. . . because? That would require an argument. — Terrapin Station

How can your perception be located as the state of a physical brain, and yet somehow you're directly perceiving the world outside/beyond this brain?

How can what you see be a physical world and yet sight is located as a brain state?

Basically how can you see beyond a head when sight is within that head?

I don't see how you can state that consciousness is literally equal to the state of a physical brain, and yet you directly (or at least non-representional) perceive the physical world existing beyond this brain?

"Equal to" is "identical to," which implies that that's all that exists (on that view). But again, that you know about the world via your consciousness doesn't imply that the world is identical to your consciousness (or equal to it). How you know about something isn't the same thing as what you know about. That line of reasoning makes no more sense than saying that you're eating a toaster because a toaster is how you make toast. A toaster may be the means by which you make toast, but that doesn't imply that the toaster is the toast. — Terrapin Station

There is a misunderstanding of what I mean by "world around you". So there's a physical world, with a physical brain state. And then there's the "world around you", and what I mean by that is the lived world, your experience of being a body in a world. So that's your visual field, what you hear, what you sense, etc. These are conscious experience. So if conscious experience is equal to the state of a physical brain, than your sense experiences of being a body in an environment is equal to the state of a physical brain. Because your sense experiences include what constitutes your lived head (you see your head, you feel your head, etc), your lived head must be equal to the state of a physical brain, which is in a physical body in the external physical world.

Or put it like this, sense experience can't be located as the state of a physical brain while also be a direct perception of the head that encapsulates it, and the world beyond.

So am I wrong in thinking that you think there is a physical brain inside your head, and your conscious experience is equal to the state of this physical brain?

I could see a case being made for laws against screaming "ALLAHU ACKBAR I HAVE A BOMB IM GONNA KILL EVERYONE" in the middle of a crowded plane ride.

What if there's no laws against masking school shooter threats to a school? Wouldn't there be constant false alarms because tonnes of students would make them just to avoid a test?

What about if a policeman says he has a warrant to search your property? Or that if you leave an interrogation room you will be placed under arrest? Or he reads you your Miranda rights but alters it in some way such as "you do NOT have the right to remain silent". But he's just using his free speech.

What if you ask your doctor if the drug he is prescribing has any side effects, and he says no even if it does because he profits off it?

Shouldn't a judge be obligated to tell the truth? What if he just doesn't like you and says you're sentenced to death, even though you'll be released the next day?

Should there be no legal consequences for a mayor issuing a false hurricane warning just to watch the city evacuate?

Should a teacher be allowed to teach creationism as fact in a public school?

When people talk about free speech I think they generally that one should be able to express whatever *opinion or view* they have without facing legal repercussions. And not that you can literally say whatever you want in any situation without restriction.

I mean that's so open to abuse. What if you don't understand the law, ask a policeman and he lies to you so that you break the law and he arrests you?

Science is educated guess work. And as valuable as it may be when applied to engineering (medical and mechanical), no human being should ever place their faith in it. — taylordonbarrett

You seem to be asserting scientific instrumentalism so on that view it wouldn't make sense to call science educated guesswork because a guess is the type of thing which is either true or false.

Or you might be saying that, "because all/most of our previous scientific theories have turned out to be false, repeatedly, we are not justified in believing our present ones to be true". ?

Non sequitur. That you know about things via your conscious experience doesn't imply that only your conscious experience exists. — Terrapin Station

I didn't imply that. I even said "equal to the state of a (physical) brain".

And re the way you're stating that, you're contradicting yourself anyway. You say, "You know ABOUT THE WORLD AROUND YOU." Well, on your view, there is no world around you to know about, since you think that everything is just conscious experience. —

Even if that was what I was saying, there's more ways than just physical of understanding the world around you. You seem to be saying that if you don't understand the world around you as being physical, you must therefore hold that it doesn't exist!

Creationists readily recognize the conflict between their explanations and evolution. (And it is they, not scientists, who make much public noise about the conflict.)

Their responses are instructive, and perhaps can be generalized so they apply to other conflicts between supernatural agent vs. naturalist explanations.

One avenue of resolving the conflict is simply to deny the naturalistic explanation--deny evolution.) — Brainglitch

Yeah, most creationists seem to subscribe to scientific realism, hence the conflict. I'm just saying it's not mandatory, and you can resolve the conflict another way - subscribing to scientific instrumentalism.

So, being a creationist you'd take religious accounts to be true/false. Whereas you wouldn't take scientific theories to be true/false descriptions of reality. Therefore there's no conflict.

Either one subscribes to the explanation that God created all the various species in one day (and brought them before Adam to name them), or one subscribes to evolution, or neither. But not both. These explanations strike me as mutually exclusive, conflicting. — Brainglitch

Because if you take scientific instrumentalism to be the case, then you wouldn't 'subscribe to evolution'/take evolution to be true, because scientific theories for you are not true or false descriptions of reality.

At the same time you could also be religious and take the account in genesis to be true/believe in it.

I'm not actually religious I'm just pointing out that a lot of what's being argued in this thread rests on an unstated subscription to a non-instrumentalist view of science. The conflict between evolution and creation only comes about when one subscribes to scientific realism.

. It doesn't follow that if consciousness is simply a brain state, then everything is a brain state. I have no idea what your argument would be for that, but surely the argument isn't sound. — Terrapin Station

If consciousness is a brain state then everything that is consciousness is a brain state. You know about your body (including your head) and the world around you through conscious experience. Therefore the body you experience and the world you perceive around you must be equal to the state of a brain.

Touching your head is a conscious experience. If consciousness is the very same thing as a brain state, then your sensation of touching your head must be the very same thing as a brain state. Therefore the brain state which is the very same thing as 'touching your head' can't be the state of a physical brain within the head you touch, rather your touch experience of a head is already the state of a physical brain. There's no physical brain within your head that you touch, rather all your conscious experience, including that of your head, is already the state of a physical brain.

