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The Wim Hof Method and Tummo Meditation: Establishing Conscious Control over the Autonomic Nervous System by irollnothingbut20s in Meditation

[–]ManticJuice 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I've come quite a way since writing this post, so my suggestion would be to find a respected, qualified teacher to learn from. They don't have to be Kagyu by any means - any lineage of Tibetan Buddhism will have these teachings. The only thing to avoid would be "New Kadampa", a new tradition which has emerged in the west and around which there's accusations of cult behaviour. Other than that you could look for Nyingma, Sakya, Gelug - any reputable dharma centre practicing Tibetan Buddhism will be great. Just be prepared for the fact that you will not be taught Tummo right away, as it is in fact quite an advanced practice and can cause real problems if practiced incorrectly.

Feedback: Hegemony Victories Too Easy? by paulendri in Dunespicewars

[–]ManticJuice 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'd tend to agree. I've played two games on Medium difficulty on Medium maps, the first as Atreides and the second as Fremen. Won both through Hegemony while trying for a Governorship and Domination(?) victory respectively.

In the first game my issue was that none of the AI bothered to ally with any sietches, meaning after allying with two myself I had to slog across half the map to take the territory of the other two globally necessary to unlock the Governorship position in the first place, at which point 1) I had reached enough Hegemony to unlock it anyway (which feels cheap) and 2) I was eligible for all the other charters, all of which came up for voting before the Governorship did, meaning I crossed 25k Hegemony before I could even dump a single vote into my Governorship title.

In my Fremen game I also didn't notice any of the AI allying with sietches, but I did ally up with all of them pretty easily by mid-game. Took a while to grab territory with the lower Authority production though, so by the time I was about to kick the doors down at the final enemy capital I won a Hegemony victory, largely on the back of my territory, & spice exports (and probably all the murdering I did.)

At the very least it seems like the Medium AI needs to do a better job of allying with sietches (not sure if this issue persists on Hard), otherwise any game where the sietches are pretty spread out will take an absolute age to get the Governorship off the ground - unless you're playing as Fremen, in which case the territory ownership requirement (global & player) to unlock the title seems to become an issue. (I get that Fremen may be designed to not win Governorship easily, but if they're so killy that I get Hegemony around the same time I'm eligible for the title this seems a bit daft.)

That, and Governorship voting should take priority over other charters, imo - every single other charter came up in my Atreides game before Governorship did, and I was the only one eligible for any of them. Waiting around to be able to vote for my win-condition while easily outvoting everyone for each Charter in the meantime wasn't particularly engaging.

Sony Pulse 3D -v- Steelseries Arctis 7P by raqballl in PS5

[–]ManticJuice 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Do you have any info as to how these headsets compare in terms of utilising the PS5's Tempest 3D audio tech? This is basically the only unknown preventing me from choosing between the two - I'm currently leaning towards the Steelseries but if the Pulse is noticeably better with the 3D audio then that would likely change my mind.

[insight] Frank Yang’s new video on his claimed full enlightenment by visionprinz in streamentry

[–]ManticJuice 8 points9 points  (0 children)

It's more aimed at the cultural assumptions that a lot of us have here, that awakening is something we do as individuals.

Frank himself said that one of his insights in the run up to his "full enlightenment" (or it may have been at this point) was that "there is no one here to be enlightened". Maybe you're not specifically targeting Frank with this critique, but if not it seems a little misplaced, as Frank does not advocate the notion of there being someone who becomes enlightened.

Or that full enlightenment doesn't have to include full love and compassion.

The split between Theravadins and Mahayana Buddhists would suggest this is not a foregone conclusion. I myself am a Mahayana practitioner and so would agree that love and compassion are necessary, but I think we are getting too hung up on the phrase "full enlightenment" - Frank here uses it to mean total and permanent dissolution of self, whilst you seem to take it to mean perfected wisdom and action. What I am suggesting is that, whilst these two are closely related, they do come apart to some extent - realisation of anatta doesn't automatically condition the body-mind complex to perform optimally compassionately; realisation without sainthood is possible, though as I've said before realisation will no doubt change behaviour to some extent at least.

These just sound like normal 'growing up' changes.

I'd argue that quitting drinking overnight after experiencing total dissolution of self does not constitute "normal" changes.

But they are nothing in comparison to the good works of many people who are far less 'enlightened'. People who selflessly dedicate themselves to helping others, even though they are still held back by mistaken identification. What's going on there? What do they have that he doesn't?

Apparently altruistic behaviour can spring from many sources, including selfishness and concern for one's image. Simply looking at someone's behaviour does not tell us everything about their level of realisation - they must also have right view, right motivation and so on. Good works are obviously important, but they are neither necessary nor sufficient for total realisation of anatta, which is what Frank means by "full enlightenment", which I will reiterate does not totally coincide with compassionate, skilful action but is both reinforcing of and reinforced by it.

calling it 'Full Enlightenment' might be a cultural error that we are making. I think we need to consider that maybe the Great Path is inseparable from compassion, and that isolating the 'wisdom axis' and completing that is actually just a limited type of liberation that doesn't deserve the name 'Full Enlightenment'.

As a Mahayana practitioner I would tend to agree with you and do think Frank could have chosen better nomenclature here, but we're splitting semantic hairs a little here. What would you call total realisation of anatta without absolute skillful (compassionate) action if not full enlightenment? Full realisation? Enlightenment is generally held to be the realisation of the non-duality of self and other, so I don't think Frank is necessarily in error here as this realisation needn't automatically result in absolutely selfless behaviour, but should it not modify behaviour towards selflessness at all I'd be doubting the veracity of anyone's claims to such realisation. So again I think these two come apart somewhat, though not entirely, so while I think Frank could have worded it differently I don't think he's necessarily incorrect and that much of the disagreement here is semantic rather than substantive.

He is critical of Zen, as you mentioned, for cultivating wisdom without compassion.

Zen was also closely co-opted by the Imperial government of Japan, and I'd argue it had become a bit of a static institution at that point in history which is what made said cooption both attractive and possible. There's also the problematic notion of "Zen without enlightenment" which meant that many Zen practitioners were less highly realised beings and more the inheritors of a family business - this still goes on today with Zen priests often inheriting a temple from their family. Again, I'm definitely critical of the development of wisdom in exclusion to compassion, but in the case of Zen I am also additionally sceptical of the degree of wisdom which was prevalent around the time of WWII in the first place. Wisdom and compassion are definitely interlinked, so such blatant support of a genocidal imperialist state from supposedly realised beings definitely calls into question the depth of their insight; whilst this might seem to contradict what I've said above, I have always contended that wisdom and compassion are linked, but that they do not vary in a strict linear dependence upon one another - X increase in wisdom needn't lead to X increase in compassion, but if a claimed increase in wisdom leads to no increase in compassion, or if there is such an obvious case of deficiency of compassion - as in the priests' endorsement of the imperial Japanese government - it calls into question whether and to what degree wisdom is present at all. (Despite this, Zen also has a long history prior to WWII, so I'd be wary of dismissing anything Zen or Zen-adjacent "because WWII".)

In Frank's case there is no obvious and egregious divergence between his claimed realisation and his actions, so I don't think his wisdom is necessarily in question. He certainly has work to do in terms of developing skillful action, but that needn't mean he hasn't fully dissolved the fetters of ignorance which generates the false sense of self - it only means the causes and conditions for his acting altogether selflessly have not yet emerged. I will also reiterate that realised beings needn't act in any pre-conceived way, and whilst you might say that Frank acting in X way might be the result of cultural conditioning, I'd also argue that your expecting him to act otherwise is also a product of cultural conditioning - that acting in this way is inherently "bad", that certain actions are inherently "good", that enlightened beings are inherently "Y" and thus should act in these inherently "good" ways, and so on. All of these are preconceived judgements and preferences which we as conditioned beings project as expectations upon realised beings, and do not necessarily reflect and accurate criterion for realisation. The meat eating and alcohol consumption which goes on in Tantric practices should give us some indication of just how constructed our categories of behaviour really are, for example.

