Right, strictly speaking, we don't "see" the design in plants. We see the order, and with the aid of equipment we might say we "see" the DNA etc., but we don't "see" the design. And this is consistent with human designs. We do not "see" the person's intent, or plan, it exists immaterially in the mind of the person. This is why understanding the nature of final cause, and how the object, as the goal, exists immaterially before it has material existence is very important to understanding the nature of design. — Metaphysician Undercover

Aristotle's entire framework of causation is just that, a framework. It doesn't necessarily map to reality. To give a real world example: There is nothing to suggest that proteins are made to function the way they function. For every functional protein [e.g Hemoglobin], there are hundreds of 'pseudo' genes that failed to function in the process of attempting to make that one.

And proteins don't have singular purposes, they are multifunctional. In fact it's precisely this cognitive bias we have [ functional fixedness ], of assuming purpose, that leads to so many mischaracterizations of proteins -- we fail to realize just because they're important for something in one context, doesn't mean they have entirely different functions in others. To carry the example, hemoglobin, most well-known for carrying oxygen in the blood and most expressed by red blood cells in the blood. Carrying oxygen seems the 'purpose' of hemoglobin, but hemoglobin is also expressed in numerous other tissues. In those cells it plays roles completely different than its role as an oxygen carrier. This also discounts the non-bodily uses of something like hemoglobin. We repurpose proteins all the time, taking them out of their natural contexts to do other things.

This is illogical, and not an extension of my logic. We find designed order within the bodies of animals and plants, about which we cannot say that the designer is the animal and plant itself. The design comes from the genetics and underlying processes. So an animal such s a human being, designing something, is just an extension of this underlying designing which is occurring in all plants and animals all the time.

Therefore your proposed extension of logic is a composition fallacy. You are proposing that what is true of some instances of design, that the designers are "intelligent terrestrial animals", is true of all instances of design. But in reality we see design in lower level life forms, without intelligence, so we cannot restrict our conception of "designer" in such a way.

What we do, in philosophy and metaphysics is observe very closely, and analyze the intentional acts of human designers, which are very evident to us, so that we can develop an understanding of the underlying designing process which is responsible for the existence of living bodies. This designing is what Aristotle called final cause. — Metaphysician Undercover

You've just decoupled 'intelligence', 'external agent', and even 'external cause' from 'designer'. How do you distinguish design from order?

There's a further aspect which I explained earlier, which you don't seem to be accounting for, and that is that it is impossible that we will ever find an instance of order which we can justifiably claim came into existence without a designer. This is why I told Isaac that this is a pointless position to take.
I — Metaphysician Undercover

First of all the argument is circular. Your discounting natural cases of order as having an alternative source of order depends on your [in all honesty, narrow-sighted] conclusion that there are no other sources of order. You then use this assumption to conclude that there are in fact no other sources of order.

This is despite the dis analogies in man-made and natural cases of order pointed out by @Isaac - i.e. (1) that hurricane Katrina, black holes, snowflakes, the spherical ordered tangle of the rubber bands in my pocket, and mars, were not made with any clear purpose or intent; (2) that natural order results from self organization as opposed to an external agent or individual. These clearly provide enough justification to assume the things generating natural and man-made order are different .

Secondly, there is a chicken and egg dillema here. The thing which allows humans to be intelligent, the their brain [we know this unambiguously because of lesioning studies, in which damage to the brain directly causes deficits in intelligence], is itself a natural object operating by universal natural principles. So, fundamentally, the patterns it generates are patterns that nature itself is generating as a deductive consequence of the way it is structured (which, in one local region of reality at one local time in reality, happens to be a 'designer'). So, 'design', then isn't really the result of 'designers', it is fundamentally a result of the way the universe is intrinsically structured. So, in this view, there is only ever one ultimate source of order [and disorder] which is nature itself.

Anyway I've gone on a limb and did a cursory search for clear examples of order arising from entirely unpredictable, random processes. I was able to find a nice article which provides an example of pendulums which take on an orderly state of swinging when swung at in entirely random ways. In this case the ordered properties of the system - the orientation and swinging of the pendulums - results entirely from the disorder of the inputs to the system. So here is one case in which order comes out of disorder.