You know about your head with proprioception, touch, sight, etc.
Sense experiences are the very same thing as states of a physical brain.
Your head you are conscious of is the state of a physical brain.
Therefore your head you are conscious of can't contain the physical brain state that your conscious experience of a head is equal to.

I don't agree at all.

Also a lot of people don't seem to get that if consciousness is simply the state of your brain, this means that the body and the world around you perceive - being conscious experience - must itself be a particular brain state.

So you're left in the horrible epistemic position of the brain state that gives rise to/is equal to your conscious experience not being within your head that you feel, see, touch, rather all those sense experiences, and the world around you, and the people you interact with, must all already be the particular state of a brain.

So basically you're a homunculus. An onboard body/world model within the brain of a physical human.

This is a horrible epistemic position to be on, because from the position of the onboard self/world model, you do not have any access to anything BUT the model. So if you have no access to the supposed brain which is carrying the conscious experience which you exist as within itself (or, as itself/as it's state), then I don't see how you can justify even positing it's existence. You can't know anything about it from your position, all you have access to is the phenomenal world.

Also what does it even mean to say that a state of a physical brain IS your conscious experience? How can something experiential be literally also a non experiential physical thing?

Conflict between science and religious fundamentalism arises over conflicting explanations for certain phenomena--such as species, in the current ID v evolution dispute. But there are other conflicts, and they're not limited to fundamentalism.

Conflict arises whenever science proposes naturalistic explanations for phenomena that religion explains via supernatural agency of some kind. — Brainglitch

I just want to point out that this conflict only arises if one subscribes to a non-instrumentalist view of science. If you take scientific instrumentalism to be the case, then there is no conflict between say believing god created the world in seven days, and using the theory of evolution to explain the biodiversity in the world.

So the OP isn't really talking about whether he as the same person will exist, but, rather, whether he'll emerge into existence again - whether he'll get 'caught back up in' existence. Even as something different. The focus on pronouns misses the problem entirely - it's a problem that is difficult to pose due to the limitations of grammar. — csalisbury

Precisely! You explained it far clearer than my ramblings haha.

Actually I take what I said about a subject of experience back. Because then what am I saying, that there exists a non-experiential subject of conscious experience which continues to exist after this lifetime ends, and what it just sits there ready for another life to undergo? Seems wrong.

If I fall off a cliff, my conscious experience will cease. The question is, why wouldn't it start again? There was a cessation of conscious experience before I started experiencing this lifetime, but that didn't stop my lifetime coming into existence. So why would the cessation of conscious experience after this lifetime be any different from the one before? If they are the same thing, and we know because we exist right now that conscious experience follows after a absence of it, then it seems almost mandatory that conscious experience must follow after the absence of it at my death.

Anyway, it's tangential to the thread and the OP seems to have no interest in the Buddhist account of the matter, so I'll leave it at that. — Wayfarer

I don't really grasp how the Buddha says there is no self, and yet you come back to the world in the next lifetime, and what you come back as depends upon your karma.

If there's no self, what lives the next lifetime? What accumulates the karma?

What I mean (I think) by me coming into existence again, is the same 'subject of experience', experiencing again.

My present experiences all have this first person phenomenal quality of 'subjectivity'. There's not just a free floating visual field experiencing itself, likewise for all my other experiences - rather there's this distinct feeling that it's all being felt by the same subject. All my experiences have this subjective component to them. 'Being felt by me'. All my various experiences have this unified quality to them, they're all brought together into a cohesive present experience, because they all feel like they're happening to the same subject.

So why are my experiences mine and yours yours, and neither of us can feel each others sensations. why am I me and not you? The most obvious answer (to me) is that there exists two separate subjects of experience. The subject of experience is just whatever it is that's undergoing all the sensations that make up your conscious experience. Whatever it is that those experiences are being felt/known by. I suppose whatever that thing is, it's not really knowable - at the very least it can't be sensed or experienced (because the subject would be the thing doing the experiencing). But it seems to me that it must exist. When you break your arm it's *your* pain, you're the one that has to feel it, it's being inflicted upon you and nobody else. How could this be if there is no subject of experience? If it's an illusion that the pain experience is being felt by a subject, what is it that's being fooled by the illusion? Nothing?

So, how do I know that whatever it is that's 'being pained' by my broken arm, is never going to be pained, or experience anything again after this lifetime?

Is there actually something that's 'being pained'?

I really have no idea what I am. That I even exist in any way is incomprehensibly bizzare!

I'm not so sure about the worth of pessimism. Whenever I think about all this stuff, especially how suffering greatly outweighs pleasure, and pleasure itself seems mostly just a reduction or cessation of some pain/suffering experience or another, I feel like I should just kill myself. I mean if life really is how the pessimist describes, why live?

I think you're probably better off not being aware of any of this, like a child, or a cat. Being aware that you suffer is itself a type of suffering.

To say that it is morally wrong to take the life of a young infant is, in my opinion, probably unfounded equivocation. — darthbarracuda

So if I whipped out a hammer and brained your baby to death in front of you, you would have serious difficulty saying my actions were morally wrong?

Seriously?

1. There was a time in the past in which I (presumably) did not exist. Prior to my birth there was no me, my experience, my brain, anything.
2. I presently exist.
3. So we have Time A (1.) where I had no existence, and Time B (2.) where I do
4. Let's call the time after I die Time C, where presumably I won't exist in any way. I cease to exist at death.

What's the difference between Time A and Time C? Such that Time B followed from Time A, but a Time D *WONT* follow from Time C? What's my justification for believing time C will be permanent/unchangeable (i.e. an 'atheistic' death), when I know for a fact that Time A wasn't?



Note I'm not specifically talking about the same body or brain, or personality existing for a second time. All I mean by Time D is that it is not identical Time A (i.e. there exists something, there is some sort of existence. What form that takes I have no clue, but there is *something*).

It's hard to talk without using pronouns. I'm not really thinking I'll exist again as this human, or personality.

But even if there is no subject of experience, there is still an individualised experience existing (and it has a first person quality to it). What's to stop that existing again?