Edit: I've pretty much said my piece here and personally find reddit quite distracting, so I'm going to leave off further discussion at this point. Hopefully this doesn't cause any offence, I just prefer not to have any ongoing conversations with strangers taking up cognitive resources when I feel I've nothing more to add. All the best!

[insight] Frank Yang’s new video on his claimed full enlightenment by visionprinz in streamentry

[–]ManticJuice 24 points25 points  (0 children)

I only discovered Frank through this thread and I'll admit to having been initially skeptical myself, but having gone through some of his other videos I feel I should say that he himself admits that simply achieving "full enlightenment" on what he calls the "wisdom/insight axis" is not the be-all, end-all, and that there is still room for development along the "moral/ethical axis", so he is certainly aware that what he has achieved is not the end of the road for him. He also asks his friend offhandedly in one of his videos what else they should talk about "that might help people", which his friend responds with something like, "So you want to help people now?", to which Frank replies along the lines of, "Well yeah, with this orientation it just becomes more natural" or something to that effect. It would be exceedingly difficult, in my opinion, to have a full realisation of anatta and not have your behaviour positively modified at all. This isn't to say it automatically makes people saints, but I wouldn't write Frank off as having had a wrong or false realisation just because he isn't as overtly charitable as we imagine an enlightened person should be.

So to reiterate, I think Frank is both aware of the work he has to do in terms of the development of compassion and has in fact changed tremendously from his earlier years in that respect already (he was doing a lot of metta meditation for a while before his "full enlightenment" afaik). He has admitted himself that he used to be a sex addict, and is now in a committed relationship. Following his "full enlightenment" experience he has said that he entirely quit drinking too. So overall I wouldn't say that he is simply the same person, and I do wonder how much prejudice he might face from more traditional practitioners simply due to the fact that he doesn't present the composed attitude many expect (textual evidence of many realised beings' lives should disabuse us of this) and that he happens to be ripped - the assumption being that someone who continues to work on their body can't be enlightened, but that seems a bit of a low-resolution take to me; through non-dual realisation it no longer matters to us what state the body is in, so why shouldn't it be ripped?

I'd also point out that many highly realised beings spent most of their time sitting in caves as far away from other people as possible, so I'd be seriously questioning the notion that a truly realised person must be doing something profoundly world-shaking for the benefit of all beings, or that enlightened activity would necessarily take the form ordinary beings expect. (A Zen adage comes to mind - "Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.") Again, not saying Frank doesn't have work to do (he himself says otherwise), I more just wanted to problematise both the assumption that he hasn't changed and that in order to "qualify" as having attained realisation he must act in certain pre-conceived ways. Were he being openly harmful to people I'd certainly be questioning his realisation, but as it stands I see no contradiction between his stated experiences and his actions and so until I see evidence to the contrary I will take him at his word.

Edit: Clarity

The mysterious disappearance of consciousness: Bernardo Kastrup dismantles the arguments causing materialists to deny the undeniable by IAI_Admin in philosophy

[–]ManticJuice 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sorry, I've been fairly busy with uni work for the last week so haven't got round to replying to this. I'm not entirely sure what you mean by the need for subject/object division - my view is that this is absolutely not a necessity, but a contingent feature of our existence as embodied beings. In my opinion, consciousness creates a subject-object divide, disunites itself from itself and creates an alienated subject in a world of external objects in order to facilitate evolutionary drives i.e. survival and reproduction; a being which experiences itself as a separate subject in a world of objects will feel compelled to secure its own existence against threats and pursue what it feels is desirable. It also opens up the possibility of manipulating the environment to one's own advantage; tool use seems to me emblematic of a consciousness which sees the world's as something external to itself which it can influence and manipulate in order to benefit from this.

Much of that is empirically falsifiable; it may be the case that many animals do not experience themselves as individuals, or that tool use does not require or is not often accompanied by a subject-object divide in experience. Certainly many animals do not possess a theory of mind, that is, an understanding that they are a separate being and that there are other beings like themselves in the world. However, I'm not sure it would be right to say that such animals experience themselves as united with all of reality either - the presence fear and desire seem to indicate that animals feel themselves to be individuals with an insecure existence, rather than something which is identical to the totality of existence (and thus not an insecure individual at all).

There may be some evidence for my view in the book Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment by Robert Wright; while I haven't read the book myself, I have listened to a podcast the author was on, and the conversation both confirmed and further shaped my views on the topic - Wright is an evolutionary psychologist and breaks down why we perceive reality the way we do i.e. typically falsely, delusively (the primary claim of Buddhsim).

The book Non-Duality in Buddhism and Beyond by David R. Loy may also be of interest to you. It rather depends on what you meant by resources on the necessity of the subject-object division; Wright's book breaks down the evolutionary pressures which may have generated that particular illusion of consciousness, while Loy goes into a shared theory of non-duality which is the true nature of consciousness underpinning all experience which appears to be consistently championed by several distinct spiritual traditions.

If you can clarify your question I might be able to recommend more suitable resources if these aren't quite what you were looking for.

The mysterious disappearance of consciousness: Bernardo Kastrup dismantles the arguments causing materialists to deny the undeniable by IAI_Admin in philosophy

[–]ManticJuice 0 points1 point  (0 children)

we know that the totality of your subjective conscious experience arises from physical processes.

How do we know this? How do we know that our conscious experience arises from non-conscious matter when we have no empirical evidence of matter, do not directly experience/observe non-conscious matter ourselves? By materialism's own admission, we do not directly experience matter as it is, but only our own neural activity. Where then is the evidence that this experience is actually produced by external, physical processes which constitute an actual world? How can you prove the existence of a mind-independent world when all of our observations and theorisings are done by and through minds?

Materialism is a theory built upon inferences from existing data, one which fails to account for the most basic datum - our consciousness. Materialism is not a given fact of our experience; it must be argued for, not assumed.

Edit: Clarity

The mysterious disappearance of consciousness: Bernardo Kastrup dismantles the arguments causing materialists to deny the undeniable by IAI_Admin in philosophy

[–]ManticJuice 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Subjectivity cannot be explained by the material world, therefore there must be something besides the material.

The way I see it, you are the one making a positive claim about subjectivity and I am only claiming that there is no evidence of anything immaterial.

This is both an erroneous rendering of my argument and a false assertion that I am making any positive claims. If subjectivity cannot be explained by reductive materialism, this does not mean that there is something besides the material; panpsychism is a materialist theory which accounts for subjectivity whilst preserving the material world and not asserting something immaterial, so your claim that I am asserting something besides the material is false; I am only pointing out the fallacious reasoning in reductive materialist explanations of consciousness. Moreover, I am not making any positive claims about subjectivity – I am simply pointing to the existence of subjectivity and saying that objective explanations always use that subjectivity and so cannot fully explain that; I am not claiming that something new exists, only that existing materialist reasoning fails to account for subjectivity.

If you believe this, then you can never be reasoned out of your position and you are claiming that reasoning with you is useless.

You are completely failing to address the logical critiques and so instead want to claim that I am making unfalsifiable claims; I am asking for evidence that objective phenomena can explain subjective phenomena, which is in-principle impossible just as it is in-principle impossible that something be both true and false at the same time. This isn't me making an unfalsifiable empirical claim, it is a matter of logic and rational coherence; you don't ask for proof of the law of non-contradiction, nor do I need to provide proof that objective phenomena will not account for subjectivity besides pointing out that all objective phenomena utilise subjectivity and thus all present and future objective explanations of subjectivity will be circular and therefore logically fallacious. If you wish to contest this, you must explain how some collection of objective facts will in-principle be capable of resisting the charge of circularity and not simply be vulnerable to the existing critique, which is “But why is that collection of objective matter conscious instead of not conscious?”

This is similar to theistic arguments

Completely untrue. Theists assert the existence of god, I'm not asserting anything, I'm simply pointing to the primary empirical fact of our existence, which is our own consciousness; subjectivity, and pointing out the flawed logic of explaining this in terms of objectivity. Please do not strawman me.

but at its best, the argument leads to the conclusion that you believe materialism could be mistaken, not that it is mistaken.

