No. I did not use "multiple" to define the conjunction operator. — ucarr

In other words, the "and" operator is an attractor that puts multiple members into one set — ucarr

You did, you used multiple in the definition. If you only want to used attractor, when you define attractor, you'll still have two use a word similar to multiple, several, and, connect, which all contain the same essence that's fundamental and can't be defined in a meaningful way (or, since you don't like saying that, it simply can't be explained). In other words, if you can't define/explain "and" with smaller parts it's made of, it creates the circularity, the self reference. Do you know what I mean or don't you? Because it's not clear from your response, I'm not sure about where you're going with this.

Perhaps you'll argue that connecting is just the same as multiplying. They're related, but they're not identical. We can prove this by showing how 3+4 = 7, whereas 3x4 = 12. — ucarr

Multiple isn't the same as multiplying... Just as you said here.

multiple | ˈməltəp(ə)l |
adjective
having or involving several parts, elements, or members — ucarr

The underlined part of your quote is incorrect. With A = B, you've set up an equation of the type:
5 = 2+3. This is not A = A, which could be 5 = 5, or 2+3 = 2+3. A and B, as your eye can see, are not identical, as the case with A = A. Stop conflating equivalent with identical. — ucarr

No, the problem I mention is when A = 7-2 rather than 2+3. But the analogy with numbers doesn't work because we know that we can break down 5 in a lot of ways, and the problem I mentioned is when 5 can't be broken down into smaller units, smaller operations. Basically the question "how do you make 5?" is left unanswered and the only way to "define it" is to take a "bigger" category and remove other elements from it, or to use synonyms.

Does it make sense to go from there to saying bell pepper equals the pizza? — ucarr

Bell pepper equals pizza (containing bell peppers) minus all the other elements. That's what I meant when I said "C without B", it means C minus B.

you're saying a fundamental definition cannot be redefined usefully — ucarr

Again, no, I did not say that. I mentioned the use in language here:

It's only useful if you don't know the word for A — Skalidris

If it’s best to insert 5 into one context, whereas it’s best to insert 2+3 into another context, then that stands as a minor example of usefully spinning a fundamental definition. — ucarr

Yes, trouble is that, in the context of primitive notions, you can't define 5 as an addition of smaller parts.

So you're saying that the way you defined "and" isn't A = A?

You defined it as: "the "and" operator is an attractor that puts multiple members into one set"

You used multiple to define it but multiple is just a step further from "and" (if you take one element AND another, you have MULTIPLE elements). It has the concept of "and" inside of it. If A = B but the only meaningful way to define B (or an element within B) is B = A, it's the same as A = A. It's only meaningful in language, if you don't know the word for "and" and that someone tries to explain what that means, they can use words that you know that imply the concept "and", but that doesn't mean they've defined it in a meaningful way. It's like explaining a child what a "number" is and how to do 1+1=2, all you're really doing is giving them words to describe concepts they already have. For addition, you just show two units and say "this and this becomes two", you're only giving them labels. If you were to explain this concept to an alien for whom it is not intuitive, you'd fail because all we can do for "primitive concepts" is label them, we can't explain them. Do you agree?

To me, a meaningful definition is when you're able to define it by using more fundamental elements. if A is made of B and C, Saying A = B∧C is meaningful. But if A is an element of C and that C= B∧A, defining A as C without B isn't meaningful. It's only useful if you don't know the word for A, but know the word for B and C.

multiple | ˈməltəp(ə)l |
adjective
having or involving several parts, elements, or members
The Apple Dictionary — ucarr

Define several.

If you configure a circle of any size, and you construct it by using the sequence: apple_orange_pear, you can start at any point in the circle and stop at any other point on the circle, and the three parts remain distinct. If you make a complete circle from, say, an apple back to itself, it's not conflated with either the orange or the pear. — ucarr

I don't understand what you mean. Do you agree that it's circular?

"Circular" and "undefined" are two different things. If you cannot define something, you cannot establish it as distinct from other things. In other words, if you cannot say what something is, you also cannot say what it isn't. — ucarr

If it's circular, if it sends back to itself directly, then you cannot define it in a meaningful way. In other words, you cannot explain it, break it down into smaller parts. And you could "know" when something is even if you cannot define it: we can feel when we're conscious but that doesn't mean that we can explain it and define it in a meaningful way.

By contrasting "and" with "or," the two operators clarify and explain each other. In other words, the "and" operator is an attractor that puts multiple members into one set, whereas the"or" operator is a separator that puts multiple members into separate sets, as demonstrated by the two expressions above. Now there, I've defined the "and" operator without any circularity. — ucarr

Okay, now define "multiple" :razz: . Have you ever tried following the definitions in a dictionary, looking up each word used in a definition, only to discover it eventually loops back to the same terms? There's no escaping the circularity but you can try if you want to see it for yourself!

I think there's been a misunderstanding: I don't believe consciousness is an illusion, and I don't believe it is immaterial, I believe we cannot know either of these things.

The hard problem of consciousness arises when one believes consciousness can successfully study (and explain) itself as an object in the world. And the problem is that you need consciousness to study anything. If you've ever heard of primitive notions, it's the same principle: you cannot define and explain primitive notions with concepts other than themselves. Have you ever tried to explain what a "unit" is? What the logic connector "and" means? To use the latter example, imagine our brain had some kind of logic gate (in electronic circuits) that serve as "and" connector, we would know that whenever we use "and" or any process of linking things together, we use that logic gate. So naturally, we could try to define "and" as the physical process. It could be: “And” is a circuit that receives several inputs and gives an output of 1 if all inputs are 1. You can see that “and” is already in the definition and even if we try to phrase it differently to avoid the “and”, you’ll still need to talk about the several inputs being received, and what’s “several”? It is at least one unit AND another. Do you see the circularity?

