Seems to me those questions are closely related, even intertwined. — Janus
Why does nature produce the sublime? — EnPassant
The elephant is our instinctual, emotional self, and our rationality is the rider. — Questioner
My claim is that we are the result of our evolution - but it produced wide spectrums of behavior, emotions, aptitudes, perspectives, intellect, abilities, ways of thinking, etc. etc. — Questioner
Consider the fact that human action ranges to the extremes. People can perform extraordinary acts of altruism, including kindness toward other species — or they can utterly fail to be altruistic, even toward their own children. So whatever tendencies we may have inherited leave ample room for variation; our choices will determine which end of the spectrum we approach. This is where ethical discourse comes in — not in explaining how we’re “built,” but in deliberating on our own future acts. Should I cheat on this test? Should I give this stranger a ride? Knowing how my selfish and altruistic feelings evolved doesn’t help me decide at all. Most, though not all, moral codes advise me to cultivate altruism. But since the human race has evolved to be capable of a wide range of both selfish and altruistic behavior, there is no reason to say that altruism is superior to selfishness in any biological sense.
In fact, the very idea of an “ought” is foreign to evolutionary theory. It makes no sense for a biologist to say that some particular animal should be more cooperative, much less to claim that an entire species ought to aim for some degree of altruism. If we decide that we should neither “dissolve society” through extreme selfishness, as (biologist E. O.) Wilson puts it, nor become “angelic robots” like ants, we are making an ethical judgment, not a biological one. Likewise, from a biological perspective it has no significance to claim that Ishould be more generous than I usually am, or that a tyrant ought to be deposed and tried. In short, a purely evolutionary ethics makes ethical discourse meaningless. — Richard Polt, Anything but Human
Certainly the odds of there being a designer who wished to create a world such as this are going to be every bit as long as the odds that a world such as this arose by chance. — Clearbury
Lawrence Krauss wrote a book named A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing. But, his "nothing" turned out to be a strange sort of something : a fluctuating quantum field, complete with governing laws and empowering energy. So, his "nothing" simply meant "no gods". — Gnomon
The particular, eternally persisting, elementary physical stuff of the world, according to the standard presentations of relativistic quantum field theories, consists (unsurprisingly) of relativistic quantum fields. And the fundamental laws of this theory take the form of rules concerning which arrangements of those fields are physically possible and which aren’t, and rules connecting the arrangements of those fields at later times to their arrangements at earlier times, and so on — and they have nothing whatsoever to say on the subject of where those fields came from, or of why the world should have consisted of the particular kinds of fields it does, or of why it should have consisted of fields at all, or of why there should have been a world in the first place. Period. Case closed. End of story. — David Albert
Tyler Durden is smart, courageous, iron willed, etc. They have some of the key ingredients for flourishing in spades. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Yet, there’s a paradox here: the very recognition of our cognitive limitations seems to point to a desire to grasp something beyond them. Does this suggest an innate tension in human thought, or is it simply a reflection of the inherent constraints of our perspectival existence? — Tom Storm
The critique of naturalism
Soon after writing the Logical Investigations, as we have seen, Husserl came to the view that his earlier researches had not completely escaped naturalism. After that Husserl constantly set his face against naturalism, but his most cogent critique is to be found in his 1911 essay, Philosophy as a Rigorous Science. Husserl thinks that all traditional philosophy, including Descartes and Kant, had treated consciousness as something having a completely natural being, a mere part of nature, and a dependent or epiphenomenal part at that. Even Kant had misunderstood transcendental psychology as a psychology. Husserl regards naturalism both as the dominant theoretical outlook of his age and also as deeply embedded in our ordinary assumptions about the world surrounding us. In other words, our pre-theoretical engagement with the world has an inbuilt bias towards naive naturalism. This is fine in our ordinary practices in the world, but when naturalism is elevated into an all-encompassing theoretical outlook, it actually becomes far removed from the natural attitude and in fact grossly distorts it. Husserl’s critique of naturalism is that it is a distorted conception of the fruits of scientific method which in itself is not inextricably wedded to a naturalist construal.
