Agree - I left it at demonstrated because who knows what this would look like?

You'd think the answer would be "Nothing," but we feel it makes a huge difference. — J

I think it matters more to those folk who fester quietly over the 'really real'. I'm not one of those, so there is no feeling I get from this. I guess idealism is the other companion to this idea. We live in a world of mentation and the physical is simply how consciousness appears when viewed from a certain perspective. (Kastrup)

Yes, this analogy is made very clear in David Chalmers' book about all this, Reality +. What is the difference between a creation and a simulation? — J

Cool. I haven't heard anyone else making this point and it's such an obvious one, so there you go.

You can imagine a sci-fi version of the Old Testament where God becomes the Great Cosmic Scientist... It would certainly align with contemporary thinking better than clumps of clay and 'let there be light...'

Similarly, if it could be shown for certain that we live in a (non-divinely-created) simulation, I'm positive I wouldn't react with indifference. — J

Yes, if it were demonstrated, I’m not sure how much it would change my view, though perhaps it would. I tend to think I’d simply adapt my current practice, which isn’t really attached to any particular metaphysics.

No, I don't think so. As I see it, philosophy usually reflects rather than leads. It's generally a couple of steps behind. — T Clark

That’s an interesting subject and could be a thread in itself: does philosophy lead or follow? I suspect it leads though it probably depends on the examples we focus on. @Joshs often argues that philosophy innovates and sets the direction, and it can take a hundred years for society to catch up to the ideas. That’s why postmodern ideas, while not yet fully assimilated and still resisted, seem to be gradually becoming more influential. Meanwhile, it's sometimes said that many people are still operating within the framework of 17th-century materialism. In the 19th century slavery was abolished based largely on ideas about rights and human dignity developed in the 17th century (Locke).

The digestion of these French ideas by the general public has been slow, to say the least, with liberals and conservatives alike in hysterics over the ‘wokist’ and ‘postmodernist scourge’ they beleive is to blame for everything rotten in society. — Joshs

Indeed. And all around us now people are trying to get nostalgia projects up and running as the antidote to some 'meaning crisis', and even the Thomists are having a small revival.

I have no idea if machines can replace humans, or what that even means. Replace in what way?

But setting AI or simulation theory aside, the original post could be pointing toward a range of philosophical questions that have been asked for centuries; like Descartes’ infamous idea of a fake reality created by an evil demon. Later, this was updated into the “brain in a vat” scenario imagined by modern philosophers, or even the kind of simulated world depicted in your aforementioned film.

In essence, you're asking whether our senses are reliable; a question as old as philosophy. The answer? Does it make much difference? I've never had a day in my life where my senses were unreliable, and if they are in a foundational sense, that we're living in a simulation, what difference does it make? What actually changes?

You could even argue, from a Christian perspective, that God’s creation resembles a kind of simulation, a world designed, fabricated and set in motion to run the program of human existence and see what unfolds.

If philosophy cannot end the diversity of viewpoints, what exactly is the purpose and utility in studying philosophy? — Pieter R van Wyk

Why would philosophy eliminate the diversity of viewpoints? Do you believe there’s only one way of thinking and that philosophy should get us all there?

"The only results I see from philosophy are a world in which we are: unable to have peace, unable to eradicate poverty and hunger, and a world in which a well-balanced coexistence with our environment and among ourselves is but a pipedream!" (from How I Understand Things. The Logic of Existence). Why is this? — Pieter R van Wyk

I'm not sure what philosophy has to do with world peace or orderly behaviour. Can you explain the connection?

Humans hold beliefs, and some of these beliefs fall under the domain of philosophy. It's a vast and complex subject, marked by frequent disagreement and often involving abstract or obscure approaches. Philosophers are just as likely to argue with rancour as any other group, especially when they hold different presuppositions. A subject like solving hunger or caring for the environment is just as likely to dissolve into conflict as any other issue. Why? Because there are always conflicting and contradictory values and beliefs attached to any proposed model. Philosophy won't end the diversity of viewpoints.