Your first sentence implies consciousness cannot examine itself. Can you explain how this is the case given the fact that, in this very instant, we are examples of consciousness examining itself? If we're not doing that, then what are we doing? — ucarr

So even if we can associate physical processes with consciousness, we cannot break down the intuitive meaning into smaller parts, and breaking something into smaller parts is how we explain things. In other words, consciousness can examine the physical processes responsible for its existence, but it cannot examine its intuitive meaning inside the mind. Just like we can't explain what "and" means (using other concepts) even if we knew the physical processes behind it.

Can you explain why this premise is not an impossible premise leading to the logical circularity you're propounding? — ucarr

Because of the premise that consciousness is required for any explanation, any thought (including the perception of objects).
To go back to the "and" example, any definition or description of the material processes behind "and" includes the concept "and".

If, as you imply, consciousness is thwarted by the self-referential state into useless circularity, then that's a claim that supports: consciousness exists outside of the subject/object bi-conditional. — ucarr

No, it simply implies that we do not know. We don't know if it's material, causal, an illusion, we can't know anything because we use it to build any knowledge...

brain precedes mind, at least from the materialist point of view: brain and mind always co-exist, but there's no thought without brain, as demonstrated causally by the maxim: absent brain, absent mind. — ucarr

I agree. That's why we can study the physical processes responsible for consciousness. Just how we could explain the "And" logic gate but yet never be able to explain the "And" concept.

In our context here, it is a measurement system. This is a fact about consciousness, thus establishing its identity as an object. — ucarr

No, consciousness is obviously a flying unicorn, or maybe a rock, or a planet. Consciousness can indeed associate itself with all kinds of objects, but doing so creates a self referential problem, aka the hard problem of consciousness.

What does consciousness do? In our context here, it changes the state of superposition into the state of (well-defined) position. — ucarr

So what? How does that have anything to do with this self referential problem?

This would require a little more than improvements in transportation or communication… This would require that our mind is restructured in a way that does not require “consciousness” to be a building block in our mind. And even if that is managed, this would be replaced by another “building block” and we would then face the same problem for this other building block. We use tools from our mind to understand the world, just like in the Lego analogy I explained later in this message, and it’s impossible to explain these tools when all we have to do so are the same tools we’re trying to explain... — Skalidris

You have so much to say but yet you don't have anything else to add to my remark?

If you want a more formal proof of this reasoning, it’s the same principle as Gödel’s incompleteness theorems: any consistent formal system capable of arithmetic contains true statements that are unprovable within that system. The self reference problem brings contradictions when you're trying to prove something by using that thing itself, just like with the liar paradox, just like the hard problem of consciousness. — Skalidris

You wanted a more formal proof of this logic impossibility, are you not satisfied with this one?

It’s easy to dismiss the implications of formal systems by saying they don’t apply to language because it’s informal. Following that logic, one could argue that mathematics never perfectly applies to the real world, and therefore its implications shouldn’t be considered relevant to it.

What would be more interesting is to understand why such implications arise within a formal system in the first place. Once we understand that, we can assess whether it’s reasonable to assume those implications might also hold for language or nature.

Did Wittgenstein even attempt to figure out why?

It's like saying the detective can't solve the crime if you set up a scenario where the clues are out of his reach. Sure. Nothing to do with logical impossibility though — Baden

Of course, the analogy isn’t perfect, and here, it requires some elements to simply be “out of reach” for a human while it seems that other humans can reach it: after all, the plastic bricks are made by humans so naturally it’s not impossible to break down plastic… But it shows that a system has its limits based on how it’s made. Our mind is made out of neurons and the way the neurons communicate and the way the neural networks are built present limitations. Just like the child was limited to working with plastic bricks, our reasoning is limited by what it is made of.

If you want a more formal proof of this reasoning, it’s the same principle as Gödel’s incompleteness theorems: any consistent formal system capable of arithmetic contains true statements that are unprovable within that system. The self reference problem brings contradictions when you're trying to prove something by using that thing itself, just like with the liar paradox, just like the hard problem of consciousness.

But isn’t it intuitively obvious? We explain things by breaking them down, it’s either a bottom-up or a top down but every explanation implies breaking things down into elements and explaining how the elements interact together. We know that any reasoning implies consciousness and that we can’t break it down, this “subject experience” is always there as a whole… I think the problem might arise from the illusion that sciences can break down consciousness, because we’re making a lot of hypothesis about its parts, but we seem to forget that every single one of these hypothesis was made using consciousness as a whole…

Is this an impossible picture? — SophistiCat

Why would it be an impossible picture? It is possible to take a photograph of a painter and his art.

Never say never! Yes, this seems impossible today. But science is full of 'making the impossible possible'. Did we conceive that cell phones would exist 300 years ago? That mankind would ever be able to travel to the moon? Judging what is possible in the future based on what we know today has a history of throwing egg on the face of our collective human race. :)

This is why it is viable to call it 'the hard problem' instead of 'the impossible problem'. — Philosophim

This would require a little more than improvements in transportation or communication… This would require that our mind is restructured in a way that does not require “consciousness” to be a building block in our mind. And even if that is managed, this would be replaced by another “building block” and we would then face the same problem for this other building block. We use tools from our mind to understand the world, just like in the Lego analogy I explained later in this message, and it’s impossible to explain these tools when all we have to do so are the same tools we’re trying to explain...

your argument is a bit like saying it's logically impossible to prove the existence of time because it's an object in the world and we can't perceive it as such because each act of perception is a static measurement that never captures its flow. — Baden

You're comparing apples and oranges. You're talking about the inability to understand something because we would assume that we don't have the right tools in our mind (which couldn't be a certainty solely based on logic), and I'm talking about the inability to understand something because it's self referential. We need consciousness to think, therefore we need consciousness to make any inference about consciousness, that's the problem.

Imagine a child is trying to figure out how a plastic Lego brick was made, but all they have to work with are other Lego bricks. The child could build something that looks like a drilling rig out of the bricks and they can pretend that this rig drills deep into the ground to extract some natural substance (also made of bricks) and then use another set of bricks to build a pretend fire, imagining that the substance is somehow broken down by the fire to create the bricks themselves. But the child can't actually break down or change the bricks. They're trying to use the very bricks they're made of to explain how those bricks came into being, which creates the self-referential problem. The “hard problem of the Lego brick” could be that whatever they try to build, they’ll have no way to actually check if what they built is truly like what’s happening in reality because they’ll never be able to actually build a brick.

