Yep. It's certainly easier to just absorb sunlight or oxygen and just barely move and have no worries than it is to be human being.

There are two views here we should consider.

One would be, as Neil deGrasse Tyson said, that what we're doing is equivalent to taking a bucket to the ocean, scoop up some water, look in the bucket and then state that there's no life in the universe.

The second option, also worth seriously considering, is Ernst Mayer's view. He points out that in the only planet we know of that contains life in this universe, intelligence seems to be a lethal mutation. Look around, most of the species that survive and thrive are single cell organisms.

Likely not brilliant.

So it's not clear. I lean to the view that there is life, but I'm unsure about it being intelligent.

Sure. I only speak of an intuition or vague idea, but nothing beyond that.

We're in full agreement then. :cool:

Essentially yes. As you give more detailed analysis, I get a better picture of the dog you saw.

I'd say that in describing it as being over half white, black lips and so on, those are names you give that approximate your experience. The experience for you is private. It's a first person phenomenon.

When you attempt to describe it, you're shifting to a third person description. The change occurs in the shift of perspective. The object in experience will remain the same to you, but in the description, no matter how detailed it is, I cannot enter your body and see the dog with your eyes and conceive it with your mind.

I'll make my own description in my own mental image, likely different form yours. Perhaps the black I imagine is lighter than yours, or I have a kind of terrier in mind that is bigger than yours, etc.

So yes, no change in the "object itself", so to speak, but the object as you describe to me changes from what you actually experience.

Sure. The best you can do is have a vague feeling or sensation just prior to going to sleep and as soon as one wakes up. In the non-dreamless sleep or before non-existence, there is nothing to say. It's only in experience that we can look back on these things and comment on them.

But If I tell you that right now, thinking about dreamless sleep or the time "before my birth", I have a vague sensation of what it is. My sensation would not be the same as non-existence, of course, there is no sensation in non-existence. But I have an inkling of what that would be. I don't see a contradiction in this.

No, you're right. We do all those things too.

We hope that the art we do can come close to conveying our experience.

I have a general experience X, it's mine alone. There are only several words I can use to convey my personal experience to another person, I choose the word that most closely resembles X. I use this word to express it to other people. The words I use is the way I can publicly express X, but X is much more complex and nuanced than the word I use.

There's no way to directly share X experience with another person.

That's what I'm trying to get at by saying that naming something changes it.

I'm not an expert on Kant myself, but I know a bit. Nowhere near Mww. I'm more of a Schopenhauer guy.

I suspect the Tao and the thing-in-itself is not that different, the idea in transcendental idealism is that we contribute space and time to things. Without us attributing this to nature, everything would be undifferentiated. So in this respect, it's not that different. And yes, naming changes things in a sense, absolutely.

For Kant we cannot know anything about things-in-themselves, outside a few negative comments (what it cannot be, for instance).

For Schopenhauer, the nature of the thing-in-itself is will (an unconscious striving) which is akin, roughly, to energy. Everything in nature is an object for a subject (us).

We however are both: an object like other objects but also a subject of knowledge. We have knowledge from the inside of an object, our bodies. Our bodies are driven by will as is everything else in nature.

There are plenty of connection between Eastern and Western thought in some areas.

I don't understand the distinction you are making between the representation and the naming. How is it represented if not in words? — T Clark

Sorry if I'm butting in, but I'd like to give it a shot, as I understand it.

Representations are what we have of the world, the way whatever sense-data/information interacts with our senses and cognitive faculties that leads us to postulate objects in the world.

So say you peek out your window and you see something (assume it's a tree) . This thing you see is usually called a "tree", but your experience of the object is nowhere near exhausted by merely naming it. There's the different colours, the smells, the type of wood, the shade it offers, etc. ; you can see the front side now, but not the opposite side, you imagine it has one.

In short, naming something is a very brief and concise way of expressing something which is much richer in experience than a single word could convey. It's the difference between all the ways you could think about trees and how you interact with them as opposed to merely naming them.

But I'm confident @Mww will give you a better example. :)

Hume even said "One cannot find one's own ideas of self', because what one ever perceives is just a bundle of perceptions of the external objects. — Corvus

For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception.

But he refers to himself many times, while denying its existence.

At the same time, one's conception is distorted when one applies knowledge to non-existence, which has no knowledge. But we an idea of it in dreamless sleep, or thinking about non-existence before birth. It's vague, but we have it.

Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-driven Political Systems by Thomas Ferguson — Xtrix

:up:

The reason we find nothing problematic - I think - is because we are knowledgeable creatures as a matter of our constitution. We can categorize, make sense of, measure, compare, contemplate, appreciate, contextualize, discern, wonder about, etc. We just can't help it.

So imagining a "state" in which we can do none of these things at all goes against our nature (while being awake, at least), hence the agony.

