So do you think I am contradictong myself when I say that the world exists objectively (mind-independently / when no one is looking) yet we cannot have knowledge of its intrinsic nature? — Apustimelogist

I'm not sure. Then again, we can't really disprove hard solipsism either. The real quesion is what does it matter either way?

That the world exists in an objective way just means it exists when nobody is looking. — Apustimelogist

Isn't this a bit loose? What exactly does an 'objective way' entail? Even Hoffman and most idealists would say there is an objective world. Isn't the key issue what is the nature of the world we have access to and think we know?

It's easy to declare a passionate adherence to something that makes very few demands. — Vera Mont

I suspect our nations would make many demands upon us if only we listened.

Love is one of those words, isn't it? I can 'love' Siamese cats, pizza and (god forbid) the novels of Dan Brown. But what does this really say? It expresses a preference, a fondness for these things?

In Australia we often regarded strident American patriotism as amusing - the hand on heart stuff is something alien to the Australian sensibility of my youth. But since the late 1990's, we've begun to resemble the US in as much as we borrow their identity politics and right wing tropes. Perhaps it's because we share a Rupert Murdoch? How is the UK faring?

I assume at the heart of most countries with similar forms of government they can't be too terribly different? — TiredThinker

Countries can very different- customs, values, geography, religions - there's no end to the potential diversity. A lot depends, I suspect, upon how much we are capable of noticing and participating in that difference.

I am fond of my country of the United States, but I can't say I love it. — TiredThinker

To love one's country is just a romantic, idiomatic expression for patriotism. Since many people seem incapable of loving other people, one wonders how they fair with the nation state.

Meanwhile, with each news report of the daily death toll from unrelenting bombardment, I feel a slightly greater desensitization and resignation. — FrankGSterleJr

Isn't it conventional wisdom that this is the case and that culture has increasingly desensitised us to the suffering of others? And not just via armed conflict, but also the war on poverty in our own cities wrought by neoliberal economic policies which hollow out community life and redefine citizenship in terms of the market and how well you are doing economically.

But what of it? What does it mean and what are the proposed solutions?

There are plenty of first world casualties being overlooked right here where we live, thanks to multifarious barbarisms on Main Street.

My first reaction on seeing the term motonormativity was probably to roll my eyes, since it's a fashion-conscious coinage in line with heteronormativity and neuronormativity. But on second thoughts, I think it's good. Sometimes you need to put a name on something to make it real, or rather, to allow people to think about it clearly in familar contemporary terms. — Jamal

Thanks. I've often thought this was the case, didn't know there was even a word for it. When all you have is a car, everything looks like a road...

I have never liked cars or driving. Owned many cars over decades, but never much enjoyed them. So I finally spat the dummy and bought a loft in the middle of the city and got rid of the car. There's nothing I can't get to within 10-15 minutes of walking, or 30 minutes of (excellent) public transport. Good thing is, while we may be a city of 5 million, there's not much crime, so I can walk around safely.

And my city has just banned motorized scooters, so that pleases me too.

Hoffman's interface theory is ultimately guilty of the same old Cartesian/representationalist error that haunts a good deal of contemporary philosophy. Saying "we don't know the world, we just know our experiences of it," is a bit like claiming no one can drive a car because "they can only push pedals and turn a steering wheel," or that writing is impossible because "we can only move muscles in our fingers." What is "being" supposed to mean if it's not what is thought, experienced, known or talked about? — Count Timothy von Icarus

That made me laugh. I appreciate the analogies.

I think both sides of the discussion think their position is self-evident and dismiss the other argument. — T Clark

Philosophy in a nutshell. :wink:

If it has been collectively decided to aim for happiness on an collective level, then what meaning could individual happiness mean to anyone? — Shawn

Regardless of the plans of a ruling class, regardless of any strictures imposed by authoritarian governments, people always find work arounds and recontextualize happiness in the spaces they can find. Ditto capitalism and its own multifarious deficits.