Hi T, the scientific claim about our moral sense is that the reason it exists is because it motivates cooperation strategies. Without punishment, free riders would destroy cooperation by exploiting others' efforts to “care for, look after, and protect” them. By “exploit,” I mean accepting help and not reciprocating. Punishment of exploiters is a necessary part of cooperation strategies. — Mark S

A Hobbesian position. You're arguing that there is 1) morality and 2) it's implementation, which are made up of two separate domains - cooperation and coercion. Sure, you can argue that coercion is needed to ensure compliance by certain society members. But this is an entirely separate project from what constitutes morality. Whether punishment is necessary for morality to function effectively is a separate philosophical claim, isn't it? Morality can stand alone and whether people follow it or not is separate matter to identifying what morality is.

In the West, I would argue that what we have is a code of conduct derived from moral positions. These might also be described as community standards and they are enforced by penalties, fines and prison time (unless you can bypass these through discreet use of lawyers, usually based upon your personal wealth). It's the poor who tend to disproportionately cop the penalties.

As such, I think we need to pose the usual objection: If morality equates, in some sense, to "what is beneficial for the species" -- its "universal function" -- why does that entail that I should care what is beneficial for the species, or regard that as in any way a good for me? — J

Agree. And also, what constitutes 'beneficial to the species' is itself contested. Maybe it’s better to say that morality may have established itself as part of human cooperative ventures, but this still leaves us needing to have conversations about which values we wish to uphold and what constitutes beneficial (flourishing). So we're back at the beginning.

Do you agree that the scientific hypothesis about morality as cooperation could be useful to moral philosophers without any need to derive an ought from an is? If not, why not? — Mark S

Why not? Moral philosophy comes attached to a range of worldviews. It's not unified, and it shifts over time. So there's room for all kinds of foundational justifications, from religion to secularism, scientific thinking to postmodernism. Most Western societies are pluralistic and have to balance competing views. They do so pretty well.

And almost all people, except psychopaths, have a moral sense that motivates them to act unselfishly in common circumstances, to punish immoral actions by others, and experience feelings of shame and guilt when they perceive they have acted immorally.
— Mark S

I think this is not true. Certainly not true of me and a lot of people I know who are not psychopaths. If there is a moral imperative to care for, look after, and protect our fellow humans, I don’t see that it has any connection with a motivation to punish other people for behaviors we don’t like. — T Clark

I agree. People are conditioned to feel certain ways, based on culture and upbringing, but I doubt it is innate. This is skating close to an essentialist account of human psychology.

But it doesn't follow from this that the human good is limited to cooperation (or survival, or reproduction). Cooperation is not sought for its own sake, but rather as a means. Hence, cooperation cannot be the measure of the good; we should cooperate just when it is truly best to do so. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, and we can certainly (and have) cooperated to achieve violent and oppressive goals which cause mass suffering.

I just don't see it has very much to do with the modern world. All the major shifts in thought have been assimilated and now the proponents are irrelevant to modern way of life. — Malcolm Parry

I think a lot of people hold a similar view.

I've rarely met anyone who reads or takes interest in philosophy: it's a boutique interest, one that attracts more than its fair share of authoritarian monomaniacs, fanatics, bores, autodidacts, fetishists, and gimps. But that doesn't mean it isn't important.

but I don't see any influence on the modern world from philosophy today. — Malcolm Parry

But the modern world is a product of philosophy: secularism, naturalism, scientism, and neoliberalism all of these have built the fabric of our culture and how we see reality. And yet it all remains in flux. The world today is very different from how it was when I was a teenager, and it's changing as we speak. Don't expect it to look like this in 50 years.