Even if we can study our brain and associate phenomena with consciousness, our understanding of it is made through consciousness, through this subjective notion in our mind. And breaking down consciousness is impossible: it's always there as a whole, at least if we consider the whole to be the experience of the subject (you could study altered states of consciousness to learn more about the missing elements in these experiences).

What or where could anything be but in the world? — jkop

It's not so much about whether things "actually" are physical or not but about our representation of what's physical. And since that representation requires consciousness, it's impossible to imagine consciousness solely as an object in the world because that reasoning already implies consciousness to view it as an object, creating a self reference. Do you know what I mean?

Whether physical or not physical, consciousness cannot be viewed as anything other than consciousness because it's there in any reasoning we have.

Wayfarer yesterday jumped from intelligence to consciousness as if it is the same thing. — Carlo Roosen

Interesting.



It seems that we're talking about the same problem, what you're describing also arises from the problem that our consciousness is like a building block in our mind, that we cannot escape it. We'll never know what it is like to be someone else's consciousness because we're only aware of ours, and it's there all the time, in any reasoning we have, so it's impossible to imagine what it would be like with another building block. Any thoughts we would have about it implies our consciousness, not someone else's, so it's impossible to know.

"How can we objectively measure and explore the purely subjective experience of being conscious?" With our current understanding of science, we can't. — Philosophim

Well we can't, however advanced sciences become, that's what this "logical proof" is about.

So I agree that "....the hard problem of consciousness is impossible to solve", but I don't see the logical proof because it seems we are talking about two different things both referred to as consciousness. — Carlo Roosen

Well, I'm also talking about the " first person experience", and people who explore the hard problem of consciousness are also talking about this, aren't they?

Dreams, hallucinations and imagination don't fit easily into discussions on consciousness, do they? — kazan

Dreams and hallucinations are often considered to be altered state of consciousness, so it's still consciousness. But it's interesting because a lot of things we associate with consciousness can disappear in these states, like the self awareness can become very fleeting, or the sense of reality.

Well, it is apparent to me that we have already begun to understand our universe with the brains we currently have now, and i don't see any reason why this trajectory will not continue. — punos

What trajectory? The one where we’ll keep on understanding the universe better and better? Sure, I agree, our knowledge will most likely keep on extending. But that doesn’t mean we’ll able to reach perfect knowledge. In many fields, the gain of knowledge ends up looking like a logarithmic curve: we discover something and then make a lot of new theories, and then we keep on trying to discover more but the progress is heavily slowed down (like Quantum mechanics).

What’s even more striking is that uncertainty is everywhere. The only fields that allow for a perfect certainty are fields that we created, not fields that aim at the understanding of the universe and depend on the state of the environment studied. For example, many mathematical proofs can be “perfect” meaning that we are 100% sure of them, in all context. But the fact that water boils at a 100 degrees is not a certainty: it’s not 100.0000000 degrees, the decimals are uncertain, also, it’s impossible to make perfect assessment of the conditions in the environment studied (pressure,…), there are uncertainties on every measure we take.

Every tiny fraction of the universe partakes from the same fundamental logic that everything else does or it doesn't exist. I would say that the probability is 100%. — punos

Why would it not exist if it doesn’t follow the same fundamental logic?
Is it 100% because of the trajectory? Because that’s not mathematically true, as I explained with the log curve, there can be a limit, even if our knowledge keeps on increasing.

It's not arrogant because it's the other way around. It is our minds that follow the logic of the universe. — punos

It aims to follow the “logic” of the universe through trials and errors (evolution), huge difference.
Evolution is far from perfect, and just because concepts in our mind were “kept” because they allowed for an understanding of our environment and gave us an advantage for survival doesn’t mean they are the best tools we could have.

And evolution is driven by the environment we’re living in. So theoretically, if we wanted to have the best tool for understanding the whole universe, we would need to live in the whole universe… And assuming it is infinitely small and infinitely big and that everything is causal, its simply impossible. And if it is immensely big and small but limited, our little planet earth still seems like a tiny drop in the ocean, it seems ridiculous to assume that we could predict such huge things that are happening far from our bubble when we “got created” through evolution from what was happening inside the bubble.

So if you assume that we could “live” in the entire universe (which would imply that the universe is not infinite), let evolution run its course for as much time as “needed”, where we would have “tiny” “humans” that would explore the quantum world and huge humans to explore the galaxies, AND that all these intelligent species could still communicate with each other to achieve a perfect understanding of everything… There’s already a problem with that last part because the basic tools these species would have would most likely be drastically different from each other (like we would use our logic, tiny humans would use some type of quantum logic, etc), which would make communication impossible…

That's how science works now, because we can't perfectly isolate the phenomena we're studying, and even if we were, there would still be uncertainties because we don't have perfect knowledge of every single particle in the experiment. So yes, we would need to simplify and discard some data points.

But in my thought experiment, we have everything: there is no noise, all the information is relevant because it's an isolated system and the particles are the most fundamental.

In my opinion, that's an impossible situation, but I thought about this because I think even then, we still might not be able to find a solution because our logic is limited.

What if you may already intuitively understand that the statement is lacking substance? — Vaskane

Yes that is probably the case.

Therefore, if someone uttered the statement, it would beg the question, "Which sentence do you mean?" — Corvus

Yes, my reaction exactly. The most intriguing thing about this paradox is that a lot of people don't mind reasoning with something that is empty of meaning... Probably because they did not check that it actually has meaning prior entering this logic loop.

The term "paradox" is overrated and abused. Most "paradoxes" are simply self-contradictory, self-refuting or circular statements or statements based on a false hypotheses. — Alkis Piskas

Yes, I agree. And I find it quite unbelievable that no discipline has managed to reach a consensus about all of these "fake paradoxes".