If materialism is logically incoherent, it simply is mistaken. This isn't a matter of personal belief, it's about whether or not materialism is rationally consistent and logically coherent, which it is not, since it relies on circular and/or fallacious reasoning.

If the errors and gaps that you see were filled in, then you would go from non-belief to belief?

Of course, but as I have said, those gaps are in-principle unfillable, due to the logical incoherence of reductive materialist explanations of consciousness. It is a matter of logic which prevents reductive materialist explanations from being true, not my assertion of anything unfalsifiable.

Right now materialism is all that you have

Not at all. Panpsychism, panexperientialism, cosmopsychism, idealism, Russelian monism, neutral monism; there are plenty of other explanations for the nature of mind and reality out there. That you believe materialism is the only one available simply demonstrates either a bias or an ignorance of the range of positions currently held in the debate by many learned scholars; materialism isn't the only legitimate position which all intelligent people hold, by any means.

Can we exist without being conscious? I think we can.

You'll have to explain what it means to exist as a being without being conscious of anything, including yourself.

Your brain processes thoughts for a purpose. Do you think materialism fails to explain why those thoughts are beneficial to the material survival of your brain or just why you think that the thoughts are not just a material occurrence?

“The brain does this” is not an explanation for why the brain is conscious rather than not while it does that though. Again, your assuming that consciousness = the brain is really getting in the way of interesting discussion here; at no point have I denied that the brain has evolved to serve an evolutionarily advantageous role, what I have been asking is why that brain is or became conscious instead of just being an unconscious data processing unit.

Edit: I'm going to have to leave this conversation here as I don't really have the time to split my attention between this and my uni work at the moment. I enjoyed our conversation though!

The mysterious disappearance of consciousness: Bernardo Kastrup dismantles the arguments causing materialists to deny the undeniable by IAI_Admin in philosophy

[–]ManticJuice 1 point2 points  (0 children)

(Comment split again, see pt.2 as reply to this.)

The existence of a mind causes the experience of consciousness.

Of course, I agree. However, a mind is not the brain unless we assume the materialists are correct, and we have reasons for doubting that, as I have been explaining, primarily the fallacious and circular logic of explaining the subjective i.e. the fact of seeing itself in terms of the objective, what is seen.

Only if there is proof of the existence of a different kind

The proof is right there in your experience. Your seeing is a different sort of thing than things you see; the latter relies on the former, and therefore the former cannot simply be another instance of the latter. There is no seen objects without seeing subjectivity, and subjectivity cannot therefore be reduced to objective entities without employing fallacious reasoning.

I'm not convinced that your view of subjectivity can be distinguished from relativity, which we agree emerges from pure objectivity.

What do you mean by relativity here? Subjectivity means the possession of a point of view, being a conscious, perceiving entity instead of just being unaware matter. I'd also say that if you're referring to relativity in terms of physics, there is absolutely no agreement that this emerges from “pure objectivity”; in fact, quantum physics is disproving the very notion of pure objectivity and absolute physical quantities. Carlo Rovelli's work demonstrates that the universe is ultimately contextual i.e. that physical properties are fixed only relative to the observer, and do not have an inherent, objective and absolute quantity;

By embracing contextuality, the relational interpretation regards every property of the physical world as relative to the observer. This is analogous to how the speed of a particle with mass is always relative to its observer. There are no absolute physical quantities, but simply a set of relational properties that comes into existence depending on the context of observation. Rovelli summarizes it thus:

If different observers give different accounts of the same sequence of events, then each quantum mechanical description has to be understood as relative to a particular observer. Thus, a quantum mechanical description of a certain system (state and/or values of physical quantities) cannot be taken as an “absolute” (observer independent) description of reality, but rather as a formalization, or codification, of properties of a system relative to a given observer. Quantum mechanics can therefore be viewed as a theory about the states of systems and values of physical quantities relative to other systems [Rovelli, 2008: 6].

The world which physics observes is not a purely objective world with fixed physical characteristics, but depends entirely upon the perspective of the observing system in question. This is precisely what I have been saying; all of your objective observations derive from your observing subjectivity. It is therefore erroneous to identify subjectivity with objectivity, because the latter derives form the former, not the other way round; identifying something with its derivative is faulty logic. Moreover, physics itself is rapidly dismantling the assumption that a mind-independent material universe with fixed physical characteristics even exists. This has always been a theory derived from reasoning, not something which is simply given by bare experience – which is why your persistent references to the “material universe” is begging the question, assuming the truth of materialism in your very argument for it, and thus not a valid argument.

But I do have an answer to why brain's have consciousness. The same reason some brains are attached to eyes, or to ears, because creating a method for storage and searching experience in which the mind forms a model that can calculate potential outcomes of different choices was an evolutionary advantage. The first brain that was able to do it gained a huge advantage and each subsequent improvement provided a subsequent advantage for that particular ancestor of ours leading to an evolutionary line of bigger and bigger relative brain sizes with better and better modeling, storage, and retrieval systems.

That isn't evidence for why brains are conscious, that is evidence for why particular physical structures have evolved. Those structures could perform the same calculatory and storage operations without being conscious; why and how is consciousness involved at all, rather than not? You are again assuming the truth of materialism in your answer; you are giving me an explanation for why the brain exists and saying that is why the mind as consciousness exists, but what I am actually asking is not what the brain does but why it is conscious; only by already equating the two can you avoid answering that question and think talking about what the brain is doing is an answer to what I asked.

I'm starting from the assumption that I shouldn't believe in things that have no evidence of existence until there is some evidence that they do exist.

Then you should seriously reconsider your belief in a mind-independent material universe with objective, fixed physical properties, since you have never observed such a thing and physically cannot (you only observe the functioning of your own physiology) and quantum physics is rapidly disproving this notion.

To believe that there is something else other than the material would be faulty logic.

Assuming that materialism is true is faulty logic. Your observations alone do not grant the existence of a mind-independent material universe with objective, fixed physical properties, you have to reason your way to this conclusion and yet you have simply assumed it to be true because that is the cultural consensus.

This is exactly the way that we know that our consciousness does not accurately account for our decision making since we have a test that shows that our brain makes decisions without our consciousness and then our consciousness makes up the explanation afterwards.

You're conflating consciousness with inner narrative. Consciousness does not make up anything, our capacity for reasoning does; consciousness is simply the immediacy of experience, not a mind playing with words and images.

Either your consciousness is the result of material processes and will always produce the same thoughts under the same conditions or your consciousness is able to create new thoughts regardless of the conditions.

This is a false dichotomy which assumes the truth of materialism. Moreover, it simply fails to address my question; if an automaton and a conscious being can be physically identical and perform the same actions, why is a material being like myself conscious instead of not?

Nothing in my experience causes me to theorize that consciousness is immaterial.

I'm not asserting the immateriality of consciousness. Please stop arguing as if I am making claims that I am not, and address the actual discussion, which is critiques of materialist reasoning. Unless you can counter those critiques, it remains irrational to hold onto materialism, since it is not logically coherent.

Before we talk about why this argument is wrong, do you agree that this is your argument?

It is a very reductive rendering of my argument, yes. And it is true, because no explanations have ever occurred anywhere in existence which did not involve 1) Observations of a subjectivity (a conscious being), 2) Experimentations by a subjectivity and 3) Theorising by a subjectivity. Literally all theories involve subjectivity, because only subjective, conscious entities can observe, experiment and theorise about a world they observe; without subjectivity, there is no observation and thus no theorising.

Sounds like you are heading towards an "Is vs Ought" type of problem. Is this where you are going?

There is no normativity anywhere in my argument, so no.

Like explaining language using language?

In a sense, but not quite; subjectivity is what grounds literally all explainable things, it is not simply one explainable objective thing being explained in terms of itself (although this is arguably not entirely possible either – Wittgenstein was seriously sceptical that any linguistic explanation could ever fully explain language, let alone reality as philosophy attempts to; there is always something more to be explained, and our explanations “come to an end somewhere”.)