Of course we also know the universe is fundamentally indeterministic or random - this is why schrodinger's equation is a probabilistic model, not a deterministic law. In fact it gives you, based on the energy of the system, only all possible locations where the system could be and the likelihoods of 'finding it' at those points - should you assume the system as actually, a conventional point particle. Alternatively, you can imagine it as telling you the object exists in all possible locations it could be given that energy.

You said it’d be illogical to think there is any source for order other than a designer.

Your justification is that every instance of things we conventionally define to be ordered, derives from a ‘designer’. You infer from all instances of design-designer you’ve seen, that order in the natural world must also be from a designer.

I’m just extending the logic here. While it’s true everything we define to be ordered has a designer, it’s also true that all designers are intelligent terrestrial animals. There is nothing to suggest designers could be otherwise because we’ve never seen any other possible designer, in the same way we’ve never seen any other source for design. So it would be illogical to assume that the universe could be designed by anything other than intelligent terrestrial animals

You don’t see design in plants, you instead conclude that the order in plants is designed, which you ultimately infer from the fact that all man-made designs come from human designers.

Meanwhile, I've demonstrated that the only way we know of, that order could possibly come into existence, is from an intelligent designing agent. And, it is unreasonable, and illogical to think that we could ever know of order coming from another source. — Metaphysician Undercover

By the bolded's logic, the universe must be designed by a terrestrial animal capable of design. We have never observed anything intelligent enough to design things that is not an animal capable of design, so any intelligent thing, by your logic, must be an animal capable of design. So it must be so that God is, in fact, a terrestrial animal... Well maybe a computer, so maybe God's an uncreated computer.

Do you see how ridiculous that sounds?

I demonstrated that your so-called "reasons" are unreasonable, so why are you falling back on this unreasonableness? Let's look again. — Metaphysician Undercover

I was not referring to the snowflake example, I was referring to the definition of design; he has not addressed that point.

I stand by that order doesn't imply designer for the reasons I mentioned to @TheMadFool. Designs are made ordered by something external to them, by definition.

How the particles move is an unknown. Some aspects of their movements are predictable, but that only means that the movements are orderly. The capacity to predict does not imply that the movements are known. For example, one could predict that the sun will rise in the morning, and predict the precise time of the rising and setting, while believing that a giant dragon is moving the sun around the back side of the earth every night, in an orderly fashion, therefore not knowing that the earth is actually spinning. If the movement of an object is orderly, its appearance is predictable, but the ability to predict its appearance doesn't mean that its movements are known. — Metaphysician Undercover

I agree, we have no idea why the universe is the way it is. Why particles move at all. Why they move in characterizable ways. I think, however, theories that presuppose anthropocentric things like 'demons', 'dragons' moving objects that are similar to us with respect to being intelligent agents with a will to move things is just ridiculous- not saying you believe that, but a god in the sky designer, a computer scientist who's simulating/designing a universe on a computer and we're all in it, whatever other anthropocentric idea for why the universe operates the way it does is just absurd. Living things with brains that can interact and manipulate things physically etc. only exist on a single mote of dust in the middle of [basically] an infinite space of swirling stuff. Humans or anything conceivably like them do not have the capacity to manipulate the universe in a way that leads to ordered movements which obey the same equations at all points in space and time. Everything points to these movements and their order being generated intrinsically from reality itself and not something external to it.. it would also be very difficult for me to imagine what it would mean for something to be external to reality, since reality is defined as everything there is, observable or unobservable.

My point is while, sure, the world could just be a design, there is nothing that makes it the most likely explanation - I stand by that order doesn't imply designer for the reasons I mentioned to @TheMadFool. Designs are made ordered by something external to them, by definition.

Efficiency: Don't you think the universe is efficient? If "yes" then that's great design.

If "no", can you give an example? You mentioned human bodies and that reminded me of Neil deGrasse Tyson, the astrophysicist, who deprecated the design argument by stating that building an entertainment system (sex organs) right in the middle of a sewage system (excretory system - anus and all) was "poor" design. However, if efficiency, your criterion, is considered, multi-purpose structures should be the norm rather than the exception. — TheMadFool

No I don't think so. A clear example is energy loss going from trophic level to trophic level. Only 10% of the energy contained in an acre of grass is transferred to consumers of grass. The energy level drops exponentially as one goes from one level of consumer to the next, due to the cost of metabolic processes which result in heat production, and due to the inability to digest or store certain bonds. An efficient ecosystem would be able to maximize the utilization of energy. And what do you think of vestigial organs, pseudo genes?

