What is good?

[Cognisant]

I think fundamentally we all want the world to become a better place, we all want to do the right thing, even the most awful of people who do the most terrible of things believe themselves somehow justified even if that justification is nothing more than callousness, a callousness I believe comes of either necessity or their own dreadful experiences.

I believe much of the world's problems stem from disagreement over the definition of good, of that which we should do, when someone commits theft should the priority be to reform the criminal or to make an example of them? In other words what is the greater good, what metric should be held in highest priority when making such decisions?

Spoiler

My takeaway from this video is that it's the metrics of the incredibly high conviction rate and the incredibly low recidivism that illustrate the nature of the problem, a problem that otherwise goes unseen and unaddressed. What's also important to note is that these metrics aren't in of themselves inherently good or bad, a high conviction rate sounds good on paper but in this case an excessively high conviction rate is symptomatic of an arguably worse problem.

So I want to define what is good with metrics (i.e. measurable outcomes) or more specifically the relationships between those metrics as that's where the truth is, and I want to do this because if we could all come to some agreement on what a better society looks like we would be one step closer to achieving it.

To get the ball rolling lets start with the metric of wealth equality, if wealth equality is low is that a bad thing and why is it a bad thing, what other metrics can we use to determine whether a high or low level of wealth equality is a good or bad thing?

 

[Black Rose]

Practically the question is: what should people do with the resources they have. And what laws should govern resource utilization. All inquiries should be held in light of that.

 

[moody]

Informative video; thank you for sharing.

I have always had the tendency to make my decisions about my life and my views based off of what I could conclude as the most "ethical" course. I have always looked down upon the motivations of "saving face," but I understand our social structures often put more emphasis on that than taking accountability. Japan's culture is especially like that, but I've seen it in the west as well in the business and professional world.

This is the danger of upholding perfection as the rule. The Japanese, along with some other Asian cultures, have people who thrive in all areas because of their high standards of productivity. Unfortunately, this can lead to individuals feeling as though any sort of failure is fatal, and will thus result to drastic measure to ensure failure isn't an option.

I have an older family member who went to UC Berkeley, and they told me the famous clock tower at the center of campus became closed off from students due to the annual suicides that would happen around finals every year. While they were a student there, they said that they would hear about at least one student who jumped to their death off of the clock tower, and they were usually of Asian descent.

In other words what is the greater good, what metric should be held in highest priority when making such decisions?

There's never going to be a perfect algorithm for law, morals and ethics that will cover all possible scenarios. In our judicial systems, there must be a degree of jurisdiction the ruling parties have when deciding the outcomes of a trial.

The highest priority should be a combination of future and present consequences to a decision. I don't agree with the end always justifying the means, but I also don't agree when government ignores problems on the horizon because they're too slow and cautious to brainstorm changes.

I've noticed that most policies and political platforms tend to fall into an either-or scenario: for example, whether climate or economic growth matters more. The either-or argument in itself is a logical fallacy taught in Rhetorical Analysis. It's ludicrous to think one problem would render the other irrelevant.

The influx of new information should not be ignored. This is why I think flexible thinking is essential when making decisions and responding to new problems that arise.

To ignore problems that present a clear and present danger to the citizens a government makes decisions for, it is wrong to completely ignore that situation. At the same time, it's also wrong to exert a degree of force on citizens that cause undue physical or emotional harm.

It's like parenting: no parents are perfect, and there will always be something they do that will mark their children in unsavory ways for life. This can be as small as letting them get away with too many things so they have a hard time following orders when they're adults, or being so harsh that the child spends the rest of their days overly neurotic and unsatisfied with their work output. The best parents, like the best government, will be able to change or alter their parenting approach based off of any new behavioral or circumstantial developments.

To get the ball rolling lets start with the metric of wealth equality, if wealth equality is low is that a bad thing and why is it a bad thing, what other metrics can we use to determine whether a high or low level of wealth equality is a good or bad thing?

Hm...that's a tough one. What about comparing life satisfaction between countries with more even wealth distribution and less even wealth distribution? From there, we could look into what type of government each country has, how that effects distribution of wealth, and ultimately how that government has effected the life-satisfaction of it's citizens.

I'll try to come back with some research....

 

[Rebis]

I think the evilest deed is to seek vengeance upon someone for your own pleasure. That is as close to evil as you can get, if anyone has a better definition let me know.

Relatively common, so if you take pleasure in wanting people to suffer you know where the deed is heading. Be vigilant!

To contrast this, I would say to good is to selflessly aid someone. Aiding someone regardless of whether you benefit and irrespective of people's perception of you.

 

[Cognisant]

Maybe this was too broad.

I suppose a good place to start would be human needs as after all the definition of "good" is a human contrivance based on human needs and desires. People need adequate food/water/shelter and if someone can't access those most basic of necessities in a modern developed nation that's a clear sign that there's something seriously wrong.

Then it comes down to the definition of adequate, regarding shelter you could say if someone isn't dying of exposure then their shelter meets the bare minimum requirements for adequacy. But if you want people to be well rested and productive then there needs to be sufficient protection from light/noise pollution and a sufficient level of security so they can sleep soundly. Then if we want them to be productive over a long period of time (i.e. their working lifetime) then that shelter needs to meet certain criteria for healthy living such clean air, facilities for washing and safe food preparation/storage, etc.

Of course this all seems rather obvious but the point is that this is the foundation to build upon so when we get to more contentious issues like "should internet access be a basic human right" we can assess it in terms of how providing that to people will benefit society, essentially is it worth the expense?

