1) the continued philosophical interest in, and too common assumption of, “imperative oughts” that do not seem to exist and

2) the apparent lack of philosophical interest in universal moralities based on conditional oughts such as Morality as Cooperation Strategies.

Can anyone explain it? — Mark S

Yes. People aren't much interested in morality as a subject, but they're happy to hold unexamined 'oughts' which can be used to judge others. Morality functions as a series of prejudices and biases.

Sure. My answer was just a modest response to this:

There is no sensible meaningful answer to it. — creativesoul

Which I think overstates the case, for reasons I have spelt out. But it was a small point. And you're right the qualia debate is banal. Personally I have no idea what it's like to be me let alone you, or a fucking bat!

We all seem to enjoy thrashing out these issues, maybe by way of diversion. I don't see any profoundly important moral battle going on between metaphysical materialism and spiritualism in modernity.

The only form of materialism I find ethically and spiritually compromising is the kind of materialism that consists in attachment to excessive material profit, wealth and status, and I think that exists equally among people of all kinds of metaphysical persuasions. — Janus

:100: :up:

In any case, I don't think one's metaphysical views have any bearing on one's spiritual practice; on one's ability to realize equanimity, non-attachment, peace of mind or whatever you want to call it.

Whether you believe in an afterlife, in resurrection, rebirth or reincarnation or you don't believe in any afterlife at all is irrelevant. I find it most plausible to think that people are simply attracted to systems that accord with their personal views. — Janus

Again. :up: Nicely put.

Not relevant to my point. As I said,

What is it like? This is a question that elicits a rich source of experiential data from people, the answers are meaningful, but the question probably doesn't elicit specific, verifiable data. — Tom Storm

For instance, if you were involved in counselling or supporting people to recover from trauma (as I am) or a series of other similar activities, then the question 'what is it like' can be of immense significance in assisting people to navigate their experiences and identity.

Does that question even have an answer? It seems clear to me that it does not! Watching a sunset is not like anything. To quite the contrary, each viewing is different. One could watch the sun set as many times as one likes, and each time it will be different. — creativesoul

But each time it will involve (at the very least) watching and a sun. I agree that each experience is somewhat different, but so is each time we take a piss or eat a curry. But in each instance, there are elements that clearly distinguish taking a piss from eating a curry (unless there is beer involved). What is it like? This is a question that elicits a rich source of experiential data from people, the answers are meaningful, but the question probably doesn't elicit specific, verifiable data.

Do you have a link for that? — RogueAI

I spent a lot of time on his blog a while ago trying to nail down the story he is presenting to us.

I'm not sure I have the precise reference, but this is a start -

https://www.bernardokastrup.com/2012/07/meaningful-evolution.html

It does look like he is trying to have his cake and eat it, but maybe that's how it appears when someone builds a comprehensive account. It's human cognition that puts time and space into it. Natural selection is a process we have interpreted, based on our cognitive apparatus, and our understanding of consciousness, which we have interpreted as physicalism. I understand Kastrup sees evolution as an account of consciousness evolving and changing (our conceptual frame) over aeons.

Why should even "inanimate" matter not appear as striving, if it is fundamentally energetic? But a blind, striving will cannot explain how it is that we all see the same things in the world around us, unless the will generates real structures that are continually being formed and broken down by real forces. But this would just be a physicalist view, not an idealist one. — Janus

Well, I can only answer that here we are trying to project human understanding, our cognitive apparatus upon a highly complex account that requires a lot of text to describe. Since I am not Kastrup, I can only suggest reading him. I don't think you are right about it being a physicalist view - the entire point is it looks like physicalism to us but is mind when viewed from a particular perspective - us. I see no reason why consciousness, if that's all there is (as even the Hindu's believe) would not also appear to us as inanimate objects.

s it aware of us and does it have a plan for us. It all seems too nebulous and far out to me to be taken seriously as anything more than a wishful fantasy. There is only one more wishful step up to a Giod that cares about us. — Janus

These are the very same questions Kastrup poses and I don't think he has answered them. He'd be the first to say that his ontology raises matters for which he has no current account. I am not deep enough into him to respond fluently on this.

I think Mind at Large is a small 'g' god surrogate and occupies a similar foundational space and is the guarantor of being. It doesn't have a plan, however, since it has no metacognition. The idea is there is only mind and from this, all being emanates in various forms - creatures and objects. Object permanence comes via Mind at Large.

Another significant problem I have with the idea is that there is a huge body of consistent and coherent scientific evidence that tells us there we many cosmological events long before there were any minds. In order to accept the view that mind is fundamental I would need to discount all that evidence. — Janus

I don't think so. The issue here is that Kastrup would agree that conscious creatures emerged 'later' and the cosmological events or the 'reality' we have detected which predate life, like consciousness, is simply what mind looks like when viewed from a different perspective. We know it as 'physical'. In other words, inanimate objects and process are all aspects of consciousness, so there is no contradiction inherent in a notion of pre-life.