Your response here is one of the more arresting things I have read here for a while.

But the ‘I’ , and with it the world it makes sense of, changes its meaning completely , but subtly, every moment. You are not the same you from moment to moment , so blaming whoever came before ‘you’ makes about as much sense as blaming the you of yesterday for your current woes. You have a chance to start over again with each tick of the clock, because it s a subtly different you and a subtly different world — Joshs

And yet people feel they can't start again because they are on a loop. Habits seem to become compulsion. How do we work with this? (Perhaps the last quote from you below is what you are suggesting?)

I happen to think that the concept of non-being is a metaphysical chimera, a notion of death as pure nothingness that we invented and used as either a source of threat or comfort. But it is a human-invented illusion which only exists when we summon it as a thought. And when we summon it, it is fraught with suffering because built into the concept is a reminder that we currently fail to achieve what it promises. Imagine killing yourself , only to pick up right where you left off, with all your sufferings, questions, imperfects, but without the memory of your past history — Joshs

I am assuming this holds if you believe that we are on some kind of eternal cycle. And/or that death is not the end. But if there is a loop we pick up again, doesn't this suggest being is ongoing and consistent in some way? A ceaseless cycle of boredom and suffering. Are you hinting at a Nietzschean solution to recurrence?

Transcendence of suffering is an active, dynamic achievement that must be continually repeated. It’s about discovering the unities, patterns, relations in the flow. — Joshs

That's an exciting notion. Can you say more about this but locate your answer around a tentative example or two?

Sorry. Yes, I think what you outline holds water pretty well.

b) Communities of catharsis. It would be easier to vent, complain, as a community. Instead of pretending that the next mountain hike, or the puttering in the garden, or House of God Worship session, or Netflix show is the answer, we understand what is going on here with each dissatisfied response and inherent lack.

I find this particularly interesting. How this might work.

I've often thought that a key reason people contrive families is to be distracted by an interactive domestic soap opera.

If you could wave a wand an never be born, would you wave that wand?

We disagree on this.

That is to say, God is STILL suspiciously all too human. He wants suffering so that "holiness" (himself basically in material form) can be revealed to his own creation. It reads too much like a game designer that wants to see his cool creation play out. It is especially odd when adding in elements like "reward and punishment" for these players.. wiping people out, condemning them, exiling them, cursing them, rebuking them.. etc. etc. This seems again all too human...To WANT punishment and reward, let alone meeting it out as divine dispensation. YOU get the World to Come, YOU get the World to Come, not YOU though.. The little creations ENDURE the negatives, because I'm curious to see how you overcome them... All too human. Obstacle course for the piddling creations. A game. Is it divine boredom then? Does BOREDOM, yet again rear its ugly head? — schopenhauer1

Fair enough. A comprehensive series of accounts. Boredom seems as good a reason as any. Perhaps a desire to share boredom and to see what ridiculous things creatures will do to distract themselves.

Then of course there is the idea that our flawed universe is the product of a Demiurge. The Gnostic accounts suggests a creature of some malignancy.

I have never read an account of god which makes much sense to me or one which resonates. Which is why I think belief in god is a bit like a preference or predisposition, not unlike sexual attraction. You can't help what ideas you are attracted to. The reasoning and justifications come later. For me the god hypothesis doesn't offer anything useful when it comes to sense making.

As an aside, god has no explanatory power - we don't actually know why or how creation was made or to what extent god has any control over creation or, in fact, how many gods there might be. We don't know if god is good or to what extent they care. The events on earth suggest a negligible commitment to the welfare and happiness of creatures.

Is god good? Is god love as many believe? The idea that god is good seems to come from the fan fiction and just because an old book says a thing, doesn't mean would believe it.

If God's morals differ from ours, we are necessarily wrong.
— AmadeusD
Why? — Banno

Yes, I've often wondered why too. I guess if your definition of god holds that god is necessarily the foundational source of all that is good then there's the answer. But when you read some religious works like The Koran or The Bible, God is more of a bellicose, vain Trump-like figure, an incompetent mafia boss who seems to think genocide is a solution to problems he created.

