I think it's really lazy thinking and that there is a fundamental discontinuity that is reached at the point where humans are capable of abstract reasoning and language. It is at precisely that point, where the biological accounts loose their cogency and start to be missapplied to create an illusion of understanding something that really isn't at all well understood. These ideas - the nature of universals, logic, reason, and the like - aren't a highly refined version of bee-signalling or bird-calling. It is at this point where the 'rational animal' is able to see into a different ontological level than animals per se. — Wayfarer

Although I sort of agree with the sentiment I can't help but point out the irony of you claiming reason is not equivalent to bird-calling, yet also claim that this skewed view of reason is the product of something not-too-dissimilar to bird-calling. >:O

Materialism is a foolish position.

How does the fact that human beings can produce certain chemicals essential to life prove that these chemicals can be produced without life? That conclusion requires the unstated premise that anything a man can produce, can be produced without man. This implies that all the products manufactured by human beings could have come into existence without the existence of life, just because we build them out of naturally occurring elements. It's truly unbelievable to think that computers and airplanes could have come into existence on earth without the presence of life — Metaphysician Undercover

I suppose you are right that airplanes and shit don't just pop out of nowhere. They are built by humans, living creatures.

But the point of naturalism is to try to explain things without the use of other-worldy, "supernatural" forces. There is no supernaturalism required to explain the existence of planes - humans created them. All x must come from not-x. So far so good. So "LIFE" cannot come from life. It had to start somewhere. And so Life came from non-Life. And yet what is this non-Life?

The naturalist will say it came from inorganic matter. The supernaturalist will say it came from something else, like a god or something. But this is a clear case of simple ignorance. Naturalism doesn't have to know everything, it merely has to say "I don't know" and try its best to figure it out. Whereas alternatives are simply god-of-the-gaps arguments.

And in any case the fact that humans can create "vital" stuff like urea means that in different conditions, urea could potentially arise naturally. And in fact we see this a lot in science in general. Things are modelled in the lab or on a computer simulation or what have you and then lo and behold we see it in nature. We knew about lightning before we knew about electricity - does the mere ignorance of naturally-occurring urea legitimately give credence to vitalism?

Ego boundaries in a person with high self-esteem are well defined along with a deep understanding of one's natural talents and limitations, which brings me to my main point. The person with an ideal sense of self-worth is the stoic. A stoic knows that there are things within his/her control and makes sure that he does not feel inadequate or incompetent when trying to look after things out of his/her control. — Question

On the other hand, is was Nietzsche who argued that the overman would have an objective and realistic view of their own existence. Nietzsche was not a stoic.

Hard theological determinism (or 'predestination') seems to be a logical consequence of God's omnipotence. For how could anything fall outside the causal control of an omnipotent being? There's simply no room in reality for any other causal agents besides God. — lambda

Or perhaps God allows things to slip through his grasp? In the same way a parent is pretty much omnipotent to a child but allows the child to do things they want to do?

Whereas here, reason is simply an adaption - like a peacock's tail, it improves the odds of passing on your little bundle of protoplasm - and if, as a byproduct, you happen to be able to figure out the age of the universe, then so much the better, eh? — Wayfarer

At the same time, however, we aren't perfect reasoners and we aren't objective evaluators of the world. We're filled with biases and fallacious thinking.

So I think the more "reasonable" thing to believe, in which I mean "most likely", is that the universe has a structure of repetition, and that this structure can be gradually re-modelled within our own minds. Genuine perfect correspondence is bullshit expect for some of the most basic and commonly-encountered things. Yet through a process of counterfactual reasoning and tentative speculation we can come to know things outside of our basic experience. And we can know we're on the right track because it will work, just as we would expect from an evolutionary perspective. There's no inherent need for correspondence truth in the wild, you only need what works. And what works may or may not be correspondence. However now that we have evolved further, we can reflect and realize all this.

But then there's also theories of knowledge which see Knowledge as a natural kind in-itself. Thus when we have knowledge, we actually HAVE knowledge.