I think going about it in this systematic way highlights the nature of issues, like if you have a homelessness problem having insufficient support basic necessities isn't going to help them get back on their feet, indeed it'll make the problem worse, as is the case with drug abuse where there's ample evidence to indicate that offering support for drug addicts is a lot more effective at helping them kick the habit than arresting them.

 

[sushi]

good seems to be related to utilitarianism.

but in the end its subjective like beauty.

 

[Cognisant]

No not subjective, arbitrary, if the human condition was different our definition of what's good would predictably follow suit, it's arbitrated by the human condition, it's only subjective insofar as the individual's condition differs, i.e. a bodybuilder may require a less secure shelter because he is more inherently secure than say an old woman who couldn't defend herself if she were attacked by a feral dog.

 

[Black Rose]

No not subjective, arbitrary, if the human condition was different our definition of what's good would predictably follow suit, it's arbitrated by the human condition, it's only subjective insofar as the individual's condition differs, i.e. a bodybuilder may require a less secure shelter because he is more inherently secure than say an old woman who couldn't defend herself if she were attacked by a feral dog.

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs"

 

[Black Rose]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy

 

[moody]

I suppose a good place to start would be human needs as after all the definition of "good" is a human contrivance based on human needs and desires. People need adequate food/water/shelter and if someone can't access those most basic of necessities in a modern developed nation that's a clear sign that there's something seriously wrong.

You're talking about the triangle of needs transcendence, illustrated based off of Maslow's hierarchy of needs:

we can assess it in terms of how providing that to people will benefit society, essentially is it worth the expense?

The availability of a service or resource becomes a matter of human rights when lacking it begins to threaten someone's chances of survival and a life without undue stress.

Internet is becoming a crutial resource to have when trying to look for a job, as well as for professional communication. Networking and landing an interview could be nigh impossible with the way you're living right now. Right now, internet service is already seeming too important for people to go without. Public libraries with computers help make up for this deficit. I can see this being managed with opening up more library/computer labs at schools, possibly.

 

[redbaron]

i really hate maslow's heirarcy of needs

but it's hard to argue against

 

[moody]

i really hate maslow's heirarcy of needs

but it's hard to argue against

I hear you. I vehemently rejected it when I first learned about it, but then I realized the teacher wasn’t explaining it the best, and that it held a lot of fundamental truth...doesn’t mean I have to like it.

 

[Cognisant]

i really hate maslow's heirarcy of needs

Why?

 

[redbaron]

mostly in that it implies you can't have things from parts in the upper pyramid if the ones below it aren't satisfied

which isn't strictly true, although a lot of them are obviously 'ingrained' needs. physiological ones are hard to argue with, but everything beyond that gets a bit dubious in terms of a hard definition of 'need'.

lots of people with poor health are incredibly creative, just as an example. i dislike it because basically everything beyond the physiological needs are kind of moot: they don't necessarily follow this pattern. in practical terms they often do, although i'm not sure that's an argument for the accuracy of the heirarchy. it seems like it's wrong often enough that it shouldn't be taken seriously beyond the physiological needs

but even so, it's not a bad predictor of outcomes either. better than say, IQ (lul)

 

[sushi]

beneficial to mind body, survival and health= good

bad= destructive posion, addiction, weaken body and mind, cause pain and suffering

also success and failure, which is harder to quantify

 

[The Grey Man]

Nothing.

Nothing is good, in the sense that goodness is a property of no thing at all, but rather the gestalt of experience, in which all things are connected and determined by reciprocal relations and all opposites reconciled. Just as a woman's eyes are nor beautiful, nor her nose, nor her mouth but the whole face united in a single evocative expression, so is there nothing good but esthetic occasions of goodness.

Materialists always want to "explain" goodness by theorizing that good experiences are caused by this or that natural phenomenon, forgetting that experience is the primitive datum of such naturalistic theories and, therefore, to explain experience as a consequence of such a theory is circular reasoning or, at best, an explanation of one experience by another, which leaves one with no more understanding of the origins of experience in general than before.

The only way to know the Good is to be immersed in it or what is the same, to immerse it in oneself. To know it is also to be known by it, or, as Eckhart says:

The eye with which I see God is the same with which God sees me.

I knew the Good once and only once, back in April (though I had a possible 'aftertaste' of it in October). I haven't been on the forum much since then because I've been trying to understand what had happened to me, and have devoted more attention to research into mysticism while strengthening my theoretical foundations in principles of Kantian critique. The one thing that has become abundantly clear to me over the years is that there is more "in heaven and earth" than is dreamt of by the physics of today or even the metaphysics of Spinoza, Leibniz, and Schopenhauer.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

 

[Black Rose]

All is One

a unitary experience

I get it. I was whole once or several times.

it did feel like a goodness

nothing was an obstacle. it was just to be what is

Might be related but I once met a goddess. I felt so selfless.

 

[Cognisant]

Nothing is good, in the sense that goodness is a property of no thing at all, but rather the gestalt of experience, in which all things are connected and determined by reciprocal relations and all opposites reconciled. Just as a woman's eyes are not beautiful, not her nose, not her mouth but the whole face united in a single evocative expression, so is there nothing good but esthetic occasions of goodness.

I agree with this, mostly.