I'd like to refer you back to the notion of complexity when you draw from nature or the universe for examples of undesigned order.

To illustrate take the example of clocks/watches. Chronometers began as sun dials and water clocks. They were then replaced by pendulum or mechanical clocks which were in turn superseded by digital versions. I've heard of people refer to this as "progress" from the primitive to the modern and is understandable in terms of increasing complexity. This increased complexity indicates increased knowledge and designing capability.

Since everything in nature is "surely" better designed than anything we humans are capable of i.e. is even more complex we should actually infer a better, far more knowledgeable designer than no designer; just like a digital watch is better designed than a sun dial. — TheMadFool

This example avoids the difference in our definition of design, and its influence on the arguments. If you agree with me that self organization is not the same as design then, by definition, order in the universe is not a result of design and you would agree with me that examples such as the one above has no bearing on the question of whether order in the universe is designed.

Secondly, I disagree with the idea that higher complexity implies more knowledge, I think instead higher efficiency implies more knowledge. A clock that is made of less organized parts, i.e. less complex, but is able to still function just as well as a more complicated watch with more parts is indicative of knowledge. It's certainly a fact that order in the universe is not the result of efficient means - evolution of species, for example, had to go through innumerable iterations before getting it right enough for survival [as opposed to perfectly right]. Human bodies are not fully efficient systems, there are many ways in which our strength, immune systems, cardiovascular systems could be optimized to minimize fatigue and effects of aging and so on. But I ultimately think this is a different issue.

This is obviously untrue, as evidenced by the unknowns within quantum mechanics. Just because we can observe enough of the process to make us believe that we understand it, doesn't mean that we actually understand the activities of those subatomic particles involved in these processes. And until we understand those activities of those subatomic particles, we cannot say that they haven't been designed to behave in the way that they do. — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't mean to be pestering, but what quantum mechanicals unknowns? All the quantum mechanics needed to understand basic subatomic interactions is well characterized: orbital geometries, bonding interactions between orbitals. The activities of the relevant subatomic particles - electrons and protons, are well known.

If what you mean by "we cannot say they haven't been designed to behave the way in they do" is that until we have an explanation for why they behave that way, we can't say they haven't been designed to do so, then I'd also disagree saying it's not the forming of snowflakes that's designed, it's the fundamental constants and forces that are designed to be the way they are. I think, however, this kind of thing just moves the problem up a level. The designer would have to be explained as well as, by being able to interact with matter, it must have some sort of form or mechanism of interacting. This implies there's a logic or order to the way the designer works. This order would then need to be accounted for.

Do you understand that every massive body is composed of parts? And, the parts within a massive body are not necessarily arranged in the way that they are, so as to make that particular mass. However, as time passes, the mass retains its composition, (parts not flying off in different directions), and this is inertia. This requires that the parts are "ordered" to maintain the existence of that massive body. As I explained to Isaac (who has now ignored my explanation and opted for an absolutely useless definition of "order"), the only way that we know of, by which these elements could be ordered like this, is through design.

We are working with different definitions of inertia. Your definition, the tendency of parts of an object to remain together over time, is not the same as the traditional definition of inertia, the tendency of an object to maintain its state of motion - either continuing at a certain velocity or remaining at rest. I don't think either of these require a designer.

The first case can be explained by just fundamental forces at work - at small scales [electron to maybe hundreds of kilometer range] electromagnetic force is most influential contributor to bodies maintaining their composition; at larger scales gravity is the most influential contributor.

The second case can be explained by general and special relativity.

Actually, we do not really know these mechanisms. We can describe these processes to an extent, provide a partial description of them, but not enough to say that a designing agent is not necessary. As I explained a couple posts back, the fundamental aspect of such processes, which we take for granted, inertia (the tendency for things to remain the same as time passes), which is how we describe temporal order, cannot be accounted for without an appeal to a designing agent. — Metaphysician Undercover

Probably the only thing I mentioned that is unknown enough to even make remote the possibility of a designer is galactic filaments. To my knowledge, there isn't a full explanation for how or why dark matter, which pulls ordinary matter to form filaments, is distributed in the organized way it is,. Snowflake formation, molecule formation is known with sufficient detail. If we didn't know how these were formed, we wouldn't able to make snow machines or pharmaceuticals.