What is self-esteem? — Question

Self-esteem is a psychological power structure that motivates the organism by reassuring it as a significant and important symbol in the world. More often than not self-esteem is derived from external means, such as family, friends, co-workers, countries, and even metaphysical theories.

The number one job of the ego when it is not focused on immediate survival requirements is the constant reassurance of the validity and importance of itself, oftentimes in a vane attempt to escape death and live forever as an immortal hero archetype. Terror Management Theory.

Is it overrated? — Question

No, in fact it's a highly necessary and comforting thing to have and it's something I wish I had more of.

How does one build having a strong sense of self-esteem? — Question

By surrounding oneself with supportive external factors (which may or may not be authentic) or by attempting to come to grips with oneself and find motivation from the inside. In fact the trouble tends to arise when one realizes that one's support group is filled with idiots and idiotic ideas, as one's very identity is called into question.

Constants emerge as the rate limit on self-optimising flows. So they describe the regularities that a process of symmetry breaking creates. They don't cause the action. They are a measure of it. — apokrisis

Yet talk of rates, limits, self-optimization, flows, regularities, symmetries, all that stuff is still referring to something. A graph without numbers is not a graph. Language cannot exist without syntax. You reject abstract Platonic ideals but also seem to want "things" that are not concrete objects like tables and rhinos and whatnot. Are they virtual? Are they "semi-real"? Are they "vague"? In the beginning, there was nothing - but there technically was something, it just wasn't SOMETHING but a different sort of something entirely. Which, to the uninitiated, comes across either as bogus or esotericism.

I keep running into this problem when I read what you write: it seems to me that you attempt to explain things like universals in an ontic and intra-worldly, scientific manner, when it's that these very observations and theories hold the same regardless of what metaphysical position you hold. Nominalism won't change the Big Bang theory at all. Presentism is compatible with special relativity despite endurantism being a common trope. Idealism accounts for everything we know, just without an unknowable external world. Metaphysical theories of these types are empirically transparent.

Figuring out whether or not universals exist is not like finding a particle or uncovering the history of the cosmos. Science already uses properties all the time in its theorizing. What we want to know is that properties themselves are without a regress into vagueness. We want to know how we ought to see properties as. We already know that stability occurs and habits emerge, but nominalism doesn't deny this. It simply denies that these habits are actually repeatable entities that are multiply instantiated.

As it stands I do believe that there really shouldn't be a problem of universals, or at least a problem of similarity/difference. Universals are inevitable and I think should be fairly obvious especially when one sees just how clunky nominalist positions tend to be. The universalist is much more flexible as it recognizes the existence of both universals and particulars, while the nominalist strictly forbids the existence of universals. The problem shouldn't be on the existence of universals but the nature of universals themselves, i.e. abstract transcendentals vs immanents or something else.

If so, then the question of universals is the wrong question. It's not why things are similar, it's why they're different that needs explaining.

Is that convincing? How would a proponent of universals respond? — Marchesk

Yes, well I had brought this point up a long while back, how nominalism not only struggles to explain why things are similar but why they are different as well. i.e. why can we discriminate between things if they are not "actually" similar to each other in virtue of sharing a property.

However I think similarity is a more pressing issue anyway. The nominalist could simply say that two things are different because they have different particular properties. Fine, the universalist would say the same thing except they would be universals not particulars.

It's in no way saying anything like that. Be serious if you want to understand this stuff rather than responding like you're in a political forum and you want to polemically exaggerate your opponent with the aim of gaining votes/followers. It's not saying that anything is amorphous, "deserted," etc. — Terrapin Station

I'm not being polemical, Quine was a hardcore nominalist and called his own system an amorphous desert.

ALL that it's denying is that there are universals that exist extramentally as abstract existents that particulars then somehow partake of so that the universals are identically instantiated in at least two different particulars. — Terrapin Station

Right, so like I said, without universals the extramental world is a mish-mash of wholly unique particulars with no actual "sharing" relation at all. The world is overflowing with unique particulars everywhere you look.

