For whatever reason, the free will issue has never bothered me.I guess I'm a soft determinist. I think we can't help but enact our training. At the same time, I think we are too complex to predict in detail. — T H E

Maybe it depends on mood swings, sometimes one is more prone to pessimism and nihilism but if it's a sunny day I don't pay much attention to it - instead I would be focused on the noontide demon of boredom that haunts my perfectly uninteresting life. Always be aware of the danger of a perfect sunny day. :lol:

take responsibility, perhaps eternal responsibility, for its actions. Away from the religious baggage, I think it would just be easier to fallibly discuss difficult cases of assigning praise and blame. — T H E

There's an interesting article on the subject of Moral Luck:Moral Luck (Stanford Encyclopedia)

When I deal with an "impossible problem" like the Problem of Free Will, my natural reaction is, maybe due to my neuroticism (natural tendency to avoid negative emotions), to try to resolve the emotional tension as quickly as possible. Many times I adopt a pragmatic position, to avoid feeling the physical sensation of being truly in doubt, to avoid the anxiety and stress that comes with real questioning, because the answer could lead me to question my foundational beliefs about who I am and how I should live my life. When I read some scientific article that disproves Free Will like, for example, "Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain" by Chun Siong Soon, I choose to adopt a pragmatic point-of-view and tell myself "Oh, who cares if free will doesn't exist? I'll still act as someone who believes to be free, I have no choice. Why bother thinking more deeply about the consequences of the non-existence of free will?" - then I go about my day, ignorantly happy and satisfied with my answer, having consciously chosen to ignore the emotional tension caused by a contradiction or complexity. I need to exercise the muscle that allows me to be more comfortable around ambiguity and complexity, and avoid trying to resolve an emotional tension, just to feel good about myself and the life I live. Thanks for the article :)

Sam Harris is an atheist too. The title seems very biased towards defending buddhism, but it just tries to show what claims in buddhist religion have been validated by science. Not the metaphysical stuff, but the "simple things" like how meditation can rewire your brain etc.

It is one who tries to make reason the master and eliminate passion, that ends up in trouble.

Not reason itself, but the supression of emotions/passions in search of pure objectivity. Maybe this is the key to madness, when you try to live your day to day life through the lens of Bacon's "sub speciae aeternitatis": it will lead you to an illusion of objectivity, when you pretend to live life only from a third person rational and detached perspective? Maybe this is the source of the madness?

That said, you probably thought of survivorship bias because of the direction our conversation took with my comment on "exceptions" and "generalizations".

As a connection that was related to the topic but doesn't imply causality, I think your right.

There can be no doubt on that front. "Chess players" depend on logic, thinking inside a box, not crossing boundaries that logic sets up - that's where their daily bread comes from. "Poets" are more about unrestricted creativty, thinking outside the box. crossing boundaries wherever they happen to encounter one.

Both "chess players" and "poets" are playing games of creativity, either in literature or chess. Think of the great masters of creativity, they are those who reinvented the wheel without breaking the rules of the game, by making us aware of rules we didn't know existed. Shakespeare discovery of the modern man through Hamlet's soliloquies or Casanova's groundbreaking chess tactics. Both played by the rules of language or mathematics, and tried to express their creativity within that game. They both played creative games by following the same principles of disruption: reinvent the wheel without breaking the rules - this sounds a lot like Wittgenstein. Robert Mckee expresses this idea very well:

“Anxious, inexperienced writers obey rules. Rebellious, unschooled writers break rules. Artists master the form.”

That's a good differentiation, didn't think in those clear terms, even though it seems self-evident. Started reading Peirce and started to laugh: "But the mere putting of a proposition into the interrogative form does not stimulate the mind to any struggle after belief. There must be a realand living doubt, and without this all discussion is idle." Pierced through my philosophical pose of someone who really questions, oh shit, I have some self-reflection to make... :lol: Thank you.

It's a quite interesting podcast, he talks from politics to religion. "In 2007, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett filmed a landmark discussion about modern atheism. The video went viral." They were named the Four Horsemen.If your going to watch an episode, please watch this one: Sam Harris 2018 - Why Buddhism is True with Robert Wright

PS: I'm not a budhist btw.

Hope you find it interesting :)

"Very true. Is this what happens when religion fades?"