This place may have jaundiced me because most of the discussions are over my head and I'm not stupid. — Malcolm Parry

I've learned a lot just by participating (often badly) in discussions. I find I'm most interested in views different from my own. If you resist or mistrust something, chances are you need to understand it better. Philosophy is very difficult and its complexity is spread across centuries, it's an impossible subject to fully master, but one from which we can all snatch an occasional insight. I understand very little myself and don't have the time understand it much better.

Are you implying mid 70s prog is boring? — Malcolm Parry

I wouldn't know prog rock from a coffee grinder.

My analogy for philosophy now is that it seems to be the equivalent of prog rock fans discussing an obscure album from 1973 in minute detail when the world is listening to Taylor Swift, Chappell Roan.and other popular artists. — Malcolm Parry

Do you mean by this that philosophy has moved from the boring to the derivative?

In other words, we sense there is a reality, but we are perhaps once-removed from its direct experience. — Nemo2124

I've often thought that the notion of 'reality' is what some of us chase in lieu of God, and it's probably every bit as chimeric. Reality is simply the space we inhabit and navigate each day. Whether that reality is a simulation or an act of constructivism makes no real difference to the experience. So, for me, the question doesn’t really matter. My intuition tells me that in creating reality humans devise contingent descriptions that prove useful within a given time and community, and are always subject to revision.

Love is not just an emotion. Love is a desire for someone or something that is good. Love, the desire for only the good, is the ultimate quality control function. — GregW

Our world views are too different to continue this discussion. Take care.

Reality has all but disappeared, according to post-modernists. — Nemo2124

While Baudrillard seems to come closest to suggesting that reality has "disappeared," he argues that what we experience now are simulations, representations that replace direct, unmediated reality. In contrast, Derrida doesn't claim reality disappears but insists that it’s never stable to begin with. For him, it seems that reality is always mediated by language and our perception, meaning that our understanding is inherently fragmented and in flux. Did you have something different in mind?

So what has replaced it is a computer generated simulation that we interact with via technology. — Nemo2124

Why would you think this? Do you have some arguments or evidence? Are you thinking Donald Hoffman?

I think that’s well observed.

But what gives you the idea that there is such a thing? — Ludwig V

I don't. I'm responding to the claims.

Love is not just a feeling. Love is the love of something and not of nothing. You love because the thing you love is good. You cannot love evil. Love does not transcend qualities; love is the desire for the qualities of the good. — GregW

Yes, you can love evil. And sometimes you may not know it as evil. Love is a feeling for someone or something. An emotion. It doesn't come with a quality control function.

I agree that love and the power of love "can make hardship and suffering bearable and inspire us to strive for things beyond ordinary ambition. It can also clothe, soothe, and rebuild a broken and deprived being." I do not agree "that naked ambition and jealousy can provide a similar fillip toward transformative deeds." — GregW

You seem to have a preoccupation with good and evil, and take a strongly binary view of them. Personally, I don’t think the difference is always so clear. I tend to see good and evil as contingent qualities, shaped by context, perspective, and circumstance. While there are obvious examples of actions driven by hatred or self-sacrifice, at a broader, more human level, evil (which is not a category I generally use) is not always so easy to identify. Some acts of duty and patriotism and courage may also be considered evil.

Overwhelmingly, the world appears to do much as advertised. — Banno

When I was briefly swept up in associated New Age ideas and Theosophy this fact bothered me greatly.

Appeals to the supernatural lack direct empirical exemplars; one cannot simply point to observable cases in support. Instead, such appeals often proceed obliquely, through critiques of the epistemological limits of science or argument from hallucination or the inadequacies of a materialist/naturalist ontology. The strategy tends to rely on undermining the dominant framework, entering through a kind of philosophical back door, if you'll pardon the clumsy metaphor.

Supose that someone claims to have achieved "self-transcendence". How could we check? — Banno

They'd be the ones charging money for intensives... (sorry, a cheap shot).

I'm sure I don't need to tell you that mental health is an extremely complex matter. I can't really provide any advice to you.