There are such factors as perspective and relativity, which alone leave certain paradoxes "open" or "unsolvable". E.g. The Ship of Theseus paradox (thought experiment). — Alkis Piskas

The Ship of Theseus paradox looks more like a philosophical or linguistic issue than a paradox.

Having distinct and unique thoughts is what produces the idea of individuality. — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't see how the unique part makes sense. If we were to clone two human beings, they wouldn't feel like two different persons anymore because their thoughts wouldn't be unique anymore?

But that's not how we conceive of an individual, as having a a separate "I", the "I" being something general. The "I" is the complete package of the individual. So you propose a separation of the "I", but it's unrealistic. — Metaphysician Undercover

Which "I" are you referring to? The notion we have when we are completely awake and conscious? The cloudy version of "I" we sometimes have in dreams? What about people with mental illness, their notion of "I" is completely different, imagine people with split personality, or people with schizophrenia who hear voices. Which "I" are they? I don't think you realize how complex this "I" is, we feel like ourselves when we can access our memory, our feelings, things that we normally access to when we're conscious and awake. I mentioned waking up from fainting in my thread, and the first images and sounds were really different from reality, yet I didn't experience any feelings of weirdness or fear. If I had the same notion of "I" as I do when I'm conscious, I would have felt disoriented and scared.

To go back to the thought experiment, imagine we make a computer with the notion of "I", that would be vaguely aware of its components etc, like we do. Do you think that would trigger consciousness, that the computer would experience something as soon as the notion of individual is coded? I don't see why this would happen, what relates this notion to the fact that experiences "light up"?

To propose a fictitious one is to say that things could be otherwise, but since the notion of individual is the true concept what purpose does the fictitious one serve? — Metaphysician Undercover

What do you mean it is the true concept? Again, which "I" is the true concept? And it's not about being true or not, it's about assessing its relation to consciousness. How do we know that the notion of "I" is related to consciousness? Why would that be the best theory? It's the most intuitive one, for sure, hence my topic: "deconstructing our intuitions". If we choose not to trust our intuitions, what rational arguments do we have to say that consciousness is always related to this "I" notion?

It is a reply in that it focuses on the formation of consciousness, or rather the formation of qualia and individuality. That's a dimension that needs to be included if we are to break down our intuitions of consciousness. — Christoffer

It would be needed if I were deconstructing a theory about the formation of consciousness, which I am not. I'm focusing on what consciousness actually is, about explicitly trying to grasp our intuitions about what it is. And you're discussing the how and why, which doesn't make sense in this thread since we didn't even elaborate what it actually is. How can we talk about why and how something was made if we didn't clarify what we're talking about?
Consciousness is an intuitive notion, not a scientific one (it wasn't created by sciences).

You ask what we think about your reasoning, but there's no clear conclusion you make. It reads more as a speculative meditation on the subject than deconstruction down to a conclusion. — Christoffer

The first conclusion is that there are no rational reasons to believe that consciousness always come with the notion of individual. And that therefore, they should be treated as two different matters. The second derives from the first one: there could be several neural networks experiencing consciousness in our brain.

anytime a "ball of energy", supposedly a consciousness, passed from one subject to another, it would find itself completely disoriented, being in a completely different frame of reference, sort of like if you went to sleep in Tokyo and woke up in London, except much more extreme. — Metaphysician Undercover

First of all, thank you for reading and actually replying to my thread, unlike most of the replies here.
Replying to your comment, the "ball of energy" would not be disoriented because it would only carry the energy to "light up" some neural network, to give rise to this "conscious experience". It wouldn't carry the content of the thoughts. It could be like electricity: if you change the charger of your computer, or the battery, the data and programs in the computer stay the same.
If you imagine that "you" are the ball of energy, like a battery, like the electrons travelling throughout the electronics of the computer. If you are taken to a unit that says "You are individual and have been living in his body since 50 years", you can't "think" anything else because these units define your trajectory. And if the battery is taken to another computer, it won't "notice" anything.

This would produce all sorts of irreconcilable confusion for the consciousness because it would not be able to distinguish forces of change coming from the inside, from forces coming from the outside, leaving it incapable of intentional activity. — Metaphysician Undercover

If we didn't have the notion of individual, this would indeed happen. But if the notion of individual is simply a structure that the ball of energy "reads", this wouldn't happen.

But this is just a thought experiment to challenge this notion of "individual" and show that it could be separated from consciousness. It's to emphasize that this sense of individual could just be a concept in our brain, just like time, numbers,... From the point of view of the thought experiment, there's no reason to think that whenever there's a flow of electron through a circuit, there must be a specific electronic circuit coding for the concept of individual. For living beings, it makes a lot of sense to have this notion and it's hard to imagine that a living being would function without it, but that doesn't make it part of the flow of energy, it doesn't make it necessary for the "conscious experience", they're independent.

the question of qualia and our subjective experience as a consciousness is another discussion that fits this thread better. — Christoffer

However this is not a generic thread about qualia and our subjective experience as a consciousness, this is, as the title suggests, a thread about challenging our intuitions of consciousness. How is anything that you wrote a reply to my thread? It seems like you are just expressing your opinion about consciousness.

I understand that my thread is quite long, but I did not expect that level of misunderstanding.

As long as you think reality is something that has to be ‘matched to knowledge’ you’re screwed from the get-go — Joshs

That is not my opinion, all I said is that knowledge doesn't perfectly match reality... How did you go from that to "reality has to be matched to knowledge"? They're two completely different sentences...

There is no conceptual space for the role of the subject in that method — Wayfarer

Saying this is ignoring philosophy of sciences. And even if we put philosophy aside, there is and there was a place for the subject in sciences long before quantum physics. This is why so many papers get criticized and rejected (and this process is part of the scientific method), we're only humans applying a method that we created, we're biased and make mistakes, and science takes that into account.

