A lot of folk seem to dislike Dennett's ideas - especially those with romantic, spiritual or religious inclinations. Do you think he is generally strawmanned as the dude who says consciousness is an 'illusion'?

Anyone know of an interview where he addresses this and restates his position? I recall reading one wherein he said something like consciousness is not exactly an illusion, it just isn't what we think it is.

I recall reading passages by Dennett and thinking, yes that sounds right based on my own reflections. In my experience, I've often found my own consciousness to be rather underwhelming, comprised of fleeting impressions and fragmented moments that I stitch together with narrative to seemingly make sense of it all.

A very interesting reply.

In terms of going deeper, Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue is one of the more influential works comparing the classical/medieval tradition and modern ethics. His thesis is that most modern moral discourse is not truly reasoned, but emotive and rationalized after the fact. That means that systems that appear to have rational principles are in fact voluntaristic frameworks disguised as rational. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I've generally suspected that most, if not all philosophy or theory, is rationalisation after emotion. How would one demonstrate that virtue, in the context of such venerable system building, is an exception?

Is MacIntyre's advocacy of a coherent moral framework (essentially by way of Aristotle), not just an example of that which pleases him emotionally or aesthetically? It also seems to be an appeal to tradition.

I have generally assumed that one can be a virtuous serial killer if one values excellence in a slightly different way to usual intersubjective custom. But is this difference an indication of flawed reasoning, or simply a different way of constructing values? What makes a value immutable?

Some recent archeology in Central America indicates that some of the civilizations were so successful that they depleted their resources. I think that is culture and not a result of our survival instincts. — isomorph

Is it not possible that our 'survival abilities' are a double edged sword? What makes us strong could also be what can takes us out. — Tom Storm

We seem to be in agreement.

I guess I'm trying to understand what you want the focus of this thread to be about.

In an absurd universe, nothing we do ultimately matters, but if our survival abilities are clouded, we will never be able to adapt, and that is what I think has happened. — isomorph

Is it not possible that our 'survival abilities' are a double edged sword? What makes us strong could also be what can takes us out. Are you saying that our ability to address issues like climate change and political tribalism are fraught unless we can get back to some 'more pure' state?

Rather than frame morality in terms of principles, I think it more productive to think in terms of moral deliberation. We are in the realm of opinion, not absolutes or truths handed down from a higher authority. In the absence of such authority morals are by default relative and subjective. This does not mean that distinctions between right and wrong or good and bad cannot be made, but that we must critically evaluate and defend such opinions in an attempt to determine and do what seems best, while also recognizing that about certain things we may be wrong or that there may be others who hold defensible opinions that differ from our own. — Fooloso4

Nicely put.

I'm still unclear why any of this matters.

Are you saying that you want to identify the nature of the human (beyond culture) in order to determine who we are and what commonalties we have which might be useful to solve some of the challenges we face?

what I'm really trying to explore is the human condition without the culture that seems to make us all different — isomorph

Are you positing an essentialist project? What do you mean by different?

Propositions:
1. As we progress, our idols are destroyed and replaced, e.g., Ptolemy/Copernicus.
2. Improved instrumentation allows us to verify our perceptions and correct our thinking. Aristarchus saw a heliocentric universe before Ptolemaic geocentric universe was replaced by Copernicus’ heliocentric universe.
3. History can be an idol to be destroyed as in the case of Pythagoras and his theorem, which was known in other cultures long before Pythagoras. Also the victor usually wipes out the history of the vanquished.
4. Our historical idols did not spring up by the prowess of their own genius, but stood on the shoulders of giants as Newton said.
4. We should be conservative in accepting changes, but remember the priests have always had a vested interest in maintaining status quo. — isomorph

I'm not sure that idol is a useful metaphor personally, but I understand the general sentiment. I tend to hold that what we call knowledge is contingent, a product of social practices and linguistic frameworks rather than a reflection of an objective reality.

New Zealand is heading there, the brain damage can already be seen in England, Canada, and starting in Australia. — Lionino

What's starting in Australia?

