The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy and Other Essays
by John Dewey

When we look at the world at the scale of QM, we’re looking at pre-cognitive reality without the benefit of the formatting by reality’s boundary administrator, our consciousness. — ucarr

Why should this be the case? On the one hand, you seem to be presenting a metaphysics of consciousness as a natural feature of reality. But then you seem to fall back on a more anthropomorphic interpretation.

Perhaps consciousness does exemplify an "executive" function (oversees boundary negotiations). But another way to phrase it would be that it is a "function of" those operations.

In the Days of the Comet
by H.G. Wells

I think pretty much everybody who is alive is pro-life. The so-called "pro-life" movement is really "anti-abortion". If it is an issue of personal responsibility, then it is and should be a personal choice. If it is an issue of social responsibility, then the world is becoming increasingly overpopulated, in a way which increasingly threatens the health and well-being of many, as well as the biosphere. In which case it is a reasonable choice.

Little Dorrit
by Charles Dickens

So - is there a connection between biosemiosis and this broader understanding of evolution? — T Clark

My take is that biosemiosis is essentially the materialization of understanding. So expanding it becomes a kind of self-understanding that embraces and constitutes reality at the deepest levels, through/as the mechanism of semiotic feeback.

I'm currently reading about biosemiotics. It is the science of signification that stretches across the biological domain, the logical extension of Lorenz's ideas you mentioned. The grandfather of biosemiotics is Jakob von Uexkull. Biosemiotician Barbieri notes that von Uexkull's Umwelt:

had an influence on...Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger...and was instrumental for Konrad Lorenz's development of ethology.

I'm trying to expand the notion of biosemiotics to embrace the entire material domain, not just the biological (a la Terrence Deacon).

We are free to act on our will, but not free to choose our will.... We are our will, who would be the "we" apart from our will that wants to change the will. — ChatteringMonkey

Yes, we have an inherent disposition. In many ways, this is akin to having (being) a perspective. How does this not make sense conceptually? And just because we have a disposition, why should this mean we are not free to change our disposition? Your argument is like saying that a sailboat being driven by a northerly wind is not able to change its course.

Introduction to Biosemiotics: The New Biological Synthesis
by Marcello Barbieri

I think the most compelling idea in the book is there there is a direct continuity between the "cognition" of the earliest animals and the cognition of complex animals such as us. — T Clark

What is your interpretation of "direct continuity"? I feel there is a "direct continuity" between individual consciousnesses, their socio-cultural encodings, and their subsequent re-encodings (as subsequent individual consciousnesses). Like that?

A Journal of the Plague Year
by Daniel Defoe

Civilization and Capitalism 15th-18th Century, Vol. 1: The Structures of Everyday Life
by Fernand Braudel

The C.S. Peirce collection was edifying. From the perspective of a voracious intellect, Peirce consistently demarcates the different spheres of scientific, logical, and metaphysical inquiry:

the scientific man...ardently desires to have his present, provisional beliefs (and all his beliefs are merely provisional) swept away (312)
the conclusions of science make no pretense to being more than probable (326)
Metaphysics [is] an observational science (313)
that which has been inconceivable today has often turned out to be indisputable on the morrow (332)

Peirce also suggests that there is an overarching kind of reason that encompasses the totality of our experiences, something that is neither reducible nor amenable to scientific expression. For me, this is a fundamental truism.

The Expedition of Humphry Clinker
by Tobias Smollett

A Norton Critical Edition I happened across. Includes a critical essay by Sir Walter Scott I'll probably read first.

(a) How do you know (i.e. corroborate) that you or any other agent is "conscious" if "consciousness" is completely, inaccessibly subjective?
— 180 Proof

cogito, ergo sum — Wayfarer

:smile:

Well, apparently you're too lazy to think — 180 Proof

You mean like when you asked me to explain Mario Bunge's metaphysical concept of energy and I provided a link to his text and you told me "never mind" because you were too lazy to read his essay? Ok. Sure.

I'm not really sure why you even bother to engage people who are legitimately trying to offer good commentary only to mock and belittle them. It's not productive. You are definitely the Donald Trump of philosophy. You strike me as the kind of person who would tattoo "Prove me wrong" on his forehead. Maybe that could be your avatar.

Straight-forward, relevant questions are beyond you. Gotcha — 180 Proof

I'm sorry, what exactly was the question again? All I saw was more of your trademark wit, but no actual philosophical commentary of any kind. I substantiated my position anyway.

Inasmuch as you didn't see fit to amplify it I took it that way and responded appropriately. What I thought was funny was that you didn't bother to offer any comment.

Mary's room. — Lionino

Is based on a faulty premise that one can acquire "all the physical facts" that there are about something. Which is implied by my further comments on the inherently compartmentalized and abstract-approximate nature of scientific knowledge in general.

In short, experience overflows our knowledge of it, which is self-evident to me. I know there are some people who think they "know it all" though. They don't.

Life is largely anecdotal [sophistry].
— Pantagruel
Yeah, like your posts ... care to try again? — 180 Proof

Sure.