Individuation is indeed a fundamental part of human being, but mystics have long pointed to states of consciousness beyond that of 'me and mine'. — Wayfarer

I think you misunderstood, my opinion is that the notion of subject isn't tied to the notion of consciousness.

That it's very jumbled. It's full of mixed metaphors and partially-grasped ideas. — Wayfarer

What do you mean partially-grasped ideas? Who's ideas?

I think neither of these really reflect the problem of explaining phenomenal experiences — Apustimelogist

Indeed, they do not, this is why I said they aren't specific to the hard problem of consciousness.

"Consciousness" is an empirical problem yet to be solved (i.e. testably explained) and not merely, or even principally, a speculative question ... unless by "consciousness", Skalidris, you mean a 'supernatural' (i.e. non-empirical) entity. :chin: — 180 Proof

Okay, let me understand what you mean by empirical. Is anything "non-empirical" supernatural? What about love for example, is it empirical or supernatural?

And if by empirical you mean scientific, well this is a philosophy forum, not a scientific one. If science is the only field that is allowed to deal with the topic of consciousness, should it be banned from this forum?

Its just a very visual example of creatures not recognizing 'Themselves". — Philosophim

Yes, I always thought the mirror test was really reductive, we are animals that rely heavily on visuals so this test makes sense to us but it doesn't make sense for a lot of other animals. Dogs can recognize their own smell but not themselves in a mirror.

Several of your quick answers to my questions from the OP imply that a "perfect" knowledge is possible, and desirable. And that anything that doesn't reach that perfection causes pain. Is that really what you think?

In sciences, we constantly test our hypothesis to see how well it matches reality. And since we keep on doing that, it becomes closer and closer to reality, and we're willing to replace old theories with new ones that are a better match. But with psychology, they don't touch intuitive concepts that are deeply rooted in the society, like love. They do a top down approach, and don't touch the top. It's the same with philosophy: they discuss all the problems there might be with a term like "selfish" but don't do anything about it, its aim isn't to replace terms like that but observe them. It's as if we were only making hypothesis in sciences and never coming up with a method to test them...

So inherently, people learning psychology or philosophy will be disappointed that the intuitive terms are so misleading.

You even suggested it had no benefits — Hanover

No, I asked what the benefits could be:

I don’t believe this is just a random trait that stayed within us while having no advantages, so what could it be? — Skalidris

Of course some of it is related to genetics, so? Almost everything about us is driven by both genetics and the environment. But the ratio can vary a lot. The way we're driven to be disgusted by certain smells is mostly genetics and there isn't much we can do about it. So my question to you is: do you think that it is the case for alcohol? That it is mostly genetics and there isn't much we can do about it.

Don't we already have such fields, though, including those of sociology, anthropology, and cognitive sciences? — javra

If these fields were trying to replace the intuitive concepts that are misleading about human nature, we wouldn't spend hours on this forum pointing out how they don't make sense. "Are humans selfish?", "Does freewill exist?", "What's the meaning of life?". We still use these poorly defined concepts that, when you think about it, are contradicting our knowledge of reality.

but this doesn't come close to defining what "human nature" in fact is — javra

Why make it binary? There is no such thing as "perfect knowledge", knowledge is always evolving. What I mean is that what we currently know, in more scientific fields, not personal opinions or cultural believes, is in contradiction with a lot of intuitive everyday concepts. I just don't understand why no one fixes it.

To give you another example, the expectations we have of romantic love, the way it is painted in movies, is honestly closer to expecting being love bombed by narcissists than actually wanting to be close and spend your life with someone because you truly love who they are. And I believe so many relationships fail because people still hold on to these expectations and never reach it.

What is your point exactly? That society and education are mostly helpless about alcohol consumption and that it's mostly genetic and there isn't much we can do about it?

do you really feel like you're "in control of your thoughts" when you're not drunk? — flannel jesus

More than when I'm drunk, absolutely.

“the proof is in the pudding: rape happens in the world and always has”. This genetically determined aspect of human nature is so called “reality” as they see it. — javra

Just because some humans do some things doesn't mean everyone should do it, that has nothing to do with being closer to human nature. When I mentioned making concepts that are closer to reality, I meant it in a scientific way, gather the best knowledge we have about human nature and try to change concepts that are misleading like those I mentioned. How is considering rape as a crime distorting human nature?

but rather a method by which we can dispel the bullshit and prop up truths - especially those truths that have utility or are impactful. — ToothyMaw

Yes, it would come with a method. And about having a use, the problem is that we don't always know what's going to be useful and what's not. It's like doing fundamental scientific research, you may find things but not all of them will have a direct use, and you can't judge their use if you don't even know what the findings will be. But unlike sciences, doing research in the field of digging into human nature can have destructive consequences.
Imagine if there was such a discipline, it could have the power to destroy everything we rely on, it could even have the power to destroy most of our language. Will we say "I love you" anymore? Will we still say "you're selfish"? There are so many concepts we use everyday that seem absurd considering what we know about human nature. How would such a discipline emerge if it's like a dangerous bomb over which you have no control? It's not like we can say "don't use the method for everything", once people understand it, they will be tempted to analyse everything around them with it.

In fact, those things are required for a human to navigate the world socially and otherwise, I would argue. — ToothyMaw

But to what extend? I never implied it to be black and white, and to completely destroy all intuitive concepts, but to make it more and more rational, and more in harmony with our knowledge of human nature.

we catalogue human nature and teach it so as to avoid Weltschmertz? — ToothyMaw

Yes, that's what I'm suggesting.

Point being it really boggles the mind how such small little gestures or even inaction can literally change the world and lives of countless people — Outlander

Doesn't it boggle the mind specifically because we've been mislead about how much we can do to make things "better"? For example, in my opinion, wishing for peace in the world is completely unrealistic, but that doesn't mean we can't do things to avoid violent and deadly wars. And if someone struggles with drug abuse, expecting them to get better if you say "it's bad for you, it's destroying your life" is unrealistic too. If you're more aware about the problem and the changes that are possible, it might seem more depressing at first but at least you won't keep on being frustrated and you won't expect them to quit after one conversation.