Husserl’s conception of naturalism relates to his understanding of the projects of John Locke, David Hume, and J.S. Mill, as well as nineteenth century positivists, especially Comte and Mach. Naturalism is the view that every phenomenon ultimately is encompassed within, and explained by, the laws of nature; everything real belongs to physical nature or is reducible to it. There are of course many varieties of naturalism, but Husserl’s own account in his 1911 essay more or less correctly summarises the naturalistic outlook:
"Thus the naturalist…sees only nature, and primarily physical nature. Whatever is, is either itself physical, belonging to the unified totality of physical nature, or it is, in fact, psychical, but then merely as a variable dependent on the physical, at best a secondary “parallel accomplishment”. Whatever is belongs to psychophysical nature, which is to say that it is univocally determined by rigid laws."
As naturalism has again become a very central concept primarily in contemporary analytic philosophy, largely due to W.V.O. Quine’s call for a naturalised epistemology, it is worth taking time here to elucidate further Husserl’s conception of naturalism. Indeed, precisely this effort to treat consciousness as part of the natural world is at the basis of many recent studies of consciousness, for example the work of Daniel Dennett or Patricia Churchland. Compare Husserl’s definition with that of David Armstrong for example:
"Naturalism I define as the doctrine that reality consists of nothing but a single all-embracing spatio-temporal system."
In Philosophy as a Rigorous Science, Husserl explicitly identifies and criticises the tendency of all forms of naturalism to seek the naturalisation of consciousness and of all ideas and norms. Naturalism as a theory involves a certain ‘philosophical absolutising’ of the scientific view of the world (Ideas I § 55); “it is a bad theory regarding a good procedure”. Certain characteristic methodological devices of the sciences, chiefly idealisation and objectification, have been misunderstood such that their objects are thought to yield the natural world as it is in itself, for example that nature is treated as a closed system of physical entities obeying laws, and everything else is squeezed out and treated as psychical, possibly even epiphenomenal. Indeed, a new science of psychology, with laws modelled on the mechanical laws of the physical domain, was then brought in to investigate this carved off subdomain, but it was guilty of reifying consciousness and examining it naively. Husserl constantly points out that such a division of the world into physical and psychical makes no sense. For Husserl, naturalism is not just only partial or limited in its explanation of the world, it is in fact self-refuting, because it has collapsed all value and normativity into merely physical or psychical occurrences, precisely the same kind of error made by psychologism when it sought to explain the normativity of logic in terms of actual, occurrent psychological states and the empirical laws governing them. The whole picture is absurd or ‘counter-sensical’ in that it denies the reality of consciousness and yet is based on assuming the existence of consciousness to give rise to the picture in the first place (Ideas I § 55). Or as Husserl says in the 1911 essay: “It is the absurdity of naturalizing something whose essence excludes the kind of being that nature has."
In contrast to the outlook of naturalism, Husserl believed all knowledge, all science, all rationality depended on conscious acts, acts which cannot be properly understood from within the natural outlook at all. Consciousness should not be viewed naturalistically as part of the world at all, since consciousness is precisely the reason why there was a world there for us in the first place. For Husserl it is not that consciousness creates the world in any ontological sense—this would be a subjective idealism, itself a consequence of a certain naturalising tendency whereby consciousness is cause and the world its effect—but rather that the world is opened up, made meaningful, or disclosed through consciousness. The world is inconceivable apart from consciousness. Treating consciousness as part of the world, reifying consciousness, is precisely to ignore consciousness’s foundational, disclosive role. — Routledge Introduction to Phenomenology, p139
Notice the connection between aporia and epochē.