I'm unsure what you mean by inertia being a fundamental aspect of these processes-- if anything it is the electromagnetic properties and kinetic energies of molecules and atoms that are fundamental to snowflake and molecule formation. How does inertia require a designing agent?

Assuming that I am conflating design and order what could be the reason for that? Could it be because the inference that order implies design(er) is a well-founded heuristic? — TheMadFool

Maybe it’s because the way we define ‘design’ differs. What did you think of my definition.

I don’t think order implies a designer - part of that is because the examples of natural, order - snowflakes, molecules, galactic filaments- are so numerous and we know the mechanisms and none of them require an external intelligent designing agent for their generation.

@aletheist made a pertinent remark viz. that complexity itself isn't sufficient to infer a designer. We need irreducible complexity. What is your opinion on irreducible complexity which basically states that if object x is irreducible complex then it shouldn't be possible for an object y, through small increments, to become x?

My understanding of ‘irreducible’ in the term irreducible complexity is irreducible with respect to function - ie, the object cannot function unless all its parts are present, functioning and arranged in a necessary way. I don’t think this necessarily implies designer. I can think, for example, of a protein, which by that definition is irreducibly complex. A functional protein is formed by an unguided, semi-stochastic process of protein folding.

I think what you could use as a criteria to infer designer is an inability to conceive of a plausible mechanism of generation. Ie if the pattern’s generation cannot be explained by an unguided, mechanistic process then it’s likely a design.

To this issue of irreducible complexity I simply draw your attention to human creativity. Which is a sign of greater designing ability - a computer program that is task-specific or an artificial intelligence that evolves and adapts and can make your morning coffee or crunch numbers for a space program?

I’d definitely say the artificial intelligence. And, whilst it’s true the components and the logic gate states which generate an artificial intelligence are something that cannot come together alone, implying AI is designed, this does not mean all intelligent agents are designed.

Thanks. It's the wide-scale application of this heuristic (order/design ergo designer) in our everyday lives and then making a singular exception of rejecting it when it comes to the universe that I'm asking an explanation for.

I understand that exceptions are the rule, so to speak, but there must be a good reason which I presume is an instance of order/design without a designer. Can you give me an example of that?

S — TheMadFool

Firstly, I think you are equivocating ordered and 'design'. The way in which a designer makes designs, which are ordered, is fundamentally different from the way nature orders. A designer, by necessity, intervenes on otherwise inanimate material to construct a particular design. A designer, by necessity, is an external force that designs something external to it. Order or patterns, on the other hand, is a more encompassing term and includes designs (i.e. patterns constructed, by an external agent) or self organized patterns. In nature, order and patterning is intrinsic to nature itself. I.e. a 'dog', cat, snowflake are all self organized; those things don't have external agents constructing them, hence they are not 'designed'.

Secondly, even if we equivocate order and design, that heuristic does not support the conclusion. I.e. Even if every design we know has a designer, not every design necessarily has a designer. In the same way that there being clouds in the sky does not imply rain. If rain then cloudy and if designer, then design, yes both of these are true but they are not exhaustive - i.e. the antecedent can still be false while the conclusion true.

I am aware that my ability to articulate this is not very good, and I am hoping that somebody who has had a similar experience either through dreams or psychedelics could help me understand and articulate this feeling more effectively, and perhaps point me in the direction of information related to this sense. — Eric Wintjen

I tried in some other post and I'm not sure I did a good job either.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/176521

I think w

Every person, as a self, body, or both, knows they exist. But that knowledge is certainly variable with concern to each one, as a lot of philosophies about proving one's existence have emerged, and are known for their common contradictions.

What's yours? I would like to hear from you. — Unlimiter

I think what's more disorienting and freaky is the thought that nothing really validates our own collective existence. I mean everything is materially continuous, and without our brains placing meaning and significance on the intrinsic patterns in the universe, and distinguishing tables from chairs, dogs from cats; there'd be nothing to do so.. it would just be what it always was; one blob of matter in motion.

