The point is that you cannot simply decide by fiat what will be more important to you. — Janus

Oh yes you can. I was a totally addicted smoker aged about 17 until about 40. Until aged about 60 I was an occasional smoker (= asked other people). When I was addicted I often did things I am ashamed of to get my fix (like, stealing cigarettes.) I was on nicotine gum for a long time (my then-small children called it ‘smoking gum’’.) In the end, the principle that got me off it was Buddhist - I realised that cravings are transient. I worked out that if I could hold off for just as long as it took to smoke a cigarette - about 2-3 minutes - then the craving would pass. That did the trick - before then I was always fantasising about ‘being without for 6 months’. It was the minutes that actually counted.

The last cigarette I smoked was at my 60th birthday, 10 and a half years back.

'Intelligence is the ability to make distinctions'.

Evan Thompson’s work in embodied cognition has interested me in recent times. — Tom Storm

Speaking of whom:

suppose we found that specific patterns of brain activity in Yo-Yo Ma’s brain reliably correlate with his playing Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1. This finding wouldn’t be surprising, given his years of training and expertise. Although that information would presumably be useful for understanding the effects of musical training and expert performance on the brain, it would tell us very little about music, let alone Bach. On the contrary, you need to understand music, the cello, and Bach to understand the significance of the neural patterns.

Excerpt From
Why I Am Not a Buddhist
Evan Thompson

Fair enough, agree with that. Much more like the Scandinavian model of democratic socialism. Although they have the advantage of a highly intelligent citizenry ;-)

Would you be willing to accept a set of principles that increases the prospects of others, even if it means having fewer opportunities yourself? — Rob J Kennedy

You mean, by paying income tax?

It's a very politically-incorrect fact that not all people are equal. All people should be treated equally by the law, and generally should have equal opportunity to participate in the economy. But not every one is equal in respect of their abilities, proclivities, talents, desires and intentions. To try and impose equality ends up being a recipe for totalitarianism, as Orwell prophesied so eloquently.

Dennett's not an eliminativist though. He's a critic of it. — fdrake

But he is included in that same article as a representative of eliminative materialism:

Although most discussions regarding eliminativism focus on the status of our notion of belief and other propositional attitudes, some philosophers have endorsed eliminativist claims about the phenomenal or qualitative states of the mind (see the entry on qualia). For example, Daniel Dennett (1978) has argued that our concept of pain is fundamentally flawed because it includes essential properties, like infallibility and intrinsic awfulness, that cannot co-exist in light of a well-documented phenomenon know as “reactive disassociation”. In certain conditions, drugs like morphine cause subjects to report that they are experiencing excruciating pain, but that it is not unpleasant. It seems we are either wrong to think that people cannot be mistaken about being in pain (wrong about infallibility), or pain needn’t be inherently awful (wrong about intrinsic awfulness). Dennett suggests that part of the reason we may have difficulty replicating pain in computational systems is because our concept is so defective that it picks out nothing real.

(Personally, I think disputing the apodictic reality of pain, because of not being able to form a concept of it, is all the illustration needed of the shortcoming of this attitude.)

Again, Thomas Nagel summarizes the problem he sees with Dennett's views:

According to Dennett...the reality is that the representations that underlie human behavior are found in neural structures of which we know very little. And the same is true of the similar conception we have of our own minds. That conception does not capture an inner reality, but has arisen as a consequence of our need to communicate to others in rough and graspable fashion our various competencies and dispositions (and also, sometimes, to conceal them):

"Curiously, then, our first-person point of view of our own minds is not so different from our second- person point of view of others’ minds: we don’t see, or hear, or feel, the complicated neural machinery churning away in our brains but have to settle for an interpreted, digested version, a user-illusion that is so familiar to us that we take it not just for reality but also for the most indubitable and intimately known reality of all. "

The trouble is that Dennett concludes not only that there is much more behind our behavioral competencies than is revealed to the first-person point of view—which is certainly true—but that nothing whatever is revealed to the first-person point of view but a “version” of the neural machinery. In other words, when I look at the American flag, it may seem to me that there are red stripes in my subjective visual field, but that is an illusion: the only reality, of which this is “an interpreted, digested version,” is that a physical process I can’t describe is going on in my visual cortex.

I am reminded of the Marx Brothers line: “Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?” Dennett asks us to turn our backs on what is glaringly obvious—that in consciousness we are immediately aware of real subjective experiences of color, flavor, sound, touch, etc. that cannot be fully described in neural terms even though they have a neural cause (or perhaps have neural as well as experiential aspects). And he asks us to do this because the reality of such phenomena is incompatible with the scientific materialism that in his view sets the outer bounds of reality. He is, in Aristotle’s words, “maintaining a thesis at all costs.” — Thomas Nagel, Analytical Philosophy and Human Life, Chapter 23 - Dennett's Illusions

It is this conviction on Dennett's part that I think allows his views to be fairly characterised as 'scientism', that is, 'the view that science and the scientific method are the best or only way to render truth about the world and reality', and then to exclude, or eliminate, as a matter of principle, the first-person perspective, because it is not something that science as currently practiced accomodates.