But there is a silver lining. While we are afraid of death, I think that if we try to apply fear, worry, anxiety, pain and all the bad things in life to the "state before" birth, none apply. Not even boredom. How bored were you before you were born? Huh?

So we miss out on the good, but we skip the bad. I think there are much worse conditions in this life than not feeling anything.

"what did your face look like before your parents were born?" — TheMadFool

Like a physical field or a particle, I'd guess. Nothing too exciting. :wink:

I fear I may have stepped on @Wayfarer's toe here. Uh-oh.

I've frequently pointed out that I see no good reason to think the "time after" life ceases will be different than the "time before" life began. I was nothing and will be nothing, same state.

So the best I can do is extrapolate to the very earliest memories I have, probably the first time I remember having a conscious perception of a building. When I try to go back and think about it, try to focus on anything before, I find that no single attribute I can make about existence applies.

I suppose that if you've ever had the experience of being black-out drunk, might be similar to the state before birth.

But for some reason, I'd like to know why, this suggestion is not thought about as frequently as I think it should...

Yes and what else would they do? They wouldn't say we stole most of this wealth. They have to justify to themselves what they do, so they make up ideologies of free markets or entrepreneurial genius.

But the system of propaganda thus developed must be even cynically appreciated in some sense. It's extremely powerful and persuasive. It's only lamentable that, aside from inequalities, they're burning the Earth. So they're winning now. In a few decades it won't matter much.

But I don't think this story is written is stone yet.

I mean it's easy to say that corporations are the one's who rule the world, essentially. And to a large extent that's true. But I think that misses the main point: corporations can do precisely because states allow them to do so.

If states did not grant companies patent rights, property rights, bailouts, international law defense mechanisms and so on, these very companies could not do what they do.

So at bottom, the state is the actor enabling this, it's also the entity that could restore order in the international arena. It all depends on what people are willing to accept from state action.

That's fine. I'm only accentuating that, strictly speaking, "now" always passes. So if we want to speak sensibly about now, we should probably consider the specious present, which includes the almost immediate future as well as the almost immediate past.

I think that makes the idea of "now", a bit more concrete. But's it's a technicality, which is not wrong, I don't think.

I remember the late great Robert Fisk quoting a US soldier, don't know his rank, who was patriotic and wrote really well.

Chris Hedges has an interesting book on the things you are talking about called War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. Yes, it is very strange - but then again group psychology is extremely complex, we are all subject to such behavior, depending on our life's circumstances.

Thanks. Good to see it available for free. :up:

Sure, I think that's the type of guidance this type of thinking aims to, not meant to be taken literally as right-in-this-moment-in-time.

But I also get the impression that because "living in the moment" can be ambiguous - it can lead one to defeat the purpose of the exercise. Sure, your interpretation is sensible, but a person entering this naively or worse, reading a self help book, will force themselves to live in the moment. But I don't think living in the moment can be forced, or at least it's not sustainable for long periods of time.

It might even be an easier way to get in, by getting lost in something. Writing, reading a novel, listening to music. Then you can extrapolate to more mundane events: being in traffic, waiting for a long time at a doctors office, etc.

"Living in the moment" comes in ebbs and flows, though practitioners of Zen might be able to do it at will, after much training.

Sounds interesting, I'll be sure to check it out.

I've yet to see that one. Yay, more doom and gloom.

Just what I need given the state of the world. :wink:

Yeah. I'm no fan of the Chinese government, but it is surrounded by countries that have the capacity to hit them with nukes. It's not surprising they are responding in kind.

But it will likely lead to escalation...

The story of Arkhipov is quite nuts:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/you-and-almost-everyone-you-know-owe-your-life-to-this-man

Yep. The Cuban Missile crises was averted by one Russian general who refused to launch a nuclear missile as his submarine was being bombed.

Now people don't worry about nuclear weapons, when, as you say, the situation in Taiwan is extremely delicate. WWII is the exception, which could have been avoided had The Treaty of Versailles not been so harsh with Germany.

War is still about money and power.

Putting births aside, incest is extremely hardwired in most cultures (all?) as being unacceptable. If it weren't for the babies part, what makes it feel repugnant?

There's the issue of abuse of minors, that's obviously horrific. So we'd have to put that aside to. So incest would be ok IF precaution is taken to avoid making a baby and IF there is no child abuse going on.

I don't have any studies or anything, but I'd suspect that sexual desire of a family member would usually begin early in life. I remember reading The Incest Diary, by a daughter who was abused by her father. It was very strange to read.

Sex began early, but I don't recall her calling it rape (or abuse, I don't recall the terminology she used) until later on, which makes sense. Many victims don't know what rape or abuse is until they're older.

I'm just having a hard time understanding incest, must be biological.

As two time recipient of the medal of honor, Smedley Butler said:

"War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses...

I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912...

I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.

During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."

:up:



Many people here are posting the same thoughts as I have better than me. Oh well.