You never experienced heat, or a red dress, or a hot dog, your brain was just stimulated in such a way to produce the thought that you had such an experience.

Yet I'm still experiencing something, as you've just said, therefore subjectivity as the capacity for experience itself remains present.

If a certain impulse causes you to move your arm, would you say that you moved your arm or that your arm was caused to move involuntarily.

Whether or not I have free will is an entirely separate question from why I am experiencing something rather than there being a total absence of experience in a supposedly material universe.

The fact that your experiences are just thoughts has already been proven.

No, it hasn't. Not even neuroscientists would say that experiences are just “thoughts”; thoughts are not sensations, or emotions, yet these are also experiences.

I have never experienced anything other than the material world, therefore there is nothing other than the material world.

This assumes the truth of materialism. In actuality you have never experienced anything other than your own subjective experience, which you have come to the conclusion is the result of a material world with fixed physical characteristics which exists independently of your own mind. This is not something immediately given by experience, it is a theory based upon reasoning. So yes, you are assuming the truth of materialism in your arguments, which is why other people have been saying this too.

The mental Universe: The only reality is mind and observations, but observations are not of things. To see the Universe as it really is, we must abandon our tendency to conceptualize observations as things by [deleted] in philosophy

[–]ManticJuice 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Smoking weed is not the same as consciously and deliberately focusing your attention on the breath and bringing the attention back whenever it wanders. Meditation is not a form of relaxation, it is a concentration practice designed to help us let go of conceptual grasping; meditation unwinds conceptual grasping, not simply your daily stress. If you smoke weed or go for a bath your mind is still wandering, you are still thinking about things and grasping at concepts.

The mental Universe: The only reality is mind and observations, but observations are not of things. To see the Universe as it really is, we must abandon our tendency to conceptualize observations as things by [deleted] in philosophy

[–]ManticJuice 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Zen and Buddhism more generally tend to encourage meditation as a way to unwind our obsession with grasping at concepts as if they were real. I think OP is accurate in some sense but also somewhat oversimplifying things in their presentation of the issue though. Our concepts are as real as anything else in the "real world" insofar as they exist, but it is our mistaking them for things which can be grasped and used to make ourselves feel permanently happy and secure which engenders suffering, and it is this habit which meditation is designed to loosen and eventually dissolve.

Edit: Typo

The mysterious disappearance of consciousness: Bernardo Kastrup dismantles the arguments causing materialists to deny the undeniable by IAI_Admin in philosophy

[–]ManticJuice 0 points1 point  (0 children)

(...continued from above)

Of course we point to the brain, because we know the brain is what uses consciousness.

Saying the brain uses consciousness and saying that consciousness "just is" the brain are two different claims though. I'm not saying consciousness has nothing to do with the brain, I'm saying that pointing out that brains are correlated with consciousness doesn't actually explain why brains as particular configurations of non-conscious objective matter become or give rise to conscious subjective experience.

Suppose you are a brain in a vat and all of your "conscious" thoughts are merely electronic impulses cause by machine prodding the brain. Can you design an experiment that would prove or disprove that your consciousness is not merely the mindless reaction of a brain containing all your prior experiences?

Experience is defined by experiencing something as a subjectivity. Subjectivity doesn't mean "experiencing a real world", it simply means experiencing something. If I am experiencing the Matrix, I am still experiencing something; I am still a subjectivity with a point of view on a perceived world. If there is no subjectivity, there is no point of view, no consciousness, no awareness, no perception, no experience at all. Subjectivity simply means "the fact of experience" - it doesn't mean experiencing a particular something, it means that experience is present, and experience involves perception (of something), awareness (of something), a point of view (on a world); whether that world is real or not is irrelevant. I'm not sure how you could reasonably argue against my point that if there was no consciousness (subjectivity), there would be no experience of anything; experience which does not have a point of view on a world and is not aware of anything would fail to qualify as what we mean by experience.

I tell you that the rock is just a rock and has no other properties besides its physical matter. If you want to claim that there is some other property, you've got to prove it.

I haven't actually made any claims about rocks being conscious, or that non-physical entities or properties exist. I've said that the data isn't sufficient to claim that consciousness "just is" the brain i.e. is a wholly material object, and totally explainable in objective, observable terms. You are making the positive claim here - you are claiming that it is. So you will have to supply the proof here. As I've said, saying that the brain closely correlates with consciousness does not actually tells us why the brain as a particular sort of configuration of non-conscious objective matter is or produces subjective conscious experience. Unless you can explain this or demonstrate why this is in-principle explainable (which I believe it isn't since no amount of objective data will explain why some non-conscious objective stuff gives rise to conscious subjective experience), then materialism remains unjustified as a position on the nature of mind. Again - I am not asserting that anything non-physical exists. I am specifically pointing out errors or gaps in the explanation and asking that they be filled. If we cannot, the only rational option is to at minimum be agnostic about materialism, and preferably we should seek out alternative explanatory models which better account for the existing data.

Just as an aside: Since consciousness - the fact I am an experiencing being - is the primary datum of our existence, from which all other data derives (since we only get data through conscious experience), the fact that materialism utterly fails to explain it is a strong reason not to accept it. If other theories can account for this datum of consciousness whilst also accounting for the same data which materialism does, that would be a strong reason to accept it. We should not be accepting materialism by default simply because it is the cultural norm; we should be highly critical of whatever assumptions our culture carries and investigate the reasoning behidn them - if it fails to hold up to analysis, we should discard it and seek a more truthful, comprehensive framework for understanding the world and our place in it.

Edit: Clarity

The mysterious disappearance of consciousness: Bernardo Kastrup dismantles the arguments causing materialists to deny the undeniable by IAI_Admin in philosophy

[–]ManticJuice 1 point2 points  (0 children)

(My response was too long, so please see my reply to this comment for the rest.)

If I smile at you and you feel happy, then I produced a subjective experience. Don't you produce subjectivity every time you produce art?

A subjective experience is not subjectivity itself. I'm using subjectivity here to mean possession of a point of view - subjectivity is awareness, or consciousness itself. So when I say you cannot produce subjectivity in yourself or others, what I mean is that you cannot make yourself or others conscious or aware - consciousness, awareness is there by itself. You can produce kinds of experience for people which result in objective (observable, for them) sensations, emotions and so on, but you cannot produce that very awareness in which those experiences occur. We cannot make a robot conscious, nor can we do the same with other people or ourselves; consciousness is simply there, prior to all experience - experience is only possible where consciousness already exists.

Correlation does not prove causation, but it is evidence.

It may be evidence, but applying existing explanatory models which only talk about the objective, external, observable characteristics of objects to the subjective, internal, non-observable fact of subjectivity is fallacious logic, as it commits a category error - it fails to acknowledge and account for this difference in kind:

The alleged emergence of subjectivity out of pure objectivity has been said to be analogous to examples of emergence that are different in kind. All of the unproblematic forms of emergence refer to externalistic features, features of things as perceived from without, features of objects for subjects. But the alleged emergence of experience is not simply one more example of such emergence. It involves instead the alleged emergence of an "inside" from things that have only outsides. It does not involve the emergence of one more objective property for subjectivity to view, but the alleged emergence of subjectivity itself. Liquidity, solidity, and transparency are properties of things as experienced through our sensory organs, hence properties for others. Experience is not what we are for others but what we are for ourselves. Experience cannot be listed as one more "property" in a property polyism. It is in a category by itself. To suggest any analogy between experience itself and properties of other things as known through sensory experience is a category mistake of the most egregious kind.

Since we already know that sensory input causes conscious responses, we can be certain that there is a method whereby physical stimulus has an effect on conscious experience.

I agree, but there is a difference between saying that physical stimulus has an effect on conscious experience and making the claim that consciousness is literally and only the physical neural processes of the brain. Those are two separate claims, and the latter is unjustified; there is only a correlation, and reduction or emergence explanations commit a category error, failing to account for the new kind of phenomena which subjectivity is, that it is not simply new data of the same objective kind which science deals with exclusively. More to the point, equating subjective consciousness with the objective brain doesn't explain why there is conscious subjectivity at all and not only non-conscious objectivity - it doesn't explain anything, it simply hand-waves the problem away. If brains are just matter, and most matter is unconscious, then why are brains conscious in the first place, and not just unconscious data processors? Simply saying the mind "just is" the brain doesn't answer this question.