Creating conceptual abstractions, where we ignore details of difference and instead lump things together as common kinds, allows us to act and react quickly so that we can survive to procreate. Those conceptual abstractions into common kinds are what universals are. — Terrapin Station

That is plausible, but what I do not find to be plausible is that, in a world utterly void of universals, the mind pops up with universals. It would require a sort of dualism in which the mind is actually not part of the rest of the world at all but separated from it.

And I still don't understand how nominalism gets around the problem of why we even clump things together in the first place. If universals do not exist extra-mentally, then how do we even begin to clump things together? Why see Blue1 similar to Blue2 but not similar to Red3? What differentiates the Blues from the Reds?

Says who exactly?

If you are thinking that universals are ghostly forms or epiphenomenal ideas, then your claim is that they definitely don't exist. So they are not vaguely existent. They are sharply inexistent.

But if you are taking my approach, then universals and particulars are as real (or ideational) as each other. — apokrisis

I am saying that without universals, particulars wouldn't exist. Particulars are made of universals. In the same way you might boot up MS Paint and use a few geometric templates to make a design.

So they don't both talk about the world and our place in it? What are you on about? — apokrisis

Science talks about the world. Theology talks about the divine and how it relates to the world and its residents.

I would also say that what you know how to do is the most important thing to know. It means you can be a reliable and productive member of a society. This includes, of course, rational thinking.

A gas is vague possibility. Particles are not in interaction. A liquid is a collection of events. Some kind of organisation arises as every particle has some individual interaction with other passing particles. Then a solid is the emergence of a global rigid order that puts every particle into a final entropy-minimising state of organisation. — apokrisis

I would then put universals prior to particulars. Universals are more vague than particulars. They are what particulars are made up through the instantiation relation or what have you.

No, it means that whatever exists is an expression, or instantiation, of universals. — John

Yet is this not what universalists believe? That particulars instantiate universals? Properties are just ways things are, and these ways are universals. Repetitive patterns.

I would agree that they are real apart from their instantiations, but I would not agree that they "have Being", because I think 'to be' is coterminous with 'to exist'. Any alternative to this seems incoherent to me. Consider this; a thought, an imagining, or a feeling is real but it does not exist and is not a be-ing. — John

I would have said that thoughts exist but are not real, as realism typically is about an external reality beyond the mind.

At any rate, we're denying that there's somehow literally one (real) thing that is identically, multiply instantiated in two different entites. — Terrapin Station

Right, so all the processing power of similarity gets re-located to the mind. The external world is just some amorphous deserted blob and it's cut up and structured by the power of the mind.

The problem with this that I see is that it is difficult to understand how and why the mind "separated" itself from the rest of reality.

It is also impossible for me to understand why we have different concepts to begin with, if universals do not exist. The mind presumably originated from the rest of the world in some sense. It is causally connected to the world. What makes us recognize round from triangular is not the going-ons in our heads but the actual structure of the two objects in the world that we interact with.

So instead of the mind molding reality, it is the rest of reality that molds the mind. In fact this is basically the Aristotelian conception of the soul.

And better yet, it is not theistic mumbo-jumbo but testable hypothesis! — apokrisis

Theology doesn't try to be a science, because it's subject matter isn't scientific.

If your divine will could show itself more clearly, more consistently, then we might believe in it with more confidence. Until then, let's stick to what we are finding written into the fabric of nature everywhere. — apokrisis

Natural theology is all about attempting to show the necessity or probability of theism by general observations of the world at large.

If it is not conceivable then it's not able to be witnessed. It would be outside of our knowledge except perhaps by indirect inference. For example, we don't really know what dark matter is, but many scientists use it as an explanation for certain phenomenon. The theologian would use God as an explanation for the causal chain. Etc.