All of those things we distinguish from surroundings, we do because of very human-centered reasons. An intelligent agent with a completely different set of sensors and body design may find other distinctions relevant to it and may completely discount our existence because to form a visual boundary around and define a 'human' or 'dog' or 'cat' may completely be irrelevant to it. Maybe its brain operates on a timescale of hundreds of years as opposed to miliseconds, or nanoseconds as opposed to miliseconds and so it just misses us; maybe it's so tiny it finds objects on the bacterial scale of size relevant. etc. But the point is, there's nothing really substantiating our existence; we just collectively validate each other's existence because we interact with each other.

Thinking of a 'designer' as best explanation is just availability heuristic. Irregardless of whether all designs at present have designers, there could be an alternative explanation that is unintuitive, but true.

At this point, there are good reasons to not think there's a designer because it's now established the universe operates by rules that result in ordering. Those rules are intrinsic to the structure of the universe and not external to it; i.e. it's not a stagnant, lifeless clay that gets molded by some external hands or force; it is self molding.

Even supposing any sort of designer seems so anthropocentric. Maybe the universe is intrinsically self-creative; maybe there is something or process that 'creates' that is entirely unlike any thing we could imagine and would better be understood as just being a fundamental component of reality itself. It'd be hard to imagine a 'creating' force that isn't itself inextricably linked with what it creates because in order to create it must interact with its creation which implies it shares properties with the creation; those properties being what mediate the interaction. If it shares properties with that creation then its substance is the same as that creation. This is the same reason why strict mind-body dualism doesn't work; how would a soul/body interact if there's no intermediative? My point is, even if there's a creative engine, its likely some other fundamental element of one singular reality - be it a multiverse or whatever else`.

How so? — TheMadFool

I think it has to do with how the meaning is encoded. In traditional language, a word's referent is a particular concept; even in the Wittgensteinian sense, within a given language game, the word has some specific precise referent. In music, the individual tones do not have concrete referents. Instead meaning is conveyed directly through pitch, loudness, timbre, duration. The meaning, in terms of emotional significance, is captured by directly relating the loudness, pitch, to one's emotion. It would be hard to imagine dividing a song into concrete melodic elements that mean concrete things. You instead listen to a longer stretch of melodies and then you connect it to vague descriptives of emotion, adjectives. The emotions conveyed could or could not be relevant to whatever conceptual story you have in your mind or it could be related to the lyrical parts of the song that go on to determine the conceptual meaning of the strings of tone.

Ultimately I think emotion and concepts are very distinct and so are communicated best in different ways, hence why you can communicate emotion with music and concepts with language.

You could counter by arguing we can attach concrete referents to particular sounds in a similar way we do with words in a traditional language; but I would argue then what you are using is not music anymore; it would then be a language. In fact that is what we do with a traditional language.

Everybody loves music. It's one of few human talents that gets mentioned on any list of human achievements. People consider it a distinguishing feature of the human species. Of course birds sing and that's where I want to lead this discussion to.

I consider myself a below-average music fan as I prefer the melody more than the lyrics. Most people who have truly appreciate music like the combination of melody and lyrics.

Music is pleasant to hear and different pieces (songs or instrumentals) elicit different moods. Music has this ability. I can even go so far as to say that if the music/song is of the right kind people may even "enjoy" getting murdered.

Anyway, language as spoken has no musical quality as such. Excitement or surprise may result in an increase in volume and a high pitch. Depressed people speak in subdued tones, etc. These however aren't usually counted as music/song.

My question is, if music can connect with our inner selves and with others in terms of emotion, etc, why hasn't language evolved into singing or is language in the process of becoming a song?

In some ways all the music that exist and how people derive meaning from them suggests that language is transforming into a song just like with birds where the song is the language. — TheMadFool

Music has less precision than words, making it less useful for communicating certain kinds of information, eg. factual knowledge. Maybe that's why we have both capacities as opposed to one or the other, since neither really put us at an evolutionary disadvantage whereas both have their own particular advantages.

Being mean would be to callously speak or behave in a way that disregards the negative feelings your action trigger in another person. It's a moral flaw because it perpetuates unjustified, unnecessary suffering.

We are humans, we are fallible. But can one gain knowledge via introspection? yes. Can people improve their use of introspection? I think they can. I also think one uses introspection in all sorts of other methods, even if these seem outward focused and rational. We are always checking in internally and intuitively during any trying to gain knowledge process. — Coben

I agree

^Maybe it's the same with just implicit recognizing, not just with words. To see a world of things is to already have categorized the world into objects, which involves a fallible process of reasoning, even though it's non linguistic. I've never tried to consciously 'bracket', in the husserlian sense, my categorizations of mental phenomena into mental objects but it would be an interesting exercise.