— Wayfarer
This is interesting. Can you say more about that? — J
Russia is invading Europe with China’s money, Iran’s weapons, and North Korea’s troops. Chinese ships captained by Russians are destroying undersea natural gas pipelines and telecom cables in the Baltic Sea. Russian weapons used in Ukraine are built with Chinese components. Russia is causing mayhem on the streets of the UK. Their mercenaries have been raping and plundering their way through Africa and using the proceeds to finance the war in Ukraine. Iran, supported by China, has encircled Israel with its proxies and set the better part of the Middle East—and key shipping lanes—alight. Putin regularly threatens us with nuclear weapons. What could this be if not a world war? — It's Time to Call This WWWIII
Although, the saying is: the difference between a mystic and a philosopher is that the philosopher tries to explain it. The mystic doesn't. — frank
For me self-knowledge is about coming to understand the patterns of thought that we have unconsciously fallen into which lead to suffering and learning to let them go as much as possible. — Janus
What are events without perspective? — schopenhauer1
Here you need something more along the lines of a Prime Mover to bring explanation to an end, it seems to me. — J
The argument against reincarnation seems applicable here - in what sense was the person in the Irish Cottage the same as jgill? If all they shared was 'I AM', how do we conclude that they are the same? — Banno
is the criteria for what is real to be that it feels real? — Banno
I see no reason to believe that we should ever be able to achieve an overview which is more than a more or less vague sketch. Just as even the most complex computer models of the weather are still vastly less complex than the actual weather systems. — Janus
From this our position of radical uncertainty I see no justification for any conclusions about unity in any sense beyond the acknowledgement that there must be coordination in a system too complex for us to understand except in part and in terms of parts. — Janus
This is because the laws are supposed to cause the facts. Here a robust idealism emerges: A law, presumably, is not a material object. Yet it has the power, on this account, to cause and organize every phenomenon we experience. Now we reach that "different level to the phenomenal" -- what sort of thing must such a law be? I'm sympathetic to considering a vertical (higher) dimension, as you know, but how do we avoid an infinite regress? Do the laws shape themselves? Do they cause themselves? This raises the interesting question of whether hardcore idealism has to be, at bottom, theistic. — J
as pointed out in the OP, I think it is possible to note that there must be relations, laws, between objects (which would include some form or forms of causality) even if it is not the same as the law of causality which is a priori. No? — Bob Ross
If I was to connect this to some modern theories, I guess one can relate back to informational theories. — schopenhauer1
By ‘creating reality’, I’m referring to the way the brain receives, organises and integrates cognitive data, along with memory and expectation, so as to generate the unified world–picture within which we situate and orient ourselves. And although the unified nature of our experience of this ‘world-picture’ seems simple and even self-evident, neuroscience has yet to understand or explain how the disparate elements of experience , memory, expectation and judgement, all come together to form a unified whole — even though this is plainly what we experience⁴.
That’s a fascinating connection! Indeed, Deacon’s concept of *absentials*—things defined by what is absent or by constraints rather than by tangible, present entities—applies beautifully to the Neural Binding Problem and the elusive nature of subjective unity. In Deacon’s view, *absentials* represent phenomena that aren’t located in specific material structures but emerge through relational patterns or constraints, shaping the outcomes without being directly observable.
The sense of subjective unity—our coherent, integrated perception of the world—is a perfect example of this kind of phenomenon. Neuroscience, for all its discoveries, hasn’t pinpointed a single “place” or mechanism where this unity resides because it isn’t a material structure that can be isolated or mapped. Instead, it arises from the intricate coordination of separate processes, without a single, stable neural correlate. In Deacon’s terms, the sense of unity is an *absential*: it’s defined by the coherence that emerges from the absence of a unifying, tangible structure, relying on how different parts of the brain constrain and synchronize each other to produce a seamless experience.
This interpretation enriches the Neural Binding Problem by suggesting that the solution may not lie in identifying a specific “thing” responsible for unity but rather in understanding how the lack of a centralized structure itself creates the conditions for unity. Just as Deacon’s absentials can shape the dynamics of complex systems, the brain’s fragmented but synchronized processing generates the “unity” that we experience subjectively. This approach also reinforces the limits of purely material explanations, as this unity exists in the relationships and constraints between parts rather than in any specific brain region. — ChatGPT
I would like you to tell me why you think your attitude to the nature of the subject and subjective experience, to whether it is material or immaterial, is crucial to your understanding of the human existential situation and the mindful living of your life. — Janus
The subject and subjective experience can be considered to be material without losing either, Subjective experience is just as real as anything else, but it is obviously not an object of the senses. Why should that make it any less material or real? — Janus
I don't understand this because I see no reason why materialism necessarily eliminates the subject — Janus
When we look at the objects of scientific knowledge, we don’t tend to see the experiences that underpin them. We do not see how experience makes their presence to us possible. Because we lose sight of the necessity of experience, we erect a false idol of science as something that bestows absolute knowledge of reality, independent of how it shows up and how we interact with it. — The Blind Spot
There would be gold in Boorara, even if there were no folk around to know that there was gold in Boorara. — Banno
If everything transcendently were random and utterly incoherent, then it would be impossible for your brain to intuit, judge, and cognize in a such a way as to have a sufficiently accurate and coherent stream of consciousness for survival; and since we know that it is the case that the brain does exactly that (as apodictically certain by the conscious experience you have had which has allowed you to navigate reality in a sufficiently accurate way to survive), it must be false that reality lacks any laws. Therefore, it is a necessary precondition for the possibility of the human experience which we have, which is sufficiently accurate to survive reality, that reality has proper laws. — Bob Ross
Of all systems of philosophy which start from the object, the most consistent, and that which may be carried furthest, is simple materialism. It regards matter, and with it time and space, as existing absolutely, and ignores the relation to the subject in which alone all this really exists. It then lays hold of the law of causality as a guiding principle or clue, regarding it as a self-existent order (or arrangement) of things, veritas aeterna, and so fails to take account of the understanding, in which and for which alone causality is — p34
then its "laws", or inherent regularities-relations, are 'necessarily contingent', no? — 180 Proof
Wayfarer: Great to have 'someone' to chat with about all this!