It certainly is interesting how metaphysics affects things outside of its own domain. I remember reading a while back on SEP how ancient Buddhist philosophers tried to distance themselves from the Hindu caste system by developing a thoroughly nominalist ontology of radical particularity. According to some Hindu philosophers, people belonged to their caste by having certain universals - they metaphysically belonged to that caste. And of course Buddhism rejected the caste system and some adherents ended up sacrificing what I see to be a reasonable position in order to try to distance themselves from an otherwise unreasonable view of nature (castes).

The general and the particular can only exist in relation to each other. And then that definite relation can only exist in relation to yet a third thing which is the same relation at its other limit - a state of maximal vagueness, a state where it can't meaningfully be said whether there is the general or the particular. — apokrisis

Yet if I remember correctly Peirce included second-ness and third-ness. So first-ness would be vagueness (which is a vague term itself - a placeholder for what is impossible to predicate?), second-ness would be universality and third-ness would be the "crisp" particularity. A crude image would be gas-liquid-solid.

Universality comes before particularity simply because we particulars cannot exist without universals, i.e. constraints and repetition. The very class of particulars is a universal. So indeed you are correct that we never come across universals "by themselves", but this is well-accepted as the instantiation relation objects have with their properties.

Universals do not exist, they inhere in existents. — John

What is the difference between existing and sort-of existing?

The existence of an existent, in other words, is a symbolic expression of universals. — John

Does this mean that whatever exists depends upon an expression of universals?

The empirical is a symbolic representation of the spiritual. — John

I don't know what this means.

So the universal (the spirit) is prior to the particular (empirical nature), but it does not follow that the universal exists prior to the particular. — John

If the universal is prior to the particular, then the universal is prior to the particular.

Now, now...

There are some nihilists who claim that life has no (objective) meaning, but what does a world look like where life does have (objective) meaning? They describe the absence of something that is not clear to me. — Emptyheady

I think when people ask what the meaning of life is, they are asking what general purpose or goal does life fulfill that makes it "important", and that aligns well with our own evolutionary narcissism.

But there is no ultimate cosmic purpose for life that isn't simultaneously nauseating (a la Nietzsche). God is not our friend.

So we have two different perspectives at work here: we need meaning, and we need this meaning to make sense and reassure us. If we have no meaning, then there's nothing to reassure us. And if we have meaning but it's a gross and horrifying meaning, this also doesn't reassure us. So it all comes down to finding some way of reassuring ourselves of our place in the world.

And the fact is that, although morality likely evolved out of social conventions thousands of years ago, the compassion-based morality that we are all so familiar with is in direct conflict with the whims of the cosmos at large. Human projects are almost always about finding a way to oppose the oppressive drive of entropy in some way or another. We live in an indifferent world, and can know this by an honest empirical evaluation of the relationship between organisms and their environment, which is characterized by agent-less violence and destruction.

The search for meaning, then, is a consequence of living in an inadequate and insufficient environment.

I conclude that the simplest coherent belief is that no others, capable and knowing, exist, that are as good as the neighbor on the right (or otherwise benevolent/loving). — jorndoe

One of the biggest issues people tend to have with consequentialist ethics is that they apparently ask too much of us. This is false. Consequentialist ethics, in fact, ask only for what we are able to do.

The problem isn't that we are given much too responsibility, but rather an unequal amount of responsibility is placed on those who subscribe to consequentialist ethics. Instead of the entire world attempting to eradicate hunger, for example, we have only certain countries and organizations doing so. Way too much responsibility is placed on the shoulders of these groups, and it actually affects their overall productivity.

Those vanguards who pave the way for future productivity in welfare will always have an unequal burden placed upon their shoulders, at least until everyone else gets off their asses and starts helping as well. Those who stand idly by and are legitimately capable of helping out are not simply bystanders but are actively contributing to the overall poor state of the world (the bystander effect).

Anybody play no mans sky?

If so does it live up to the hype mill? — m-theory

lol no man's sky sucks big time. Go with star citizen.