I like Rohr but I am not sure what he means there. Guess I would need to read the full text.

As it happens, Rohr often rolls his eyes and says 'that's just religion' too.

“Christians are usually sincere and well-intentioned people until you get to any real issues of ego, control power, money, pleasure, and security. Then they tend to be pretty much like everybody else. We often given a bogus version of the Gospel, some fast-food religion, without any deep transformation of the self; and the result has been the spiritual disaster of "Christian" countries that tend to be as consumer-oriented, proud, warlike, racist, class conscious, and addictive as everybody else-and often more so, I'm afraid.”

― Richard Rohr, Breathing Underwater: Spirituality and the 12 Steps

Throughout history and across cultures many many nonbelievers have sacrificed their lives in order to protect their families / communities and/or to oppose various tyrannies. "Belief" in some "afterlife" – or any fact-free, faith-based story – in order to gain a "reward" (or punishment) isn't a necessary motivator and, IMO, more often than not, is only useful for deluding weak minds into throwing away their lives "in the name of (the cause)". Ethically, as a rule, martyrdom isn't an argument (& ends don't justify means – especially those means which undermine or negate their ends). Just my 2 shekels. :victory: — 180 Proof

I like your 2 shekels. For me the afterlife is all the life that takes place after mine is over.

If you don’t like to explore different ways of thinking, what is the point of doing philosophy? — Angelo Cannata

Well, I'm not sure about 'doing' philosophy. I don't do it. I read a little about it. But my interest is superficial.

People seem to take an interest in philosophy for a range of reasons. Often simply to find more sophisticated post hoc justifications for what they already belief. I also think a lot of people are attracted to philosophy to undertake a bit of a survey of what other (seemingly) crazy ideas there are available.

I have always thought that human knowledge was simply the best inferences we can make given our limitations and the perspectives available to us. We can apply some of our knowledge with prodigious results. But we seem unable to avoid wars, famines, environmental catastrophe and hideous internecine religious and political conflicts. We have just enough knowledge, it seems, to take us to the precipice.

Well, Christianity is known as a pretty big tent.

Kastrup's analytical idealism suggests that the ground of existence is experiential, rather than material, and that the universe is ultimately a single, universal mind. As discussed previously, there are convergences between that and schools of ancient Greek (nous in neoplatonism) and the Brahman of Vedanta (not to mention more recent schools of idealist philosophy). The model of the self as a "dissociated alter" originates from this. In this understanding, individuals are like "alters" (a term borrowed from dissociative identity disorder in psychology) of this larger consciousness. — Wayfarer

Nice summary of Kastrup.

The key point is that popular religion cannot traffic in high-falluting ideas of cosmic consciousness and the unitive vision. 'Believe and be saved' is much nearer the mark. — Wayfarer

This is a good point and wherever anyone says this I think, yep that's true. Unfortunately in reducing spirituality to such a simplistic or 'dumbed down' terms (the Magical Mr God) I wonder how useful/meaningful it is. It seems awfully easy to turn this into a tool of oppression and Calvinist-style retribution.

I'm while I'm coming around to the understanding that those who really do practice charity, empathy, self-control and agapē really may be 'saved' — Wayfarer

Which would include most secularists, I'd imagine. David Bentley Hart makes the point that universalism was central to the early Christian tradition. We are all 'saved', regardless.

I'm not sure what 'saved' means however, once you articulate this in more sophisticated spiritual terms. Liberated? Moksha? Any thoughts? Saved seems so binary and one suspects a more nuanced vocabulary is required.

Is it not the case that Camus and Nietzsche, start with nihilism, more or less as foundational - there is no inherent meaning, value or purpose - and then devise a response to this, which is essentially subjective or personal? Maybe I'm the only one who thinks this, but no matter what one does to rehabilitate the implications of nihilism, it remains in some way a nihilist project.

Can you say some more about how Deleuze, Derrida and Heidegger put consciousness into question alongside subjectivity and objectivity? Does this come out of their critique of the binary/emphasis of pluralities?