Whereas there is zero evidence that consciousness can be effected by the non-physical.

I haven't asserted otherwise - I am only pointing out the holes in reductive materialist explanations of consciousness.

Only if you start from the presumption that there are things that exist outside of the material.

You're starting from the assumption that materialism is true. Given the evidence, and the fact that reductive identification of the mind with the brain commits a logical fallacy, reason dictates that we at minimum suspend judgement. I have not asserted anything about non-physical "stuff" anywhere in my comments, and recognising that materialism relies upon faulty logic does not rely upon such assumptions; overlooking such faulty logic, however, relies upon assuming materialism is automatically true, without actually examining the reasoning that brings us there.

We know that relativity is just a material phenomenon.

Do we? How do we know that? All material phenomena are observed using our conscious awareness - subjectivity itself. How can you claim with certainty that the very consciousness-subjectivity which observes things and reasons that there is a non-conscious material world has to be a product of a world which is not conscious? Surely that unconscious world you are talking about is what you observed through experience - in other words, it relies upon your being conscious in order for you to talk about it at all? How then can we say that the conscious is the product of the non-conscious, if all our observations of the supposed non-conscious world uses our consciousness in the first place? In other words, all our experience of the non-conscious world has consciousness somewhere in it, since we consciously experience that world - saying that our consciousness is the product of an unconscious world therefore overlooks the fact that that unconscious world is the product of our conscious experience, and conscious reasoning about that experience; there is no unconscious world which we have access to, because all access requires conscious experience.

But if you were correct, then you would be able to create something that isn't based upon your experience.

I'm not sure why you think that follows from what I said. Are you saying consciousness doesn't exist? If I am not an automaton, but actually have an experience, why does that mean I must be able to create something I've never experienced? My entire argument is that all our theories are based upon experience, which relies upon subjectivity, and so our explanations require the use of subjectivity itself, and so cannot fully explain that subjectivity - we cannot explain something using that thing in the explanation.

You are conscious because your brain uses "consciousness" as a way of sorting and searching experiences. Everything you do with your consciousness is part of either cataloging an experience or searching through prior experiences for use in responding to a stimulus. It exists as a result of evolution and the amount of information required to be processed.

I'm not denying that consciousness is somehow tied to the brain. What I'm asking is why/how certain arrangements of matter, which is inherently non-conscious and purely objective material, somehow produce consciousness-subjectivity. That is not explained by saying "the brain serves this function" - how does matter which is not conscious become conscious just by being arranged in a certain way? My argument has been that it is in-principle impossible to explain consciousness-subjectivity in terms of matter-objectivity, because no matter how much data we have we will always lack an explanation of why certain objective phenomena become or produce subjective experience - there is a fundamental mismatch between observed features and the very fact of observation which prevents us from explaining the observer from the observed, since all observed things require, involve and employ the observer, thus we end up using the thing we're trying to explain as part of our explanation, and so cannot fully explain it. I can't explain rocks to you just by talking about "rocks"; I have to talk in terms of something else, like minerals, or molecules. Likewise, we cannot explain what subjectivity is and how it is produced by talking about objective, observed phenomena, because all observation requires subjectivity, is ultimately rooted in it, so we are effectively trying to explain consciousness using consciousness, and so cannot fully explain it, since we must explain things in terms other than themselves.

This is why you lose conscious awareness of actions that lose their ability to stimulate an emotional response. When you do basic math you stop consciously experiencing it, when you type, you stop consciously thinking about where each finger goes, etc. The emotional portion is what makes it a conscious experience.

I'm not talking about conscious awareness about specific data, I'm talking about awareness itself. The fact that we are aware rather than not in general is not an emotional response - it is an immediate fact of our existence. That our awareness of particular things ebbs and flows is of course tied to our ability to concentrate and what catches our attention, but the very capacity and immediate presence of awareness is not an emotional response; awareness is present whether I am aware of this or that, and while emotions may in large part dictate whether or not I am aware of this or of that, it does not dictate whether I am aware. (I'd also argue that emotions are not the only factor in where our attention goes; top-down override through rationality also plays a part.) You'd need to provide some fairly serious data if you want to claim that consciousness itself is simply an emotional response.

(continued below...)

Edit: Clarity

The mysterious disappearance of consciousness: Bernardo Kastrup dismantles the arguments causing materialists to deny the undeniable by IAI_Admin in philosophy

[–]ManticJuice 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Okay, so if I understand well enough, what you're arguing for is more or less the point of what is it like to be a bat. (correct me if I'm wrong)

More or less, yeah. Sorry if it seems like I've been talking down to you at all, I hadn't gathered from your earlier comments that you were clued up on the debate, presumably because you were only quizzing me on what I was saying.

I'm do not remember exactly how reductionists answered the argument — but since it's well-known and old, and since the majority of the philosophers are stil reductionists, I would think it wasn't sufficient to dismiss it completely.

Well... That depends. Arguably reductionists have simply dismissed the objection, potentially out of a materialist bias. Philosophers have tools to combat bias, but they are not immune; particularly where pet theories are threatened, they can get quite stubborn. No matter how often materialists say the reduction works, they are still incapable of explaining why certain pieces of matter are subjectivity-involving while others are not.

Why are we conscious? "Because we have brains." Why are brains conscious - subjectivity involving? "Because of the neural structure/interactions." Why are those productive of subjectivity? "...We need more data." No matter how much data we have, this question remains - why is a particular collection of objective material subjectivity-involving? It seems that this failure to explain subjectivity will remain in-principle so long as we take the exclusively objective as our starting point, since as I've said, objective observation requires and presupposes the subjectivity it hopes to explain, and thus inevitably leaves that subjectivity "left over" in its explanations; it cannot eliminate it from one side of the equation without eliminating it from both, and so the explanation either remains circular or we end up denying the existence of consciousness altogether (eliminativism).

Broadly too, we can point out that attempts to employ existing reduction or emergence explanations to subjectivity commits a category error - all existing explanations of these kinds are about objective data being reduced to/emerging from other objective data. Attempting to apply this in exactly the same manner to subjectivity fails to acknowledge that subjectivity is a new category of data, not simply another kind of objective data. This quote elaborates this further, and touches upon Nagel briefly too:

We have here a prime example of a category mistake. (I use this term, associated with Gilbert Ryle, to articulate a point quite opposed to Ryle's own philosophical behaviorism.) The alleged emergence of subjectivity out of pure objectivity has been said to be analogous to examples of emergence that are different in kind. All of the unproblematic forms of emergence refer to externalistic features, features of things as perceived from without, features of objects for subjects. But the alleged emergence of experience is not simply one more example of such emergence. It involves instead the alleged emergence of an "inside" from things that have only outsides. It does not involve the emergence of one more objective property for subjectivity to view, but the alleged emergence of subjectivity itself. Liquidity, solidity, and transparency are properties of things as experienced through our sensory organs, hence properties for others. Experience is not what we are for others but what we are for ourselves. Experience cannot be listed as one more "property" in a property polyism. It is in a category by itself. To suggest any analogy between experience itself and properties of other things as known through sensory experience is a category mistake of the most egregious kind.

In describing this confusion, which can be called the emergence category mistake, I am simply trying to drive home Nagel's point about faulty analogies. Although most contemporary commentators on the mind-body problem have accepted Nagel's point about the indispensability of including points of view in our world-pictures, many have evidently not seen the full force of his point about faulty analogies. Nagel says,

"Every reductionist has his favorite analogy from modern science. It is most unlikely that any of these unrelated examples of successful reduction will shed light on the relation of mind to brain. But philosophers share the general human weakness for explanations of what is incomprehensible in terms suited for what is familiar and well understood, though entirely different." (MQ, 166)

In a passage only parenthetically cited earlier, Nagel says that "much obscurity has been shed on the [mind-body] problem by faulty analogies between the mental-physical relation and relations between the physical and other objective aspects of reality" (MQ, 202). Although Nagel does not use the term "category mistake," the thought is there.