Nagel adds:

There is no reason to go through such mental contortions in the name of of science. The spectacular progress of the physical sciences since the seventeenth century was made possible by the exclusion of the mental from their purview.. To say that there is more to reality than than physics can can account for is not a piece of mysticism: it it is an acknowledgment that that we we are nowhere near a "theory of everything", and that science will have to expand to accommodate facts of a kind fundamentally different from those that physics is designed to explain. It should not disturb us that this may have radical consequences, especially for Dennett’s favorite natural science, biology: the theory of evolution, which in its its current form is a purely physical theory, may have to incorporate non-physical physical factors to to account for consciousness, if if consciousness is not, as he thinks, an illusion. Materialism remains a widespread view, but science does not progress by tailoring the data to fit a prevailing theory

.

I still say that philosophy itself is one of the casualties of eliminative materialism.

From the SEP entry on Michel Henry, phenomenologist:

If, for Henry, culture has always to be understood as “a culture of life”, i.e., as the cultivation of subjective powers, then it includes art without being limited to it. Cultural praxis comports what Henry designates as its “elaborate forms” (e.g., art, religion, discursive knowledge) as well as everyday forms related to the satisfaction of basic needs. Both types of forms, however, fall under the ethical category of subjective self-growth and illustrate the bond between the living and absolute life. The inversion of culture in “barbarism” means that within a particular socio-historical context the need for subjective self-growth is no longer adequately met, and the tendency toward an occultation (i.e. obscuration) of the bond between the living and absolute life is reinforced. According to Henry, who echoes Husserl’s analysis in Crisis, such an inversion takes place in contemporary culture, the dominating feature of which is the triumph of Galilean science and its technological developments.

Insofar as it relies on objectification, the “Galilean principle” is directly opposed to Henry’s philosophy of immanent affectivity. For Henry, science, including modern Galilean science, nonetheless remains a highly elaborated form of culture. Although “the joy of knowing is not always as innocent as it seems”, the line separating culture from “barbarism” is crossed when science is transformed into scientist ideology, i.e., when the Galilean principle is made into an ontological claim according to which ultimate reality is given only through the objectively measurable and quantifiable.

Dennett crossed that line.

Thanks! Helpful and illuminating as always.

I’d suggest not trying to hang on to it. These moments come and go, it is the intensity of the underlying enquiry which is key.

However those views that I ascribed to him are not misrepresentations, are they? Thomas Nagel said of him

Dennett is a materialist about the mind, but unlike many materialists he doesn’t identify mental events with physical events in the brain. Instead, he maintains that while we are nothing but complex physical systems controlled by what happens in our brains, we can’t in ordinary life understand ourselves in those terms. We operate instead with a useful fiction, namely that we are controlled by a mind full of sensations, intentions, beliefs, emotions, desires, and so on. This rough explanatory scheme enables us to understand and predict the actions of others, and to communicate with them. We treat ourselves and others as if we had these inner conscious lives. Like the rest of our natural, unscientific take on the world – colours, sounds, ordinary objects – these ideas about the mind are tools given to us by evolution, according to Dennett. Even though they don’t depict reality with scientific accuracy, they help us to function and survive, so they have been entrenched by natural selection.

In my view this is one of those philosophical positions that represent the triumph of theoretical commitment over common sense.

Fair comment, do you think?

Hey whatever it is, go with it! You’re actually doing philosophy!

Thanks Pierre-Normand, I am always impressed by your erudition which far exceeds my own. I do indeed only see Dennett as a reductive materialist, as I encountered him in his guise as New Atheist polemicist and confrere of Richard Dawkins. I’m pleased to learn there is more to him, as this would explain why people I respect hold him in respect.

If we are robots, are robots conscious according to him? — Johnnie

The key phrase is 'unconscious competence'. He argues that what we consider to be conscious thought actually arises from cellular and molecular processes of which we have no conscious awareness. Dennett asserts that the usual understanding of consciousness is a fallacious 'fok psychology' that interprets these processes after the fact. We believe we are autonomous agents, but our mental processes - which we mistakenly believe to have real existence - are really the outcome of the evolutionary requirements to solve specific kinds of problems that enhance our chances of survival and reproduction. That dovetails with Richard Dawkins' idea of the selfish gene. So he posits that what we experience as conscious decision-making is more about rationalizing or making sense of the outcomes of the unconscious competence of our unconscious evolutionary drives.