Is it ethical to use embryonic stem cells to cure diseases? Which of these stem cell types are best for therapeutic usage? Embryos don't have emotions or any life experiences, should it really be considered as unethical using their stem cells have many benefits while curing diseases? — verbena

Yes, it is perfectly acceptable to use embryonic stem cells to cure diseases. To view it as wrong is to place more value on a someone who doesn't even exist than a fully-fledged person who is suffering. In other words, the mere idea of a future person is not important, unless of course this person is going to exist and suffer themselves.

In my view, it all comes down the instrumentality, i.e. the harmful utilization of other sentients for the selfish benefit of others. An embryo is not a person and thus cannot be instrumentalized. Nor is the person the embryo is set to become existent yet. No crystal ball predictive magic shit here; focus on the here-and-now, the people who actually exist and who are actually suffering.

Ethics in a world like ours should be focused on janitorial clean-up duty; figuring out ways we can clean up the mess we're and with the least amount of harm-trangressions as possible. If we end up maximizing happiness and becoming virtuous sages along the way, cool, whatever, but that shouldn't be our goal. So it's not surprising when I dismiss the potential future good life of a person as irrelevant.

Knights of the Old Republic I and II
Jedi Knight series
Star Wars Battlefront I, II, and the mediocre DICE remake
Republic Commando
Age of Empires and Age of Mythology
Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds
Star Wars: The Old Republic
Portal I and II
TES V: Skyrim
Deus Ex
Witcher 3
War Thunder
Insurgency
Chivalry

PC Master Race

Why is this reality apparent as opposed to other possible worlds? — Question

Why not?

From this, several questions can be raised:

• Is a happy slave still a slave?
• Can slavery ever be good for someone? Is manipulation always bad in-itself?
• Do the ends of desire-enslavement (pleasure) justify the manipulative nature of desire?
• Can sentients (desire-slaves) ever be seen as positive contributions to the value of a world, or
• Are sentients always a liability?
• Is pleasure ever an impersonal good, or is it restricted as a personal good?
• How does the feeling of power affect our views on desire-slavery? (i.e. "I can do this!" rather than "I must do this!")
• Is pleasure still a good if it has only been obtained by the addition of bad (discomfort), or does the uncomfortable process of obtaining the good invalidate the good as truly good?
• If there is no alternative to existence as a sentient other than by desire-enslavement, should we embrace this as an acceptance of our fate and essence, or should we reject it?

Pleasure, evolutionarily, seems strongly correlated with survival and procreation necessities. We achieve pleasure by eating, by exploring (and engaging in concomitant exercise), by sexual activities, in the wake (if not the midst) of significant adrenaline releases, etc. — Terrapin Station

I agree that we could not have "made it" if evolution had programmed us to live in misery our entire lives. We would have needed to feel positive and up-beat at times. So although nature is mostly bloody, tooth and nail, it also produced the capacity to feel happy or content as a means of making sure nobody goes crazy. Again, though, this is basically manipulation (by our genes): the focus isn't on our welfare per se, but rather on keeping our welfare up to a certain minimum standard so that we can effectively spread our genes.

Pain warrants change, while pleasure itself changes. Both motivate action. That is why life is structurally manipulative: the bad is guaranteed and the good only comes about by experiencing bad things. In any case, evolution has programmed most animals to be slightly anxious all the time.

It would be better, at least from my standpoint, to just use the terms "pleasure", "wants", and "needs" rather than "desire" -- especially as your account of desire seems to somehow exclude emotion. — Moliere

Yes, I would agree that moods have a very important place here. Moods can essentially over-ride brute hedonic calculus. If you are truly happy, then aches and pains don't really matter. It's all worth it.

The question remains, however: is it still manipulative to experience these pains? Are these pains still bad even though you don't care about them?

Further, "harm" is already a word bound up in the logic of desire, no? It's not like I have my desires over here which manipulate me in the middle to go to the harms over there. I want to avoid harms. And these are the things which I need to avoid. — Moliere

True, this is why I definitely see a difference between the experience and the process of obtainment of this experience. However I would say that we always want to avoid harm, while we don't always want to obtain pleasure because the costs (pain) may be too high.