Materialists always want to "explain" goodness by theorizing that good experiences are caused by this or that natural phenomenon, forgetting that experience is the primitive datum of such naturalistic theories and, therefore, to explain experience as a consequence of such a theory is circular reasoning or, at best, an explanation of one experience by another, which leaves one with no more understanding of the origins of experience in general than before.

Were it just an individual speculating about the mechanism of their own mind based upon their own experiences the subjectivity of those experiences would certainly be a problem however that's not the case. We can observe the mechanisms of pain and pleasure in effect in humans and animals and with neurons and their synapses in a petri dish. As such it is both well understood and well verified that pleasure (rather experiences that correlate to what we describe as pleasure) prompt the formation of synaptic connections, reinforcing the behavior that resulted in the pleasurable experience. Whereas pain has essentially the opposite effect, severing synaptic connections and forming connections that serve to block rather than transmit impulses.

So that which we regard as good is good to us because of a large number of mechanisms that serve to both shape and regulate our behaviors. Food with a lot of sugar/salt/fat tastes good because historically those were valuable nutritional resources and as such natural selection favored people who were motivated to seek foods rich in them. Unfortunately in the modern era our circumstances have drastically changed and being highly motivated to seek out particular substances is now to our detriment. We know this sugary/salty/fatty food is bad for us but we struggle to eat healthily because we're in opposition to our own inherent nature.

The only way to know the Good is to be immersed in it or what is the same, to immerse it in oneself. To know it is also to be known by it, or, as Eckhart says:

The eye with which I see God is the same with which God sees me.

I knew the Good once and only once, back in April (though I had a possible 'aftertaste' of it in October). I haven't been on the forum much since then because I've been trying to understand what had happened to me, and have devoted more attention to research into mysticism while strengthening my theoretical foundations in principles of Kantian critique. The one thing that has become abundantly clear to me over the years is that there is more "in heaven and earth" than is dreamt of by the physics of today or even the metaphysics of Spinoza, Leibniz, and Schopenhauer.

I know that I do not know everything but that doesn't mean I'm open to an appeal to ignorance, talking of circular reasoning why don't you apply that boundless skepticism to your own thoughts? Isn't faith by definition belief in spite of the evidence?
Begone charlatan, this is a thread for philosophy not sophism.

 

[The Grey Man]

All is One

a unitary experience

I don't know about that. Perhaps I never will. Kant inherits empirical realism from Berkeley, but supplements it with transcendental idealism; concepts such as unity and plurality are justified by their reference to human experience, since the synthetic unity of a plurality of sensations is a conditio sine qua non of said experience, but to ask whether such concepts refer to aught which is independent or transcendent of experience is tantamount to asking whether the world looks the same when it isn't being looked at—in other words, it is meaningless.

But meaning is not all there is. There are not only references, but referents; not only abstract theories, but concrete realities. When it happened, I did not ask what it meant. There was no room for signs and meanings. Distinctions were annihilated. I was selfless, as you were.

We live in the world described by the scientist, yes, but also the world described by the poet. More and more, I find myself torn between the two aspects of this Janus-faced world: the esthetic and the natural, eros and logos.

 

[Cognisant]

Science does not exclude poetry, only nonsense.

If you cannot find beauty in the natural world, the world that is, the world that is supposedly your god's creation then perhaps you are a victim of the demiurge?

The demiurge, how that concept amuses me, an entity that exists to use reality to obscure from us the true reality, as if mere reality wasn't somehow real enough, are you really so conceited that you must believe reality cannot be real unless you're a beloved creation carrying out the divine plan of the all-creator who will reward your efforts with an eternal paradise?

What does this demiurge gain from this anyway and why doesn't the all knowing all powerful all-creator stop it? Does your god abide its actions, how does any of this make any sense?

 

[The Grey Man]

Were it just an individual speculating about the mechanism of their own mind based upon their own experiences the subjectivity of those experiences would certainly be a problem however that's not the case. We can observe the mechanisms of pain and pleasure in effect in humans and animals and with neurons and their synapses in a petri dish. As such it is both well understood and well verified that pleasure (rather experiences that correlate to what we describe as pleasure) prompt the formation of synaptic connections, reinforcing the behavior that resulted in the pleasurable experience. Whereas pain has essentially the opposite effect, severing synaptic connections and forming connections that serve to block rather than transmit impulses.

I have no problem with your naturalistic explanation of the physiological correlatives of pain, but it remains that the physiological correlatives of pain are not pain, any more than a person who appears to be enjoying a painting is the enjoyment of that painting. As different is the act of looking at something from the thing being looked at, so different is the body from the mind. One is a perceptible object enclosed by skin, the other is the perception itself, which has no boundaries. As long as you reject this basic distinction, my arguments for non-reductivism will continue to fall on deaf-ears.

I know that I do not know everything but that doesn't mean I'm open to an appeal to ignorance, talking of circular reasoning why don't you apply that boundless skepticism to your own thoughts? Isn't faith by definition belief in spite of the evidence?
Begone charlatan, this is a thread for philosophy not sophism.

I do not expect you to believe my reports about my own experience, but neither are they indispensable premises of my argument against materialism. Any unitive esthetic experience is sufficient to refute the notion that pluralities of corpuscles, particles, waves, or what have you are all there is. When the dawning sun bursts through a throng of trees in the morning, for example, what is the "illusion?" Is it the colourless causal nexus spoken of by physics textbooks, or the reality before my eyes? I'm more inclined to believe in the latter, but I don't see any reason why we can't believe in both.

