• Antinatalism Arguments
    It just seemed that you were framing emotional dispositions as the grounding for moral choices rather than there being no moral choices.I like sushi

    Oh, okay, I see what you mean. That might be a language issue - Emotional dispositions are the only possible grounding for moral choices. But that lives within the vagueries of "moral decision" so probably cannot be adequately defined (in either direction).

    Moral (Right for Your Perspective) and Ethical (The Right Objective Implementation).I like sushi

    But this misses that Emotivism is a meta-ethical position. It says that human Ethics are dispositional. That framing Ethics as something objective, under which we must argue for our chosen source (God, Ayn Rand, deontology, utilitarian calc etc...) is wrong ethically. Ethics inform morals - so this ethical position means that all moral choices are in response to one's emotional state which is in turn in response to a moral proposition. You can't have a meta-moral system to explain this, because that's just ethics. And the "ethics" is that it is right to ascribe moral positions to their underlying emotional states. I'm unsure more needs to be said here, but feel free to pick it apart.

    For what it's worth, I think people are ethically wrong to enforce their ethical position if their position entails an objective moral outcome. Strange, I know.
  • Perception
    Not a Skittles fan, huh? Taste the rainbow, except the rainbow has no colors.creativesoul

    To me, nothing you've used to object to the position has any effect on it. You're, in all cases, bringing the mental phenomenon to a physical fight. The only reason a Red skittle is Red, is because my mind creates a red experience for me in response to a(in this case, a very specific) frequency of light reflected of a cooked sugar surface. It isn't in the Skittle. THat's, again, bizarre.

    Just off the cuff absurd conclusions following from the idea that color is nothing more than a mental/psychological event.creativesoul

    Explanation: Nice, thank you
    Relevance: None, unfortunately.

    It detects what we've named "red" and programmed it to pick up on, based on the frequencies we have decided are the 'red' spectrum pursuant to the experience of Red. Nothing to do with with the frequencies themselves representing anything in experiencecreativesoul

    I'm also not entirely un-open to the idea that a machine could have 'mental events' in some form that delineates 'mentation' from 'consciousness'. There are bacteria who can react adequately to their environment (and show what would be considered unnatural coherence in those reactions) without any consciousness - but perhaps we have to give them mentation to make sense of it. Idk. It is distasteful to me, but I can't find a reason to just say "No, not that".

    There is a further point, and all of your objections rely on it's facticity: the reality that we cannot point out Red without experiencing it. The only reason we could announce that a programme has 'created' Red is because the experience we have corresponds with what we call Red elsewhere. And this was programmed into the software based on the prexisting version of the same correspondence. It is all derived from experience.

    There is no part of any of these discussions where colour obtains without experience. I get the feeling this is going to just end up with erroneous exchanges about language use.
  • Personal Identity and the Abyss
    When you go to find a trajectory, you still rely on Newtonian mechanics. Is it wrong to rely on things that are sturdy and well-built?kudos

    Not at all, but as you'll have picked up, this is not how i view Hegel :P

    Your last paragraph is the same type of muddled i'm getting elsewhere, so I'm unsure how to respond. It seems like a mess of words asking senseless, redundant questions. This isn't meant to be rude - It's most to illustrate that, given my opinion of Hegelian thinking (and my position that it can be shown to be nonsensical) we're not going to get far :P
  • Perception
    The range we've named "red" cause us to see red, but there is no red in the range.creativesoul

    No. It causes (in general terms) the sensation we take to be caused by the range on the spectrum. That sensation is termed 'Red'. There is no red in the spectrum. Arguing that there is red in the spectrum is bizarre. If you're not doing so, I am not quite understanding the objection.

    Also, if these several string-posts are in response to someone, I'm not seeing hte intermediary posts so sorry if anything is incoherent for that reason. If its just me, also sorry lmao.
  • Perception
    Frequencies of light are not color... according to those I'm arguing against.creativesoul

    Yes, that is why my response is a bit of an objection. "colour" formally, is the experience of (sorry, caused by, in most cases) such and such light frequency. That these very rarely vary independently doesn't instantiate a 1:1 match.