He says in his book Darwin's Dangerous Idea that Darwinian evolution is like a 'universal acid' that dissolves the container in which it developed, suggesting that it cannot be contained or limited to just biological sciences—it seeps into and transforms every field it touches. This idea reshapes our understanding not only of biology but also of philosophy, psychology, and even the social sciences. So in that sense it is 'supersessionist' - it supersedes, or dissolves, classical philosophy, most of which he says is merely self indulgent.

I think it's the sheer hostility that some of these media atheists have gotten — ssu

It was a two-way street. Richard Dawkins often made a point of being deliberately insulting to shock people out of their God delusions. He and Dennett both regarded anyone religious as either pitiable fools or hostile fanatics, depending on their overall congeniality.

And speaking of congeniality, by all accounts Dennett was a very congenial guy, and an excellent lecturer. He also paid his university tuition by playing jazz piano in bars, which definitely gets my respect. But all of that was in spite of his philosophy, not because of it. That's what he describes as 'compatibilism' (a 'wretched subterfuge', according to Kant.)

The mind’s a priori conceptual contribution to experience can be enumerated by a special set of concepts that make all other empirical concepts and judgments possible. These concepts cannot be experienced directly; they are only manifest as the form which particular judgments of objects take. Kant believes that formal logic has already revealed what the fundamental categories of thought are. The special set of concepts is Kant’s Table of Categories, which are taken mostly from Aristotle with a few revisions. — Kant, Metaphysics, Internet Encylopedia of Philosophy

I would think that since having these categories is actually having a form of knowledge, then we cannot truthfully say "Kant agreed that all our knowledge begins with experience". There is a bit of inconsistency here, whereby it is necessary to either break knowledge into two types, a priori and a posteriori (such as innate and learned), or else we need to provide different principles for understanding the a priori as something other than knowledge. — Metaphysician Undercover

Fair point. On the other hand, Kant said 'concepts (innate) without percepts (acquired) are empty' - if an infant is not primed with the right experiences, their innate capacities will not be activated. Children raised by wolves - there have been some - do not learn to speak.

Aristotle offered a resolution by portraying this as two distinct layers of potentiality — Metaphysician Undercover

Also true. There are continuities between Aristotle and Kant, after all, Kant adopted Aristotle's categories nearly unchanged.

I did not preconceive language: I learned it. I did not preconceive reasoning; I developed it over many years, — Vera Mont

Because you were born with the capacity to learn both, which animals are not, the cleverness of crows notwithstanding.

A peculiar world view that always seems to be removed from the clear definitions of others but pervades all of Classical physics and it also seems that those biases died hard when coming into modern physics. You may even say they are still rather prevalent despite the apparent 'transcendence' of physics disciplines from such thinking. — substantivalism

Here's a big-picture sketch of how I interpret the whole issue of mechanistic materialism and its demise at the hands of the new physics. The advent of Newtonian physics and Galilean astronomy posited a sharp division between the subjective and objective domains, with the objective domain being defined solely in terms of the 'primary attributes' of physics - measurable quantities such as mass, velocity, and the like. The 'subjective domain' - that of mind - was associated with the 'secondary attributes' of color, taste, and so on, and was associated with Descartes 'res cogitans'. It was conceived as a completely separate substance (or type of being), another aspect of this proposed separateness. With all this came the birth of a new form of awareness, an 'objective consciousness', which sought to understand the Universe solely in objective and physical terms. That reached its clearest contemporary expression with positivism, as you mention, with Carnap as one of its chief exponents.

That approach has yielded enormous benefits in technical and scientific terms. But its shortcoming was precisely that it excluded the subject, who after all was the instigator and beneficiary of the entire panorama, from the picture! There was no place in it for h.sapiens, save as the 'outcome of the accidental collocation of atoms', as Bertrand Russell put it.

Many factors have begun to call that picture into question, not least the 'Copenhagen interpretation' of modern physics, which found that the observer could not be sharply divided from the observed after all - and in physics, the hardest of the so-called 'hard sciences'! Physicist John Wheeler, commenting on one of the experiments which indicated this problem, said:

The dependence of what is observed upon the choice of experimental arrangement made Einstein unhappy. It conflicts with the (realist) view that the Universe exists "out there" independent of all acts of observation. In contrast Neils Bohr stressed that we confront here an inescapable new feature of nature... In struggling to make clear to Einstein the central point as he saw it, Bohr found himself forced to introduce the word "phenomenon". In today's words Bohr's point - and the central point of quantum theory - can be put into a single, simple sentence. "No elementary phenomenon is a phenomenon until it is a registered (observed) phenomenon". It is wrong to speak of the "route" of the photon in the experiment of the beam splitter. It is wrong to attribute a tangibility to the photon in all its travel from the point of entry to its last instant of flight. A phenomenon is not yet a phenomenon until it has been brought to a close by an irreversible act of amplfification such as ...the triggering of a photodetector. In broader terms, we find that nature at the quantum level is not a machine that goes its inexorable way. Instead, what answer we get depends on the question we put, the experiment we arrange, the registering device we choose. We are inescapably involved in bringing about that which appears to happen.