 

[The Grey Man]

If you cannot find beauty in the natural world, the world that is, the world that is supposedly your god's creation then perhaps you are a victim of the demiurge?

See above. My whole point is that the world of the scientist and the poet's world are the same. It is both a plurality of phenomena and a unitive experience. When we speak only of the connections between its parts (as if we could 'abstract' them from the concrete experiences to which they are native), we are speaking scientifically; when we speak of what the whole feels like, we become poets or philosophers. Neither matter nor mind is substantial to the other; they are co-dependent, like two dancers in a relation of mutual support.

 

[Cognisant]

As long as you reject this basic distinction, my arguments for non-reductivism will continue to fall on deaf-ears.

Why should I entertain the notion that consciousness isn't embodied when all available evidence indicates that it is, am I supposed to just take your word for it and disregard all the contradictory evidence?

I have no problem with your naturalistic explanation of the physiological correlatives of pain, but it remains that the physiological correlatives of pain are not pain, any more than a person who appears to be enjoying a painting is the enjoyment of that painting. As different is the act of looking at something from the thing being looked at, so different is the body from the mind.

Without a person to enjoy the painting there is no enjoyment of the painting thus they are that which is enjoying the painting, whether or not they are the "enjoyment of the painting" well that's a concept. Of course they can't be a concept, I flat out cannot understand your point because it's just semantic nonsense, how does someone not being a concept prove their consciousness isn't embodied?

People have concepts, you need a mind to have concepts, the concept of a person exists within the mind and the mind is what we call the processing of the brain, your concept of self (your "soul" as you would call it) is what I call the ego. It's a concept your mind is inherently predisposed to have because natural selection favors self-interested entities. Essentially you're a heap of meat blood and bone that's been tricked into thinking it isn't so it's better at making more heaps of meat blood and bone.

I do not expect you to believe my reports about my own experience, but neither are they indispensable premises of my argument against materialism.

"Indispensable" implies that I cannot dispense of them and they only reason I can't is because I already have.

Any unitive esthetic experience is sufficient to refute the notion that pluralities of corpuscles, particles, waves, or what have you are all there is.

Uh-huh, and I got high one time and thought I was a fairy so you should call me Tinkerbell.

Seriously what the fuck is an unitive esthetic experience and how is it not just your own personal subjective experience and it undoubtedly being that how is that not in your own fucking words "an explanation of one experience by another, which leaves one with no more understanding of the origins of experience in general than before."

Can you really not see the blatant hypocrisy here? You are subjecting materialism to a skepticism (which I'm easily addressing) that you are adamantly refusing to apply to your own beliefs, in other words BY YOUR OWN WORDS you are full of shit.

When the dawning sun bursts through a throng of trees in the morning, for example, what is the "illusion?" Is it the colourless causal nexus spoken of by physics textbooks, or the reality before my eyes? I'm more inclined to believe in the latter, but I don't see any reason why we can't believe in both.

I don't know what you're talking about I just see the sun rise, I can appreciate the beauty of it as a subjective observer and I understand that my appreciation of that beauty is because I have a human brain (if I was a roach I'd likely be fleeing in terror) but that doesn't make it magic or anything in those physics textbooks any less true.

Neither matter nor mind is substantial to the other; they are co-dependent, like two dancers in a relation of mutual support.

Right so how do I do telekinesis again?
See I understand that I can affect my mind with chemicals electrodes or a blunt object but if mind and matter are co-dependent as you say then it should go the other way, just as a blunt object can affect my mind so too should my mind be able to affect a blunt object. Unless of course that's not the case, that instead reality precedes perception and therefore no amount of thinking about it, wishing for it or prayer will make shit happen.

Teach me to do telekinesis and buddy I'll be 110% converted.

 

[The Grey Man]

Why should I entertain the notion that consciousness isn't embodied when all available evidence indicates that it is, am I supposed to just take your word for it and disregard all the contradictory evidence?

This is a blatant petitio principii. You've assumed that the only empirical evidence can decide what is the relation between mind and matter, whereas I'm arguing that mentality or experience is a sine qua non of empirical observation in general, therefore to base a theory of consciousness on empirical evidence is circular reasoning. We are talking past each other.

Without a person to enjoy the painting there is no enjoyment of the painting thus they are that which is enjoying the painting, whether or not they are the "enjoyment of the painting" well that's a concept. Of course they can't be a concept, I flat out cannot understand your point because it's just semantic nonsense, how does someone not being a concept prove their consciousness isn't embodied?

"The enjoyment of a painting" is a concept, yes. So is "the married bachelor." Merely talking about something doesn't make it real. When I talk about enjoying a painting, I'm talking about an actual first-person experience, not just a hypothetical experience that is inferred from watching someone who is standing in front of a painting based on a theory; analogously, when I talk about pain, I'm talking about the brute fact of being in pain, not an arrangement of neurons that you've taken to mean that someone is in pain.

Seriously what the fuck is an unitive esthetic experience and how is it not just your own personal subjective experience and it undoubtedly being that how is that not in your own fucking words "an explanation of one experience by another, which leaves one with no more understanding of the origins of experience in general than before."

Unitive esthetic experience is, as I said, "the primitive datum" of naturalistic theories. It is whatever is happening here and now, so to speak. I do not think it can be explained at all. It is materialists who think that they can explain experience by finding its material correlatives.