    My point about the scanner is that it cannot detect colour. Colour is an experience.
  • Personal Identity and the Abyss
    I think we're all a little bored and narcissistic. Some of us think /pretend that actually means something. Most of us realise it's a nothing.

    As to the rest of your post, it seems to rely on Hegelian concepts that I find totally incoherent:

    The finitude of I becomes visible, and approaches the truth of was what we began with, and we experience the circular idea and its universality.kudos

    This says nothing, as far as I can tell. This is just some words describing nothing anyone could put a finger on. "visible" makes no sense here, "the truth of what was" makes no sense here, "we experience the ... idea" makes no sense here, "universality" is out of hte blue.

    To be sure, I think Hegel was an eloquent idiot. But that doesn't affect the lack of coherence here.
  • Perception
    That's not doing any lifting at all. A scanner can match frequencies of light based on a human programme of light=experience tables.
    This doesn't help the problem..
  • What are you listening to right now?


    Fantômas - Delirium Cordia.

    Something of a Magnum Opus for the band. Roughly speaking, the album charts a patient's experience of surgery in a delirious state, rather htan waking consciousness.
  • Donald Hoffman
    which will be coming due to the use of AI.wonderer1

    I don't expect you to be other than analogous to a flat earther when it comes to this subject.wonderer1

    If only there was an emoji to represent eyes being in the back of one's head.
  • Donald Hoffman
    I disagree. For instance, I don't need to know what is happening on the slopes of Mount Everest right now to believe there are some definite events happening on the slopes of Mount Everest right now.Apustimelogist

    I'm not quite seeing where this relates to the contradiction noted? (response to bold below this all)

    If we literally cannot know anything about hte intrinsic nature of things, what you think or believe has precisely zero bearing on the potential question: How could you possible confirm that:

    there is an objective way the world isApustimelogist

    If:

    science cannot tell us anything about the fundamental "intrinsic nature" of things beyond experience.Apustimelogist

    These are directly in opposition, as best I can tell. The example you gave doesn't seem to approach the problem in any way... Premeptively, if i've missed something key, apologies.

    Response to the bolded: That's true - but to be correct you'd have to solve the above. And given you're making a pretty absolute claim here for science establishing a mind-independent, objective world outthere beyond experience.
  • Donald Hoffman
    Similarly, science cannot tell us anything about the fundamental "intrinsic nature" of things beyond experience.Apustimelogist

    I think this is true - but then whence comes:

    there is an objective way the world is and the mind is embedded within thatApustimelogist

    These seem to run into each other quite violently...
  • Reasons for believing in the permanence of the soul?
    There is a theory of time (which I've never seen treated properly, but has never been taken seriously either)which states that time sort of flickers the way frames in a film reel do. Infintessimally small and imperceptibly small "cells" of time flash in and out with the gaps between an analogy to 'antimatter' or whatever. It's vague and science-fictiony but most are.

    I can't see why we would pursue it other than a hunch, but thought you might like at least an aesthetic frame for considering other options.
  • Evidence of Consciousness Surviving the Body
    A physicalist metaphysician has no problem addressing the philosophical questions he raises every bit as well as a Thomist like Feser. That science is a rational form of inquiry doesn't require a supernaturalist metaphysics to justify; the "causal regularities" he refers to can be accounted for as laws of nature (relations between universals).Relativist

    (not in pursuit of the greater discussion here - I am just motivated to ask prima facie..)
    I am unsure these answers can be given as readily as you're putting forward. "Laws of Nature" just refer back to those causal regularities. They aren't actually 'accounted' for beyond that we regularly see stuff happen under certain conditions. It may well be that this is what you're getting at and I'm misreading... Because both we seem to have a similar reaction to THomism, and I agree with your final point there; I am just not seeing how you are actually answering the questions old mate put forward.. (but, that supports your conclusion, so that's fine, im just curious).
  • Perception
    LOL, well okay that's fair! I think that's why Chalmers does (and should) get the respect his book actually commands. We don't have much to go on, lol.
  • Donald Hoffman
    Yes, I think this is a serious potentially insurmountable difference in approach. He (we (Wayf and I)) see it; others dont.