"Practical Science...is philosophy, which deals with positive truth, indeed, yet contents itself with observations such as come within the range of every man's normal experience, and for the most part, in every waking hour of his life....These observations escape the untrained eye precisely because they permeate our whole lives...."
CS Peirce, "Philosophy and the Sciences"

Indeed, I find Peirce's views to be entirely consonant with my own with respect to the fundamentally limited and approximate character of scientific knowledge, compared with the plenary nature of both reality and our phenomenological experience of it. Peirce is also careful to distinguish between the experimental endeavour, versus just "reading about" something, which I also endorse.

In short, scientific reasoning, if it is legitimate, inherently acknowledges that its results are always open for further correction. And it also acknowledges that there are dimensions and aspects of reality of which it is wholly uninformed. If it doesn't, it is just dogmatism, mere dogmatism.

Not everything that can be proven can be proven at this moment, just like not everything that can be rebutted can be rebutted at this moment. Life is largely anecdotal. For someone with a formidable intellect, you are remarkably unimaginative.

Of course it's relevant! It is not a "glaring issue" that Aristotle is avoiding. The question of the ethics of a species that is by its nature unethical makes no sense. It is asking how something bad is good. — Fooloso4

:up:

Quite right. From an organic perspective, the only analog to a "devil species" would be "some species that human beings don't like". Which means nothing. Every species is integral to the biosphere in some way. It is a meaningless investigation, either of species or of ethics.

If so, then what makes "consciousness" mine? If it's not mine, then why should "consciousness" matter to me? If, however, "consciousness" is mine, then what does "trans-individual" mean and why should it matter to me? — 180 Proof

I watched a small murder of crows spooked from their foraging recently. They dispersed in a strategic fashion, the majority heading to a distant safe perch, two scouts remaining closer to the scene. All the while calling and responding to one another. It was evidently highly coordinated, a social entity, an organism, a macroscopic brain.

We are unquestionably already cooperative collective entities. Cells form organisms form colonies. There is no individual apart from the collective, nor vice-versa.

Thought...must presuppose communication.
Man is essentially a social animal.
~ Charles Sanders Peirce

The idea that we need to confirm our subjective experiences in controlled settings or they're not veridical is ridiculous on its face. — Sam26

:up:

Specifically, subjective experience overflows or transcends controlled settings exactly as concrete reality overflows and transcends the artificially constrained environments within which alone experimental science proceeds (and which render all scientific results as merely a set of ever-improving approximations).

I think the whole idea of consciousness "surviving death" is misleading. What is plausible is that consciousness transcends the apparent physical boundaries of the individual organism. It is a feature of a larger system. It isn't so much about surviving death as never having been entirely constrained by the limits of the purely individual organism to begin with. Consciousness, in its essence, is imminently trans-individual.

"People who want philosophy ladled out to them can go elsewhere"
~C.S. Peirce

Then you are not talking about intentionality as it is commonly and predominantly understood. So we are talking past each other. I am only interested in intentionality as it is largely understood. Your view of intentionality strips out the essence of intention and swaps it for causality; which of no use when we analyze the intentions of someone. — Bob Ross

If you concede that our intentions can be imperfectly realized, as you said, then it follows that what we are trying to do is at least as well exemplified by our actions as by our putative objectives. It is in this sense that Aldous Huxley, for example, argues in Ends and Means that the end cannot justify the means but, rather, that the means employed must be consistent with (representative of) the intended ends.

Philosophical Writings of Peirce
by Charles Sanders Peirce

To attribute the cause to some philosophical jargon that no one cares about except philosophy hobbyists seems far fetched. — Mikie

Essentially, traditional religious values provided a morally realist framework. Durkheim's anomie is the state of normlessness that arises from alienation from fundamental values of life, including the decline of traditional religious morality. So this isn't a new idea, at all. Just something recloaked in modern jargon. Which seems to be a favourite strategy of modern thinkers. Which, unfortunately tends to alienate them from the philosophical history of ideas, producing a state of normlessness, leading to the decay of civilization....lol.

This is emotional reasoning. — Leontiskos

No, it's a fact about human intentionality.

We ought to associate intentionality with the act itself, which is the means, rather than with the end. Intention is a cause, and what is caused is action. — Metaphysician Undercover

Precisely. I believe this is essentially identical with my observation:

Intentionality is not just about what is aimed at, it is also about what is the reason for a certain type of action. — Pantagruel

Some people act carefully. Others act recklessly.
— Pantagruel

How would you know, given your curious claim that, "There is no 'standard' of foreseeability"? — Leontiskos

There doesn't have to be a standard for there to be a spectrum. There is no "standard" of colour, but there are lots of colours.

I personally know lots of people that live their lives recklessly and whose "intentions" routinely cause all kinds of havoc and produce all kinds of "unintended consequences". One such person was directly responsible for the death of my fiance by being an unfit driver. I'm not inclined to pursue this further because it is so trivially evident. We are not masters of intentionality and causality such that we are capable of surgically creating only the results we intend. The consequences of our imperfect intentionality abound in the tragic mess that humans have made of their world.

unforeseeable — Leontiskos

There is no "standard" of foreseeability. Some people act carefully. Others act recklessly. Many people think that they know what they are doing and do not. We do not live in a world where we go around executing "transactional" events that are over and done with. It isn't realistic. It is an invalid abstraction to view intentional action in this "A causes B and over" sense.