:up: Nice.

What did Milan Kundera say? You create a utopia and pretty soon you’ll need to build a small concentration camp.

Part of the problem with utopian visions is that people differ in what they believe should be in scope. One man’s utopia is another man’s stifling authoritarian state.

I suppose its a sign that Fairness & Justice are touchy topics for philosophically and religiously inclined posters. — Gnomon

Fairness and justice are, after all, the values which animate most people's political and social thinking. Even the most unphilosophical and irreligious person is bound to have strong views on these ideas, perhaps because they are the building blocks of most discussions today, from trans rights to MAGA, golden-era romanticism.

I for one have had a few bosses that are incapable of doing the job they have me do. — TiredThinker

I don't see any problem with this. Management and leadership are often very different skills to those held by the worker.

Same with politicians running on morals despite their own indiscretions.

Same with employers setting high productivity standards even though they themselves can't realistically do it. — TiredThinker

The fist example is hypocrisy which is a different subject.

The second example may not necessarily be a bad thing. In pervious years, I have often done work my boss isn't able to do and I have done it faster and better than he or she can. That's how it works if you have hired for a set of skills.

The other point I would definitely include is ‘some reference to the canonical texts of the philosophical tradition’. This thread, for instance, contains none. — Wayfarer

Yes, the tradition is important. The hard part is determining which parts to privilege and study. Just getting up to speed would take more than a lifetime and be utterly beyond the capacity of most people. And there's always the nagging feeling that there may well have been one or two thinkers along the way who might have allowed us to dispense with some of what came before them.

(Which is not to say I don't believe there is a 'crisis in philosophy' - I have on my desk Edmund Husserl's The Crisis of the European Sciences, published after his death, and composed mainly in the 1920's and 30's. — Wayfarer

I suspect there has been a crisis in philosophy since day one...

My definition begins with the word itself: philo (love) sophia (wisdom), philo-sophia, 'love~wisdom'. What that means, how to realise it. — Wayfarer

It's hard to avoid this definition, isn't it? One issue, of course, is that the notion of what counts as wisdom is a bit nebulous. I sometimes think philosophy is at war with wisdom, inasmuch as it tends to deconstruct this 'sacred' knowledge we have derived through experience, reflection and judgement.

Another problem is how do we recognise what is wise if we ourselves are not? We tend to gravitate to the philosophical ideas that match our personality and inclinations. I wonder if this mostly takes us in the wrong direction and I wonder too if true wisdom for most of us might involve staying away from philosophy.

For me, the essence of philosophy seems to lie in exploring what can be considered true about the nature of reality; even examining whether the concept of 'reality' is actually a useful term.

:up:

Just a quick question - concepts like 'fair' and 'just' are human notions grounded in our values. Do you hold that these categories are not intrinsic to nature but are instead relevant only to our interactions with it? Essentially, fairness and justice are about how we engage with the world, not about the world’s inherent nature.

Yes, this is a common approach in American Christianity. Everything is good because God is good. The end. Interestingly, a recent conversation with a Muslim highlighted a similar perspective. According to them, the world is inherently good and just, and any negatives —like cancer, earthquakes, or famine—are just misinterpretations by humans, not reflections on the goodness of Allah and His creation. This approach is quite effective; dismissing contrary evidence allows the belief to remain intact, much like carefully putting away Grannie's fragile china, which won't get broken if it doesn't interact with the world.

You raise interesting points. For me humans use or exploit any number of fictions and stories to set their values and give direction their choices. Whether it be religion or the Boy Scouts, it seems to me that the flaws inherent in human beings will also be reflected in anything they chose to value.

Some of the most hedonistic and violent criminals I have worked with were devoutly religious - Muslim and Christian. No value system, no matter how drenched in piety or virtue will necessarily support the common good or bring out the best in folks.