If realizing means labeling, that's not what I'm talking about. As I said previously - No inferring, no explaining, no understanding, no attribution, no acknowledgment. Now we can add no labeling and, I suppose, no recognizing. An episode of the Simpsons comes to mind when they go to Australia. — T Clark

I'm sorry some of this is just really subtle because it's easy to assume an 'introspection' involves a factual claim about your inner life 'e.g. 'I am feeling tired'. I think the moment you begin to try concluding something about your inner life is the moment fallibility becomes possible. Otherwise, I agree you cannot be wrong with what you are plainly observing presuming you aren't trying to make sense of it or categorize it as a type of experience.

As I wrote, introspection is observation, not interpretation, not intuition. How do I know that?....Introspection. I observe my introspection. How? Using my introspection. No inferring, no explaining, no understanding, no attribution, no acknowledgment.

For a moment, just imagine what I'm talking about. From what you've written, it seems like you don't experience things this way. But people do. I do. We're not wrong. You're not wrong either, except when you say we're wrong. People are different. Why is that hard to understand? — T Clark

So observing or recognizing yourself as having or experiencing certain internal states, emotions, thoughts. That's introspection correct? I think the process of labeling feelings, 'recognizing' certain feelings is falliable. I didn't think about 'meta' introspection - introspecting introspections. It's true you can self correct that way but I think from implicit attitude research, there is good reason to think despite this, a large number of people may mistake what they think they believe or feel for what they actually feel or believe. It would take repeated 'introspective experiments' to see how you really feel or think about something.

Introspection is not the same thing as intuition. Introspection, as I've said, is just observation. I've spent a lot of attention observing my internal life. How can I be wrong about what I see? I can be wrong about what I do with those observations, but that's true of everything. Generally, I'd say introduction is more effective for me than other types of observation. — T Clark

You don't think we occasionally confabulate, thinking sometimes we know how we felt or why we did a certain thing when in actuality the real reason, if any, was different? I think it's very possible to misattribute emotions and misunderstand feelings, specifically when there are implicit attitudes or biases hidden because of whatever discomfort they cause to ackgnowledge. I think, as with any other sort of infering, like with external observation, it's possible to not be right even with introspection.

When I observe the outside world with my senses, e.g. a dog sitting on my lawn, is that observation a source of knowledge or a tool for gaining knowledge? In my view, introspection is an observation that is internal rather than external. I'm going to stick with "source of knowledge," but let's not get into a back and forth about it. I don't think it really matters.

I'm sorry I misunderstood the claim here. I still would say it's a method of obtaining knowledge not a source; the 'dog sitting on the lawn', that fact, is sourced from the outside world. But I wont talk about it more.

I think you should test your introspection. How many times do you get it wrong when considering how you introspect things to be or turn out which have a matter of fact answer? I think personally it's clear it isn't a valid source because of the amount of times my introspection doesn't work for me; I typically need to modify my first intuitions or introspections with reasoning

I wouldn't say introspection is a source of knowledge; all the knowledge comes a posteriori ultimately but it certainly allows for sifting through and identifying what is sound true fact vs what is not. It's more a tool for gaining knowledge but not the source of knowledge.

I would distinguish between introspection and feelings, thoughts, beliefs or other mental objects because those things are still experiential/empirical. Identifying those things internally is still an empirical process -- you are recognizing facts about your inner life. The actual reasoning process/introspection is not the same thing.

Notice the implicit dualism of 'out there'. It imagines 'the world', as object, to me, the observer, 'in here'. Whatever is real is 'out there somewhere'. That is what I call 'instinctive naturalism'. I'm not saying it's wrong - but it is something to be noticed. — Wayfarer

Well I think the whole psychologism framing creates a dualism in posing the origin of logic being 'mental' vs 'physical' so I just took you saying 'recognize' as opposed to 'construct' to mean you side on the 'physical' side of the division.

But I say the development of language, logic and reasoning - which I'm sure are inextricably connected - requires something more than the fortuitous combination of elements. [It requires the ability to recognise meaning, to see that one type of thing equals or differs from another type of thing. That is inherently an abstract process, isn't it? Where else in nature do you find an analogy for that? I think this is why semiotics and bio-semiotics have become so influential of late - it's because of the 'language-like' processes that seem inherent in nature itself, which are not amenable to reduction to physical or lower-level processes.