I constantly second-guess myself. — Truth Seeker

Do you know why this happens? Are you haunted by previous errors?

I often wish I had made different choices than the ones I made — Truth Seeker

What would be an example of this?

What is the best way to make choices? — Truth Seeker

I've never really given it much thought. I just make choices and go with them. Sometimes I regret a decision, but not often. I'm trying to understand what kinds of choices typically lead to regret. Is it things like having children, getting married, or deciding where to live? But day-to-day choices don’t seem to matter much, even if the outcome is disappointing. Maybe I just don’t make very important choices very often.

How would one assess whether to have an abortion or not? — Truth Seeker

Is this one you are mulling over, or a hypothetical?

Could be. I haven't been following closely. I'm no connoisseur of metaphysical models like some here. But I have to admit, I no longer really understand what this discussion is about. It seems to be drifting into a culture war of ill will, like so many other threads.

Would you be able to summarise what the two camps are arguing? I'm assuming there's two.

:up: Thanks Vera. Sorry you've gone from our lives.

Ever hear of Fred D'Agostino? D’Agostino’s take: Instead of asking, “What do we all believe?” we ask, “What kind of practice allows us to live together with our differences?” — Banno

Ah yes… and this is a good question for this forum where we can practice this in microcosm.

What matters would not be the abstract truth of a belief, but how that belief functions within a system (logic, science, discourse); gets used (for justification, prediction, coercion); survives confrontation (with evidence, argument, or rival beliefs) and integrates with shared methods of reasoning or inquiry. — Banno

Would this not mean that some people might practice compassion even whilst holding an ostensibly intolerant belief system? Ye shall know them by their works.

Interesting read, basically it's a Speculative Realist criticism of the problems of phenomenology. The real clincher is, does phenomenology ultimately end up resorting to idealism, at the end? — Bodhy

I’m no expert in this area but I’ve wondered if the idealism comparison was apt in some contexts.

I guess it would mean that his assumptions are less fully developed and his conclusion missing important information. But let’s leave it there.

I think the issue is methodological - not about what you believe but what you do with it. — Banno

Say some more on this.

It also seems to me that some are more preoccupied by certainty or absolutes than others.

I think it leads to a more robust questioning of science and reason than many of us would accept. I’m not convinced Lorenz aligns with enactivism and this approach would probably question the realism and evolutionary biology that underpins Lorenz’s work. But this isn’t my area.

To start, it’s important to realize that Lorenz wasn’t talking about perception alone, he was talking about our entire cognitive system - not just our eyes and ears and nose, but our brains and nerves, our thoughts, our consciousness, our emotions. — T Clark

I'm not pursuing the Lorenz connection, I'm focusing on enactivist accounts of co-creation. I read Lorenz a generation ago and have forgotten it.

I'm currently more interested in postmodern thought, phenomenology, and other non-essentialist accounts of experience. I’m also aware that you align with Collingwood’s view of metaphysics as a historical/conceptual framework and not true or false as such. Personally, I would argue that science is itself a form of metaphysics, or at the very least, it rests upon one: the assumption that the world is intelligible. And yes, science can perform some remarkable tricks. But the implication of @Joshs contribution asks us what exactly is it that is intelligible and what are we understanding?

Well, yes, I think that's right. I guess I see personal as an interpretive and assimilative process of the shared.

For the record, I wasn’t really arguing against Joshs point - only that it isn’t clear to me how it is relevant to this specific issue. — T Clark

No worries. I added a bit where I have tried to interpret the point as best I can. Pretty sure I have missed something.

The issue is whether it is possible to make a distinction between the organism's perception of its environment and its evolution with respect to its environment. Put differently, is perception the organism’s representation of a reality, or is it the enacting of a reality? In the first case, what is represented is presumed to be external to the perceiver. In the second case, the real is produced through the organism-environment interaction.
— Joshs

I still don’t get it. Let’s leave it at that. — T Clark

@Joshs would you mind having a go at explaining this further? This idea appeals to me, as it goes to the heart of what we think we are and I’d like a more educated formulation of it than the slight understanding I currently have.

