

To expand on that, it's a way of saying that visual data is processed in the eye of arthropod to yield a relatively low data output stream, but data reduced in a way that preserves salient features of the visual field.

So, in the case of those arthropods and vision, their brains don't have to deal with nearly as much data as vertebrate species do. Information processing is expensive in terms of energy consumption. There are lots of niches in which an energy efficient 'design' can hold it's own against more intelligent but less energy efficient designs.

What do you mean? This place is full of people pushing all kinds of mind altering stuff.

What is the evolutionary benefit of consciousness? — RogueAI

See here. (Although that may require a subscription. If so, Google is your friend. I used "the evolutionary adaptiveness of consciousness".)

If I may interject a question as someone with only a superficial understanding of Kant...

Isn't it a bit of an overstatement to say we know *nothing* of the thing-in-itself? Why not a more nuanced view, in which we know a limited amount about things-in-themselves, but some of us know more than others, depending on the thing under consideration.

Here is the IEP entry.

Do you mean that determinists still blame others for their actions erroneously? Assuming it is, I would say that perhaps they can't help doing that, even if there might not be any rational warrant for it. — Janus

Yes, blaming reactions are naturally ocurring instinctive emotional reactions that have historically been adaptive for our species and are adaptive still. Being emotional reactions, they aren't particularly conducive to us seeing things objectively. They are evolutionarily adaptive because they are strongly motivating to action. So yes, we can't help doing that.

However, understanding the nature of blame reactions allows for nuance and skill in modulating how one behaves in response to a having a blaming state of mind - from philosophising - to unleashing the angry ape.

I don't understand what you are saying in your last sentence. — Janus

What I was trying to convey in saying, "Of course that's fallacious in all sorts of way. Not least, it's an appeal to consequences.", is that I don't expect people to see what I said prior as a rational argument. Just reinforcing that this is a matter of subjective preference on my part.

As a layperson, I can well imagine the ambition to discover some kind of secular and universal formula for morality. It reminds me of the alchemist's quest to turn base metal into gold. — Tom Storm

:up:

It's part of a larger argument, that I've tried to develop here and elsewhere. — Wayfarer

Thanks for the outline.

Part of me wants to dive into discussing it further, and another part is saying I should allocate my time better. So I'm going to pass on diving in. At least for now.

I stand by the basic claim that numbers, logical principles, and the like, cannot be explained in terms of the interactions of matter. — Wayfarer

Saying this unironically, in the process of posting on the Internet, is hard to fathom from my perspective.

Do you think that computers do not deal with numbers and apply logical principles, or do you think that the processes occurring in computers cannot be explained in terms of the interactions of matter, or...?

It seems that if sensory input isn't coming in to the brain, the brain will create it's own hallucinatory input to compensate. People in sensory deprivation tanks hallucinate fairly quickly when deprived of external stimuli. What is the evolutionary benefit of this? — RogueAI

Sensory deprivation tanks weren't part of the environment our ancestors were exposed to. There is no reason to think that there is an evolutionary benefit to how we respond, to an environment that played no role in the natural selection of our ancestors.

Did you happen to observe my recent demonstration, here on the forums, of how predictable people can be?
— wonderer1

No. I'll take a look if you provide a link. I'm skeptical that the level of prediction you are talking about is as rigorous as what would be required to claim strict determinism. I don't doubt that events in the past have effects in the present and future. That's different. — T Clark

I'm not claiming it "is as rigorous as what would be required to claim strict determinism", but it is a piece of evidence that I think makes the most sense on determinism.

Anyway, what I'm referring to can be found on this page starting with my post which is about the tenth one down on that page. (Sorry I don't yet know how to provide a more direct link.)

Yes, but it is oriented around a more 'expansive' understanding of what consciousness is. There is a long tradition of consciousness as an interior movie, an interior monologue, things going on "in the head." The whole layer of intelligence involved in the micro-coordination of our overt actions and behaviours is ignored by many people. — Pantagruel

I don't disagree with the notion that there is intelligence involved in the automation of our motor skills, but it seems likely to result in confusion to refer to that automation as consciousness. I think there is no avoiding a degree of fuzziness, in trying to consider consciousness in isolation from the rest of the causal web, but nonetheless it is still worthwhile considering how our brains instantiate consciousness. There is certainly no shortage of things to be learned in doing so.