You seem to reduce a physicalist picture of language, logic and reasoning to being in terms of a fortuitous combination of elements.

But this is simplification. There are [or at least from our scale, seem to be] rules that govern interaction between elementary particles. These principles can generate processes that result in "meaning-carrying" and "meaning recognizing" phemonena - e.g. a cell responding to a hostile environment, a cell responding to a change in signaling factors surrounding it. You can analyze these processes in terms of elemental ones that fundamentally work via electromagnetic and mechanical mechanisms- enzyme-substrate binding, diffusion electrochemical gradients, etc.

So it's not just fortune or luck at work int he world and hence I don't think you need to assume the physical needs some sort of extra element for there to be a logic intrinsic to it.

So seems like you think we start out with our own inference rules and we use it to figure out or 'discover' what the real 'rules' or 'logic' that's intrinsic to the world is [likewise with the 'actual' causal relations' and so on.].

You should read Quine's two dogmas. He makes a good case against apriori justification.

don’t you imply an inherently reliable physical reality by presupposing that things like common physiologies exist? If you argue organisms that have common perceptual systems exist then you are already implicitly assume a physical reality that can independently give rise to organisms like that.

The first level of measurement is 'nominal' i.e. naming of 'the thing to be measured'. The naming of 'space' or 'time' is no exception. 'Space' and 'time' are 'things' by virtue of being useful concepts fof some human endeavours.

There is no point in arguing about naive realistic axioms. The thesis rejects them by definition. — fresco

It can’t be entirely nominal or else how could we even have common, reliable experiences at all? At some point there must be primitive referents to which we can slap on symbols.

By assertng that 'a concept' is not idential to 'the object it conceives' you are immediately dismissing the relativity thesis by stepping back into the naive realism of 'objects'. Bohr was suggesting that what we call 'objects' are focal aspects of agreement about our experiences denoted by 'words'. Common species physiology tends to imply large areas of agreement which we tend to call 'objects — fresco

I think it’s clear there’s something observer independent that you measure when you measure the charge of an electron. The property or feature being measured may not actually ‘be’ an electron - the concept may be incomplete or just a useful fiction to keep track of the properties being measured but that doesn't discount the independence of the actual measurement.

But that doesn’t mean it’s existence as an independent existing thing is absolute either - it is dependent on a space-time position and the reason it’s distinguished and recognized as an object distinct from the background is because of its relevance to us and the way it interacts with us. What I’m trying to say is physicality can still exist but the way it’s catalogued and divided up is not intrinsic and is relative to whether the distinctions we make are meaningful to us. In that way existence of particular objects can be relative while still maintaining the reality of a larger observer independent whole

There are 2 assumptions you are making that are a bit problematic:

1. Determinism and ‘unfreewill’ are synonymous
2. Unfreewill implies reasoning is circular

Im still not sure how you came to the second assumption. You can have a deterministic processs that lets you compare and consider all alternative explanations for something. And the first is not true. They’re distinct concepts and there are many people ready to defend the belief that both are compatible with each other

You feel you are doing these things because you are conscious of doing them, but something is presenting these "perceptions" to the consciousness. Have you ever been driving and realized at some point that miles have gone by, with actions and decisions being made, and yet you know that the conscious "you" was operating on auto-pilot? — Unseen

Well I think here you're mixing up attention with consciousness. You're still conscious [having experiences] of the road and what actions you are doing, just not focused or attending to them. These are being triggered by the intrinsic circuitry which simply has qualia associated with it or causes qualia. Secondly, I don't think just because most reasoning and decision making can be done on autopilot doesn't mean all forms of reasoning can. Decisions involving self inhibition - stoping yourself from reaching for the cookie; deliberative reasoning involving language, future and goal oriented reasoning-- are things that I think require heavy attention-load and intentional decisions.

When you argue by giving me questions rather than facts (e.g., " why couldn’t consciousness play important roles in other mental processes") that is just speculation and doesn't really answer why. Remember, I'm not denying that we're conscious. I'm not even denying that we may need to be conscious to function. I just can't figure out why we need to be conscious. Many plant species preceded higher mammals on Earth and, thus, have longer records of evolutionary success, proving that consciousness need not have any survival value at all.