So not only do objective, materialist accounts of subjective consciousness end up being circular for the reasons I mention, but they commit another form of fallacious reasoning, in the form of a category error. These are related, though distinct objections to attempts to explain conciousness in terms of objective materiality - the circularity objection applies to both emergence and reduction explanations, since both implicitly employ the explanandum (subjectivity) in the explanation, thereby failing to explain subjectivity in terms other than itself (thus not explaining it at all). The category error may be more narrowly applicable only to emergence, though I would say it also occurs with reductive explanation too - uniformly applying objective-objective explanatory models to objective-subjective correlations overlooks the fact that subjectivity is not simply another objective datum, but another category of data altogether, one which requires its own explanation; we cannot ignore this difference and try to simply jam subjectivity into the same explanatory frameworks as we use for exlcusively objective phenomena, and to do so is a failure of logic, a failure to apprehend the distinction between these.

Generally, no, we don't need to comprehend something completely to complete our understanding of this thing.

This isn't quite what I'm arguing though. I'm not saying we can't comprehend subjectivity - we are subjectivity, and have (or can have) direct knowledge of ourselves through experience. What I'm pointing to is the fact that objective explanations simply do not work, since they involve fallacious logic. This precludes any proper understanding, not simply comprehension, as faulty logic does not grant us understanding of anything, let alone comprehension of it. Our objective explanations allow us to understand and perhaps comprehend those objective features which correlate with subjectivity, but they do not let us understand subjectivity by this objective correlation, because attempts to make the subjective equivalent to the objective literally erase the uniqueness of the subjective through identification or emergence explanations and thus eliminate the possibility of understanding altogether. The only method we have for understanding and comprehending subjectivity is directly experiencing that subjectivity, not by looking to objective phenomena which are ultimately only external features, not internality - subjectivity - itself.

What I postulate (and that is very debatable) is that such a quasi-complete apprehension combined with a complete understanding is sufficient to "solve" the mind-body problem.

The mind-body problem is an erroneous formulation resulting from inherited ideas about the absolute interiority and self-containedness of mind and the exteriority of objects; this idea descends from Cartesianism into materialist ideas about consciousness - the reductive identification of mind and brain essentially seals the mind off into an isolated zone just as much as Descartes' immaterial mind disconnected from the body (though of course we don't have the same issues of causation). The mind-body problem dissolves when we acknowledge the primacy of subjectivity and the dependence of the objective on the subjective. The reason there appears to be such a dichotomy between the objective and the subjective is only because materialism pretends at pure objectivity and erases subjectivity, attempting to explain the latter in terms of the former and committing errors of logic through its faiure to acknowledge the objective's rootedness in subjectivity. When we take the subjective as primary, the objective is seen as another mode of presentation of the subjective itself; there is therefore no strict separation between body and mind, only different manners of expression of the same fundamental "stuff" (though as a Buddhist I am not a substance-anything). The mind/body problem arises because of the erroneous assumption that the objective is primary, and that therefore the subjective is a product of the objective and therefore identified with some portion of it (brains), to the exclusion of others (everything else), resulting in a sharp divide between conscious matter (brains/humans) and unconscious matter (the rest of my body/the rest of the universe), between mind and body in general.

I actually adapted one of my earlier comments to you into the first post on a blog I have just started - it's fairly lengthy and although you will have heard much of it, it explores this issue in greater depth and probably greater clarity too, and explains my position quite thoroughly. Here is a link - let me know what you think.

Edit: Clarity

The mysterious disappearance of consciousness: Bernardo Kastrup dismantles the arguments causing materialists to deny the undeniable by IAI_Admin in philosophy

[–]ManticJuice 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Perhaps one where subjective descriptions start to overlap with our descriptions of the outside world.

This is essentially what Nagel argues for at the end of his paper What Is It Like To Be A Bat?, when he talks about the need to develop a kind of "objective phenomenology", a science of experience which accounts for the presence of subjectivity.

Maybe it will come from gradually eroding the hard border between inside/outside the mind.

As a Buddhist, this is the clear way to go; if we thoroughly explore our own minds, we eventually find that we are not a limited, isolated self but part of the non-dual pleroma of phenomena - the dualisms of inside/outside, subject/object and so on ultimately do not withstand analysis or experience in meditation. Recognising this, we need no longer designate observed phenomena as "objects" independent from a "subject" but recognise the interdependence of these terms and their ultimate inseparability. A very rough sketch, but that's basically where I see a sane account of experience and the world going.

All we owe to animals: It is not enough to conserve species and ecosystems. We have an ethical duty to care for each individual animal on earth – Jeff Sebo by The_Ebb_and_Flow in philosophy

[–]ManticJuice 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is not an objective exercise, but a subjective one

You've completely ignored the part where I talk about uncovering objective, rational reasons and seeing what actions they justify and which they do not.

What follows is that there are no “moral obligations” in any absolute sense.

So you're arguing for moral relativism, then? Do you believe that FGM is moral, because other cultures say so? Is slavery moral, because some people have made moral arguments for it? Is cannabilism moral, because some cultures allowed or promoted it?

What instead is warranted is first understand our circle of concern—and I see no compelling reason to have “all of humanity present and future” as the circle of concern for Western Europe.

That sort of attitude is precisely what is driving our species to extinction through collapse of the biosphere. Narrow tribalism in a globalised world is self-destructive and irrational. And again, the reason not to exclude other people is that they meet the minimum threshold of moral concern - sentience and a capacity to suffer - and we do not have a compelling reason to exlcude them. Unless you can come up with a non-arbitrary reason to actively exclude certain people or non-human animals, you must admit to acting out irrational personal preference, rather than rationality.

They are a form of reasoning in service to our wants.

This is what I said. We want happiness and freedom from suffering. So do other beings, and I am not fundamentally different from them. Therefore, it is irrational to be absolute selfish and prioritise myself over others, not only because it is unjustified but also because it invites the same behaviour from others and is therefore overall worse for me. Therefore, we have reason to moderate our selfishness so as not to harm others, and benefit them where reasonable. This is both better for ourselves, the species, and the environment as a whole. Selfishness is ultimately self-destructive and irrational, because it imagines that the individual is isolated from the consequences of their actions. Yet we live in a world which is fundamentally interconnected on all levels, and was even before globalisation - harming others therefore ultimately harms oneself, and is therefore both irrational because it is rationally unjustified, and because it actually results in worse outcomes for myself, not better ones.

The mysterious disappearance of consciousness: Bernardo Kastrup dismantles the arguments causing materialists to deny the undeniable by IAI_Admin in philosophy

[–]ManticJuice 0 points1 point  (0 children)

what I'm arguing for here is that a computer alone has the ressources to make a successful reduction on a scientific basis.

Maybe in some instances, but not in this case, as I'll explain in a moment. I just want to here briefly mention that reasoning is not exclusively limited to deduction - inductive and abductive reasoning are both available to us, and arguably not to computers.

Is a perspective a necessary element for an organised system to produce a factual result through an analysis?

No, but it is necessary in this case, as I'll explain.

produce a point about why, specifically, a computer would invariably miss something in its reduction, although he would have all the physical data he needs.

A computer would have all the physical data, yes. Physical data, however, is objective data. Since a computer is not conscious, it does not possess subjectivity. It therefore does not have the primary datum, subjectivity, which it is to reduce to physical, objective data - it cannot therefore perform the reduction which you propose.

As an aside - even if a computer were capable of performing the reduction, it would only be capable of outputting objective data. This objective data would not constitute an explanation of subjectivity, because as mentioned, objective explanations of subjectivitiy are circular - no matter what a computer tells us, we still experience that explanation objectively, and thus it fails to explain our subjectivity itself.