I think that @Joshs makes a very good point. I'll put my spin to it though: of course living in the moment sounds trivial, yet it is far from it. In fact, it's literally impossible to do, for as soon as I focus on the moment, it has passed. So If I keep reminding myself to live in the moment and fail every time, because moments are passing by, I'll necessarily get stuck in a circle I should not have dug in the first place.

I don't know much about Zen, but in my experience speaking with people who do follow some version of it, I don't really find much of a difference between it and someone who has reached a certain age in which they are at peace with life, things don't bother them much, they accept the bad and the good. It's a kind of attitude of acceptance. But I don't know what Zen adds to that, as it can be used for good or ill.

it follows that (mind)ing can also conceived of as physical. — 180 Proof

It's good to hear someone uttering these words. I say this frequently and I fully believe experience exists. But it's physical. This is not a contradiction in terms.

I'm not part of a team nor do I agree with Wayfarer on everything. I just thought it was a well thought out reply. But likewise, I've got to give you credit for being so tenacious and articulate in the way you think about this topic. :up:

What do you mean by encode?

Yes. Philosophers often invent technical terms which differ substantially from ordinary language use that leads to mistakes. "Representation", "content", "event" and so on.

You're right that positivism is in many ways the opposite of OLP in so far as they used different Wittgensteins as a point of departure from which these philosophies developed.

The similarity I see is that both seek clarity of exposition in trying to deal with traditional problems, both focusing on language use as a way to proceed. I didn't mean to imply that OLP had a theory of knowledge. It's a method as you say.

Not that you say this at all, but it is a mistake to think that OLP (or language-use philosophy in general) originated in the 20th century in terms of having no precursors. Thomas Reid's work on the topic of language use is very interesting as he focuses on the way "the vulgar" (the common folk) use to talk about problems that philosophers get engrossed with. It's interesting and insightful to find aspects of OLP style thinking back then.

EDIT: To be fair, I should speak of language use philosophy as opposed to OLP as I don't adhere to it.

For me OLP is mostly a method used to try and dissolve some traditional philosophical questions. I think that this is useful in some instances. On the other hand, I'm not so confident any single major problem in philosophy has been solved by OLP.

I think that topics like "what it's like", "mind-body problem" and a few others can be, if not solved, then thought about properly using ordinary language. But these issues continue going.

And who belongs in OLP is also a bit messy. As you say, Austin, Strawson and other get grouped under this heading. At the same time, it seems to me as if some facets OLP are be closely related to logical positivism.

Carnap comes to mind as someone who tried to use ordinary language to solve "big problems". Also A.J. Ayer.

Yeah, I agree. I don't necessarily follow Rovelli, particularly with his view that there isn't a metaphysical substrate or existence absent relations. I think physical stuff exists independent of us.

But I also appreciate someone trying to make sense of QM as is, which makes for an interesting thought process when taken seriously, as opposed to Chopra-style woo.

It's also not clear to me that we actually can suspend metaphysical inclinations: even the most avowed anti-metaphysician has a metaphysics, sometimes a variety of positivism or some kind of view related with sense data.

Yeah, that could be attempted trying to figure out what are the instances in which people use words to either refer or shout or anything else people do with words.

It just seems to me that finding conditions for these things to be very complex, involving many factors that often are taken for granted. Like paying chess, we use the word "queen" to designate a piece which can move freely on a board (this doesn't include throwing the queen at your opponents face) . Of course there need not be any physical queen (in terms of the plastic piece called a "queen") there, you could do it with a stone. Or with anything else, in fact you can use the chess piece which we call a "king" as a "queen".

You don't even need a chessboard to play chess, nor another player. You need to know the rules of chess, which are different from the rules of society. And so on. It can become extremely difficult to pin down all the conditions in which it is correct to say that we are using the words pertaining to a game of chess correctly, though we plainly do so.

:clap:

Rovelli doesn't agree with the MWI, not that that means I agree with him or not. His idea is that we should let the science say what the metaphysics is, not let our metaphysics guide our science. I take him mean that people who adhere to MWI have the intuition that the world must be deterministic, but the world isn't so.

How'd you think about this?

Not mentioned yet is the even more radical alternative: the worlds that branch out are made of words. That is, at bottom, you actually see text in the wave function!

:cool:

Happens very frequently, unfortunately. Just reading Haaretz once every few weeks, some killing takes place, as if expected to happen.

Either words refer or they don't. You can use many types of examples or counterexamples in the traditional style, but the point can be made more concisely by now. I'm only saying that people refer, it's an act that people do. They can refer with words, as is often the case, or with gestures.

Just to comment, I bought Rovelli's Helgoland on a whim and I read it in a day, though it's not long to be fair.

What a wonderful book. I very much like his interpretation of QM and the way he thinks about all the complications associated with it, the book has very much a philosophical flavor. Not that I agree with him on all points, but highly recommend it for people interested in the topic: quite easy to read and understand. Simply great stuff.