I don't know what you're talking about I just see the sun rise, I can appreciate the beauty of it as a subjective observer and I understand that my appreciation of that beauty is because I have a human brain (if I was a roach I'd likely be fleeing in terror) but that doesn't make it magic or anything in those physics textbooks any less true.

All I ask is that you respect the reality of subjective experience at least as much as you do that of the things described in those textbooks. It's all I've ever asked.

 

[Black Rose]

The first thing to drop is cognitive monolog. You just are as you are observing the senses. Then your body drops away. Weightless. Nothing but per perception. Everything is effortless. There is no more struggle in doing or thinking. Everything becomes easy compared to before unity happened. The ego stops fighting itself pulling back and forth against everything.

I experience this myself. May or may not be what @The Grey Man experienced

The take away is that the mind is in complete equilibrium.
It is at peace, it is still and is quiet, relaxed, settled.

Chills in the brain and spine happen with music. The same can happen in unity experience. It bubbles up to the surface of the system. Everything feels the best and is natural, like music causes chills. It is not exactly woo-woo.

 

[Cognisant]

This is a blatant petitio principii. You've assumed that the only empirical evidence can decide what is the relation between mind and matter, whereas I'm arguing that mentality or experience is a sine qua non of empirical observation in general, therefore to base a theory of consciousness on empirical evidence is circular reasoning. We are talking past each other.

I'm not talking past you, circular reasoning would be to say a benevolent and competent AI dictator would be a good form of governance, it's a circular argument because I've stipulated that the AI is benevolent and competent so the conclusion is in the premise.

You seem to be saying that because we need to use our minds to study our minds that therefore any conclusion we come to is "circular" well that's not circular reasoning that's subjectivity, we can't trust our perceptions of ourselves because we're inherently biased observers and indeed this would be a major problem if we're talking about an individual trying to draw conclusions about their own mind based on their observation of themselves.

But that's not the case as I've already explained:

Were it just an individual speculating about the mechanism of their own mind based upon their own experiences the subjectivity of those experiences would certainly be a problem however that's not the case. We can observe the mechanisms of pain and pleasure in effect in humans and animals and with neurons and their synapses in a petri dish.

I'm not talking past you Grey, you're refusing to listen.

"The enjoyment of a painting" is a concept, yes. So is "the married bachelor." Merely talking about something doesn't make it real. When I talk about enjoying a painting, I'm talking about an actual first-person experience, not just a hypothetical experience that is inferred from watching someone who is standing in front of a painting based on a theory; analogously, when I talk about pain, I'm talking about the brute fact of being in pain, not an arrangement of neurons that you've taken to mean that someone is in pain.

Your experience of something happening, your qualia of that event, cannot exist without the event itself (though the event may be you drooling on the floor high on hallucinogenics) therefore you can create that semantic distinction between experiencing-pain and the experience-of-pain but it's just that, semantics, you're not proving anything or rather disproving that pain and by implication consciousness is the result of physical mechanisms.

Unitive esthetic experience is, as I said, "the primitive datum" of naturalistic theories. It is whatever is happening here and now, so to speak. I do not think it can be explained at all. It is materialists who think that they can explain experience by finding its material correlatives.

You're disappeared up your own theoretical ass, I get that you're talking about the qualia of experience but that's not proof of anything, it can't be proof of anything, in your own words it is "an explanation of one experience by another, which leaves one with no more understanding of the origins of experience in general than before" really you're just ignoring reality, you've retreated to the final bastion of false arguments, the realm of personal subjective bias.

Really the only justification for what you believe is because you want to.

All I ask is that you respect the reality of subjective experience at least as much as you do that of the things described in those textbooks. It's all I've ever asked.

Absolutely not! Those textbooks represent centuries of accumulated knowledge verified by scientific inquiry, I refuse to debase them by putting them on the same level as whatever baseless nonsense you want to believe and I will mock you for doing so because you are being ridiculous and if we ever forget that we will be living in a world without reason.

Now you may think I'm persecuting you and by a lax definition of that word I am, however I am merely mocking you, there are places today where they would kill me for apostasy and so long as those places exist I will do everything I can to discredit you.

 

[The Grey Man]

I'm not talking past you, circular reasoning would be to say a benevolent and competent AI dictator would be a good form of governance, it's a circular argument because I've stipulated that the AI is benevolent and competent so the conclusion is in the premise.

This is an example of a tautology, not a circular argument.

You seem to be saying that because we need to use our minds to study our minds that therefore any conclusion we come to is "circular"...

No. Naturalistic explanations of the mind fail because naturalistic explanations presuppose empirical evidence and empirical evidence is immanent in the mind. The mind is never that which is studied, but always that whereby things are studied. It can't study itself any more than a measuring rod can be used to measure itself. Just as the horizon recedes as quickly as we approach it, so does consciousness resist all attempts to measure it because it is a condition of the possibility of measurement. Even the most sophisticated theory of the material correlatives of consciousness presupposes the actual experiences of the experimenter who found them.

Your experience of something happening, your qualia of that event, cannot exist without the event itself (though the event may be you drooling on the floor high on hallucinogenics) therefore you can create that semantic distinction between experiencing-pain and the experience-of-pain but it's just that, semantics, you're not proving anything or rather disproving that pain and by implication consciousness is the result of physical mechanisms.

There is a difference between the experience of pain and what a person who is experiencing pain looks like to another person and if you refuse to recognize this difference, I don't know what else to say.

I get that you're talking about the qualia of experience but that's not proof of anything...

You're right, it isn't. I can't prove that there is a difference between experience and theories based on that experience, I can only point it out and hope that you understand what I'm talking about.