All of this is, of course, subject of enormous commentary and speculation. I found Paul Davies' books especially useful in getting a clearer picture of it, but there are many others.

I glanced at the link you provided about naturalism, which looks interesting, but it's a book, and I have more than enough on my hands at the moment. But as it mentions Wittgenstein, I thought you might find this magazine article on Wittgenstein relevant - it was was originally published by the British Wittgenstein Society so its provenance is established: Wittgenstein, Tolstoy and the Folly of Logical Positivism.

A couple of observations made off the top of my head.

It seems to me it's been written from a perspective of a kind of disillusionment, by someone who formerly believed that the role of science was to develop a true picture of the world, but has now come to see that this seems increasingly remote. So that even though you say you've seen through naive or scientific realism, you're still not really able to let it go, or see what could replace it. You seem to be expressing a fear that, if you completely let go the mechanistic world-picture, then (heaven knows) anything goes.

Anyone can observe a pen fall, tell us how fast it falls, repeat this experiment, and mathematically model it but something seems lost in it all. — substantivalism

Odd choice of an example object. One usually picks 'a billiard ball' or some other simple object - of course it is true that pens will fall at the same rate as billiard balls, all things being equal, but pens are primary for communication, and physical predictions of how it will behave when dropped will tell you nothing about what you might write with it when you pick it up. I think perhaps that your choice of metaphor here is an inadvertant expression of the problem you're grappling with!

Or is there some way to lean into non-visualization through metaphor or mathematical modeling but without an occultist taste to it? — substantivalism

Again, there seems a kind of fear at work, that letting go the scientific outlook will result in devolution into some kind of voodoo magic. I also notice your mention of Capital T Truth. But I don't think science is about that - certainly, philosophy as taught in the English-speaking academy is not. I think you feel a kind of longing for a unitive vision, a sense in which everything will hang together or make sense, but it's diabolically difficult in the modern world to arrive at that, now that everything is so specialized, and there are such vast amounts of information available.

One book I've been studying which might be of assistance to your quest is Incomplete Nature by Terence Deacon. He attempts to account for intentionality within a naturalist framework, although it's a pretty tough read. But a romantic or mystic, he ain't.

Me, I'm more drawn to classical philosophy (as well as philosophical spirituality), although it's taken me a lifetime to begin to understand it. But I'm realising the richness of our Platonic heritage, and I would recommend to anyone looking at Plato again. Also reading philosophy in a synoptically and historically - trying to form a picture of the way in which the subject started and developed through the history of ideas.

Of particular importance to the kinds of questions you're asking would be the metaphysical assumptions behind the advent of science (e.g. this). And also philosophy of science - Kuhn, Feyerabend and Polanyi. They can help re-frame the issue, such that the distinct difference between the philosophical and purely scientific perspectives comes into view.

That's about all for now, but you're into a lot of really big questions in all that.

It'll all be drones and robotic equipment to start off with. Like Breakthrough StarShot

Guliani, Meadows charged in Arizona Fake Electors Scheme

An Arizona grand jury on Wednesday indicted seven attorneys or aides affiliated with Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign as well as 11 Arizona Republicans on felony charges related to their alleged efforts to subvert Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in the state, according to an announcement by the state attorney general.

Those indicted include former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, attorneys Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, John Eastman and Christina Bobb, top campaign adviser Boris Epshteyn and former campaign aide Mike Roman. They are accused of allegedly aiding an unsuccessful strategy to award the state’s electoral votes to Trump instead of Biden after the 2020 election. Also charged are the Republicans who signed paperwork on Dec. 14, 2020, that falsely purported Trump was the rightful winner, including former state party chair Kelli Ward, state Sens. Jake Hoffman and Anthony Kern, and Tyler Bowyer, a GOP national committeeman and chief operating officer of Turning Point Action, the campaign arm of the pro-Trump conservative group Turning Point USA.

Trump was not charged, but he is described in the indictment as an unindicted co-conspirator.

In a related article,

Republicans in four states are facing charges after submitting documents to Congress falsely claiming that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election in their states. Investigations are ongoing and more charges could be filed.

Why thanks! I'm perusing that last title he mentioned even as we speak.

Where is that "first place" supposed to reside? In the embryo? On the ovum? Surely not in the genes of apes that oh so recently could not philosophize at all? What is the origin of this mind that preconceives? — Vera Mont

To even write your response, you're drawing on your innate capacities of reason and speech, which you must have to mount an argument in the first place.

That's what it means.