Those who agree with Max Weber's View of the Disenchanted World, agree that the loss of religious values brought about the decay of society, turning a society based on judeo-christian values into a "sick" individualistic, moral relativistic and atomised society where people are too focused on authenticity and self-realization. I believe Charles Taylor is right when he says this is an inauthentic form of "authenticity", because it doesn't recognize the necessity for community and recognition in identity formation. All I'm doing is echoing Taylor's arguments. If you have time, please watch this very interesting lesson - full of self-evident truths I didn't see because they were too close to my lived experience:smile: : The Malaise of Modernity (1/5) - Charles Taylor

Community is not very popular with some people who prefer individualism. Reaching 'one's potential' is a meaningless notion. 'Reaching some potential' might be more accurate but downbeat. We are potentially many people - opportunity, effort, luck, all play a role.

I see alot of people being unaware of the role of influence in their lives, "they" seem to live in a vaccum, not knowing that when they say "Jessica" they are citing Shakeaspeare, the one who discovered the name for the first time. This goes for everything we take for granted. We can't live in a vaccum, believing we invented this language, these philosophical problems, etc. I don't think it goes against individualism, because individualism can only survive in a very specific democratic eco-chamber, that's why we need to preserve it and community is fundamental.

Curious, because it reminds me of a dilemma I heard in a Sam Harris podcast: If, from a neurological point of view, there's no way to differentiate from a state of enlightenment produced by a drug or by a lifetime of "hard ascetic work", how could we differentiate these experiences from a qualitative perspective? Of course, from an ethical point of view, they are completely different ways of life, even though the the result might be the same.

I don't think poetic insights are incompatible with reason, but I agree that pure aesthetic play in philosophy becomes frustrating because many times there's no way to understand what a romantic is trying to express, hiding behind vagueness, while using interchangeably the concepts of "truth", "being" and authenticity" - it can get very murky and confusing, even though I don't doubt their good intentions.

This is the best definition I found of a romantic view of reason:
"Human lives take place in the same intimate unconsciousness as the lives of animals. The same profound laws, which govern the instincts of animals from the outside, also govern the intelligence of man from the outside, which seems to be nothing more than an instinct in formation, an unconscious dog like every instinct, less perfect because it has not yet been formed.

«Everything comes from reasonless», it is said in Greek Anthology. And, in fact, everything comes from reasonless. Outside of mathematics that has nothing to do with nothing but dead numbers and empty formulas, and so it can be perfectly logical, science is nothing but a children's game at dusk, wanting to catch bird shadows and stop grass shadows in the wind."
- Bernardo Soares, The Book of Disquiet [Used Google Translator to translate from Portuguese, english is not my first language]

According to this view, reason is nothing but an instinct yet to be fully formed. I don't agree, but I can see why it's so appealing to many people, mostly artists. Modern society is obsessed with authenticity and self-fulfillment, to fulfill one's potential is seen as the highest value. To fail in life is to fail to fulfill your own potential by not finding who you truly are - to avoid this, you need to listen your passions, to your heart, not to reason. In this way of life, the romantic artist became the paradigm of the life that should be modeled, a search for aesthetic differentiation, one's own originality, "that which makes me different from you". An empty lifestyle if you ask me, it can lead to moral relativism and isolation. How can one reach one's potential without being inserted in a community? I don't see how. Sorry for this pseudo-intellectual rant.

Thank your for your answer, I think your position is quite reasonable.

seems exceptions don't imply the absence of a dependable generalization.

- this is a very good point and I agree with you. But what I failed to state more clearly doesn't go against this point.

What you said reminds of me of the Survivorship bias: we only focus on the winners, forgetting how many people have to lose to "produce" one winner:
- Survivorship bias or survival bias is the logical error of concentrating on the people or things that made it past some selection process and overlooking those that did not, typically because of their lack of visibility. This can lead to some false conclusions in several different ways. It is a form of selection bias.

The truth is I haven't checked medical records/statistics to see the the number of cases of madness in this two "different" groups, namely, mathematicians and artists:
- First Problem: Define what madness is, I don't believe it's merely a social construct, there's a biological reality to it, but still it's very difficult to define, since in psychological/medical literature a disease is defined by it's symptoms and it's possible cures - a functional definition. This goes against my belief that it's not a social construct, but it's very hard to define what "madness" is.
- Second Problem: What makes an artist or a mathematician? Someone with an artistic or mathematical inclination is not an artist or mathematician? They have to be professionals? To have a relevant impact in knowledge creation to be a "true" mathematician?
- Third Problem: What's the difference between an artist and a mathematician? Can we be both at the same time? Da Vinci was, to a certain extent. Is he the exception or the rule? Maybe most people share both traits, but since they weren't as good as Da Vinci, they were forgotten.