Absolutely not! Those textbooks represent centuries of accumulated knowledge verified by scientific inquiry, I refuse to debase them by putting them on the same level as whatever baseless nonsense you want to believe and I will mock you for doing so because you are being ridiculous and if we ever forget that we will be living in a world without reason.

I don't merely believe in esthetic experience, I know it. I believe you do, too, but you won't admit it, for reasons I can't fathom.

 

[The Grey Man]

@Animekitty what I experienced was as terrible as it was ecstatic. J.A. Symonds' account of a certain youthful "mood" of his (as quoted in William James' Varieties) agrees almost exactly with my recollection of the event, but the best description I have seen of such experiences is Rudolf Otto's Idea of the Holy. Musical "chills" are perhaps the closest analogy to it to be found in everyday experience.

File:Beet5mov1bars1to5.ogg - Wikimedia Commons

commons.wikimedia.org

 

[Cognisant]

Naturalistic explanations of the mind fail

How so?

Naturalistic explanations of the mind fail because naturalistic explanations presuppose empirical evidence and empirical evidence is immanent in the mind. The mind is never that which is studied, but always that whereby things are studied. It can't study itself any more than a measuring rod can be used to measure itself.

SO YOU USE ANOTHER ROD YOU UTTER FUCKING MORON!!!

I don't know how to get this through to you, studying the mind is no different to studying any other natural phenomena because it's not one guy sitting there being introspective, you experiment on other people and other people repeat your experiments to verify your results, the individual who carries out the experiment isn't part of the experiment, stop being a fucking idiot.

You're not bringing up any new points you're just repeating the same nonsense and I keep re-explaining the same answer and it's just not getting through because you're not listening, I totally understand what you mean and you're just plain wrong.

Just as the horizon recedes as quickly as we approach it, so does consciousness resist all attempts to measure it because it is a condition of the possibility of measurement. Even the most sophisticated theory of the material correlatives of consciousness presupposes the actual experiences of the experimenter who found them.

It doesn't matter, the experimenter is not the experiment, if I conduct an experiment and I get a different result to the result I was expecting I can do various checks to ensure I haven't made a mistake and if I haven't made a mistake then I have to accept those results as valid, my assumptions do not determine the outcome, my personal bias isn't relevant, I am not part of the experiment.

There is a difference between the experience of pain and what a person who is experiencing pain looks like to another person and if you refuse to recognize this difference, I don't know what else to say.

No we're not talking about appearances we're talking about qualia and the mechanisms of consciousness, just because a soccer player is rolling around in agony doesn't actually mean they're in any pain, but if pain can be induced by activating electrodes in someone's brain then we can infer that the experiences of pain is the result of physical biological mechanisms.

I don't merely believe in esthetic experience, I know it. I believe you do, too, but you won't admit it, for reasons I can't fathom.

Of course I experience qualia but that doesn't contradict my mechanistic understanding of consciousness. If you train several artificial neural nets with identical hardware and identical software to recognize people in a photo based on different sets of training data each AI is going to have its own subjective definition of a person based off its own personal experiences. One AI might consider monkeys to be people, another might have been taught to differentiate animals and people, another might think cartoon depictions of people are people while yet another demands photo-realism. You show all these AIs the same photo and even though they've all got exactly the same hardware and software because their "minds" are a product of their experiences their qualia is different, they're all seeing the same photo from their own subjective perspectives.

Then there's the qualia of what pain feels like and you can't convey that because there's no frame of reference to use as a media through which to communicate it but that doesn't make it some kind of magical mystical transcendental mumbo-jumbo, it's just what it is, your personal subjective experience.

 

[The Grey Man]

I don't know how to get this through to you, studying the mind is no different to studying any other natural phenomena because it's not one guy sitting there being introspective, you experiment on other people and other people repeat your experiments to verify your results, the individual who carries out the experiment isn't part of the experiment, stop being a fucking idiot.

Experience is a generic condition of experimentation; there is no experiment without experience. There is no "other rod" with which to measure the rod that is the mind, no "place to stand" from which Archimedes might move the world or Laplace's demon observe it from without. The experimenter is part of the experiment because the nature of the experiment determines the nature of the results. If you place a mass on a scale, you get a measurement of weight; if you put a ruled rod next to it, you get a measurement of length. The difference is that experience is a condition of all observation and measurement whatever, whereas the rod is only required for the measurement of a particular class of quantity.

Where are all of these hypothetical individuals carrying out these experiments of yours? Can you show them to me? If you could, where would they be but in my mind's eye? When we dispense with hypothetical judgments expressing theoretical realities, what are we left with but actual, concrete, experienced realities? Physical theories, insofar as they are empirically testable, only express relations between concrete objects of experience, so why do you look to them for the knowledge of the origins of experience and knowledge itself?

You're not bringing up any new points you're just repeating the same nonsense and I keep re-explaining the same answer and it's just not getting through because you're not listening, I totally understand what you mean and you're just plain wrong.

As long as the same point is being disputed, I don't see any advantage in bringing up new ones.

It doesn't matter, the experimenter is not the experiment, if I conduct an experiment and I get a different result to the result I was expecting I can do various checks to ensure I haven't made a mistake and if I haven't made a mistake then I have to accept those results as valid, my assumptions do not determine the outcome, my personal bias isn't relevant, I am not part of the experiment.