We first interpret it as a story. It is not until the same kind of event is followed by the same kind of event repeatedly that we begin to understand cause and effect — Vera Mont

It seems an obvious, common-sense answer, but the point is that a dumb animal, for instance, might be likewise 'exposed' to a series of events but never form any idea of a causal relationship, unless in terms of stimulus and response. Our ability to discern cause and effect goes beyond just observing repeated patterns and constructing stories. According to Kant, and an important point even though he might be a dead white male, the concept of causality is a fundamental 'category of the understanding' that we rely on to make sense of our experiences. This isn't merely a habit or a learned response from observing the world; it's a precondition for how we perceive and interact with the world. When we perceive one event following another, it's our mind's inherent structure that compels us to see this sequence as causal. This isn't simply a narrative we construct after the fact; it's an immediate and automatic application of our cognitive faculties. This means that our recognition of cause and effect is not just a result of experience but a lens through which we interpret all experiences, enabling us to engage with the world in a meaningful way.

Now, as per Jacques Maritain's quote, dogs and cats surely perceive some level of causal relations. After all they're highly intelligent species. But they lack the ability to abstract from that to understand general ideas (or ideas generally!) It is that abstractive and intellectual ability, easily taken-for-granted, that differentiates h. sapiens from other species.

They're both dead enough not to trouble me overmuch — Vera Mont

Shows.

when I previously mentioned that we think and understand perceptions via concepts, but that concepts are in themselves extra-empirical (else non-observable).... — javra

@Vera Mont- what Javra says here is similar to 'Kant's answer to Hume'. Kant's response to Hume addressed Hume's skepticism about the ability of human reason to understand the world beyond sensory experience. Hume - the textbook empiricist philosopher - argued that our knowledge is limited to what we can perceive through our senses. He was particularly critical of the notion of causality, claiming that our belief in cause and effect is merely a habit of thought formed by observing repeated associations between events.

Kant agreed that all our knowledge begins with experience, but he disagreed with Hume's conclusion that it therefore arises solely from experience. Kant introduced a critical distinction between the forms of intuition (space and time) and the categories of understanding (including but not limited to causation), which are necessary for us to interpret sensory information.

According to Kant, these categories are not derived from experience but rather are the preconditions that make experience intelligible in the first place. They are the innate structures of the mind that organize sensory data into coherent perceptions ('percepts'). For example, when we perceive one event following another, our understanding interprets this as causation, allowing us to see one event as causing the other, rather than just as two events occurring sequentially. Thus, Kant argued that Hume's reduction of knowledge to mere sensations and perceptions overlooks the active role of the mind's inherent structures, which underpin experience.

Generally speaking, your posts seem to exhibit a straightforwardly empiricist approach, hence are susceptible to this kind of critique.

:up: You're a fount of interesting book recommendations!

I don't believe this is correct. The random nature of the 'quantum leap' is what caused Einstein to say that he doesn't believe God plays dice. He always maintained that quantum theory must be incomplete, as a consequence of this and other aspects of it, but I think subsequent discoveries have not favoured his objections.

to further judge a phenomena as undetermined is really troubling. — L'éléphant

I think the popular idea is that the elementary particles are lurking in a kind of fuzzy cloud, awaiting measurement; when in reality, they have no definite location, and therefore no definite existence, until they’re measured. Until then there are only degrees of probability, there are not definite particles in the realistic sense generally understood. This is the subject of comments by John Wheeler, in one of his popular essays, Law Without Law. Here he is referring to interpretations of a particular experiment in quantum physics which is associated with the well-known 'observer problem':

The dependence of what is observed upon the choice of experimental arrangement made Einstein unhappy. It conflicts with the (realist) view that the Universe exists "out there" independent of all acts of observation. In contrast Neils Bohr stressed that we confront here an inescapable new feature of nature... In struggling to make clear to Einstein the central point as he saw it, Bohr found himself forced to introduce the word "phenomenon". In today's words Bohr's point - and the central point of quantum theory - can be put into a single, simple sentence. "No elementary phenomenon is a phenomenon until it is a registered (observed) phenomenon". It is wrong to speak of the "route" of the photon in the experiment of the beam splitter. It is wrong to attribute a tangibility to the photon in all its travel from the point of entry to its last instant of flight. A phenomenon is not yet a phenomenon until it has been brought to a cloase by an irreversible act of amplfification such as ...the triggering of a photodetector. In broader terms, we find that nature at the quantum level is not a machine that goes its inexorable way. Instead, what answer we get depends on the question we put, the experiment we arrange, the registering device we choose. We are inescapably involved in bringing about that which appears to happen.

The implication being, the Universe does not comprise independently-existing elementary particles which exist as a kind of material ultimate. That is no longer a new realisation, although the implications are still being debated.

the grasp of (a) thing's intelligibility involves understanding its species and genus (scholastic sense of the terms), its telos (at least for living things; the healthy adult versions of living beings are phenomenologicaly "present" to us even when observing the immature or diseases for ), and the universals involved with it. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The human awareness of other animals did not begin with an idea; it began with individual real entities. The human realized that every example of a certain kind of prey was like every other in some ways in which it was unlike another kind of prey — Vera Mont

For Empiricism there is no essential difference between the intellect and the senses. The fact which obliges a correct theory of knowledge to recognize this essential difference is simply disregarded. What fact? The fact that the human intellect grasps, first in a most indeterminate manner, then more and more distinctly, certain sets of intelligible features -- that is, natures, say, the human nature -- which exist in reality as identical with individuals, with Peter or John for instance, but which are universal in the mind and presented to it as universal objects, positively one (within the mind) and common to an infinity of singular things (in the real).