This is exactly the kind of false "insular causality" reasoning that leads to the debacle of externalized costs destroying the biosphere. Along with whatever other unfortunate accidents you'd care to add.

:up:

Just because something is caused by something done intentionally, it does not follow that that effect was intentional. You are forgetting or omitting that intentionality is about what is being aimed at---not what happens.

If I am aiming with a bow an arrow at a bullseye target, and I miss fire and hit a deer of which I had no clue was somewhere behind the target; then I did not thereby intentionally hit the deer even though it follows from the causal chain which derives back to an intentional action. According to you, it would be intentional. — Bob Ross

You have misdirected my rebuttal by mis-characterizing it. Intentionality is not just about what is aimed at, it is also about what is the reason for a certain type of action. My point is that, whatever action you do, you are not always - not often - in a position where you can determine that exactly and only what you want to happen will happen. You may intend to help a co-worker get a promotion by doing some of his work for him. Only to have the boss discover you did it and give the promotion to you instead. Or, as I said, you may hit someone because you are mad at him. Then he goes home and hits his wife because, after a bad day, your blow was the straw that broke the camels back.

Intentional causality is often done with an imperfect knowledge and therefore, even when it "works" often has additional unexpected effects. This is exactly what companies who choose to disregard "externalized costs" do. And it is a poor choice all around. If a company disregards externalized costs, then the explicitly choose not to manage the ongoing consequences of their actions. Which means that, the system in which they are involved (the ongoing project of exploiting resources for example) they have elected not to manage some of the results of their actions, the consequence of which can only be that that system can never be made stable (by their actions).

What do you think an “intention” is? If a consequence of something intended is accidental, then it was unintentional: that’s what it means for it to be accidental. — Bob Ross

If I push someone around because I am bigger and stronger, and that person then goes and pushes another because he is upset that I pushed him around and that third person then kills himself, there is arguably a causal link there. I think it is very salient to recognize that actions inherently transcend intentions in their scope. Hence Descartes' observation that the will is much wider in its range and compass than the understanding.

It is completely unrealistic to envision that when we intend to do something the results will be exactly what we envision. Some corporations entire business model is structured around "externalized costs" - i.e. things that they cause to happen but don't happen to want to assume responsibility for.

The paradox here is that if someone has 'bad faith' how can we tell? This is because the very idea of 'bad faith' is a being-in-itself created by a being-for-itself. What one person may point at as a system of oppression or bad faith may very well be doing so in bad faith.

How can this gap be closed, if at all? — I like sushi

Is it even relevant for people to know or say of others that they are in bad-faith? As you point out, it is an 'internal' concept.

Perhaps the cafe waiter who truly aspires to be the best cafe waiter possible is not in fact in bad faith at all. Sartre's biography of Saint Genet (Jean Genet) would seem to bear out this interpretation. Genet embraced the judgements of society that were heaped upon him (which is what makes him an existential 'saint').

Could Karma be the expression of basic physical laws of motion emerging/permeating into the sphere of sophisticated societal dynamics? — Benj96

Sure.

Perhaps free will and determinism both exist as a mutual duality/ neccessary dichotomy — Benj96

And I think this is the rational approach. Human beings do act "automatically" in the sense that they enact their own physical "habits", but they can also (to varying degrees) modify their own habits. Life isn't "transactional" it is cyclical. We are constantly re-enacting in a kind of cybernesis into which free will can be injected, with varying degrees of success depending on the individual.

My main point is just that accidents, by definition, cannot be intentional. That's categorically incoherent to posit. — Bob Ross

But is something accidental if it not only could have but should have been forseen? People manifest different degrees of "epistemic responsibility." Is there an objective standard separating accident from culpability?

Unintended consequences are not necessarily accidental, only unforseen.

I think this issue is good for revealing how people think and what biases they have. Notice how each participant in this thread has their own take on what it means. — frank

Absolutely. The core of Scepticism revolves around the recognition of deep (epistemic) subjective relativism, which extends so far as to be able to shape what we are able to perceive. Which is why Scepticism touts the suspension of judgement to the greatest extent possible.

It sounds like you're equating freedom with potential. That's an interesting take. — frank

How do you mean exactly? Certainly, I'm construing it within the composite framework of the subject-object system. As such, it is measurable and quantifiable. More radically, I think it may be a feature that is "conferred" by subjectivity on the system. But it is still in evidence as a systemic feature.

I guess you mean that if I have the knowledge to build a bridge, it makes it easier for me to cross the river, and so I'm more free? — frank

Yes, that would be one way of describing it. Phase space is a physical characterization of the possible states of a system. A bicycle-rider system can assume various trajectories in phase space - i.e. rolling along the path that is defined by the rotation of its wheels, the turning of its handlebars, etc. But a bicycle ridden by someone who knows how to ride a bicycle has more possibilities - more degrees of freedom - than one ridden by someone who doesn't know how to ride a bicycle.