The limits of human knowledge are not a bias any more than the horizon is. Just as you can't catch the horizon by running after it, so you can't capture consciousness and dissect it like a frog. It's not a mistake, but a consequence of the fact that there can be no observation of a frog's innards, the human nervous system, or any natural object, but by means of consciousness.

No we're not talking about appearances we're talking about qualia and the mechanisms of consciousness, just because a soccer player is rolling around in agony doesn't actually mean they're in any pain, but if pain can be induced by activating electrodes in someone's brain then we can infer that the experiences of pain is the result of physical biological mechanisms.

The very fact that we are inferring that the soccer player and the brain are feeling pain based on a physical theory indicates that there is no necessary connection between the two. The only thing I'm insist upon here is the distinction between experiences and their phenomenal manifestations that makes such a theory practically necessary.

Of course I experience qualia but that doesn't contradict my mechanistic understanding of consciousness.

And there need not be any contradiction, as long as a distinction is made between consciousness as it is in itself and consciousness as it appears. I think the mechanistic theory of the cognition of the human qua animal and the theory of the human qua organic unity are compatible and complementary in that they refer to different 'moments' or aspects of the same reality.

 

[Cognisant]

I've reported you for trolling.

 

[The Grey Man]

You've reported me? You're the one who has been piling insults on me for arguing that consciousness is not an empirical phenomenon. The distinction I am making is that between consciousness as such and consciousness as objectified by its concomitant embodied natural phenomena. This is not unprecedented. Similar distinctions have been made by philosophers of such diversity of convictions as Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant, Husserl, Russell, and Sartre, all in an effort to solve the Cartesian mind-body problem, the central problem of Western metaphysics. Why are you dismissing it as "nonsense"? Or are all non-reductivist accounts of the relation between mind and matter to be dismissed a priori on account of their heterodoxy? Which character do you think you are in your far-fetched fantasy of the free thinker executed by the authorities for his apostasy? Are you the martyr or the fanatic who lights the pyre?

 

[Cognisant]

 

[DoIMustHaveAnUsername?]

i really hate maslow's heirarcy of needs

but it's hard to argue against

Last I heard, it has lack of empirical support. There are updated versions of these kind of things. But I don't really like these kind of categorizations all too much. Lot of these categorizations don't really seemed principled or rigorous, rather something intuitive made up classes which may or may not map to some empirical data. There also seems to some normative descriptive elements mixed in.

 

[moody]

@Cognisant @The Grey Man

If I may...

It seems as though you two are speaking about totally different things. And somehow that was an argument, because neither responded by talking about the thing the other was talking about.

In all of his posts, Grey Man seems to be basing his arguments off the fact that we cannot name or describe a given phenomenon while it first occurs, and we can describe something when we reflect on it. Thus, none of our thoughts are in "real time" and because our memory is flawed our descriptions will always be deviated from the phenomenon itself.

Cognistant is trying to move past this, and discuss the concepts rather than troubleshoot the errors in our ability to fully understand and describe a concept or phenomenon.

I think because Cognisant didn't frame the rest of his argument in same way Grey Man expressed, it was assumed that Cognisant didn't understand, rather than that Cognisant just wasn't interested in taking that approach in analyzing what we perceive as good. This doesn't mean Grey man's analysis was ignored, rather Grey man was troubleshooting the flaws in us trying to describe anything while Cognistant was just trying to discuss the thing in itself.

 

[Cognisant]

Thus, none of our thoughts are in "real time" and because our memory is flawed our descriptions will always be deviated from the phenomenon itself.

Riddle me this, can anything be meaningfully said from a position of epistemological nihilism?

As I see it, and why I reported Grayman for trolling, is that he wasn't engaging in a discussion on the nature of good he was using sophistry to shut it down.

He isn't earnestly an epistemological nihilist, he has his religious agenda, he's just using that nihilism to shut down any opposite to his beliefs, it's the same shit Da Blob used to do, why I banned him the first time and why he was ultimately permanently banned.

 

[redbaron]

Reminder: 'Grayman' and 'The Grey Man' aren't the same person.

 

[The Grey Man]

In all of his posts, Grayman seems to be basing his arguments off the fact that we cannot name or describe a given phenomenon while it first occurs, and we can describe something when we reflect on it. Thus, none of our thoughts are in "real time" and because our memory is flawed our descriptions will always be deviated from the phenomenon itself.

The argument that I was trying to make originally was that the Good can't be described as it is in itself because descriptions always contextualize the described within a plurality of objects (e.g., the definitions of words in the Oxford English Dictionary, which are all composed of words from the same dictionary), whereas the Good is a unity, a self-contained organic whole, an experience. It is thus nothing at all from the standpoint of syllogistic reasoning, which always points from one thing to another. As you can't infer with apodictic certainty a woman's beauty from a mere description of her facial features, but need to see her in a certain light, in a certain mood to grasp it; so you can't justly conclude that a thing is good unless you actually experience its goodness. As Eckhart saw clearly, it is as true to say that you are in the Good as it is to say that the Good is in you.

This is not a sophistical outgrowth of some evangelical agenda, as Cog seems to think, but a conclusion based on years of studying the work of Western philosophers, including some that can hardly be suspected of sentimental religiosity, as I've already pointed out. I happen to think that philosophy is an antechamber or vestibule to religion, but it by no means follows from this that my philosophical convictions are based on dogmatic theology.