It's not as if Native Americans, for example, who have extremely high rates of alcoholism, are just weak willed. It's part of their genetic response to the substance. — Hanover

Some people with mental disorders can be considered as "weak willed", and some studies showed that some mental disorders have a higher risk of substance abuse. Mental disorders are the result of both genetics and the environment. But for the case of native Americans, it's not necessarily because of mental disorders but it could be because of their culture, their lack of information about the dangers of alcohol, or because what happened to them is pretty terrible...

My point is that the psychological state of an individual and their habits play a crucial role in their appreciation of alcohol. If you raise your kids telling them they should drink alcohol if they feel bad, or that alcohol is a holy beverage that brings them closer to God, there will be more prone to liking it. And we live in a society where alcohol is a must for socialisation so inherently, it's the norm and a lot of people enjoy it. Almost everyone who tries alcohol for the first time finds it disgusting, and the first time being drunk is also not necessarily pleasant. But social pressure makes you do it more and more, and allow it to become a pleasurable habit.

My thread was mostly about why we keep on feeding these habits as it promotes escapism and gives less importance to meaningful social interactions.

Some people just don't have the genetic disposition to react to chemical substances as others, which also explains the alcoholic who seems compelled to drink. — Hanover

I seriously doubt that someone can be resistant to all kinds of drugs. It's not just about alcohol but about any mind altering drug. Some people just like to remain in control and most just prefer to lose it and forget. I believe alcohol reacts in a similar way on me as it does in everybody else, I just don't like it. Just like when watching a movie: people see and hear the same things but some will like it and some will hate it. It's doesn't necessarily mean that they don't see the same things or don't understand it.

There's the idea that one doesn't need religion in order to be moral. — baker

I had a similar thoughts about morals being tied to religion/spirituality.
I made these concept to explain their relation:
Dogmatic intuition: The extension of an intuition that becomes a reference principle.
Reference principle (value): Intuitive categories that serve as guideline for an individual.

So basically, morals, faith and believes are all dogmatic intuitions: they are intuitions that emerged in our life and that we somehow decided to "strongly believe in", that became part of us and that are hard to change. And in my opinion, spirituality and religions build stories around it and reinforce them.
If you strongly feel that something is bad, it's easy to be attracted to spiritual or religious thoughts that reinforce that you're "right" to feel this way, and that people who don't agree will go to hell or whatever.

So I'd say religions and spirituality are a way to maintain strong morals, but that it's not the only way. Some people just don't need to think about why they want to be loyal for example, they just are, because that's what they've been told they should do. I know some people who have strong morals but aren't spiritual or religious at all.

However, if you don't have strong dogmatic intuitions, I don't think you'll be likely to be religious or spiritual. It's my case, I don't have strong moral principles and I've never been attracted to spirituality or religion.

What do you think?

Well, it's not a tautology according to them since the new element is that they call certain phenomena "selection" because it would be similar to the "selection" in the evolution theory, which, to me, isn't similar at all. So all that's left is a tautology.

That phrasing borders on tautological. "X will tend to happen in a system when the environment around that system is favourable for X". Replace x with literally just about anything and that sentence structure holds. Right? — flannel jesus

Yes absolutely! To me, what they call "selection" has nothing to do with evolutionary selection, they created similar words to state the obvious, unless of course, I'm missing something!

I quickly found several other sites with references to a "missing law" to be added to Darwin's 4 or 5 "principles — Gnomon

A missing law to be added to Darwin's theory? Darwin's theory was made in 1859 and is outdated... Darwin didn't even know about genes, we've unraveled so many other mechanisms for evolution since then, such as genetic drift, gene flow, mutations,...

Nowadays you can't study evolution without genetics, so if a new law is made and doesn't necessarily require genes, it certainly can't be added to our current theory of evolution.

Now, from a rational point of view, the reason why we could build the theory of evolution is because living beings all have nucleic acids molecules (DNA, RNA), so in a way we somehow identified how these molecules behave in the environment, their properties. If we were to make an "evolutionary" theory for non living things, which molecules would we study, all of them?

What makes these molecules unique is replication, and then reproduction of the living beings. If an entity randomly generated laws that prevented it from destruction, in order to last longer, it has to reproduce and mutate to be able to adapt to changing environments. To my knowledge, there are no Non nucleic acids molecules having that property. Sometimes stable complex entity are formed, but without reproduction, they won't "survive" if the environment keeps changing. Crystals can grow but their property don't include reproducing, there is no "release" of baby crystals. It can happen if something breaks the crystal but it's not a property of the crystal itself. This is why living beings are able to "override" the law of entropy by being complex "stable" entities and why non living things are less complex.

I find it odd that the article doesn't discuss the importance of replication or reproduction since they're necessary for evolution.

It's not necessarily obvious that things must become more complex over time — flannel jesus

That's not what the theory says. "the functional information of a system will increase over time when subjected to selection for function(s)." There is a big WHEN. If it was true for everything, it would be in contradiction with the law of entropy.

I might be wrong but the way I understand it is: "the functional information of a system will increase over time when the environment around the system is favorable for that to happen".

Humans seem to have always enjoyed altering their consciousness and augmenting their quotidian experiences through all manner of activities - sex, exercise, hiking, travelling, flying, sky diving, deep sea diving, exploring, rock climbing, art, dance, music, cinema, performance, costume, meditation, gambling, massage... — Tom Storm

The difference is, it's easy to see an advantage for all of these activities: it "makes sense" that we get pleasure from sex, or else we wouldn't reproduce, that we exercise be so healthy,... But what about alcohol? If alcohol and drugs didn't exist or triggered a negative reaction that would make us avoid it, what would we lose and what would we gain?

They can make life a bit more interesting and fun. — Tom Storm

But that's the thing, if you didn't consider something interesting sober, why would you want to alter your state to find it valuable? Who would you trust more to access the value of things, your sober self or your drunk self?