Thanks to the association of particular images and recollections, a dog reacts in a similar manner to the similar particular impressions his eyes or his nose receive from this thing we call a piece of sugar or this thing we call an intruder; he does not know what is sugar or what is intruder. He plays, he lives in his affective and motor functions, or rather he is put into motion by the similarities which exist between things of the same kind; he does not see the similarity, the common features as such. What is lacking is the flash of intelligibility; he has no ear for the intelligible meaning. He has not the idea or the concept of the thing he knows, that is, from which he receives sensory impressions; his knowledge remains immersed in the subjectivity of his own feelings -- only in man, with the universal idea, does knowledge achieve objectivity. And the dog's field of knowledge is strictly limited: only the universal idea sets free -- in man -- the potential infinity of knowledge.

Such are the basic facts which Empiricism ignores, and in the disregard of which it undertakes to philosophize. — Jacques Maritain, The Cultural Impact of Empiricism

No; they exploit real differences. — Vera Mont

That’s only one way of looking at it, but it will fit right in here

That we’re related to, but significantly different from, simians, through higher intelligence, self awareness and other attributes. And that the difference is significant. Janus says that I am ‘appealing to the supernatural’ (although that term is implicitly pejorative.) What I will acknowledge is that I believe that elements of the religious account of mankind signify real differences. And that the accepted wisdom of humans being no different to animals is a cultural construct and one that is particularly suitable for the ‘sensate culture’ we live in.

As far as ‘what more is there than information’ there’s the whole question of interpretation, of what information means. I mean, I can fully accept the biological account of human origins without thereby accepting that we’re fully determined by biology.

Reasoned inference enables discoveries of facts impossible to obtain by observation alone. Science relies on it, not to mention everyday rational thought.
— Wayfarer
Science confirms or disproves it through experimentation. — Vera Mont

But you're missing the point. The claim I took issue with was this:

What information do you have to work with beyond the empirical? — Vera Mont

If by 'the empirical', you mean 'only what is available to sensory perception' (per John Locke and David Hume), then rational inference goes well beyond what is available to sensory perception. Through it, we have discovered endless things that you could never learn only by observation. These discoveries are then validated (or refuted) by observation and experiment, but conjecture plays a vital role, as do the paradigms within which results are interpreted, and neither of those are strictly or only empirical.

We did cross a threshold, but it wasn't an evolutionary one; it was a cultural one. — Vera Mont

And also an existential one, more to the point.

The Bhikkhu quote describes it as a "mode of perception", which I would interpret as an attitude of "open-mindedness". — Gnomon

Not exactly. It's more concerned with paying close attention to the nature of experience. As I said above:

My take on 'emptiness' is that it is the seeing through of automatic projections - thought-patterns - associated with objects, situations and experiences. These manifest as identification- this is me! I am that! This is mine! together with the associated feelings of pride and shame, gain and loss, and so on. — Wayfarer

That is not really 'open-mindedness' in an 'anything goes' sense.

As far as scepticism is concerned, there's a proposed link between a school of ancient Greek scepticism founded by Pyrrho of Elis and Buddhist philosophy. The theory is that Pyrrho travelled to Bactrian India (likely the Swat Valley straddling Afghanistan and Pakistan) which was then a Buddhist cultural center, and sat with the Buddhists. From this, he got his 'suspension of judgement', which resembles the Buddhist 'nirodha', or 'cessation'. That is the origin of scepticism, but it's nothing like today's armchair scepticism, which challenges claims to any kind of knowledge. Again it's more concerned with awareness of the disturbing patterns of thought and emotion rather than establishing a dogmatic truth claim. (Rather an interesting blog post on that can be read here.)

Obviously, [C S Lewis] created a new personal worldview, but did his mind create a new world, in the sense of the OP? — Gnomon

Need to be careful about what the meaning of 'creating' is in this context. An observation I have read is that the etymology of 'world' is an old Dutch term 'werold' meaning 'time of man' (ref), meaning that the connection with humanity is intrinsic to it. Whereas it is natural nowadays, with our modern awareness of the vastness of time and space, to see ourselves as transitory phenomena, 'mere blips' as the saying has it. But what the OP is pointing out, is that the vastness of time and space is unintelligible in the absence of perspective, and perspective can only be brought to bear by an observer. That's the central conflict I'm pointing out. (It's also a realisation that has dawned on physicists.)