    Solving a problem that isn't there is always going to look abysmal, but equally would ignoring one that is.
  • Perception
    It sounds like you're saying that neuroscience shows that human consciousness doesn't extent beyond the brain. It doesn't show that.frank

    At the absolute minimum, it is stuck at that position. So, I think Michael's position is entirely tenable. Neuroscience doesn't indicate that consciousness extends at all.
  • Perception
    No, are you trolling?jkop

    No, I am responding to what you are saying. There's not a lot of point quoting previous statements, and they would contradict what I'm trying to clarify (which is that there are contradictions all through this exchange...)

    Why, would you prefer extraordinary conditions?jkop

    I have addressed this and why I've honed in on it. You seem to have missed:

    To see it is a biological fact, just how nature works, and some of us may have better eyes than others.
    — jkop

    This is, in fact, to say there is a 'correct' way of viewing hte world, biologically. Someone looking at 430THz of light, and seeing Blue, is 'wrong' (whether that's a physical aberration or otherwise..).
    AmadeusD

    If this is the case, then there's a strict contradiction in your approach. You are insinuating there is no 'correct' way for the human vision to apprehend colours, but you want colours to be "out there" independent of our experience? Pls hlp lol.
  • Evidence of Consciousness Surviving the Body
    Fair enough. If you find a glib use of a clearly inapt term "anti-scientific" rather than a bit of fun, I'm unsure where to go :P
  • Personal Identity and the Abyss
    And this opens up the possibility of 'consciousness surviving the body" hehehehe. Let's not though..
  • Evidence of Consciousness Surviving the Body
    Ah, fair, that was very much insufficiently clear. Where i put that, I just mean to indicate that we don't know (which ironically, is Carroll's view, elsewhere) and 'miracle' is a placeholder for whatever the answer is...could think here of the breathe-in-breathe-out view of the big bang, but we don't know whether or not that's the case. It would solve the 'miracle' is my point. Anything that answers the question is the 'miracle' until it's found.
  • Perception
    Why difficultjkop

    Because of the remainder of my post...

    where does that idea come from that there could be a 'correct' mode of seeing?jkop

    The majority of your responses seem to indicate this. That colour is mind-independent and that the eye and mind must be in order to 'accurately' apprehend the 'colour' out there (this is plainly wrong, though) seems to be baked-in to your position on this.

    Would you ask if there is a 'correct' mode for digestion?jkop

    Yes. When my tummy is being funny, i digest 'incorrectly' because of an aberration in the alimetary canal somewhere. Generally, these can be found, diagnosed and treated (though, that's not relevant). This can be applied to vision. I'm asking if you position is that this applies to colour. It seems you want to say no, but...

    To see it is a biological fact, just how nature works, and some of us may have better eyes than others.jkop

    This is, in fact, to say there is a 'correct' way of viewing hte world, biologically. Someone looking at 430THz of light, and seeing Blue, is 'wrong' (whether that's a physical aberration or otherwise..).
  • Perception
    colour perception is all about neurosciencejkop

    Are you suggesting that the science of vision doesn't explain Red? Then how can you claim what you've claimed?

    the colour is the bundle of lights and pigments that emerge as a colour when seen under ordinary conditionsjkop

    I smell Tuna...
  • Evidence of Consciousness Surviving the Body
    To some degree, sure, but framing it that way is some extremely bad interpretation. That there are gaps in knowledge doesn't require invoking God. But it does require some novel thinking, at times. That's all I'm indicating. It's not Carroll's field... If God comes out of that exercise, i'd be a surprised as you.
  • Personal Identity and the Abyss
    In other words, isn’t being the same person throughout space and time an essential element of what it is to being a human?Thales

    I think we'd have to solve the fundamental problem: What does personal identity consist in?

    There are various views:
    The bodily continuity view (think: body=identity)
    The psychological continuity view (think: memory/disposition=identity)
    The further fact view (think: soul or a materialist equivalent=identity)

    They all fail to describe much of anything we take to be our 'identity'. I think most people intuitively take the further fact view. But it is very, very hard to maintain outside of strictly religious, supernatural frameworks.