Or maybe there IS a subject of experience and it doesn't cease to exist when our bodies we experience die?

It just doesn't seem logical that the non existence before our lives now would be any different from the non existence when we die. Why was one impermanent and the other permanent, if they're the same thing?

I think what's most likely here is my/our understanding of time, the past, ourselves, and non/existence is seriously flawed. Maybe there is no past and times not linear, or maybe it is and I'm a soul which intermittently occupies various bodies.

Point is the more I think about the more illogical permanent non existence after I die is. Which sucks, I want to die and then stay dead. Life is mostly suffering I don't want to be bothered by it again unless it's really good.

There's two options, either I existed prior to this lifetime, or I didn't. I don't claim to know either way.

But the point is that either way, reality brought me/my experience/my life into existence where prior it did not exist at all. So let's say when I die, I don't exist in any way anymore. How do I know I won't come into existence in some form or another once again? How do I know I will cease to exist and CONTINUE ceasing to exist. Reality already (at least) once before interrupted my non-existence, why wouldn't it do it again? It's already proven (?) that I can not exist in any way, and then exist in some way, so when I die and cease to exist in any way, there's no guarantee that this will continue indefinitely. In fact it seems to me it's likely it will happen again. Nothing stopped it happening for my lifetime right now, don't see why when I next cease to exist in any way it will be any different?

Why is non existence before this lifetime any different than non existence after our deaths? They're both the same, right? Non existence is non existence. So to me it seems likely I'll exist in some way again after my death. I don't see why it's justified to believe that non existence after death is permanent, when the non existence before our present lives wasn't. Seems to me the logical conclusion is that non existence is not permanent.

So the argument here is
1. Non existence before this life is the very same thing as non existence after this life
2. Non existence before this life was not perpetual (I came into existence)
3. Therefore non existence after this life will not be perpetual either

Because we exist right now, and presumably didn't exist before this life, we can conclude that the nature of non existence is that it's not permanent. Non existence post death won't last forever?

To the OP, why are you privileging the truth of your religious experience over the truth of your non-religious experiences? What's your justification for deciding it was the religious experience that was the true/real one and not the other way round (or neither)?

Did the religious experience simply 'feel' more real/true?

He sees no difference in kind between the biblical account of the past and how we came to be, and the scientific account.
— dukkha

Ehm...

Suppose I was to proudly proclaim "there was snow on the peak of Mount Everest last Wednesday localtime". What, then, would it take for my claim to hold? Why that would be existence of snow up there back then of course, regardless of what you or I may (or may not) think. — jorndoe

Your hypothesis would hold if there was a convergence of observations (eg, memories, weather reports for that day, snow which doesn't appear fresh being observed on mt. Everest, etc) could best be explained by the hypothesis and no other. What makes an explanation the best, is one that cohesively accounts for the widest array of observations, and has the best predictive value.

Your conceiving of the past is something which exists independent of the present, and contains a sort of linear progression of facts/truth-values to which our statements about the past correspond (Or not) to. This is confused - there is no past full of facts to which our statements can correspond. At the very least there's certainly no evidence of one. We perpetually inhabit the present - the past is unobservable.

Does your relativization of science also extend to medicine (and your family doctor)? — jorndoe

Yes.

Dawkins has just replaced the biblical creation story/Genesis with the theory of evolution. When the two are in completely different domains. When you start talking about 'believing' in evolution you have gone way past the limit and function of science. Dawkins is a fundamentalist atheist, he literally thinks the theory of evolution acts in the same way as the biblical creation story. As in, he believes evolution literally happened in the past before us, and this is how the world and ourselves came to be. He sees no difference in kind between the biblical account of the past and how we came to be, and the scientific account.

But scientific theories do not claim to be true nor false, rather, they are tools. Tools can't be true or false, rather they have degrees of usefulness under differing conditions. Discussing whether the theories are true or not is not the function or task of science, it's philosophy. Compare Newtonian with Quantum physics, is one theory more 'true' than the other? No. Each is a tool which has differing predictive value under different conditions. We don't use Newtonian physics when engineering a bridge, because it's literally a true description of an external world. Rather we use it in that situation because it's a more useful tool than quantum physics in achieving the goal of the engineer (eg, building a bridge which doesn't collapse). It is not the task of science to talk about whether Newtonian physics corresponds to an external world or not. Of course you can do this, but you'd be doing philosophy - discussing and describing the nature of reality. When you start saying eg, quantum physics is a more accurate (i.e. true) description of the physical world, you're doing ontology. Which is beyond the scope and task of science. People often think that because a scientific theory has predictive value, it *therefore* must be an accurate description of reality. Theory of evolution has an astonishing predictive value, but so say that because it's so useful in making predictions (and explaining our various observations) it *therefore* must be a highly accurate/true description of reality, is to extend beyond science and into philosophy (to cross domains). This may or may not be the case but regardless it's not science. At that point you're doing philosophy - you're making claims about the nature of the world.

I do not literally believe evolution happened in the past, in the same way a Christian believes the account in Genesis is a true account of the past. The theory of evolution is a tool used in the scientific method to produce predictions about future observations, and to weave a cohesive narrative around our various present observations (of fossils, genetics, biodiversity, etc) in order to make sense of them. Whether this narrative corresponds to an external world or not is beyond the scope of science. Dawkins doesn't grasp this. He thinks evolution should be taught to our children in the same way a Christian teaches his son the account in genesis. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the scientific method. People commonly make the same mistake with the big bang theory, or plate tectonics, treating these *tools* which have uses in particular contexts, as if they operate in the same manner as a religious creation account.

At least that's my understanding of science. You can be a biblical literalist and still use the theory of evolution to explain scientific observations. Because the facticity of that explanation is beyond the scope of science. Whether truth value even applies to scientific explanations is a philosophical issue.