//

There's another difficult point I want to make. The above connection between Buddhism and scepticism seems counter-intuitive - Buddhism is a religion, so how can be it also sceptical? This apparent conflict stems from a largely Western interpretation of what religion entails. In the West, particularly in post-Enlightenment contexts, religion is mainly associated strictly with codified beliefs and doctrines, something in turn heavily influenced by the doctrinal nature of Christianity (and especially protestant Christianity with the emphasis on salvation by faith alone). This differs markedly from religions like Buddhism, where practice, experience, and a phenomenological approach to understanding mind and reality are central, rather than the adherence to orthodox beliefs. The idea that skepticism is antithetical to religion is born out of a culturally-condition view of religion. Buddhism exemplifies how a religious framework can coexist with, or even promote, a skeptical approach to understanding nature (see the Kalama Sutta). It does not commit to a dogmatic worldview but instead encourages inquiry and direct personal experience as paths to enlightenment. This is, of course, why it is often said that Buddhism is not a religion but a philosophy, although that is also not quite true, as it's ultimate aim is liberation from worldly existence, which is clearly a religious one.

This highlights how deep-seated cultural assumptions can influence the interpretations of non-Western philosophies and religion. But it's also inevitable, to some extent, because of the role of belief in faith is often viewed as both a gift and a response to God's grace. It involves an assent to the doctrines taught by the church and a trust in God's promises. This framework can lead to an understanding of religion as essentially a belief-based system, where the right belief is the key to spiritual fulfillment and salvation. In contrast Buddhism place a greater emphasis on practices such as meditation, moral living, and the direct experience of insights about the nature of reality. Significant that the first item on the Buddhist Eightfold Path is 'right view' (samma dhitthi) rather than 'right belief' (orthodoxy). That's not to say that faith is not also important in Buddhism, as it is, but it is also counter-balanced by an existential perspective which is often missing in dogmatic religions.

Launched 1977, now 22 light-hours away. Makes you realise the vast distances involved (and why I don't believe that interstellar travel is possible inside current science.)

But I believe you want to infer from that a supernatural influence, and that is really the unspoken premise in your complaints about modern culture. — Janus

Where have I said that? :rage:

That's not information; that's conjecture. — Vera Mont

Not so. Reasoned inference enables discoveries of facts impossible to obtain by observation alone. Science relies on it, not to mention everyday rational thought.

And the cherry on top of the whipped cream of our tippy-toppery is a 'moral sense' that can't be located, measured or verified by scientific means — Vera Mont

Those very means you call into question in your initial response. And here, you're verging on positivism.

I think humans need to take responsibility for the fact of their difference to other species. We hold their lives in our hand - something which, of course, many dedicated biologists and environmental scientists are highly aware of.

Do the various species possess consciousness? It seems to be difficult to explain consciousness in ourselves (how it works, where it is located, and so on), so it will be difficult to explain how the dog laying at my feet is conscious, or the squirrels cleaning out the fire feeder, or the crows collecting in the trees... possess consciousness. — BC

I don't find it difficult. Sure, I don't know what it's like to be a dog, but it's also not something entirely remote or alien from human experience. I mentioned before the Buddhist categorisation of 'sentient beings', which casts a pretty wide net, covering basically any organism with senses. There's vast diversity amongst them but also something in common. (Mind you I also don't believe that consciousness as such is something that can or should be explained, but that's another argument.)

I also think this is pretty much the standard view, so I'm not sure why you seem to think it isn't the standard view. — Janus

I agree that h. sapiens evolved and that language also evolved but my argument is that we've crossed an evolutionary threshold which sets us apart from other animals. We are able, among many other things, to interrogate the nature of being through philosophy, or the size and age of the Universe, through science.

This evolution toward greater sapience, then, to me directly speaks of the “chain of being” you are making mention of. Something we, again, innately acknowledge in our day to day living of life but which physicalism/materialism cannot easily, if at all, account for—other than, maybe, by the proclaiming of absolute relativity when it comes to values … the very same values by which physicalism/materialism is upheld … making the physicalist’s position sort’a self-defeating. — javra

Couldn't have said it better. And yes, and there are notable acts of animal bravery and even self-sacrifice. There are service dogs (even service pidgeons!) of extraordinary courage and fortitude.

What information do you have to work with beyond the empirical? — Vera Mont

What can be inferred, what it means that something is the way it is.

Wolves and groundhogs have rules of behaviour - they just don't make a big verbose fuss about it: if somebody misbehaves, they snarl or snap at him; they don't put him on the rack or cut out his tongue. — Vera Mont

Right! They're not moral, nor immoral. They don't consider the consequences or weigh up their decisions. They act; they don't bear the burden of self-consciousness. Sin and taboo are more than just 'inventions' - they arise from the fact that we can sense right and wrong. That's what I meant before about humans being 'existential animals' - we can ask, what does existence mean, why am I here?