    I'm unsure Zeno has much to say here. His paradox you've picked out takes time to be made up of indivisible points which doesn't seem to be the case at all.


    There is the additional view that the above is nonsense, and we must only consider personal identity to be a set of dispositions, arbitrary or curated, in a person's behaviour. Your 'identity' could be 'demisexual aromatic nonbinary transgender neurospicy Unicornkin" in this sense though, so I think it's a cop-out to the actual problem of figuring out what makes 'me' 'me' over time.
  • The essence of religion
    On order to take metaethics seriously, one has to look, not to the concept, the understanding's counterpart to the living actuality, but to just this actuality. The proof for this lies in the pudding: putting one's hand of a pot of boiling water, for example: NOW you know the REAL ground for the moral prohibition against doing this to others.Constance

    This is a non sequitur for the ages. I did warn about this - continental philosophy is rhetoric only. That's why teenage boys are still finding Satre interesting. We all go through a death on the way adulthood - pretending these self-involved, preening narratives are somehow extrapolable is a serious mistake, and probably a good portion of why this type of 'philosophy' is both derided readily, and defending vehemently. But this is like defending Christianity because it pulled you thruogh your divorce. Arbitrary.

    but there is no (ontological? metaphysical?) relationship.ENOAH

    There isn't even a moral relationship. It's just a confirmation of the intuition that one probably shouldn't boil one's hand. That isn't moral.
  • Perception
    the colour is the bundle of lights and pigments that emerge as a colour when seen under ordinary conditionsjkop

    Hmmm this seems a really, really difficult account to accept. Is this to say that there is a 'correct' mode of seeing, and anyone who sees 430THz and does not accept they are seeing 'Red' is objectively wrong, or has retarded(in the medical sense) vision?

    Unfortunately for parts of your account, there are some fairly glaring issues. Michael has picked up on one (but I think been less-than-direct about it):

    These colours are percepts, they occur when the visual cortex is active, and all of this happens when awake as well.Michael

    If your take is correct, then the same experience is being had by the mind when dreaming, even if this is 'artificial' according to your view(memory, or some such being utilized by the unconscious mind). How is the colour actually outside the mind, when there is no possible way to even indicate that it is 'the colour' without this mind-bound experience?
    I don't personally have a fundamental issue with saying 'colours' are simply (arbitrarily) defined as their wavelength of light, rather than any experience they invoke. But this doesn't seem to be how the word is used in every-day language.
  • Is the real world fair and just?
    The events on earth suggest a negligible commitment to the welfare and happiness of creatures.Tom Storm

    As noted earlier though, if any personal God is 'true', we are wrong to think this way. We are simply not listening.
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    What is "bad faith" is having liars claim they know what they're talking about without having studied Marx and then having an idiot weigh in with a judgment out of the blue that nobody really cares about.Benkei

    What a bizarre level of irony. That said, it's clear you have an axe to grind. I'm sure you'll continue through several more failed states.
  • Is the real world fair and just?
    One baked-in element of God is His moral correctness and the source of ethical and moral truths. We would have to be wrong on (in fairness..) almost every conception of a personal God, and most others too. The entire point of God is to provide an ethically-inarguable framework. The subsequent discussion/revision/updating of those frameworks speaks to the nonsenseness of religion, imo.

    Is something good because the gods will it or the gods will it because it’s good?schopenhauer1

    In my view, this discussion (Euthyphro, Liebniz) is fundamentally erroneous. We have the texts. Either see to the texts (which in Judeo-Christiandom are extremely clear - God dictates ethical truth, not recognises it) or accept that they are not foundational texts. I don't really understand why one would ask the question, unless you're seriously considering a supernatural God and want to square your discomfort with that position. In that case, navigating one's discomfort might be required to live a fulfilling life, but it clearly flies in the face of the texts.
  • Antinatalism Arguments
    You deem 'suffering' as 'bad' (or rather "Boo!") knowing it is your subjective emotions talking.I like sushi

    It's hard to commit to a formulation of this part, but I think this is a bullet to bite, in terms of its vagueness. Yes.