Well, so evolution is not a convergent process; there's nothing restricting successful organisms from having different design plans-- anything that can survive and reproduce will. Secondly just because consciousness is not advantageous for a certain kind of organism doesn't mean it isn't advantageous for another. Plants and animals have completely different metabolisms- plant's don't need to do more than extend leaves out for their energy while animals need move around and search through their environments to find their food and survive. Clearly a certain kind of nervous system is needed for conscious experiences -- and that kind happened to work in a way that either promoted or did not effect survival in any negative way.

It looks like you support your claim ‘we could function without having experiences’ by trying to decouple conscious experience from the actual mental processes - ‘there are plenty of sensory inputs we aren’t conscious of’ and ‘most decisions seem to be made seconds before our being aware of them’. Firstly not every decision has been demonstrated as temporally decoupled - those decision experiments are for in-the-moment predictions using available sensory cues, they don’t demonstrate the same for future-oriented goal making or for deliberative reasoning. Secondly, I don’t think a time delay definitively decouples what imparts consciousness from, say, decision making systems or sensory input: the thing which causes the time delay may simply be the time it takes for the signal reach and effect the speech and motor centers involved in providing the response to the behavioral task. But say they really are decoupled, why couldn’t consciousness play important roles in other mental processes - goal setting and goal refining, socializing and interpersonal interaction, meta cognitive reasoning. Maybe it just gets the salient and relevant inputs as prepackaged and refined representations for those roles. If that’s the case then while the consciousness imparting system is distinct, it is involved in some other important processing going on and so has a reason to be there.

If you just want to know why we are conscious instead of a computer, well then that’s a tractable question for which there’s an answer. It would fundamentally come down to brains having consciousness generating mechanisms which computers -modern day computers don’t have. Maybe there will be artificially conscious systems one day, but this means they have those fundamental mechanisms running.

If your question is broader and asks why at all is there consciousness, then it’s not satisfyingly answerable (just a brute fact, like the existence of charges and mass) and -imo- on par with asking why is the universe this way instead of some other possible way or why am I me and not you.

Probably the only thing that seems self evident is universal basic freedoms
— aporiap

What I think needs to be justified are universal basic rights
— aporiap — Banno

I wasn't thinking of self-evident proposals. Rather, there are some propositions, the denial of which tells us about the denier.

But this dodges the glaring problem of grounding. I agree it seems more than callous to deny basic rights, it feels disgusting, but that doesn't provide a formal grounding or justification.

I don't think we do need to ground enlightenment values in something else. Rather, those who reject them ought explain why. — Banno

Probably the only thing that seems self evident is universal basic freedoms because there doesn't seem to be any morally relevant ground to say one or another individual has special claim to anything. The lottery of birth argument seems enough to counter any sort of counter claim. There also doesn't seem to be any fundamental justification for any restriction or constraint on freedom - which themselves would be positive 'ought's' that need to be justified. Freedom is in a way an empty term since it just refers to a lack; a lack of constraint. Obviously things like do not steal or kill are rules I believe in but they're justified by social contract, unless you can think of another argument.

What I think needs to be justified are universal basic rights since they make positive claims about what people are entitled to. I think the rawlsian approach is an excellent enough justification, but that is an argument nonetheless.

Well the thing is he is making an absolutist claim in the OP.

So, when you are dreaming, at what point do you know that the dream is over and that you are no longer experiencing it? Answer: Not until you wake up. And if you've experienced general anesthesia, at what point do you know that you are not in the operating room being given the anesthesia? Answer: Not until you wake up (experiencing a new present moment). And if you never wake up?

Well I simply think you cease being conscious of anything -- there is no experience at all at a certain point. You never become aware or know of when exactly that happens, but it does happen. There's a difference between replaying or being stuck in a moment and having a final thing you're conscious of and just ceasing to be aware of it, without being aware that you became unaware of it. I'd imagine in the former case - [the eternal experience of the final moment case] -you would recall being in a moment for an extended period of time - would you agree with that?

You're presupposing enlightenment values -universal basic rights, universal freedoms- as your metric for superiority. As obvious as it seems, it still needs a grounding or justification before this sort of argument can be made. Moral theists can always appeal to divine command to legitimate their system