Hangovers

Having your pets die

Having to follow laws even when you don't want to, under threat of state sponsored violence/oppression

Knowing that you and everyone else is going to die

Nightmares

Living in a society where you're judged by your material wealth

Doing something cringeworthy and then remembering it just before you go to sleep and then you cant sleep because you're cringing so much

Having phobias

Needing to wear clothes even when you don't want to, due to weather, laws, social customs, etc

Having your things break or get ruined

Losing money (eg, playing poker, getting ripped off, dropping coins)

Having to transport yourself places (eg, morning commute, wasting time riding bus or train, can't just teleport to your destination)

Eating bad tasting food

Just to preface I also share your anti-natalist persuasion. Having children is blatantly immoral.

That said, I'm also a fairly happy person. Sure I feel down every now and then, and I recognize the constant 'background' suffering that motivates my actions (eg, I seek entertainment out of boredom, relationships out loneliness, food out of hunger, etc), but I still enjoy things by and large. I have some good relationships, I'm optimistic about the future, I enjoy my interests, my work is bearable, food is good. One can be a philosophical pessimist without being psychologically pessimistic. Of course I don't know you and might be totally off base, but from what you write it sounds like you hardly enjoy anything, or find anything to be worthwhile and meaningful. You might be clinically depressed and are gravitating towards philosophical pessimism and anti-natalism, because it's a way to justify and explain your horrible experience. ''I feel horrible because life itself is horrible'' kind of thing.

Being depressed can feel like you're seeing the truth of the world - that life is actually just constant psychological and physical suffering, meaninglessness, and has no value. This is simply not true, there are plenty of joys in life, but you can only experience them if you're not suffering from clinical depression. I would be very careful to not fall for this 'truth' aspect of clinical depression. It really feels like you're seeing and experiencing the world how it truly is deep down, almost like you're enlightened to the fundamental nature of reality (suffering, void, worthlessness). Happiness experiences can feel fake and unreal, and you can feel as if you only feel happy about x or y thing, or are only having z enjoyable experience because you're not experiencing some suffering or another as much. For example, you might feel that the 'joy' of eating is nothing more than a reduction in the suffering of hunger, and you might as well just not have felt hungry in the first place because all you've achieved is reduced your suffering to the same neutral level of suffering the dead are privy to. What was the point, you'd be better off dead.

This is not true. There is plenty of joy/enjoyment to be had in this world. Actual pleasurable and net positive sensations do exist and can be experienced. Relationships truly can be a great source of meaning and fun - you just have to find someone you like, and not be suffering from clinical depression. It's hard to see the worth in life when it's literally impossible for you to enjoy anything because you're depressed.

I mean how much deep down do you really care about preventing the suffering of non-existent unborn people? Not saying you're lying or not being genuine, there just might be other motivations at work here aside from just empathy in espousing and convincing others of anti-natalism. For example, it might bring you psychological comfort to have other people confirm and validate your pessimistic views.

Some relevant (and shocking) stats and information can be found here: http://www.amren.com/archives/reports/the-color-of-crime-2016-revised-edition/

Major Findings

The evidence suggests that if there is police racial bias in arrests it is negligible. Victim and witness surveys show that police arrest violent criminals in close proportion to the rates at which criminals of different races commit violent crimes.

There are dramatic race differences in crime rates. Asians have the lowest rates, followed by whites, and then Hispanics. Blacks have notably high crime rates. This pattern holds true for virtually all crime categories and for virtually all age groups.

In 2013, a black was six times more likely than a non-black to commit murder, and 12 times more likely to murder someone of another race than to be murdered by someone of another race.

In 2013, of the approximately 660,000 crimes of interracial violence that involved blacks and whites, blacks were the perpetrators 85 percent of the time. This meant a black person was 27 times more likely to attack a white person than vice versa. A Hispanic was eight times more likely to attack a white person than vice versa.

In 2014 in New York City, a black was 31 times more likely than a white to be arrested for murder, and a Hispanic was 12.4 times more likely. For the crime of “shooting” — defined as firing a bullet that hits someone — a black was 98.4 times more likely than a white to be arrested, and a Hispanic was 23.6 times more likely.

If New York City were all white, the murder rate would drop by 91 percent, the robbery rate by 81 percent, and the shootings rate by 97 percent.

In an all-white Chicago, murder would decline 90 percent, rape by 81 percent, and robbery by 90 percent.

In 2015, a black person was 2.45 times more likely than a white person to be shot and killed by the police. A Hispanic person was 1.21 times more likely. These figures are well within what would be expected given race differences in crime rates and likelihood to resist arrest.

In 2015, police killings of blacks accounted for approximately 4 percent of homicides of blacks. Police killings of unarmed blacks accounted for approximately 0.6 percent of homicides of blacks. The overwhelming majority of black homicide victims (93 percent from 1980 to 2008) were killed by blacks.

Both violent and non-violent crime has been declining in the United States since a high in 1993. 2015 saw a disturbing rise in murder in major American cities that some observers associated with “depolicing” in response to intense media and public scrutiny of police activity." —

And some relevant info on justified and unjustified police shootings:

"In the absence of government data, the Washington Post investigated every reported case of a fatal shooting by the police during 2015. It found 990 cases, with the following racial distribution of victims:

White: 50.0 percent (495 victims)

Black: 26.1 percent (258)

Hispanic: 17.4 percent (172)

Asian: 1.4 percent (14)

Other/Unknown: 5.2 percent (51)

Given their proportions in the population, a black person was 2.45 times more likely than a white person to be shot and killed by police, a Hispanic was 1.24 times more likely, and an Asian was only one third as likely. It is reasonable to expect people of different races to find themselves in potentially lethal confrontations with the police in proportion to their likelihood to commit violent crime, with blacks most likely and Asians least likely.

As noted in Table 4 above, in California — a large state that keeps consistent statistics on race and ethnicity — blacks are arrested for violent crimes at 5.35 times the white rate, and Hispanics at 1.42 times the white rate. The low likelihood of Asians being killed by police is in keeping with low Asian arrest rates for violent crime. The black and Hispanic multiples for police shooting deaths are well within the arrest multiples — the black multiple is less than half — and certainly do not suggest undisciplined police violence.