    How then can you state, in any serious way, that something is 'right' or 'wrong'I like sushi

    I don't see a problem. I'm an Emotivist. That's what 'right' and 'wrong' mean.

    But you seem to be saying "it is 'wrong' (boo!) for me" not that it is out and out wrong (Boo!) for everyone or that there is anything dictating what is objectively viewed as 'right; or 'wrong' other than commonality of emotional expressions.I like sushi

    A lot here.
    It is wrong for anyone(currently, anyhow) as far as I am concerned. Enforcement of that policy can only apply to me based on my ethical views.
    (my view is that..)There is nothing that could even begin to dictate what is objectively right or wrong (in the meta-ethical sense of the term "objective"). Those words don't have objective bases.
    The basis is necessarily one's emotional disposition (maybe predisposition? This could in a very weird and unsatisfying way open the door to a more-objective ethic) as there is nothing else which could inform us.
    The commonality of emotional expression is probably hte best way (:optimal) to work toward policy. I don't take this to indicate anything truly ethical. But it does indicate the overall moral vibe of a society/culture.

    It is interesting how this, in part, appears similar to moral naturalism rather than moral scepticism.I like sushi

    Could you expand? My understanding of Moral Naturalism is that it more or less indicates that morals are evolutionarily-required aspects of human development, which I don't agree with.

    ...what I previously expressed as harbouring a 'Moral' stance of AN rather than an 'Ethical' stance of AN...I think we could argue back and forth a bit more but it may be mostly a semantic issue given that emotivism is hard to articulate (a serious flaw of emotivism).I like sushi

    Hmm. Pretty hard disagree. I think in these exchanges I have navigated through that suggestion pretty well. The fact that I don't think I should be forcing other people to adopt my view doesn't make it less ethically-driven. Not doing much about it is a dispositional fact of my mind or, to be a bit more sanguine, a practical necessity to not hating my life and hte world I live in.

    I disagree that Emotivism is either hard to articulate, or flawed in any meaningful way (beyond causing discomfort, that is - but that's baked into the position so LOL). But that would make sense if it's my position, so just noting this for thoroughness.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    IF that's how you see yourself mate, be my guest. I just think you're dull and self-obsessed.
  • Evidence of Consciousness Surviving the Body
    There was an opinion piece published in Scientific American, by physicist Sean CarrollWayfarer

    Let's say these two sources are not ones I would go to for discussions on anything remotely philosophically interesting.
    How does it interact with ordinary matter?

    This is his only question that doesn't carry all his suppositions. And it's been a live one for a long, long time.

    But that is not what 'most people have in mind'.Wayfarer

    Agreed.

    So, I myself don’t much like the terminology of ‘consciousness surviving death’Wayfarer

    Thanks for explaining. I guess i Ignore stupid self-restricting positions like Carroll's. Obviously, he's an authority on what he does know - which is physics after the free miracle :P
  • Bad Faith
    Looks like @Hanover has covered it, but on any conception of Bad Faith i'm aware, you coming here to say this instead of talking to your wife about hte underlying tension you're feeling is bad faith, in regard to the marriage. If that's how you feel, don't shirk it to a forum of intellectual ner-do-wells.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    The "formatting" helps you illiterati read and maybe even comprehend the post. Btw, you're welcome.180 Proof

    It doesn't. It both makes it distinctly harder to grasp what you mean by all the random, nonsensical formatting - and It makes you look like more of a narcissist than does your content. Which is wild, particularly given the tone of this response I've quote LOL.
    Your lack of self-awareness is absolutely astounding.
  • What are you listening to right now?
    Absolute banger. Good to see some eclectic tastes showing up here..
  • Is the real world fair and just?
    If "Higher Morality" (God's morality) is so sadistically bad for its creatures, what does this say?schopenhauer1

    That we're wrong. That's baked into the description, really. If God's morals differ from ours, we are necessarily wrong.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    I was right. As usual.Mikie

    I cannot be overstated how utterly bereft of reality this is. You had to eat crow about Biden the same f'ing week this took place (i.e the ass. attempt and ensuing up-tick for T-Ump. ).