But your terminology of "slave" is only relative to some sort of demi-god-like character, because it is based on a freedom that is not only unattainable, but could reasonably be interpreted as some kind of super- or post-human freedom. You seem to believe that we could only be free and not a slave if we were to act out of something other from desire. — Moliere

Well I suppose this is where cosmic metaphysics might start to come into play. If we can't actually conceive of someone as not being a slave to their will, then perhaps it is actually the case that the will is metaphysically superior than the do.

At any rate, desires aren't manipulating us. It's the self working on itself. Maybe it all comes from not enough love. And by the time we grasp that, we've gone a long way chasing our tails down the highway. — Bitter Crank

As Schopenhauer said, a man can do as he wills but he cannot will what he wills. If he didn't have a desire to get x, would the man still consent to go through all the pains of the journey? That's manipulative, even if the pay-off is "worth it".

We always have an aversion to pain. We don't always have a desire for truly pleasurable experiences, because having these experiences may cause us much pain.

Indeed. Instrumentality. Why bring in more people in order to need in the first place? How do you think absurdity fits into the picture? Specifically, the idea that we must endure each day finding ways to fulfill desires, day in and day out. — schopenhauer1

I continually flip-flop between believing that adding additional happy people improves the world to believing that addition of happy people does not change the overall value of the world.

In either case there must be an answer to the question: is there anything wrong with the existence of happy people? As I said to Moliere above, a happy slave is still a slave. Does this change anything?

The flip-flopping emerges when you start to compare authenticity with brute hedonic experience. Both aforementioned positions have their pros and cons - the former being logical but also difficult to swallow while the latter is more relaxed but also rather ad hoc.

Think of fear. Where would that fit in your schema? I imagine that we'd posit that it is a pain, and to relieve pain is a kind of pleasure. But I would say this is to misunderstand fear. Fear is neither a need nor a want, and it can vary in intensity so that it is more pressing than either needs or wants. Yet I would classify it as a desire, though it is unrelated to pleasure per se (though I do believe there is a pleasure in a continued state of non-pain -- that is a specific kind of pleasure, but I wouldn't define fear along the lines of this pleasure-pain) — Moliere

I would say that fear is an negative emotion that motivates a desire-creation that further motivates action. Fear makes us uncomfortable. So basically all desires are spawned from the instantiation of a negative experience. The insidious part about all this is that positive experiences, although being positive, will always promote a negative experience.

But this is somewhat grammatical. I tend to think of desire in fairly wide terms -- and I also tend to believe that the satisfaction of desire is somewhat illusory, that there is no lack which is being filled in the pursuit of desire. I would say that 'filling a lack' is more characteristic of our needs than desires, as a whole. (food, shelter, sex -- the craving returns, but they are satisfiable too, unlike many of our desires) — Moliere

The point I was getting at was that the requirement to fulfill desires, however illusory this satisfaction is, manipulates us into harming ourselves.

As such, a concept of freedom which denies desire is literally a super-human concept. It may in some sense be coherent and even make sense for super-human beings. But not human beings. (and, I'd hazard, that we posit it as we, as human beings, often have the desire to be more than what we are) — Moliere

Yeah, it seems related to the paradox of desire. The point being, however, is that a happy slave is still a slave.

Truthmakers are what make statements true, whereas justifications are what make asserting a statement justified. — Michael

Yet what else could make a statement justified if not that it is true in virtue of a truthmaker?

Sartre's metaphysics, at least from what I have read from primary and secondary sources, is actually kind of shallow. It's rooted more in phenomenological observations rather than holism. As such, it seems that Sartre was more focused on what it meant to be a human being from a phenomenological point of view rather than what it meant to be a human being from the biological point of view. It's also influenced by the cultural situation at the time - the world was forever changed and unstable and nobody really know what the fuck was going on or where we were going as a species or even who they were as a person.