I'm not terribly interested in solving the "problem" of consciousness, because I don't consider any more of a problem than sunlight. — Vera Mont

It's a question in philosophy of mind, and one I'm interested in.

Like what? — Vera Mont

Philosophical questions, such as the one above, and the one we're discussing.

“We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.”
― Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene — javra

I do give credit to Dawkins for at least recognising the issue. I saw him in a TV debate once, and an audience member asked him if we should live according to evolutionary principles, and he said heavens no, it is a terrible way to try and live. But he seems completely unaware that his polemics, as distinct from his science writing, are aimed at methodically destroying any idea of there being a higher purpose or higher life. Like, he recognizes that the selfish gene gives no basis for ethics, but then what does? Science has no inherent moral orientation, it is concerned with facts, not oughts (as per Hume and the is/ought division.)

Look at the difference between plants and animals. If there is such a thing as a "highly significant difference" which marks a threshold in evolving life forms, wouldn't this qualify as such a threshold? — Metaphysician Undercover

Sure, I already acknowledged that in the post above about Schumacher's ontology. You know perfectly well that Aristotle said reason marked the difference between humans and animals.

While the term Rational Animal itself originates in scholasticism, it reflects the Aristotelian view of man as a creature distinguished by a rational principle. In the Nicomachean Ethics I.13, Aristotle states that the human being has a rational principle (Greek: λόγον ἔχον), on top of the nutritive life shared with plants, and the instinctual life shared with other animals, i. e., the ability to carry out rationally formulated projects.[2] That capacity for deliberative imagination was equally singled out as man's defining feature in De anima III.11.[3] While seen by Aristotle as a universal human feature, the definition applied to wise and foolish alike, and did not in any way imply necessarily the making of rational choices, as opposed to the ability to make them. — Wiki

You can see the Platonic lineage in the distinction between the rational and appetitive parts of the soul.

What's the difference between "kinds of entities" and "kinds of beings"? — Janus

Ontology is concerned with classification of types, not the enumeration of all the different kinds of things. Anyway, the point is only that I'm arguing for the ontological distinctions between inorganic, organic, sentient, and rational. That while h. sapiens is clearly descended from a common ancestory with simians, reason, language, self-consciousness, and so on, make us different from other animals. Why this point has to be laboured, why it is controversial or needs argument, I confess that I don't understand.

//

I would have thought an obvious difference between humans and animals, is that we're capable of moral choice (unless you accept determinism, which I don't.) As philosopher Richard Polt puts it:

People can perform extraordinary acts of altruism, including kindness toward other species — or they can utterly fail to be altruistic, even toward their own children. So whatever tendencies we may have inherited leave ample room for variation; our choices will determine which end of the spectrum we approach. This is where ethical discourse comes in — not in explaining how we’re “built,” but in deliberating on our own future acts.Should I cheat on this test? Should I give this stranger a ride? Knowing how my selfish and altruistic feelings evolved doesn’t help me decide at all. Most, though not all, moral codes advise me to cultivate altruism. But since the human race has evolved to be capable of a wide range of both selfish and altruistic behavior, there is no reason to say that altruism is superior to selfishness in any biological sense.

In fact, the very idea of an “ought” is foreign to evolutionary theory. It makes no sense for a biologist to say that some particular animal should be more cooperative, much less to claim that an entire species ought to aim for some degree of altruism. If we decide that we should neither “dissolve society” through extreme selfishness..nor become “angelic robots” like ants, we are making an ethical judgment, not a biological one. Likewise, from a biological perspective it has no significance to claim that Ishould be more generous than I usually am, or that a tyrant ought to be deposed and tried.

In short, a purely evolutionary ethics makes ethical discourse meaningless. — Anything but Human

These are expressions of physicalist reductionism, but this doesn't entail the more drastic reduction to "the 4 Fs". — hypericin

The point is, as far as a purely biological theory is concerned, what else can there be? We forget that On the Origin of Species is exactly that - an account of the origin of species. One can completely accept the evolutionary account of human origins, as I do, without accepting that, therefore, evolutionary biology explains everything about us, as the 'ultra-Darwinists' seem to want to do. It has the effect of depicting all our faculties and attributes in terms of the way they 'contribute to survival' (or not.) As such, it results in a kind of biologically-oriented pragmatism.

. I think the key is to distance ourselves from rigid 'objectivity' - which is often another term for objectification - and let our other faculties participate in a quest for knowledge; accept the information we get from our senses. — Vera Mont

:100: But when it comes to the question of the nature of being, there might be more to consider than the empirical.

F***king, of course, but as a rule I avoid profanity. :yikes:

we can get an approximation. — Vera Mont

Sure. But you’re aware of David Chalmers distinction between the ‘easy’ and ‘hard’ problems? I would think approximations and simulations are the former.