Moreover, FBI data show that from 2005 to 2014, blacks accounted for 40 percent of police killings. Since blacks were approximately 13 percent of the population, it meant they were 4.46 times more likely than people of other races to kill a police officer.

In its study, the Post found that men were 22.9 times more likely than women to be shot and killed by officers. No one suggests that law enforcement bias accounts for this huge multiple, which is undoubtedly caused by differences in behavior between men and women. In the case of racial multiples, police bias cannot be ruled out, but it is reasonable to assume that the multiples are explained by race differences in behavior.

The Washington Post noted further that all but 93 of the 990 people fatally shot by police were armed, usually with a firearm or knife. The unarmed victims had the following racial distribution:

White: 34.4 percent (32 victims)

Black: 40.8 percent (38)

Hispanic: 19.4 percent (18)

Asian: 0 percent (0)

Unknown: 5.4 percent (5)

An unarmed black was therefore 5.6 times more likely than an unarmed white to be shot by police, and a Hispanic was 2.6 times more likely. The black multiple is certainly high, though not that much higher than the California violent-arrest multiple of 5.35 noted above.

There is no obvious explanation for why unarmed blacks were shot and killed at a white multiple that was twice that for armed blacks. If police bias is the cause, there is no clear reason why it should be worse in the case of unarmed suspects. The sample size of 93 is small, so random events produce a large effect.

It may be that race differences in how suspects behave when they are arrested explain at least part of the difference. There are no national data, but a five-year study of non-felony arrests in San Francisco found that blacks were 9.6 times more likely than whites (including Hispanics) to be charged with resisting arrest, and whites were 8.6 times more likely than Asians to be so charged. In Chicago, from September 2014 to September 2015, blacks accounted for 77 percent of arrests for obstruction of justice and resisting arrest (page 4 of report), meaning they were 6.8 times more likely than non-blacks to be arrested on these charges. If these findings are typical, they help explain why the arrest of a black non-felony suspect — who would more than likely be unarmed — could escalate into potentially lethal violence.

The Post’s analysis was intended to throw light on police bias but failed to indicate the races of the officers involved in fatal shootings. This would be useful information. A 2015 Department of Justice study (page 3) of police shootings in Philadelphia found racial differences in “threat perception failure,” that is, cases in which an officer shot an unarmed suspect because the officer thought the suspect was armed. Black officers were nearly twice as likely as white officers to shoot an unarmed black (11.4 percent of all shootings by black officers vs. 6.8 percent of all shootings by white officers). The percentage of such errors by Hispanic officers — 16.7 percent — was even higher.

Black officers may be somewhat more prone to error in general. About 12 percent of police officers in the United States are black. Between 2005 and 2015, 16.6 percent of the 54 officers criminally charged for fatally shooting someone while on duty were black.

Homicide is a serious problem for black men. Since at least 2002 and up to 2013 (the latest data available), murder was the leading cause of death for black men, ages 15 to 34. Their murderers are almost always other black men. According to a Department of Justice report, (page 13), from 1980 to 2008, 93 percent of black homicide victims were killed by blacks.

By contrast, the 256 police judicial killings of blacks in 2015 would be only 4.2 percent of the 6,095 blacks who were murdered in 2014 (the most recent year for which national data are available). The 38 unarmed blacks killed by police accounted for just 0.6 percent. Police shootings of unarmed blacks is a very small problem compared to murder in the black community." —

Pretty shocking stuff!

It seems to me that the most obvious explanation for these statistics is that there is a not insignificant biological component to criminal behavior. So what I mean is something like 'people of Asian descent are significantly less likely to commit violent acts than Black people, and a large part of this can be explained by biological differences between the two sets of populations.' A lot of this difference (I believe) can of course be explained by social/environmental factors such as poverty, education, family structure, etc, but not all of it. Controlling for factors like these still ends up with significant racial differences in crime rates. These remaining differences I think are due to biology - things like IQ differences between races, prevalence of 'warrior type genes' between races, testosterone differences, - and perhaps even the amount of muscle the different races have (I have no stats for this but anecdotally Asian men seem to be less 'muscly' than black men, with perhaps more muscle meaning someone feels more confident committing acts of violence or robbery - just a thought). I certainly don't think the remaining differences in crime rates can be explained (for blacks) by an appeal to some vague, invisible, ill-defined thing like 'systemic racism' or 'a legacy of oppression'.

Nobody seems to want to go anywhere near racial biological factors in crime rates! It's as if even thinking about perhaps maybe just entertaining the mere hypothesis makes one automatically a racist. But nobody (sane) thinks its sexist to state that men are biologically more prone to violence, so I don't see why its any different when it comes to race. Politically uncomfortable sure, but willful ignorance gets us nowhere.

All the other neurological evidence indicates the brain operates using pattern matching which means consciousness and self-awareness are emergent phenomena of how many neurons you have. A baby looking in the mirror for the first time and expressing wonder is expressing their own cell's sudden recognition of a new type of pattern matching with unique uses. — wuliheron

If consciousness is produced within a brain, then the brain that's producing your present conscious experience cannot be the brain you believe is within your head that you can feel, touch, and sense in other ways. This is because these sense experiences themselves must already be being produced by a brain. As in, you know about your head using sight, touch, etc, but sense experiences are produced by a brain, so your experience of your own body including it's head, is a product of brain functioning. Your lived body must therefore be a homunculus within an physical brain, and the world around you is merely an indirect private representation of the world beyond said brain. Basically if you hold that cells/brains give rise to conscious experience, then you can't logically locate those consciousness causing cells within your lived head (because your lived body is brainless!). Your lived head must itself be the function of cells within a brain, an experienced head/body/world within the physical brain of an actual physical human body in an external noumenal world.

This position is not only absurd, it also suffers from crippling epistemic issues. For example, from the position of being an onboard self model, how is it that you can know a single thing about the external world beyond the model/representation? How do you know there is physical neuronal brain cells causing your experience, when the part of reality those cells inhabit transcends your epistemic access?