But alcohol is not primarily about escape or alteration of mind. In moderation it's a lubricant to conviviality — Vera Mont

It's a lubricant to conviviality because we escape from social norms or fears we had when we were sober... It slows our cognitive abilities, it is an alteration of mind.
To me, drinking alcohol in social events is like admitting we are better equipped at facing this event in our drunker self. I don't understand why we want to change what feels good and what doesn't instead of changing the situation. If I only find a social event fun and interesting when drunk, why go there instead of going somewhere that is fun when sober?

if one is properly 'tuned up' - that is, physical fit and mentally calm - then it is likely the need for such artificial aides to well-being will correspondingly be reduced. — Wayfarer

Yes, then why do we tend to change our perception of reality rather than change our reality itself? I never understood this, if I find people uninteresting, I'm not going to get drunk to have fun with them, I'm going to find people with whom I can have fun when I'm sober...

responsible drinkers know this is an illusion and temporary state, — Outlander

Do they really? It is so normalized to drink during social occasions. Why would you want to cause an illusionary state whenever you socialize, how does that make any sense?

Just because you're sober or awake, as you think, doesn't mean you're any more coherent or in touch with the absolute nature of things than someone who is perhaps a bit less than sober. — Outlander

Okay, so let's imagine you have to choose between spending some fun time doing something you only like when you drink, or doing something you like when you're sober, would you consider them both as valuable in your life? Some people stare at lights when they're on LSD, would you consider staring at lights a valuable thing in your life? Some people have sex with people they don't even like or are attracted to when they're drunk, would you consider that a valuable experience in your life?
I've heard people who had life changing experiences with drugs, where they realised something so important and got their life together after that. I've met someone like that and when he told me his revelation, I couldn't help but think "what, but that's so obvious". And the truth is, denial is the reason why most people can't admit obvious things about themselves, and alcohol and drugs, most of the time, feed denial. It's like when we dream about a solution of our problems, in the dream it seems like we're such a genius and that's an amazing discovery, but most of the time, when we wake up, we realise that solution didn't make any sense. And when it does, it's never something complex that we couldn't have thought about when we were conscious.

l so let me tell you a story based on the truths and falsehoods of what people commonly prescribe to be a case or "unchangeable situation" of such. — Outlander

I didn't get the point of your story. Yes, in extreme situation that alter our physical state, our states of mind is also altered, so? And even if there aren't any physical damage to the health, if someone is keeping a person captive and giving them enough food and water, they'll start losing their mind too, so? I don't think "drugs are bad", without drugs, medicine would be hell for people receiving the treatments. But what I don't understand is why we normalize alcohol during social occasions, where there aren't supposed to be any suffering. And if we suffer from our life, how changing how we feel about it doesn't change anything and is only temporary, so what's the point?

The only way forward for it is to abandon dualism, and in evolutionary terms this would be a catastrophe rather than part of a gradual evolution. . . — FrancisRay

Why would it be a catastrophe?

Because the most realistic depictions of people I’ve read have involved unpredictable and illogical behaviour. — Jamal

To me, a story, or a character is "logic" if it is a logic continuum of the premises, whether they are realistic or not.

If in the story, there are a lot of birches (presented as regular birches) growing underground without any light, it's illogical if the author never explains how they do photosynthesis. Similarly, if a character is presented as a healthy human being, then later in the story is completely distorted, if that distortion is never explained, it's illogical given the premises. But if the premises are that the character is completely crazy (or not a human being), then, even if the reader can't make sense of their behavior, it can be considered logical.

But can a story with surrealistic characters be thought provoking?
To me it’s like saying you had a revelation about a philosophical topic by reading a Disney story… You could understand the ideas of the author better, but how can it be thought provoking if you can’t stay in the story and think deeply about the characters, about how they would react in the world the author described?

But maybe it’s just the way people think in general, if the author exposed some human traits, they don’t mind making links with other things without considering humans as a whole.

Of course it’s impossible to make completely realistic characters, but personally when I’m thinking about any topic in humanities or social sciences, I try to think of humans as a whole as much as I can, not just one or a few traits and make an opinion based on that.

an independent thinker would need some sort of education to learn the terminology and ideas employed by the current field of academics he wishes to present his ideas to otherwise it would seem like he was talking in a different language. — simplyG

You mean he would need to learn the philosophical terminology? Or the terminology of the closest discipline (here sciences)? If so, I agree, if he uses scientific premises as a part of his method, he needs to know about sciences and keep updated on scientific discoveries. But in the end, he would still use a new vocabulary he invented for the rest of the method since the end goal of his discipline is philosophy, and not sciences. And sciences, as it is now, is quite clueless about philosophy. No philosophical thought can be studied using only the scientific method.

existing ideas have to be understood first in order to overcome them — simplyG

Existing disciplines would need to be understood, yes. But for example, if he builds knowledge around free will with the method he created, why is it relevant to consider what philosophers said about free will if he already assessed the philosophical method and concluded it is too different from his own to be relevant? It's like I said with sciences and religions, it's totally irrelevant for scientists to read the bible to see what it says about a natural phenomenon if they are already studying the phenomenon from a scientific point of view.

The pace would depend on the amount of good ideas being produced — simplyG

But how exactly can we judge if it's a good idea if it contradicts the methods in place?

due to some people having intuitions more compatible with recognizing the merit of the new idea — wonderer1

I didn't understand that.

even all the Maths and Geometry theorems, that we are able to prove in so clever and irresistible ways, can be considered just another way how power is able to impose itself as the fundamental law, fundamental rule, in nature, in ideas, in everything. — Angelo Cannata

You're still talking about human power, right? If so, with maths, you can objectively prove your solution is better, regardless of your social status. If a homeless finds a solution to a math problem and present it to a professor, since it's pure logic, they can't argue and have to recognize it works. I think maths underlie our "universal logic": throughout history, some things have never change, even if we represented 1 + 1 = 2 in a lot of different ways, the essence is still the same, so the essence can't be influenced by power. This notion of "unit" (=> numbers) and the notion of "and" seem to be universal for all humans.