Everyone seems to want to distract themselves from the fact that life is hard and punctuated by suffering. Amongst all this pain, social cohesion and mutual support is only possible if large swathes of society share the same values. In this era of pluralism and tribalism, stability is increasingly tenuous as the era of big, shared stories (fictions) which used to bond us are going, going, gone.

Do you see a version of pessimism which can assist us in supporting human beings to promote a more positive culture?

Yes, I know about Plantinga's argument, but it would work against Hoffman's position, not for it, — SophistiCat

I thought that was the point. Maybe I missed something. The idea in the OP that Hoffman’s work is self-refuting.

think what Hoffman is really challenging is ‘cognitive realism’, the instinctive belief that our sensory perception reveals the world as it really is. — Wayfarer

Yes, I think that’s fair.

Alvin Plantinga's rather fun argument called the evolutionary argument against naturalism (EAAN). If it comes up with apologists a lot these days. Here's a basic overview:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_argument_against_naturalism#:~:text=Religion%2C%20and%20Naturalism.-,Plantinga%27s%201993%20formulation%20of%20the%20argument,faculties%20is%20low%20or%20inscrutable.

The OP raised this in relation to Hoffman's theory too.

:rofl: Words to live by.

Rome was fantastic and so was True Detective. Yet to see Westworld. Will try to do so.

from the same crack'd bottle ... like all them other hoopleheads down on their fuckin' luck, laughin' and pissin' it all away in that limey cocksucker Swearingen's saloon. :smirk: — 180 Proof

Fuck yeah!

Dan dismantle the titty corner and set up a poker table.

- Al Swearingen

(Depressing fact: the biggest audience I’ve ever had for a piece of writing was on productreviews.com about a domestic appliance.) — Wayfarer

I laughed a lot when I read this. I hear you.

Who can account for personal taste? I love Deadwood (it's very funny too) but I find Shakespeare and the Greeks tedious, and have not enjoyed most of the other 'big' TV series like Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Succession, etc. Well written and performed, but I just don't care about the stories or the characters.

Use your eyes and your ears when crossing the road, and don't step in front of a bus! — unenlightened

Donald Hoffman and I intend to do just that. :wink:

The true nature of reality is that it is naturally real, and what one can say about it can sometimes be really true, and the result of saying really true things about the nature of reality is that it is truth-telling. — unenlightened

Do you understand the true natural of reality and all that is naturally real? Let's hear about it...

Ring-a-ding-ding,

I've concluded that I will not be making a heroic effort to see it. Whatever its literary and dramatic merits - and I gather they are prodigious - it's not my idea of entertainment.

Yes, I know that preferring entertainment over heavy philosophical content is frivolous, but I'm okay with that. — Vera Mont

I think Deadwood works well as entertainment and at a deeper level. But it is violent and pessimistic. In that way, it is not much different to other long form, scrupulously written, television shows. The performances and the script are astonishing.

IMO, much modern philosophy ends up in a sort of Kantian dualism because it's unwilling to challenge dogmatic assumptions stemming for Lockean objectivity and the primacy of "primary properties," reductionism, and the division of the word into subject and object, phenomenal/noumenal. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, that seems to be right. Do you see a way out of this?

The consequences of being run over by a bus on Main Street if we are not looking while we cross remains an ontological danger. It just isn't what we think it is.
— Tom Storm

So what do we think it is, that it isn't? — unenlightened

Well it is a bus, as far as basic human experience is concerned. But is the common sense answer the right one, or the only one?

Given the metaphysics of idealism, the true nature of our reality isn't readily described. Just as the nature of god is said to be ineffable. Wayfarer has certainly gone into this in many threads. He quotes some clues provided by Hoffman himself.

But what does 'not taking it literally' mean? That the train is not really' 'a train'?

He answers:

Q: If snakes aren’t snakes and trains aren’t trains, what are they?