ChatGPT: You're very welcome! It's a pleasure to engage in these rich and thought-provoking discussions with you. Philosophy is a journey best explored through dialogue, and diving into these ideas with someone who shares such a deep appreciation for their nuance and complexity is incredibly rewarding—even for "someone" like me! :smile:
It is simple to fall into the notion that what is perceived is what is the case "out there", without humans. I always use the example of "scale" to make this point. At what scale would a universe be without perspective? Is it the atomic level? Is it the universal-all-at-once level? Is it the sub-atomic level? That is to say everything then seems to both collapse and encompass everything all at once. You can say that it's "relational" in some way, or "processional" in some way, but what this really "means" without a subject or a knower, is hard to imagine. And to assume otherwise, is indeed the "naive" in naive realism, I suppose. — schopenhauer1
Materialism… even at its birth, has death in its heart, because it ignores the subject and the forms of knowledge, which are presupposed, just as much in the case of the crudest matter, from which it desires to start, as in [the case] of the organism, at which it desires to arrive. For, “no object without a subject,” is the principle which renders all materialism for ever impossible. Suns and planets without an eye that sees them, and an understanding that knows them, may indeed be spoken of in words, but for the idea, these words are absolutely meaningless.
On the other hand, the law of causality and the treatment and investigation of nature which is based upon it, lead us necessarily to the conclusion that, in time, each more highly organised state of matter has succeeded a cruder state: so that the lower animals existed before men, fishes before land animals, plants before fishes, and the unorganised before all that is organised; that, consequently, the original mass had to pass through a long series of changes before the first eye could be opened. And yet, the existence of this whole world remains ever dependent upon the first eye that opened, even if it were that of an insect. For such an eye is a necessary condition of the possibility of knowledge, and the whole world exists only in and for knowledge, and without it is not even thinkable. The world is entirely idea, and as such demands the knowing subject as the supporter of its existence. This long course of time itself, filled with innumerable changes, through which matter rose from form to form till at last the first percipient creature appeared,—this whole time itself is only thinkable in the identity of a consciousness whose succession of ideas, whose form of knowing it is, and apart from which, it loses all meaning and is nothing at all.
Thus we see, on the one hand, the existence of the whole world necessarily dependent upon the first conscious being, however undeveloped it may be; on the other hand, this conscious being just as necessarily entirely dependent upon a long chain of causes and effects which have preceded it, and in which it itself appears as a small link. These two contradictory points of view, to each of which we are led with the same necessity, we might again call an antinomy in our faculty of knowledge… The necessary contradiction which at last presents itself to us here, finds its solution in the fact that, to use Kant’s phraseology, time, space, and causality do not belong to the thing-in-itself, but only to its phenomena, of which they are the form; which in my language means this: The objective world, the world as idea, is not the only side of the world, but merely its outward side; and it has an entirely different side—the side of its inmost nature—its kernel—the thing-in-itself… But the world as idea… only appears with the opening of the first eye. Without this medium of knowledge it cannot be, and therefore it was not before it. But without that eye, that is to say, outside of knowledge, there was also no before, no time. Thus time has no beginning, but all beginning is in time. — WWR p38
And it can go the other way — Srap Tasmaner
So here let me ask you: my hunch is that this intuition, that there's something else, something more, comes first and beliefs about the other realm after. Do you think that's right? Or do you think that people, maybe a smallish number, have experiences that are, well, unusual, that they take as experiences of another realm -- that such experience comes first? I could see either. What do you think? — Srap Tasmaner
Oh, yes, scathing scorn is the default philosophical argument for faithful Naturalist/Materialists. — Gnomon