I think I'd make a pretty hard distinction between existentialism and nihilism.

Existentialism is the philosophical response to the necessity of nihilism: given how we've lived meaningful lives before, and given how things have progressed this world feels absurd: the absurd is always an encounter. And absurdism is different from existentialism in that absurdism is a little more specific -- Sartre was no absurdist, so far as I can tell.

Nihilism is something like solipsism, but in the ethical realm -- it's an extreme point that people diverge from in various ways, and few (if any) actually adopt it philosophically (though they may in practice). — Moliere

This is interesting. Existentialism comes in various forms, including Christian existentialism. But isn't existentialism of the secular variety built upon similar notions as nihilism? The absence of meaning. Nihilism holds that life, existence and reality itself are devoid of inherent meaning, purpose, or value. It rejects the notion of any objective significance or ultimate truth. Existentialism tends to identify same lack of meaning and then moves in to fill the void.

I would often consider myself to be a nihilist. But I don't tend to see this approach as one of destructive apathy, or assertive repudiation, rather a more cheerful springboard to make decisions about what choices you will make and what you will do. I would not consider myself to be an existentialist.

Camus is no moral nihilist, and is a deeply ethical thinker. — Moliere

I'm not arguing that Camus isn't an ethical thinker.

This all depends what you understand a nihilist to be. I don't think all versions of nihilism preclude morality. It rejects inherent meaning and morality.

Hence what I wrote:

Camus rejected the idea of inherent moral values or an objective meaning to life, but he didn't deny the possibility of creating subjective meaning and ethical principles. — Tom Storm

Non-dualism represents the absence of a distinction that seperates reality into subject-object, appearance-thing in itself, becoming-being, nothingness-somethingness, necessity-contingency etc. In short, binary distinctions created by our langauges and thoughts dissappear. — Sirius

Do they 'disappear' or is it the hope if we frame things this way?

I suspect we could do an entire thread just on this paragraph.

My understanding of the Vedanta is that there is no distinction between the individual self (atman) and the absolute reality (brahman). In Western terms I guess this is idealism. Everything is consciousness and we are all aspects/expressions of a 'great mind' - for want of a better term.

My somewhat crude question is, why should we care? Is this frame really just for people who enjoy 'wanking about oneness' or does it have a tangible use in daily living?

Interesting. Would you mind saying a little more about A? D resonates with me but I am not well read on this subject.

Does A equate with Metzinger's 'self-model theory of subjectivity'?

Interesting. I understood that Camus rejected the idea of inherent moral values or an objective meaning to life, but he didn't deny the possibility of creating subjective meaning and ethical principles. Isn't Camus project crudely one of accepting that life is inherently meaningless and irrational and despite this 'absurdity', individuals can gain a sense of meaning and value through acts of defiance and rebellion against the absurd. Morality might even be one such act.

Barry Humphries' two memoirs - More Please and My Life As Me.

The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth (RIP) — Jamal

How did you get on with it? It's an extraordinary book, I thought, but hard going in all its self-reflexive cleverness. It's like someone on the spectrum, with a gift for wordplay, has just let rip.

Curiously when I read TC Boyles' Water Music (the only one of his I like... really like) I was reminded of Barth. This is a ball tearer of a book (as they used to say in Aussie journalism).

I generally see the OP as an opportunity to make things interesting. I’m particularly interested in the ineffable at the moment.

Would you draw a connection between the notion of these 'unanalyzable concepts' and ineffable truths relating to states of higher consciousness?

Re-reading that, I am unsure it makes entire sense, or adequately captures what I'm thinking. Cest la v'ie lol. — AmadeusD

It makes sense and I have no great answer given that my view is that language begins as sounds we use to try to 'give voice' to the prelinguistic and to codify feelings. Once we get any deeper than this we are in a land of baroque Derridean self-reflexivity. I think.