A: Snakes and trains, like the particles of physics, have no objective, observer-independent features. The snake I see is a description created by my sensory system to inform me of the fitness consequences of my actions. Evolution shapes acceptable solutions, not optimal ones. A snake is an acceptable solution to the problem of telling me how to act in a situation. My snakes and trains are my mental representations; your snakes and trains are your mental representations. — Wayfarer

I am not convinced by this model but I do think I would need to do some deeper study before rejecting or accepting it. Could it be that our reality is fundamentally rooted in consciousness alone, with the physical world manifesting as a perceptual construct designed to help us comprehend our existence? Who knows? The big question remains - how does it change anything in my day-to-day life?

'fitness beats truth'. It is that natural selection favors organisms that perceive the world in a way that enhances their survival and reproduction, rather than in a way that accurately depicts objective reality. — Wayfarer

This is an interesting point. A pragmatist might argue that this amounts to a definition of truth anyway- that which is useful for certain purposes (Rorty).

I guess the meaningful quesion that emerges from this position is what the nature of truth might be. The notion of truth like our 'desktop reality' may just be a useful heuristic rather than anything linked to an objective reality or even, dare I say, it a transcendent realm. Thoughts?

I can't recall, does Hoffman hold a 'consciousnesses only' ontology. Looks like it from the above.

I think Lorenz would say it is an image of reality, not a simulation and I think, or at least I think Lorenz thought, that's an important difference — T Clark

I seem to recall that Hoffman uses the terms icon and image too. I may have been unwise to write 'simulation' - Hoffman is not a simulation theory guy as far as I recall.

The problem with all of this material is we seek undertaking in a few paragraphs, when deep study is probably required.

I have a metaphysical prejudice against the idea of objective reality, so I have some sympathy for Hoffman's perspective. — T Clark

I hear you.

I think the problem being outlined is that you cannot take for granted those premises if your theory is demolishing access to anything which could confirm it. I see the issue.. — AmadeusD

Yes, I think many have accused Hoffman of a self-refuting contradiction. As I say he addresses this, but I don't recall exactly what he says.

Hoffman is not a philosopher and doesn't seem to like philosophers. What he doesn't understand: you can't have a first premise (reality exists) and then from this premise prove that the premise is wrong. That's not a valid argument. How can he even ever say again "evolution is true" if all the research into it is based on illusions. His is a self-defeating thesis. — Gregory

Hoffman often addresses this criticism directly in interviews I have seen. He says something like his theory can be measured by its practical utility and explanatory power and not by its correspondence to objective reality. You'd need to look it up.

I guess Hoffman is a kind of epistemological idealist. The real question is how useful is such a theory - it's a bit Kantian - we only see phenomena (the human dashboard or 'interface theory of perception' versus the noumena (the world we don't and can't see).

If accurate, how does this model assist us in dealing with the world? Any ideas? Or is it all just a kind of conceptual metaphysical toy for a certain kind of academic to play with? I guess ultimately Hoffman and his friend Kastrup (and fellow Essentia Foundation member) are saying similar things. Reality is an illusion and consciousness is fundamental.

My eyesight is poor, but I can see truly enough to truly cross a real road without getting extinctified by the truly really real predatory traffic. — unenlightened

Hoffman often likes to say the same kind of thing. The consequences of being run over by a bus on Main Street if we are not looking while we cross remains an ontological danger. It just isn't what we think it is. Evolution has programmed us with a 'dashboard' of sense experiences, a kind of a simulation of reality - this realm still holds risks and threats and rewards and experiences, it's just that we do not see them for what they really are.

Lorenz, on the other hand, explicitly stated that our understanding of the evolution of mind in humans and animals demonstrates that there is an objective reality. — T Clark

I may be wrong but as I understand Hoffman he also acknowledges an objective reality. But he contends that the reality we experience is not that objective reality. According to him, evolution programs us to survive by using practical shortcuts. The reality we perceive with our senses is one of those shortcuts, a vastly simplified version (perception as heuristics) with many gaps.