I'm a physicalist but I am open to 'steel manning' the idealist position as well as I can and trying to understand the model as best as I can.

My understanding of the narrative Kastrup presents is that all we know and can detect is consciousness as seen through a different perspective (across a dissociative divide). At the heart of this there is a Mind at Large - striving, instinctive, and not metacognitive. Conscious creatures emerged as dissociated alters from this great mind and have evolved. So evolution for Kastrup is a real thing, but it isn't physical - it manifests as physical to us and leaves its fossils and detritus, much as we have memories about our own past.

So we need to accept quite a narrative for all this to make sense to us. And critical to this idealist position it seems is Mind at Large or cosmic consciousness which provides the foundation for this account.

The question we can ask of this scenario is why did a great mind splinter off and develop dissociated alters over time (as we understand time) is consciousness engaged in an act of getting to know itself? What is the significance of our metacognition in this narrative?

Maybe I'm not concentrating properly, but I'm struggling to understand what this thread is about. Is it clarifying who incels are and if they are something we should be concerned about? Is it about men and women? Dating advice? Where we should allocate our compassion? All of the above? From what I have heard of incels, I am reasonably comfortable to write them off - the way I would virulent racists or any other vile bigotry. No doubt everyone has their reasons, no doubt there's a perspectival, George Lakoff-style way to understand their conceptual framing and contextualize their value systems, etc. But I find it hard to give a fuck.

:up:

Thanks. Thoughtful response. :up:

Go for it! — Jamal

I don't know enough about the subject to make that case.

Have you ever heard of someone correcting an injustice just because it was pointed out to them that what they were doing was immoral? I haven't. — Jacques

That's mostly true. You do see this is some alcohol and drug recovery programs, where people go around and apologize and even make amends for the wrongs they have done to people they know. I've also known a few people to gain insight into their actions over time and try to correct behaviors they now realize to be wrong.

What is the use of someone knowing what he ought to do if he is not willing to do it. — Jacques

Sounds like a working definition of morality. :wink:

"Man always remembers only nine of God's commandments, except the commandment he is about to transgress" — Jacques

Yes. But what is even more odd is that Christians when asked to name the commandments rarely remember more than 3. Not to mention the fact that of the 10 commandments, there's really only 4 that pertain to morality in any real sense. The rest are all worship and dogma related.

The OP need not comprehensively describe or define incels, since it’s a pretty well-known subculture notorious for its abusive and sometimes violent misogyny. It’s probably wise to look into it rather than throwing around accusations of wokeness. Even just a quick look at Wikipedia would work: — Jamal

The extent of my knowledge of the subject is Wiki and until this thread the only proto-incel I could think of was Nietzsche (sorry). I don't think they make an appearance in any of the worlds I inhabit. I guess the question I have is, should I be worried about this - it's not like we're short of resentful subcultures already.

Yes. I find it very satisfying to listen to.

Maybe this is because most philosophy is bad philosophy. — Jamal

Nice idea for a thread...

Although many people are convinced otherwise, I do not believe that moral systems and teachings are indispensable for the existence of society (except for children, as I said before). I see them as rather ineffective and annoying, and sometimes even harmful (especially in strict religious systems), and therefore, I reject them. — Jacques

I tend to agree. I think most people just intuit what they ought and ought not to do based upon their own presuppositions. I'm not sure moral systems have much impact and even amongst the religious, a set of moral teachings is interpreted subjectively and variably, even within one religious tradition. Matters like law and order, climate change, and resource allocation will be decided (or not) by other mechanisms, even if the vestigial traces of moral systems flicker off and on during debates.

When we perceive something - large, small, alive or inanimate, local or remote - there is a considerable amount of work involved in ‘creating’ the object from the raw material of perception. Your eyes receive the lightwaves reflected or emanated from it, your mind synthesises the image with regards to all of the other stimuli impacting your senses at that moment – acknowledging it or ignoring it depending on how busy you are; your memory will then compare it to other objects you have seen, from whence you will recall its name, and perhaps know something about it ('star', 'tree', 'frog', etc - this is the process of 'apperception').

And you will do all of this without you even noticing that you are doing it; it is largely unconscious.