Some proponents of embodied cognition would argue that the environment provides the body with all the stimulus necessary for navigation to food and shelter. So there's no need to assign inference to this navigation. — frank

That doesn't sound like a very well thought out way of modeling things to me.

Additionally, the embodied consciousness thesis is often bundled with that of embedded cognition (environmental factors are also integral to cognition). And there is extensive experimental evidence to that effect. If cognition isn't construed narrowly as just thinking, but is understood as a kind of enaction, then the theory of embodied consciousness really isn't that far-fetched. After all, think about how intimately the nature of our thoughts is entwined with the nuances of our physical form, the dexterity of our fingers, the nature of our other senses. Knowledge is the result of a "hunger" which is then satisfied. Imagine how different our thoughts would be if we were instead squid-like creatures who absorbed sunlight through an algae-symbiote living in our skin. — Pantagruel

I don't see the theory of embodied consciousness as far-fetched at all. From my perspective it seems pretty intuitively obvious.

It llooks like specificity about reference frames is not clear in someone's mind.

We've had a few threads here on the forum where I've made the case that the idea of causality is unnecessary and misleading. Admittedly, most people have found my arguments unconvincing. — T Clark

Did you happen to observe my recent demonstration, here on the forums, of how predictable people can be?

Perhaps you meant that it is meaningless in the sense that it is of no significance to us whether or not the Universe is deterministic, and I would agree with that. — Janus

Perhaps it depends on your preferences. Few long term determinists, that I have observed, fail to recognize the monkeymindedness of retribution. I think humans recognizing their nature is a good thing.

Of course that's fallacious in all sorts of way. Not least, it's an appeal to consequences.

I dunno if there is much point. Whatever I say will sound condescending. I presume you are at least aware of the discussion of is-ought in Ethics... what you call the "bottom-up" is an example of the naturalistic fallacy in which it is presumed that what we ought do is just what we have previously done. Gather whatever data you like and normalise it how you will, it does not tell us what we should do... — Banno

What it does do is tell us somewhat, about how to better understand our own natures, and the natures of others. I guess for someone like me, who sees no positive value in living in disharmony with my nature, it seems like valuable stuff to understand.

I find the hostility rather baffling.

Maybe it would help if you gave a definition of the will as expressed by a philosophy that rings true for you. The concept has been approached many different ways and those ways have prompted very different 'psychological' perspectives. — Paine

Would you point at one or more of the psychological perspectives that you see see as most worthy of consideration? I'd be interested in looking into some of them.

I have my own neuropsych perspective on the subject, and would be interested in what others who have thought seriously about the subject have to say.

To take a step back, I see the whole issue of determinism as a metaphysical one, not subject to empirical verification or falsification. It's a matter of point of view, not fact. I don't see it as a very useful way of thinking - it's misleading. — T Clark

I don't see it as misleading, but I do recognize that people often jump to wrong conclusions about determinism and equate it to fatalism. I've described my view in the past as "interactive determinism", in an attempt to head people off from jumping to simplistic conclusions. In any case, I'd be interested in hearing more about what you see as misleading.

For that matter, I think the idea of causation can be misleading except in the simplest cases. — T Clark

I don't see the idea of causation as misleading. However, I do think humans are extremely susceptible to jumping to simplistic causal explanations, as a consequence of the fact that we can't grasp the full causal web, even if we recognize it exists and want to grasp it.

So you would agree that if "embodied consciousness" refers to the belief that consciousness arises from the whole body, then it must be wrong, since the human body doesn't adapt to diverse earthly environments, but we adapt psychologically. You're saying all that's left is to assert that consciousness is associated with brain states. I agree with that. I don't think any serious philosopher would object to that. — frank

I think it would be a matter of simplistic thinking to assert either consciousness comes from the whole body, XOR consciousness comes from the brain. The brain plays a central role, but other parts of the body play a role in how the brain is functioning as well. Hormones, blood flow, and the oxygen and glucose content of the blood, are some of the aspects of how parts of the body outside the brain have an impact on consciousness. Then of course there are the sensory and motor nerves, with paths all over the body, which play a big role in how our consciousness develops.