And more conceptually, what does it even mean to speak of non-experiential brain cells? The only cells I know are the images/depictions used and described in the biological sciences - we talk about them Write about them, draw them, observe them in a microscope, posit they're existence, use them within our scientific theories and explanations - they're experiential, part of the lived world. So if we aren't talking about those cells, then what are we talking about?

↪Bitter Crank I realize that digital characters, for all intensive purposes, cannot actually be said to suffer. But these characters are representations of an entire sex. The developers made a choice: should we make women wear normal, modest clothing, or should we make them wear absurdly impractical and sexually arousing clothing? — darthbarracuda

This is the entire issue in a nutshell. People, especially feminists, seem to find it impossible to view women as actual individuals rather than some soulless member of a wider homogenous group. Digital, fictional renderings that have a female gender, literally cannot harm anyone (unless you perform some wild mental gymnastics).

Anyone who is legitimately offended by this (as in, it's not feigned for some political end) is borderline mentally ill. Women are actual individuals, with their own agency, desires, and thoughts! The TRUE objectification of women occurs when you only see them as nothing more than a singular representation of some wider political group ("women"). You reduce women to some homogenous mass, destroying all individuality.

The only thing fictional graphic characters represent is themselves. You can't represent (and therefore offend) EVERY SINGLE WOMAN with a singular drawing. And the females that see an image of a female character and can't avoid taking that character to be a representation of every single female on the planet (including herself) AND gets offended by it because she's so absorbed within this homogenous mass called "women" that she can't see herself as a separate individual (an Individual wouldn't find it offensive because she refuses to believe she's being represented by the image) - she can only see herself as a absorbed within this singular group which therefore CAN be represented by a single image (an image which she takes exception to because it doesn't represent her, as a female, the way she wants - it's borderline mental illness. An inability to see yourself as an individual, nor see images which you share some feature with (sex) as LITERALLY being a representation of yourself.

It's madness. It's like a male getting offended by a muscled action figure toy because if doesn't represent himself accurately (or really, represent himself in a way that he specifically wants to be represented). The action figure doesn't represent anything but itself. It's madness to constantly see yourself being represented everywhere - and getting constantly offended because you don't like how you're being portrayed.

Even if all women WERE magically being represented by this fictional character in a computer (?) game, you still need to explain why it is a bad thing. 'Objectification' (whatever that means.. ) is not automatically a bad thing.

I mean seriously if you can't look at pornographic pictures of a woman who choose under her own agency to have those images produced, without quite literally seeing yourself being represented by her, you might want to consider therapy! The only thing women who work in porn represent in the images/video they produce is THEMSELVES.

"Should objectification be banned?"

Only if you want to live under an oppressive police state! Even if you don't like it, you shouldn't just force others through threat of police/judicial punishment to not do it, that's North Korea tier madness.

Maybe some women enjoy being objectified? Maybe some women enjoy viewing sexualised images of other females (or female game characters). Females comprise a not insignificant percentage of the gaming community, maybe developers are catering to their female customers when they make sexy images of medieval women. Maybe women like playing as them? Tonnes of women love being seen as sexy and attractive, and enjoy the power that comes from being an object of sexual desire, or being prettier than other women. Either way the idea that sexy female fictional females harms actual individual women (for some vague unexpressed reason) and therefore specifically men (it's said to be empowering when women do it ...) need to be stopped from producing and enjoying these images is thoroughly suspect - laughable really.

Here's an easy solution: stop being so self centred that you literally think every depiction of a female, across all forms of media, is a representation of yourself! And stop being offended by EVERY SINGLE THING EVER. And grow a thicker skin anyway - you don't like how the females in a video game look, don't buy and play the stupid game. They complain about the 'patriarchy' and then screech for basically men to fix it for them and cater to them, like they're children who need looking after. It's crazy, we live in this culture of offence. I DONT LIKE IT WAA BAN IT BAN IT ILLEGAL WAA STOP COMMITTING THOUGHT CRIMES BAN IT I AM SO OFFENDED LIKE WOW I JUST CANT EVEN WAA.

/rant

This is one small example of how prejudice is self sustaining. Because it is 'known' that black people are more likely to be involved in car crime, black people receive more attention from the police; because they receive perhaps twenty times more attention, more black people are discovered to be involved with car crime. So the statistics prove the prejudice. It's an excellent of how the legacy of racism is an ongoing sustained stereotyping. — unenlightened

God damn that is some intense mental gymnastics you've got there!

Why are people so afraid of facts? Black people get caught driving stolen cars more often than other races because .... they steal and drive more stolen cars than other races. Black people are involved in more non lethal violent encounters with police than other races because .... Black people instigate violence towards police at a far greater rate than other races. Black people get murdered more often than other races, not because of white systemic racism but, surprise, they murder each other at a disgusting rate compared to other races. And to the cherry on the cake here is that there is increasing evidence that blacks are actually, when the far higher rate of overall criminality is accounted for (for nearly every category of crime in America blacks are SIGNIFICANTLY over represented as offenders.

BLM is founded on a false victim complex helpless narrative, their members advocate black supremacy, violence towards police (and whitey) and the only thing they've achieved is to further destroy and damage their already fragile communities. You have to quite frankly be a complete imbecile to Believe that setting your neighborhood on fire and looting what remains (while blaming whitey for your base behavior) is going to do anything but further antagonize people towards you, break down the already fragile law and order within the black community, and INCREASE the very thing you're supposedly protesting against (unjustified police shootings) - because this animal behavior does nothing but increase the chances of a violent police encounter.

What's missing from this whole picture is black responsibility. Poverty doesn't make you murder your neighbor or abandon your children (at the disgusting rate of 80% freaking percent), it doesn't make you strong arm rob a store owner of their cigars, or refuse to drop a loaded gun while being commanded to by multiple armed police. Poverty or police brutality or 'systemic racism' (whatever that means) is not responsible for your actions, YOU (and only you) are.