In other words, your consciousness is not the passive recipient of sensory objects which exist irrespective of your perception of them. Instead, your consciousness is an active agent which constructs experiential reality - partially on the basis of sensory input, but also on the basis of a huge number of unconscious processes, including memories, intentions and cultural frameworks. This is how we arrive at what Schopenhauer designates as 'vorstellung', variously translated as 'representation' or 'idea'. And that is what reality consists of. It includes the object, but it is not in itself an object. As Schopenhauer says in the first paragraph of WWI, discerning this fact is the beginning of philosophical wisdom. — Wayfarer

This is a very rich and fascinating subject to me. It seems to me that phenomenology appreciates this approach. There's a salient quote by Dan Zahavi:

Ultimately, what we call “reality” is so deeply suffused with mind- and language-dependent structures that it is altogether impossible to make a neat distinction between those parts of our beliefs that reflect the world “in itself” and those parts of our beliefs that simply express “our conceptual contribution.” The very idea that our cognition should be nothing but a re-presentation of something mind-independent consequently has to be abandoned.

I certainly see the 'constructionist' logic in your last paragraph. It's hard or impossible to imagine how we could separate our perception, cognition, experience and metaphysical presumptions from what we generally think of as an experience of reality.

I notice in modern discourse that even the notion of laws is called into question. This goes back to the discussion about the erosion of the idea of an animating cosmic purpose. — Wayfarer

Well, I guess 'laws' does imply a 'lawgiver' in the crudest traditions of anthropomorphising. And 'laws of logic' are certainly seized upon constantly by zealous apologists (like William Lane Craig) who need a magic man, himself without apparent explanation, to explain reality. No one with an apophatic theology draws attention to 'laws' this way.

Death gives us something to do. Because it's a full-time job looking the other way.

- Martin Amis

That sounds interesting. Creationist cultures do seem to have a crudity about them which suggest creation is ours for the fucking... if you'll forgive the vulgarity.

No. It's cow belching due to enteric fermentation - which is the digestive process of converting sugars into simple molecules for absorption into the bloodstream, which produces methane as a by-product. My source is NASA global climate change :wink:

Cows fart too much. — Varnaj42

I hear it's the belching that's the bigger methane problem.

Since there seem to be only two kinds of proof or evidence: the logical and the empirical, I think it's going to be a
very
long.........................................................................................................................(and fruitless)
search.
:fire: — Janus

Story of my life... I hear you, Brother. :cool:

It seems to me that those who insist on using this tendentious term have something invested in the belief that there is some reality over and above the physical. — Janus

The search for proof for the incorporeal is at the heart of idealism, I guess.

:up:

Perhaps all we know is that we cannot imagine it being otherwise; we certainly have access only to a vanishingly small sample of the universe. — Janus

Indeed - I should have said, 'is purported to operate throughout... ' etc. I agree.

I don't know either. Isn't Mathematical Platonism a common argument used to undermine physicalism (as opposed to QM speculations which we can leave for the time being)? As far as we know, the logical absolutes of identity, noncontradiction and excluded middle hold everywhere in the universe. What does this mean? Intrinsic to human consciousness, or part of the fabric of reality - assuming this can even be spoken of meaningfully outside of our experience.

No, that was a joke based on 'interest rates' not on my interest in the subject.

But do such examples transcend physicalism?

But what if you are not interested?

Therein lies something of a problem. :wink: Where do you sit on the notion that maths is Platonic? As you know, some people maintain that logic and maths transcend physical reality. Would mathematical Platonism quality as immaterial?

when something is said to be immaterial there are two common meanings: either that it doesn't exist or is unimportant, or that it exists in some way other than the material. — Janus

Small digression. Is there an example of an immaterial 'something' we can point to uncontroversially?

And why is this the way Will chooses to individuate itself? — schopenhauer1

That's the million dollar question. Nicely framed.

Would you consider yourself an idealist?

But then why is there an internal time/space, why is there a Platonic Form, and why how are these interacting with Will? Is Will the internal time/space, is Will outside this? — schopenhauer1

Good questions. I suspect will must be outside it if it is the foundation of all things including forms. But it's unclear. Are you sympathetic to the Kantian notion that space and time are part of the human cognitive apparatus and allow us to make sense of our experience, but not an aspect of the noumenal world?

Yes, that's kind of my reaction too.

Then I recognized the Schopenhauerian aspect of this. — schopenhauer1

I think that's a good point. Kastrup seems to be influenced by Schopenhauer and it seems that he has taken the notion or will and the world as representation of will, changed some terms and added some speculative insights from QM and psychology. Notably, the idea that people are dissociated alters of Mind at Large (will) with metacognitive capacities which Mind at Large does not have. Mind at large being a blind and striving instinctive consciousness - sounds familiar...

I don't think I am wedded to any approach. Negative ethics has merit. Whatever we do in the morality space will be flawed and inadequate, just like human beings.

:up: Got ya. Thanks.