I guess this asks us whether perception is simply a picture of an external world or a process that helps create reality through interaction. If perception just reflects the world, then reality exists independently of the organism; but if perception enacts reality, then the organism and environment co-create what is real. This distinction must have significant implications in how we understand knowledge, life, and what we dub 'reality' particularly academic subjects such as biology, psychology, and philosophy.

SO I don't think that philosophical differences are ultimately "explained" by psychology. I suspect you do? — Banno

Well, I guess it depends what that means. I do believe that people are the contingent products of circumstance. How far to push this?

My intuition is that we respond to all things through prelinguistic emotion and gradually fumble our way to articulate a response. This often consists of a post hoc rationalization of how we feel, (tempered by the influence of upbringing and culture, naturally). But over time, I think we establish a personal web of beliefs that makes many of our responses formulaic - in that they automatically match the presuppositions we have arrived at. Of course, some people are wildly inconsistent, while others are disciplined and rigid.

What is your account?

The view that autistic people lack theory of mind any more than anyone else presented with another creature different from themselves, is out of date. Simon Baron-Cohen did a lot of damage with this, and the experiments purported to show this lack of theory of mind have been robustly challenged. — bert1

Yes, BC is widley disliked in some psychology circles. Tony Attwood, who I am more familiar with also subscribes to ToM models.

A clever psychopath, by contrast, may have excellent cognitive empathy, but lack affective empathy. But I'm not an expert on psychopathy. — bert1

I think these distinctions are useful. Many of these psychopaths are CEOs and often work in persuasion-based businesses: politics, law, advertising, marketing, etc. You don’t need to drive around in a black van picking up co-ed hitchhikers to be a public menace.

And that is basically a liberal stance. As against the authoritarian stance, that one way or another we must force agreement. — Banno

Of course, there are many here who also take issue with liberalism so there's that. :wink:

We love our wives, our children, our family, our friends because to us they are beautiful and good. — GregW

Doesn't work for me. I love because I love. It's a feeling and nowhere does good or beautiful enter my conception. I would say love moves beyond such characteristics. Love transcends qualities.

Love is a part of desire as the lover is a part of the non-lover because the lover and the non-lover can both exist as a part of the same person. While the non-lover can desire many things such as wealth and power along with the beautiful and good, the lover desire only the beautiful and good. — GregW

I can't follow this. Can you summarise the point I'm lost in the lover-non-lover-lover-non-lover train.

Now, there is no shame in desiring and using power. The shame is in using power not well but badly. Everyone sees that power can be used for good or for evil, but the power of love can be used only for good. The power of love is not just the means of attainment but also of creativity, the creation of the beautiful and good. "The great and subtle power of love" lies first in the creation of the lover. It is love that turns the non-lover into the lover. — GregW

Why are you talking about power? What have I missed?

When love is described as a power, it generally means that the experience of love can make hardship and suffering bearable and inspire us to strive for things beyond ordinary ambition. In this way, love can clothe, soothe, and rebuild a broken and deprived being. Yet I suspect that naked ambition and jealousy can also provide a similar fillip toward transformative deeds.

Generally, when people hold foundational positions, they are like arrows pointing toward the place they want to arrive at. That’s as true of me as it is of anyone else. This is why I often say that our arguments are often built on top of our emotional preferences.

Kripke's account leads to forms of antirealism, with which I am not overly happy. So I'm not offering it as an absolute answer here - just as an example that shows the problem with Tim's attempt to equate not knowing something with not knowing anything. — Banno

Do you think such an approach is one that assumes theism and some of the philosophical scaffolding which supports it?

Glad that you are reading along. — Banno

Trying to, but I know as much about logic as I do about genetic engineering.