Maybe I didn't understand your point but why should "INTs" be treated any differently than "IRTs"?

In the end it's just easier for most people to guess to meaning an INT rather than an IRT because not everyone has basic knowledge of etymology. The impact of the first judgement/guess a person makes when they encounter a new word is quite small compared to the intuition that will later come as the person hears that word in conversations. Whether we call free will: "partial free will" or "flying unicorn", if there is a definition and that most people talk about it, there will be some kind of unified intuition of what that means, regardless of how it's called.

But of course, it's easier to remember the meaning of the word if it is straightforward. And if we talked about "flying unicorn" to refer to "free will", people would most likely create a synonym that is easier to remember, and that synonym (which would most likely be similar to free will) would take over the flying unicorn. Similarly, if the name of a concept contains too many words, like "partial free will", people will only remember a portion of it and that's what will stay.

Is he capable of recognizing political decisions that are unfavorable to others? — Leontiskos

We can't analyze a political opinion and be certain it is better or worse than another, politics is very subjective. And most people derive their political opinions from their own values.

So maybe when the analysis of an opinion doesn't contain much uncertainties (for example: if we suddenly decide that killing humans isn't a crime anymore), when it's quite certain that this decision would lead to a lot of suffering (short and long term), he could have an opinion. But when it's more uncertain (hence most political opinions) and that people take sides because of their intuitions and values rather than conscious assessment, then he would choose not to have an opinion.

it’s important the wrong ones don’t get elected as they could end up affecting your life. — simplyG

Where does this come from? I never said "what if everyone is like that?", I said, "what if someone is like that?". Or even: what if a group of people becomes like that?". Why should every single citizen be interested in politics? If someone only cares about maths, why force them to vote?

A lot of things affect our lives and we can’t have a complete control over everything. Just because having a bad computer affects your life doesn’t mean you should learn how to build one. We have limited time in our lives, we can’t be interested in everything and do everything ourselves. That’s why we live in a society. So why should everyone care about politics?

Aside from judging, we categorize everything. Without that, there wouldn’t be any knowledge. I find it useful in my everyday life to be able to tell to what extend a person is considerate to other’s feelings or not (which is a big component of the term “selfish”). It’s not to judge their morality, but just to be able to understand them.

It’s a shame there isn’t a term like selfish without moral implication. It would be much more precise and not judgmental.

He believed in more of a "saintly" kind of compassion — schopenhauer1

Maybe that's it, what's missing in the definition is that "holy" aspect of morality, of what's good and bad. If there is some kind of higher judgement that we don't have access to, we could question the nature of humans to see if it tends more towards the good or towards the bad, given the "clues" we have available.

So maybe there is a religious/spiritual connotation to this simple term used in everyday life, even for people who are atheist, since I believe, they could also understand the question "Are humans selfish?".

And maybe this is why I don't naturally understand it, I don't have a high sense of "morality", but would rather weight the potential positive and negative consequences.

What do you think?

I helped a person who was in a very bad situation — Angelo Cannata

Why did you help them? You didn't feel bad for them at all in the beginning?

If selfishness isn't the disregard of other people's feelings, then what is it?
You say selfishness is related to intentions, but what should they be in order to be considered "selfish"?
Good intentions means that you intend to do good to people, meaning that they will feel positive emotions from your interactions with them. But why would you do that if you feel no emotional resonance ?

Some people help others because they are "used to it", or because they want to look good in front of others. But isn't that selfish?

The currently accepted cosmology - big bang, inflation. It's plausible but incomplete. — T Clark

I asked chat GPT to name 15 theories that could explain the origin of the universe, whether they are scientific, spiritual or religious:

Big Bang Theory
Inflation Theory
Multiverse Theory
Oscillating Universe Theory
Quantum Fluctuation Theory
Creationism
Intelligent Design
Hindu Cosmology
Buddhist Cosmology
Native American Creation Myths
Steady State Theory
Ekpyrotic Theory
Conformal Cyclic Cosmology
String Theory
Plasma Cosmology

Even in the realm of science, there are a lot of hypothesis that are really different from each other. The problem is: how can you tell which one is more probable? The big bang theory is the more famous one but does that mean that it's the most probable? Have scientist really tried to assess probabilities and uncertainties of the different theories? If so, I'd love to read a paper about it, do you know any? I find science a bit helpless for assessing probability when it comes to such abstract concept that contains so many uncertainties.

And even if we could find the most probable theory according to science's standards, the second part that I explained would make the probability of that theory close to zero anyway:

=> The probability that the “true” theory can be made by our imagination, and therefore from knowledge from 1): that tiny part of the universe, is even more ridiculously small. — Skalidris

My point is, I genuinely don't understand why humans even try to answer these questions. Especially since they made the hypothesis that the universe is infinite, which makes our knowledge look ridiculous, so why try to speculate about the origin of everything?

The right word is "unlimited." Humans languages can generate an unlimited number of propositions. — T Clark

Unlimited is still wrong, probabilistically. If you compare human's imagination with the power of creating combinations of elements, if the number of elements is finite, the number of combinations is as well, it is limited by the size of the sample. At least at a given time. You could say that it's unlimited because that sample of elements is constantly growing but it's different from my proposition.

If you assume they are with no evidence, it invalidates the analysis. — T Clark

I didn't understand that.

I'm not required to provide reasons for my disagreement with you if you didn't provide justifications for your statements in the first place. — T Clark

You're not required, I'm just saying I don't see how it is useful for anyone. I don't mean to be rude but who solely cares about the opinion of a random person on the internet? How can it be useful to know a human being disagrees with something, without having any more details on the reasons why? At least if I had the reasons why, maybe it would provide useful information.

I might not have detailed my justification enough for you to be able to make anything of it, but that's personal, the probability that someone can extract useful information out of my 400 word intro is much greater than extracting info from the sentence "I disagree" :p