 

[Black Rose]

I am sure cog will have an interpretation of what you just said. @The Grey Man

As I see it cogs question on what good is way to close to being Marxist economic not to be the same thing. It is cogs sociological development that leads him to Marxist thinking.

Marx was a materialist. To them, good is in economical materialism whereas resources do not break man spirit but to raise up his dignity.

The Grey Man - sees the good as too complex to simply be a material designed society.

 

[Black Rose]

Zeitgeist by Peter Joseph

 

[moody]

Reminder: 'Grayman' and 'The Grey Man' aren't the same person.

Woops...ha...I'll go fix that

 

[moody]

The argument that I was trying to make originally was that the Good can't be described as it is in itself because descriptions always contextualize the described within a plurality of objects (e.g., the definitions of words in the Oxford English Dictionary, which are all composed of words from the same dictionary), whereas the Good is a unity, a self-contained organic whole, an experience. It is thus nothing at all from the standpoint of syllogistic reasoning, which always points from one thing to another. As you can't infer with apodictic certainty a woman's beauty from a mere description of her facial features, but need to see her in a certain light, in a certain mood to grasp it; so you can't justly conclude that a thing is good unless you actually experience its goodness. As Eckhart saw clearly, it is as true to say that you are in the Good as it is to say that the Good is in you.

I see your point, though I do find this to be a deviation from any other prompts in the thread, hence the wrath of Cognisant. I find their profile picture to been extraordinarily apt.

 

[moody]

Riddle me this, can anything be meaningfully said from a position of epistemological nihilism?

There wouldn't be any meaning because there's always the possibly that meaning is a false concept!

In a strange form of logic, this kind of cancels out epistemological nihilism in itself, so then it doesn't really exist. In that twisted form of logic that is my own. Huzzah for me.

It certainly keeps you on your toes. Gears you up for the matrix.

What if we were all just very advanced version of a mii?

 

[moody]

This is one of the best things I've ever seen in the duration of my brief existence.

 

[sushi]

trying to objectify good or not is harder than hell. objectively good or objectively bad is hard to define, i struggle with this question a long time ago, and just snap out of it.

universal good and universal bad seems only exist in fairly tales.

what is good for the human body and bad for the human body is easier to categorize, what is good and bad for the mind is harder and more subjective.

what is good for life and the human body, boils down to basic instincts

 

[ZenRaiden]

I think fundamentally we all want the world to become a better place, we all want to do the right thing, even the most awful of people who do the most terrible of things believe themselves somehow justified even if that justification is nothing more than callousness, a callousness I believe comes of either necessity or their own dreadful experiences.

You do not know that. I doubt its true and it is not necessary thing to say in order to figure out what is good anyway.

I believe much of the world's problems stem from disagreement over the definition of good, of that which we should do, when someone commits theft should the priority be to reform the criminal or to make an example of them? In other words what is the greater good, what metric should be held in highest priority when making such decisions?

That is social good. It has to do how society works not you. However we are social creatures so indeed there is much to the working of society we can explore.
We can look on consequences of actions. We can look at the principals. Some people may not act out of malice, but more out of ignorance.

So I want to define what is good with metrics (i.e. measurable outcomes) or more specifically the relationships between those metrics as that's where the truth is, and I want to do this because if we could all come to some agreement on what a better society looks like we would be one step closer to achieving it.

Cool I guess....

To get the ball rolling lets start with the metric of wealth equality, if wealth equality is low is that a bad thing and why is it a bad thing, what other metrics can we use to determine whether a high or low level of wealth equality is a good or bad thing?

Single factor never does anything. It has to be a collective effort and a huge set of factors that define good in social context. You can do plenty good things and fuck them up the next minute, because you don't follow your own principals.

All types of societies can exist and be good the problem is that those societies have to be designed so when one thing is done the other things follow.
You can talk about taxes, but then you might tax so many people that they hate you and waste their money on stupid shit. You can lower taxes and it wont do shit, because starting a business is still next to impossible due to bad laws and regulations etc.

 

[Cognisant]

Reminder: 'Grayman' and 'The Grey Man' aren't the same person.

@Grayman Oops sorry my bad.

 

[moody]

trying to objectify good or not is harder than hell. objectively good or objectively bad is hard to define, i struggle with this question a long time ago, and just snap out of it.

universal good and universal bad seems only exist in fairly tales.

what is good for the human body and bad for the human body is easier to categorize, what is good and bad for the mind is harder and more subjective.

what is good for life and the human body, boils down to basic instincts

I'd take it a step further than that, and say that the ethical implications of "good" and "bad" is contextual.

It's almost cheap or lazy to have a black and white opinion of everything. It gives people permission not to think critically about the current situation, and instead let some algorithm dictate their lives.

 

[Grayman]

trying to objectify good or not is harder than hell. objectively good or objectively bad is hard to define, i struggle with this question a long time ago, and just snap out of it.

universal good and universal bad seems only exist in fairly tales.

what is good for the human body and bad for the human body is easier to categorize, what is good and bad for the mind is harder and more subjective.

what is good for life and the human body, boils down to basic instincts

Doesn't objectifying morality always result in utilitarianism?

 

[Rebis]

Good and bad are hard to define as the world has finite resources which illicit competition of those resources. Resource acquisition is good if I have gathered it and bad if someone is in competition for survival with me has. Defining good and bad are noble causes trying to create a structurally integral moral code that the world hopes to build upon.

Good, in terms of moral principles tied in with law (Do not steal, murder, rape... etc) are really operational definitions for society to progress beyond chaos.