So the difference between everyday experience and metaphysical "transcendence" is a matter of intensity, not of quality? For example, during hallucinations we feel colors more vividly, the same colors of our day-to-day experience, but in a more intense way. Those same colors of everyday life are experienced with more intensity, giving a "metaphysical tone" to the experience like something that feels extraordinary? Or making us realize there's no difference between the common and the metaphysical? Both common and extraordinary experiences belong to the same spectrum of experiences with a continuity?
- So in that sense its useful to separate the social inter-subjective reality we live in (not reality as it is, but as we experience it) from the metaphysical/epistemological realm? But if they are continuous, should we artificially separate them? Why? I don't know, maybe we should live in harmony with both?
- I think my view about taking things for granted is trying to unify the metaphysical realm we probably can't understand with the not so "common day-to-day experience".

Thank you for the feedback, it's helping me make some new interesting connections.

I researched "special pleading": argument in which the speaker deliberately ignores aspects that are unfavourable to their point of view. / A form of confirmation bias.

It's possible that he's doing special pleading but, if we took his claim seriously, not as a superficial or merely glib, do you think there's some truth to what he says? And if there's no truth to it, why is it wrong to consider reason the path to madness? What do you think he chooses consciously to ignore?

I agree with you but is reason alone capable of making us lose our minds? I'm not sure about that, it's a small minority of artists like Van Gogh or mathematicians like John Nash who go mad. I think it's more influenced by a neurological condition than an epistemological position, for example that of a radical skeptic. Maybe it's the loss of an "intuitive mechanism" to take the world for granted + being psychologically prone to believe in skeptical ideas? I don't know.
Poetry or Reason? Maybe reason because people with a certain temperament, more prone to madness, are attracted to mathematics? - this is pure speculation.

I don't know to be honest.

I believe we should question everything, even common sense claims, no stone should be left unturned but, when it comes to living our lives, to live a balanced healthy life, we need to have the ability to temporarily leave the world of philosophical enquiry and, by accepting that it's probably impossible to reach epistemological absolute certainties, live life as someone who takes things for granted, who accepts that we can't be sure about the ultimate answers.
- To make a coffee you have to act as someone who believes that coffee is real, not real in the ultimate metaphysical/epistemological sense, but real ENOUGH in the sense that:
"Ok, it could be a dream and this cup of coffee might not be real but it's nice to have a coffee in the morning - thought Waterlungs, taking a sip from a warm cup of coffee, as he contemplates the sunshine with a profound gaze, while he listens to some pretentious obscure jazz album, which gives him a sense of moral superiority, feeling that life is worth living."

- I probably misread Hume because I lack a philosophical education, I only know some out of context citations. So he might not agree with my view and I probably misused his views for my argument sake.
- When I mean we take some things for granted for discussion sake is that, when we have a discussion, we believe that we can be understood by others and that we can understand what they mean. Otherwise, it would be absurd to have a conversation if we thought no one would understand what we mean.

First of all, thank you taking the time to answer. I'll read the article very carefully.

Examples of which common sense we (supposedly) all are agree?

to avoid falling into a maddening relativism. — WaterLungs

Answer: When we stop thinking about the ultimate nature of reality and grab a cup of coffee, accepting it's real enough from a pragmatic point-of-view. This acceptance is not an epistemological agreement between everyone... but a common sense acceptance that we need to suspend disbelief temporarily, to continue living life without questioning everything. Otherwise we couldn't leave our beds, because we would be trying to rationally justify/find a reason or a purpose to every single action we take. Here nature is important, were alive because breathing is automatic and doesn't depend on rational deliberations: a radical skeptic would die if breathing depended on his epistemological certainties.
- I think Hume describes this much better than me:

“Where am I, or what? From what causes do I derive my existence, and to what condition shall I return? ... I am confounded with all these questions, and begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable, environed with the deepest darkness, and utterly deprived of the use of every member and faculty.

Most fortunately it happens, that since Reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, Nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium, either by relaxing this bent of mind, or by some avocation, and lively impression of my senses, which obliterate all these chimeras. I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends. And when, after three or four hours' amusement, I would return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strained, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther.”