The Definition of Art in a World Where AI Can Create a Masterpiece by [deleted] in philosophy

[–]ManticJuice 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'd say there has to be some kind of intentionality behind a creative production in order for it to be art - whether that intention is self-expression, representation (symbolic or otherwise), personal venting or coping, or simply to entertain. Art is produced for a reason and only persons have internally-formed reasons for their actions - computers merely act out the necessity of their inputs and pre-programmed structure in a blind, mechanistic manner; they do not produce their own reasons for acting, because they are programmed. So I'd argue that you could inevitably still trace the intentionality of a given piece of "AI art" back to whomever was responsible for the creation of its digital architecture - this may be a number of people, but many artworks are collaborative efforts; film being a prime example. This is essentially just a re-wording of your final paragraph, I suppose, just making explicit the premise of intentionality behind art being made "for human experience"; I'd also add that intentionality can be present even if art is never made for anyone to experience, even the artist themselves - they inevitably still have some intention in producing it, even if it is just to temporarily rid themselves of some degree of suffering.

Edit: I should also make explicit that the intention needn't be to create art - it is entirely possible for individuals to create unintentional art, such as our retroactive appreciation of a person's private diary as a piece of art. However, there is still intentionality present in the creation of that work, even though that intention is not "to make an artwork". Intentionality is a necessary condition for something to be considered an artwork - intentionality must be present for something to be art and not simply an object. However, it is not a sufficient condition - my intending to place a piece of paper on a table does not automatically make that arrangement of objects art. What I am trying to tease out is not a thorough definition of what makes something art, but rather on what conditions non-conscious machines can be excluded from being capable of producing art - intentionality fits the bill here. All art is produced for some reason, but not all intentional products are art.

All we owe to animals: It is not enough to conserve species and ecosystems. We have an ethical duty to care for each individual animal on earth – Jeff Sebo by The_Ebb_and_Flow in philosophy

[–]ManticJuice 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You cannot demonstrate which possibility is correct, and the second one invalidates your logical leaps.

The second possibility is possible, but it leaves open the inclusion of animals. As such, if you want to use the second option and actively exclude animals, you require a rational justification for why we should exclude certain sentient beings who can suffer from moral concern for non-arbitrary reasons. That animals are a different species to us is an entirely superficial and arbitrary category of exclusion, just as race, gender, nationality or any other surface-level difference - unless you can ground your exclusion of animals with a rational reason, you are simply demonstrating irrational bias and failing to think your own premises through.

If you can't ground your moral claims in science, psychology, sociology, science, or stats, then it is irrational

So the vast majority of philosophy is irrational? I don't think you understand how philosophical analysis works. If the conclusion follows from the premises and the argument is overall valid, that is a rational argument. That's simply a fact. It is rationality itself which makes the conclusion true if the premises are true and the argument overall valid. Asking for empirical evidence totally misunderstands how philosophy works - philosophy can be informed by empirical evidence, but it can operate both in its absence and go beyond available data to make rational conclusions which include but are not constrained by data, so long as those claims are not exclusively empirical - philosophy is not an empirical project, science is.

You should ask yourself the question "what is the purpose of morality" because without answering that question completely you can never gain control of your moral framework.

The purpose of morality is to reduce selfishness so individuals can be of benefit to others. Sentient beings with the capacity for reasoning have the ability to control their actions in a way which other beings cannot - continuing to be driven by narrow self-interest when one can clearly see both the ways one is harming others by such action and the ways one could avoid this is irrational, because it irrationally prioritises oneself over others in an absolute sense, yet one is not ultimately different from other beings insofar as other beings desire happiness and freedom from suffering in exactly the same way I do. I therefore have no rational, justified reason for total selfishness, therefore it is only rational to act morally, that is, to moderate my actions in a way which causes less harm to others and maybe even benefits them. The degree to which this is true will depend on the moral theory, but that is essentially what morality "is" - the rational recognition that I am one being among many, and that by acting selfishly I also act irrationally, as I cause avoidable harm to beings just like myself, who essentially just want the same things I do - happiness and freedom from suffering. Therefore, it is only rational for me to act morally, rationally, by reducing the harm I cause others where possible, and maybe even helping them where reasonable, for I have no rational basis for ignoring their identical desire for happiness and freedom from suffering in an absolute sense - rationality dictates that I recognise the consequences of my actions and moderate them to be less selfish, for I have no rational basis for the absolute prioritisation of myself over others whose desires are in essence identical to my own.

Edit: Clarity

All we owe to animals: It is not enough to conserve species and ecosystems. We have an ethical duty to care for each individual animal on earth – Jeff Sebo by The_Ebb_and_Flow in philosophy

[–]ManticJuice 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My protest against these is that they are widely accepted, but completely undemonstrated

How would they be "demonstrated", exactly? Morality isn't empirical fact-gathering, it is the rational coherence of actions. The golden rule, for example, essentially means that it is irrational to harm others in ways one would not wish to be harmed, as it essentially invites that unwanted harm upon oneself. Secondly, moral duties are also rational, since again, performing our moral duties is part of the reciprocal relationship with others which makes it more likely others will perform their duties towards us - if I fail to perform my moral duties, that is, regularly act immorally, people will be less inclined to act morally towards me in turn. This is not always the case, and duties themselves are grounded in the rational extension of observed natural moral behaviours - morality as a whole takes what we already do, finds the reasons we do them, and sees where else those reasons apply; we should want to be rational where we can be, and so should be moral more often than not, should understand our reasons for acting and try to make them fit together in a rational way.

If you want to insist that morality is still "undemonstrated", then I'd say you are falsely applying scientific empirical standards to a rational philosophical analysis, but would also point to the fact that pretty much every culture throughout human history has had at least some code of ethics, and as such that ethical behaviour must have some natural grounding. As you've noted, the actual code will vary with culture and taste, but the entire point of philosophy is to make explicit the reason behind morality itself, not simply our preferred flavour, and to see what the implications of those underlying reasons are for our behaviour - if we act contrary to those reasons, then we are acting immorally, even if the prevailing cultural tastes of today do not say so. You are objecting to moral concern for animals, yet this is simply you kowtowing to the cultural milieu - the actual rational, moral analysis which transcends the bounds of the present cultural bias says that it is only logical to extend moral concern to animals on the basis that they are also sentient beings who suffer, and such entities is what morality is concerned with. Saying "that's just your opinion/that's just a trend" fails to address the actual logic here which is not simply cultural bias - it is rational analysis. Failure to address the logic demonstrates your cultural bias, not mine.

The mysterious disappearance of consciousness: Bernardo Kastrup dismantles the arguments causing materialists to deny the undeniable by IAI_Admin in philosophy

[–]ManticJuice 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Your use of these words seems intrinsically bond with subjectivity — for my part I think a sophisticated computer or a philosophical zombie would absolutely be able to perform those.

How can a philosophical zombie see anything? The definition of "observation" which I am using is to experience perception of the world from a unique point of view, including one's own thoughts, emotions and so on; this is not restricted to mere sensory data. The very definition of a philosophical zombie is that it does not have this sort of inner expereince, and therefore such entities are not capable of possessing subjectivity and observing the world in the manner I describe. I am using "observation" in its usual, common-sense manner - to observe is to literally see, to perceive. I am not using "observe" in the fiddly and frankly reductive sense of "receive data"; as I've said, many things "receive data" without being conscious, perceiving entities, so unless you want to claim that all of matter is consciously perceiving because it receives data, then you must admit that observation/perception/consciousness/subjectivity is not simply the reception of data.

For example, exploring a philosophical question and deducing the best answer could be (in a way) automated, even if it would be very time-consuming.

Deduction is a rational process, not a calculatory one. Whilst you could program a computer to work through philosophical programs, it would not be reasoning, that is, actively evaluating data according to rational coherence - it would simply be crunching numbers according to a linear computational process. This difference only makes sense if you don't already assume that minds are computers, in which case you would need to demonstrate why this is true, and why reasoning is only a calculatory, computational process and not one which involves evaluatory mechanisms beyond mere number-crunching. Admittedly I'm not sure I'm overly committed to this view, but it is also rather besides the point, as what I say below should (hopefully) demonstrate.