All words are reductive, but concepts don't need to be. I think Bob is trying to ascertain the word-resistant concepts we all accept prior to language.
Comfort and discomfort probably fit here. — AmadeusD

Yes, I was thinking along these lines. I'm not certain these pre-linguistic concepts are 'word resistant' as such - are they not in a sense foundational for later vocabulary?

But I would go further and suggest that "absolute certainty" is a nonsense formed by concatenating two otherwise innocent words. — Banno

Yes, I hinted at this myself earlier.

I don't count "elevated experience and understanding' as being demonstrably more than a feeling. In other words I don't think we can know what the implications of such experiences might be. The guru thing might be helpful for some people, personally I dislike the smell of it. — Janus

Got ya. Fair point.

I see the psychologist Jon Haidt's notion of elevation as having a lot of support, and fitting well with my experience: — wonderer1

Interesting. New one for me but I guess I've felt this intuitively.

The advice is not to talk about such things, but to enact them - whereof one cannot speak, thereof one can do. — Banno

Ha! Yes. Apart from this place, I spend almost no time talking or reading about such matters and am almost entirely a creature of doing.

Perhaps the problem is not, not being able to find "absolute certainty", but the framing of these issues in terms of "absolute certainty". Garbage in, garbage out. — Banno

Could be. Certainty seems to be a kind of pragmatic continuum. I am certain Bob Hawke was a Labor Prime Minister in the 1980's. I am not certain if he was a good prime minister. That kind of thing. But as soon as we get to questions of gods or metaphysical extravagances such as 'enlightenment' or mystical experiences, certainty seems absent.

I believe that it is an altered state of consciousness that seems generally to carries with it a sense of elevated experience and understanding — Janus

That's intriguing. Especially the 'elevated experince and understanding' part of it. What would be an example of this? Are you thinking enlightenment... gurus and such?

I'm saying that someone who would aspire to be an alcoholic would be being a fool (and thus shouldn't want it). But wouldn't be doing anything immoral by being an alcoholic. — fdrake

Got ya.

But the trouble: ethics so elevated now has the status of being written in stone on a mountain top. It is, in its essence, non contingent, absolute, indefeasible. — Astrophel

Yes, I see the problem. Transcendent ethics almost seem to be an ethics of the gaps to me.

For me 'absolute knowledge' refers to knowledge which is true independent of any and all contexts. I don't believe such knowledge is possible, so I am not confusing ordinary knowledge, which is knowledge relative to contexts, with that.

If you cannot be certain what the probability of something being true is, then you would be operating with a mere belief to support your conclusion that your original belief was justified. An infinite regress ensues.

Absolute certainty is possible within contexts. I can be absolutely certain of what I am doing and experiencing right now. If I look outside and I see that it is raining, I can be absolutely certain that it is raining, or if I see a caterpillar climbing a tree, I can be absolutely certain that there is a caterpillar climbing that tree while I am seeing it. But all of such certainty is within the context of the collective representation we call "the world", it has no application beyond that. — Janus

I've also generally held that there is no absolute certainty. And no realm where certainty or truth lives (in the Platonic sense). But I sometimes wonder what is served by adding the word 'absolute'. Isn't certainty finally just a human word, an artifact of language use and convention which can mean various things depending on context?

There are things we can call true because to deny them would result in catastrophe - eating arsenic, jumping from a plane without a parachute, etc. Which unfortunately for my antifoundationalist tendencies suggests that truth (certainly in some instances) is not merely a product of human construction but is grounded in an objective reality that exists independently of our beliefs and perceptions.

On the positive side, having a definition of knowledge or truth is of almost no use in my day-to-day life, so there is that. All I need to know about truth exists in convention, usage or domains of intersubjective agreement.

Cool. I was just wondering which behaviors associated with 'alcoholism' you were referring to. It is possible to use alcohol habitually and at harmful levels but for there to be virtually no impact on your life or that of your family. A lot depends on your level of wealth and how you behave when intoxicated.