Here's a hypothesis: black people per capita, simply choose to commit crimes at a far higher rate than other races. The good thing about this hypothesis is that it's so easy to correct - all that needs happen is blacks to choose not to commit crimes at such a society destroying rate.

BLM, to who? Certainly not to other black people. The most dangerous thing to a black man is not a racist 'pig', or an evil white supremacist society - no, the most dangerous thing is it another black man.

The criminality of the black male (although black females also choose crime at a higher rate than other females - by and large the problem is young violent criminal black men) is the problem. Some of the stats are shocking, for example if New York City were all white, the murder rate would drop by 91 percent, the robbery rate by 81 percent, and the shootings rate by 97 percent. In an all-white Chicago, murder would decline 90 percent, rape by 81 percent, and robbery by 90 percent.

You buy an illegal firearm and commit a robbery, or commit murder, or assault someone, it's nobodies fault but your own. And the only thing that caused your actions is your own immorality.
Black people need to be held responsible for the dire state of their own community. It's a cop out to blame some racist white boogie man. Asians faced historical oppression in America, Jews races historical oppression in America, so did the Irish. The only difference between them and black people is they didn't use that oppression as an excuse to abandon their children, sell drugs, join a street gang, and commit violent crime en mass.

I am so sick of this (false) victim narrative. If blacks truly are equal to white people (which they are) then they should be held responsible in the same way. It's not white peoples responsibility to give you money or fix your community. A good start would be to stop murdering each other, and start taking care of and loving your own children. Nobody make 8/10 black males abandon their own sons and daughters and the mothers of their children like their trash.

The black community really has some truly reprehensible, immoral and disgusting features. And I suspect the only reason wider (mostly white) society isn't as outraged as they OUGHT be, is because deep down they don't truly believe black people are their equals and hold them to a lower behavioral and moral standard.

If there was say an Italian community in the USA with the same rampant homophobia, single motherhood, fatherhood abandonment, child abuse, sexual assault, gun/thug glorification, anti-intellectualism, tall poppy syndrome, victim-hood, entitlement, violence, welfare dependency, police/law and order disrespect, criminality, and outright murder, people would be utterly and rightly disgusted and outraged. Why is it any different for black people? Because they're black?

BLM is a violent black supremacist and separatist hate group. Something has gone terribly wrong when your response to a black man getting shot by a black cop in a city with a black mayor and chief of police because he refused to stop endangering everyone around him with a loaded gun, is to corner innocent motorists, trash, burn and loot their trucks and cars (even thse containing children), break into stores, Walmart, vandalize and steal private and public property, shoot other black people in the process (even killing one), and just generally act like an out of control escaped chimp from the zoo - and ALL of this is racists whitey 'dey evil pigs' fault. It's disgusting and immoral. You hate whitey, oh but it's also up to white people to fix your problems (which seems to mean nothing more than literally giving you cash)? Quite frankly, fuck off.

/rant

Thomas Metzinger's

StreetlightX
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Interestingly, we can actually scientifically test the above. The rubber hand illusion is famous and should be self-explanatory in the above regard, and there are other tests as well, as when Thomas Metzinger managed to make test subjects 'feel' that they were the 'fake bodies' standing out a few feet in front of them by coordinating their movement together with sensory cues.
2mo — StreetlightX

I take Thomas Metzinger's work to be reductio ad absurdum argument for why its wrong to explain consciousness scientifically. If you take explaining consciousness using brains (and the mirror neurons therein) to its logic conclusion, you end up stuck in Thomas Metzinger's absurd little internal theatre as some onboard homunculus living in its own private world. Not to mention the crippling epistemic problems that plague the onboard homunculus/self-model.

If you try and explain the experience of self/others using mirror neurons, the logical conclusion is that the rest of conscious experience is also 'generated' by (or perhaps equal to) brain processes, and therefore the brain that produces consciousness (including of self and others) can't be the pink jello ones we think are in the head we experience with touch/sight etc, rather, our entire bodies and the world around us are entirely produced by an 'actual' brain in the 'real' world.

Basically if self/other consciousness is equal to, or produced by, mirror neuron functions, then mirror neurons aren't located within your head you experience. There's no actual brain within your head you touch, and the mirror neurons you use to explain your consciousness are epistemically cut off from yourself- existing beyond what you can access. How can you know a single thing about these neurons? They're noumena. Thomas Metzinger just assumes that a physical body models itself and it's surroundings internally in some epistemically magical way, so that from the position of the onboard self/world/others model, knowledge of the 'actual' world (and actual mirror neurons) existing beyond the model can be had. It makes no sense, and what does even mean to experientially model non-experiential noumena?

'Because i can be tricked into mistaking my hand for a rubber one, my hand, body, and the world around it, including other people, is entirely generated by, and exists as an onboard self/world model within, a physical brain existing within a world noumenal to what I have access to, yet I can know things about this world (such as, it gives rise to this model I exist as) because I (without epistemic justification) assume that an experiential model can in some magical way be veridical to a non experiential noumenal world which transcends said model.'

''There is no difference in kind between the experience of myself, and of others, because in an external world which transcends what I have access to, the very same physical neurons are involved in producing/causing both experiences. And the evidence for this is that when I look at (what is actually an internally generated, by a human physical brain, onboard model of) an MRI computer screen (existing within a noumenal world which transcends what I can access), I see the same area on the computer screen light up when (what is an internally generated private model of) a (physical) monkey (in the world transcendent to my experience) sees it's own hand, and when it sees (what for me is also an internally generated within a physical brain model of another physical monkey in the same transcendent physical world as the first physical monkey, along with the physical body and brain of the physical human which produces my experiential world which contains models of both monkeys and an MRI screen which i am presently being tricked through an evolutionary quirk into believing that both my body, the two monkeys, the MRI, and the entire world we all appear to share are not actual monkeys, MRI machines, human bodies and brains but rather, almost like a robot computer modelling it's surroundings, myself and everything around me is an onboard internal self/world model existing within the physical brain of a physical human which is in a world which epistemically transcends the experiential model that is my existence , which i perpetually mistake for being the real thing because the grand illusion is just so seamless except for when I'm tricked into mistaking a rubber hand for my experiential hand which exposes the whole grand illusion to myself!) another (physical) monkeys hand.''