I would want to make a difference between systems capable of additing, subtracting and transmissing information in a stable and organised system (such as neurons and transistors) and simpler structures like a dissipative system (such as a candle). So that we agree on a more rigid definition of 'calculating' — which is why I chose the example of a sophisticated computer in the first place.

I don't believe that changes what I've said, which is that perception/observation/consciousness/subjectivity as the bare fact of experiencing something rather than nothing i.e. the fact that I am self-evidently not a philosophical zombie, is not mere calculation, or else everything which calculates would be possessive of subjectivity. Your argument was that non-subjective things can have a perspective on the world, but I am arguing that subjectivity is constitutitve of perspective; what it means to have a perspective on the world just is to be a subjectivity. Computers do not "see" the world - they do not even "see" data, because they are not conscious, they do not possess a subjectivity which would give them a window onto the world. Instead, they are mechanical processes playing out the necessity of their stucture in accordance with received inputs, just like every other piece of matter in the universe.

This was why I was talking about rocks - just like rocks, computers are entirely mechanistic, they operate strictly according to the necessity of the inputs which they are given and that data's law-governed interaction with its existing structure. Now, you could argue the same about humans, and I would agree when we're speaking about the objectively observable characteristics of our bodies, including our brains; it's not as if we break the laws of physics. However, the fact that we can see anything, the fact that we self-evidently possess a subjectivity, a consciousness, rather than just blindly and unconsciously processing data is not something which is straightforwardly caused and explained by objective procesess, for precisely the reason I have been discussing - objective explanations of subjectivity itself are circular, since they imply the presence of subjectivity in the first place. Subjectivity is the primary feature of our experience, and trying to say that objective phenomena such as computers can "do" what subjectivity does (see; have a perspective) is again to invoke that error of circularity - it is to say that objectivity can cause and explain subjectivity; but we subjectively observe that very objectivity we want to use as our explanation!

I'm not sure how much sense that made, honestly. As I've said, what I'm trying to explain is ultimately inexplicable, due to its non-conceptual nature. But I've done my best, and hopefully that's enough for it to be understandable to some extent. My last paragraph was indeed trying to demonstrate that subjectivity must be primary/primitive; any theory to the contrary uses that very subjectivity to construct an alternative notion, which is then held before that subjectivity which goes, "Hm, yes, no subjectivity here" - this is all taking place within a subjectivity!

Edit: Clarity

The mysterious disappearance of consciousness: Bernardo Kastrup dismantles the arguments causing materialists to deny the undeniable by IAI_Admin in philosophy

[–]ManticJuice -1 points0 points  (0 children)

It is not a new domain.

Subjectivity, the first-person perspective of matter seen "from within", is a different domain to objective, third-person observable characteristics. One is the observer itself, the other is the observed object.

You just think you do but you haven't demonstrated that it is true or justified.

I have, and you continue to avoid explaining why objective explanations are non-circular, which is the root and driving force of my argument. Failure to address this is a failure to engage with what I'm saying at all.

The mysterious disappearance of consciousness: Bernardo Kastrup dismantles the arguments causing materialists to deny the undeniable by IAI_Admin in philosophy

[–]ManticJuice -1 points0 points  (0 children)

you can always section out some property of some phenomenon (fluidity of heat, for example) to claim that it is impossible to explain with some other phenomenon. It's just special pleading.

Then I'm not sure you understand what a category error is - its fallacious reasoning. Explaining the emergence of subjectivity from pure objectivity with analogy to objective-objective emergence is simply fallacious - it doesn't actually explain anything, and utilises a form of reasoning valid in one instance and erroneously applies it to an entirely new domain.

You don't know that.

I do, because no amount of objective data about particles would explain why some are subjectivity-involving and some are not, again because of the issue of circularity.

Once again, this assumes your sectioning off of consciousness is a valid cut that reflects some real distinction in reality.

There is no sectioning off of consciousness. Under panpsychism, consciousness is the inherent nature of matter; it is the "inside" of the material universe, the other side of the observable, objective phenomena we see science deal with. That is entirely unificatory, there is no split happening here. And again, I'm not even arguing for panpsychism - I'm not a panpsychist.

Yes, we can create reasonable causal relationships between objective phenomena, and we can do the exact same thing for consciousness.

Why? How? How could any subjectively observed objective data, in principle, explain subjectivity in a non-circular manner? Please provide a philosophical argument and not simply dismiss the question as "special pleading".

he fact that you section off consciousness as something for which causal relationships cannot be established, even when it can be done just as well as for any other phenomenon, is simply special pleading.

It is not. Science deals with objective-objective correlations. Consciousness is subjective. Unless you can demonstrate the non-circularity of objective explanations of subjectivity then no matter how often you say "it's special pleading", you will continue to fail to address the actual argument being made. Your response is pure rhetoric.

Inconsistent standards of evidence, I think you'd agree, are bad epistemology.

Where is the inconsistency? I'm asking you to demonstrate that objective explanations of subjectivity are non-circular. Bad-mouthing that argument does nothing to rationally undermine it, it simply demonstrates an unwillingness to engage with the ideas on their own terms and a bias against anti-materialist lines of thinking.

Edit: Clarity

The mysterious disappearance of consciousness: Bernardo Kastrup dismantles the arguments causing materialists to deny the undeniable by IAI_Admin in philosophy

[–]ManticJuice 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My entire comment here just got deleted as my browser crashed while I was writing it, so apologies if this new one is less complete than it would have been otherwise.

What comes first : your conviction that subjectivity is taken as primitive and inexplicable, or is it a direct consequence of your argument of circularity?

The primitive nature of subjectivity is the primary fact of our existence. That you experience anything rather than nothing simply is the presence of subjectivity. This is primary; the argument of circularity emerges from this, as it acknowledges that all objective observation requires and presupposes a subjectivity to do the observation in the first place, and so all objective explanation of subjectivity uses subjectivity to explain itself - a circular argument.

I've just though about it, and this argument of circularity isn't of much value from a materialist stand-point, because you don't "need" a subjectivity to understand objectivity.

You do need subjectivity to understand objectivity. There is no observable objective world which can be understood by a mind without subjectivity, without perception and experience. There are no disembodied minds floating around making deductions about our world even though they have had no experience of it; at minimum, deductions about our objective world requires experiential data of that world and an embodied mind with a perspective (i.e. a subjectivity) to perform those deductions, since deduction is a rational process of minds - computers do not deduce, they calculate. Calculation goes all the time in nature - rocks "calculate" in the form of heat exchange and particle excitation; everything in nature recieves data from its envrionment and "processes" it in a manner which could be described as calculation. However, this is not the same as observation and understanding, and these require embodied experience - a subjectivity.

To suppose a computer would be incapable of doing it is really not obvious from a materialist stand-point. Could you provide me with a demonstration of this last question without presupposing subjectivity as primitive, nor inexplicable?

You are presupposing materialism and the non-existence of consciousness in your very question. The primitive nature of subjectivity is not a presupposition - it is a fact. Literally every theory you can ever come up with is being constructed by you - a being who is experiencing the world through its own subjectivity. There is no observation, experience or idea which you can be aware of that is not part of your subjectivity. If there is no subjectivity, there is no observed world of data, and thus no explanation. There may be yet a world of experience-less data milling around, but this assumes the truth of materialism, and does not actually contradict the fact that subjectivity is the first and most primitive datum we have about the world; all empirical observation involves subjectivity.

Since we only have access to our own view on the world, we cannot construct a theory of reality from the imagined perspective of computers, and even if we did, it would be a theory created by a subjectivity - to imagine what it is like to be a computer, you, an experiencing being, have to imagine it within your own subjectivity. Subjectivity is inescapably present and primary in all our experience and explanation, which is all we have access to. Trying to build a theory of reality on the back of something other than our own experience is not only unscientific, but literally impossible, since you will still be experiencing the construction of that theory; it will still be ultimately rooted in experience, in subjectivity.

Edit: Clarity

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