A person who wants to be an alcoholic behaves in a manner that intentionally sustains and potentiates their dependence on alcohol. — fdrake

I'm not sure what your intention is in saying a person 'who wants to be an alcoholic'. Do you mean this literally, or do you take it as the implication of their behavior? Many problem drinkers don't want to be this way and others don't even know they are problem drinkers. But I get your boarder point.

Yes. Alcoholism. — fdrake

That's an interesting one. What do you mean by alcoholism? Alcohol use disorder includes a broad range of behaviours.

Wise and witty. Thanks.

It's not really a case of anything. Intuitively, like 90% of people, I feel as if there are non-physical properties to my experience (and the world). I have never seen an adequate explanation of how many things are physical. I have no reason to commit to either, but I have plenty of reason to lean against physicalism, as it is. Its mild. Possibly insignificant. — AmadeusD

Ok. That's reasonable.

Who saysit is open ended? It might seem that way to you now, but who knows?
— Tom Storm

referred to two different ideas,
— Tom Storm

Oh, no you don't. Hehe. — AmadeusD

Oops, you're right. I misread my own comments. Apologies. But can't I say that something might seem open ended now but who knows, in time it might not be?

For sure. But my pressure, such as it was, was trying to get you to commit to this as it would require you to basically claim ignorance on everything. — AmadeusD

I do claim ignorance of many subjects - origin of the universe, idealism, gods, consciousness - 'I don't know' seems reasonable to me. Pretty sure no one on this site knows either.

But this;

Who says it is open ended?
— Tom Storm

but who knows?
— Tom Storm

Oh my guy, come on now. — AmadeusD

-referred to two different ideas, so shoving them together seems unfair.

Back to my question, however.

Is your position not a case of a fallacy from ignorance? It may not be, but it seems so. Are you not essentially saying, 'I can't explain consciousness via physicalism, so it must be non-physical.'? Are you a dualist?

non-physical (apart from concepts).
— Tom Storm

Seems like a plain contradiction to me ;) — AmadeusD

Fair enough.

It is said to be the etymological origin of the word 'sin'
— Wayfarer

Ah! Interesting, thanks for that Wayfarer. It is a pleasure to learn something new. :smile: — javi2541997

What Wayfarer also points to is that Christianity (like most faiths) can be made to argue anything at all - it's in the interpretation you choose which may have nothing to do with what the religion may in fact stand for or have originally intended. Many people torture themselves here on earth out of fear of the judgements of god and a self-created violation of holy order.

You're essentially asserting a no true scotsman here — AmadeusD

How so? I'm saying it could be more 'a woo of the gaps' situation, or a fallacy from ignorance, perhaps?

While this is obviously nominally true, It cannot be the case that an open-ended "well something is likely prove it wrong, sometime, somewhere, for some reason" is a valid argument, or defeater. It is self-effacing speculation. — AmadeusD

Who says it is open ended? It might seem that way to you now, but who knows? Actually I am open to the postion of mysterianism which argues we may never know. Open ended ignorance also seems possible.

Or can we - demonstrate - that certain things are almost certain, despite further discovery clearly being able to debunk that position? — AmadeusD

Well, it is the case that science provides reliable but tentative models which are regularly the subject of revision, so there's a sense in which we never arrive at absolute truth.

Otherwise, I don't think anyone saying they have a clue is being honest with themselves so i largely refrain from even speculating. — AmadeusD

I'd can't say either way, although I am skeptical that there is such a phenomenon as the non-physical (apart from concepts). 'Seems' like it isn't enough for me.

They are non-physical properties of experience, even if there is a correlated brain-state. This does not demonstrate that the experience is physical. — AmadeusD

But are you satisfied that it demonstrates the experience is non-physical? How would we demonstrate that conscious experience reflects a non-physical reality? Isn't it an inference based on a lack of data or knowledge?

That is, unless you take the entirety of phenomenal experience as an evolutionarily-required post-hoc sense-making program — AmadeusD

Perhaps that is the case. I have no idea, I'm not an expert on the nature of consciousness.

Anyway - all that aside - what is your explanation of consciousness? Are you a dualist, or more of an embodied cognition guy?