It's a reductio, a domain/category error to a apply science to conscious experience itself. Science exploits the regular, sequential structure of the things within conscious experience. It doesn't work when you take it broader and try to apply it to the whole of conscious experience.

So I am aware of others pain before I'm aware of my own?

This seems crazy. Other people's pain exists beyond what I can access, so how on earth is there no difference in kind between how I know my own pain and how I know yours? I would hazard its the complete opposite - rather than there being no difference, it's so different in kind to the point that it's basically impossible to understand another's pain from a first person perspective. Whereas I directly know my own, it inflicts itself upon me! It's immediate and inescapable. I cannot 'not know' my own pain, but I can certainly 'not know' another's.

I would think this fundamental difference in the way we know ourselves verses others is what actually makes others, others. Other people really are 'other' to us - we cannot access, experience, know, in principle, everything about them. They transcend us. Sure, this leads to doubts about solipsism - perhaps serious doubts (solipsism is not just some silly idea which can prima facie be rejected off hand - it's a fundamental philosophical issue), but that's whats required for others to actually be 'not me'.

People want to erase the gaping void between us - I suppose to get closer, but all you end up doing is erasing the actual 'otherness' of others in the process. I mean if you know and access everything that composes others, then in what sense do they have an existence beyond your own experience?

It's also fundamentally confused and flawed to try and ground consciousness within biological theories. Cells and brains and sensory organs are objects of consciousness - they're experiential. So you're trying to explain consciousness with it's very own objects. You have to basically posit that your sensory organs and brain are the cause of their own existence.

Science applies to things we perceive, not perception itself. That is, our brains and sensory organs do not give rise to our conscious experience (because if they did, then our brain - as something we consciously experience, would therefore give rise toitselfa)

Heidegger tries to dissolve the problem of other minds through his analytic of the experiencing self (Dasein) claiming Dasein always is being in (the world), and being with (others). For Heidegger, the problem of solipsism is simply a misunderstanding that arises of out Cartesian reductionism essentially. There is no problem to solve.

Heidegger, in order to avoid solipsism, must invoke special pleading in regards to the ontological status of other people. So, things in the world only exist in relation to an experiencing self. Other people are things in the world, therefore one must embrace solipsism (the meaning of the existence of others for us is always with reference to *my* experience of others). But he doesn't embrace solipsism.

Therefore Heidegger must make an ontological distinction between two types of experience - one of objects and of people. How is this special pleading justified?

Is there an *ontological* difference between say the experience of a couch, and the experience of a human? If not, then a human is just a thing in the world and therefore only exists in regard to an experiencing self.

Imagine all that reality consists of is your experience, nothing else. There is nothing beyond what you are experiencing. But because of the structure of your experience - living as a body in a public world - you experience yourself as among others.

But they don't exist!




If kettles only exist with respect to an experiencing self, then what is the ontological status of other selves? Again to put this in more rigorous terms: analyzed,

But how could anyone ever step beyond their own experience in any meaningful way? That seems like a crazy demand to establish the 'objective' existence of anything. We can't transcend our perspective, and therefore solipsism seems incapable of ultimate refutation. I mean, how would you possibly confirm the objective existence of others? Maybe have a chat with them? Kick a ball around with them? What are you looking for here in your use of the term 'objective'? — Erik

It seems that for Heidegger, the existence of others is neither an objective or subjective fact. Heidegger tries to sidestep this realist notion by an analysis of others which places them not in an external or internal world, but rather grounds them in this notion of 'being-with', a necessary part of Dasein's ontological condition.

This leads him wide open to accusations of solipsism. We want the existence of others to be an objective fact, not just a condition of experience.

Sure, Dasein experiences itself among others in a shared world. But through grounding others within the structure of Daseins experience, Heidegger cannot speak of others existing beyond or outside of Dasein.

The question of whether others actually exist independent of whatever Dasein experiences is side stepped by Heidegger. For Heidegger it is unintelligibe to speak of others 'outside' of Dasein, and so one cannot coherently make claims about the objective existence of others - which leads to solipsism. Heidegger's ontology cannot even make sense of claims about other minds existing independently of ones experience.

Of course others exist objectively whether they are part of my 'being-with' or not. — Erik

Heidegger cannot intelligibly claim this. He's trying to avoid the realism of other minds existing objectively (or not), and so in my opinion lapses into a solipsism. One in which he can claim to be among others in a shared world. And yet cannot talk about others having any independent or separate existence beyond Daseins *experience* of a shared world - because he's grounded others within the structure of Dasein. It is unintelligible to speak of others separate from what Dasein experiences.

Heidegger can intelligibly speak of others, but the ontological status of the others he talks about is less real than the way in which others exist for say a non-solipsist realist. For the realist others exist as a brute ontological fact of reality, independent of any claims about their existence, or any experience of their existence. For Heidegger, others have been shifted from the realists ontological fact of reality, into an existential structure of a beings experience.

Which strikes me as solipsistic. I want others to exist in the realist sense.

I don't think I understand your issue here. Of course others exist objectively whether they are part of my 'being-with' or not. — Erik

But Dasein can't 'step beyond' Daseins fundamental ontological condition (being-with) and claim objective facts about the world. The existence of others beyond Daseins experience of 'being-with', is not something which Dasein has access to. Others beyond Daseins experience of 'being-with', is something transcendent to Dasein. So how can you state the objective existence of others as an obvious fact?


Heidegger says 'being-with' is a fundamental part of human experience, so you can't just say ''independent of my 'being-with' experience of others, other people exist'', because you literally have no access to the world independent of your ontological constitution.

So for Heidegger there is no 'objective truth' about the existence of others. Or at least one which can be known (or even coherently conceptualized). Can Dasein even talk about the world beyond Dasein?