From the biological point of view, humans are a type of organism. Normal specimens have two arms, two legs, genitals, a large head, various organs, etc. They are born in a rather gross manner, grow up in around twenty years time, and do various things before they die at ~75 years of age.

But from the phenomenological point of view, a human (or a self), isn't really anything essentially, and the self has to battle against itself when it recognizes the nothingness in which it seems to arise. In this case, there is no essential part of the self that the self can recognize and see as a suitable justification for its own existence. Without God, there is no higher, transcendental power to devote oneself to. And worldly-affairs are imperfect machinations. So a human being is quite literally thrown into the world and finds himself wondering where he is, where he is going, and who he is as a person. He exists, but has no essential properties that he can depend on.

Presumably not, which is why I favor neutral monism in that respect. Or property dualism.

So your ontic commitments amount to a bob each way. Cool. :-} — apokrisis

I never said it was ambitious, in fact I said the opposite. So spare me the pretension.

es. But why? What difference does that make? — apokrisis

Well because the nervous system controls movement and bodily processes, and so does consciousness.

Did you mean outside philosophical circles? Being immanent and not transcendent, being holist and not atomist, seem to be fairly clearcut and familiar ontic commitments to me. — apokrisis

TO YOU, but perhaps not others. You have given some descriptions of naturalism, but this is not ubiquitous. Defining your terms helps immensely.

Every Cradle Is A Grave: Rethinking the Ethics of Birth and Suicide by Sarah Perry

I am questioning your use of words like "my experience", or "experience residing". You are simply presuming the dualistic mind~world framing that becomes the locked cage of your thoughts. — apokrisis

Certainly I am supposing the phenomenological experience of being a self of sorts. But I don't really have an ambitious metaphysical structure of the world. I find idealism to be theoretically satisfying but not entirely believable in some sense, while I see a real, external world as probably existing in some form or whatever. A giant abyss of darkness, with matter bouncing into matter on the macro-scale and random events happening on lower levels. But basically I hold a position I suspect most people do: the universe is a spatio-temporal container and we are one of its many contents.

My argument is that to start unpicking that paradigm, a good place to start is to seriously address the issue of what might make life and mind actually different in your scheme of things? As a biological process, where does any claimed divergence in terms of causality arise? — apokrisis

Well, I said that then existence of a nervous system would be a starter. I mean, unless we have good reasons for believing so, there is no contextual or inferential evidence to support the claim that mind is identical or somehow intrinsically connected to life. And then there's the problem of distinguishing life from non-life. Are viruses life? Apparently not, since they don't die in the normal way organisms do when detached from their host. No sheer cut-off implies vagueness, and vagueness implies cross-over. Or perhaps prior existence, a la idealism/panpsychism.

To simply repeat "subjectivity" is to retreat back into Cartesian dualism and abandon your tentative naturalism here. And even in the end to reject naturalism, you would first have to demonstrate understanding of its best case. — apokrisis

I don't see how subjectivity is non-naturalist. And you of all people should know that "naturalism" is such a vague buzzword that it literally is meaningless outside of esoteric circles.

I of course have repeatedly said that the way to make sense of mind~matter duality is to re-frame your inquiry as one based on the semiotic symbol~matter distinction instead. That then allows you to see how - causally - mind is just life. A more complex version of the same modelling relation. And even material existence can be accounted for pan-semiotically. — apokrisis

Where, according to your pan-semiotic theory, does qualitative experience reside? It doesn't seem like a process, because I can identify specific qualitative feelings.

If I were to suddenly flash into your exact state of mind for a moment - due to some extraordinary brain blurt, say - then how is that not accessing your state of mind?

What else would access look like according to you? — apokrisis

I am not thinking about a soul, although I suppose there are actually some decent arguments for the existence of a "soul-like" entity of sorts, in the Aristotelian schema for example.

Rather I am saying that there is a distinct difference between the firing a C-fibres firing (an outdated theory nowadays but one that continues to be used out of tradition) and the experience of pain. Whatever is going on in the brain when I experience something is different than the experience itself.

The point being, however, is that a numerically-distinct experience can only be experienced by one subject at a time. A teleporter kills me because the copy of me at time t+1 is not identical to me at time t.

Only one mind can exist in a single perspective at a time, just as how only one object can exist in a single space-time location. Access to the mind would be akin to access of the exact same perspective as another person at the exact same time - impossible. My head cannot co-exist with your head at the same time. The perspective I have is unique. Of course, you can make perfect copies of my mental experience, just as you could make perfect copies of the perspective I inhabit at a certain time. But they would not be identical - it would not be true access, but rather access by "cheating".

So doesn't that make it more phenomenally accurate to say that the world seeps into your mind? And the same world seeps into my mind? So we both share access to the same world. — apokrisis

But not at the same time nor place, i.e. perspective.

You have to start thinking like biologist and see structures as processes. Mind is not located in stuff but in action and organisation. — apokrisis

So mind just "arises" out of structure/process? This doesn't explain anything really. Just seems all hand-wavy and actually kind of poetic.

Dualism depends on the presumption that animals can be dumb automata and humans are inhabited by a witnessing soul. — apokrisis

No, this is false.

Now following that same logic, I could conceivably be in exactly the same brain state as you right now. I could be accessing your private point of view by exactly mirroring your neural activity. — apokrisis

I disagree. You would be accessing a duplicate copy of my brain state, not my brain state. Both of us can stub our toe and feel pain - perhaps we would be in the same exact state (probably not though). But these are two separate, independent states.

You can have the Mona Lisa, or you can have a duplicate copy of the Mona Lisa. The two may be indistinguishable. And in fact multiple people can simultaneously look upon both Mona Lisa's. But Mona Lisa is a material object and thus it is unsurprising that this can happen. Material objects are public, mental "objects" are private. My mind does not seep into the world, or at least I don't think it does (re: externalism). It doesn't come out of my ears. Mind is the one thing that I am certain about having, yet I cannot locate it in the world I assume surrounds me.

So a better analogy would be that I have my own container filled with stuff only I have seen. You can take an x-ray and get a general idea of what is inside. But you cannot actually see the contents. Only I can see the contents, only I am allowed to. Nobody else is allowed inside. Mind is subjective. Like a Liebnizian monad.

If we look at the brain, we can presumably see the structure of fatty tissue and analyze the various synapses and whatnot going on. We can dig through the whole brain, but we'll never find mind. There's hair, skin, scalp, skull, brain tissue, then skull and scalp and skin and hair again. So where is the elusive mind? Where is it located?

If we take a deflationary view of mind - treating it less like an ectoplasmic substance and more like a complex state of world mapping - while also giving rather more credit to the actual biological complexity of a brain with its capacity for picking out highly particular points of view, then the explanatory gap to be bridged should shrink rather a lot. — apokrisis

I don't think the explanatory gap shrinks more than it is just flat-out ignored. It's also telling that you assume alternative views must consist of some sort of ectoplasmic magic goo. That's just silly.

The point was that the reference point that we inhabit ourselves - mind - is inaccessible to anyone else but ourselves. It is our personal, private sphere.

So how is the nervous system different from other ordinary biological processes in your view? Surely the answer to that should go a long way to solving the dilemma you express? — apokrisis

Apo I don't know all the answers, so stop playing with me and actually start giving me your own answers. I don't go on this board to satisfy some urge to confirm my own superiority, I don't know the answer to this question so do me the service and enlighten me with one instead of treating me like a child.

Why on earth would consciousness serve no purpose? Is that your own experience? You function just as well in a coma or deep sleep? Does paying attention rather than acting on automatic pilot not help you learn and remember? — apokrisis

I say conceivably everything we do could be done by an unconscious mechanism. Consciousness, even though it works, is not necessary for the sorts of output we have.

More rambling unfounded assertion I am afraid. — apokrisis

Or just the anthropic principle.