Philosophy on LiveJournal

Hard problem, simulation argument

Thu, 23 May 2013 02:49:32 GMT

This is kind of a dumb idea. It may actually qualify as my first "stoner philosophy" post. Anyway, I got started thinking about it after checking out the simulation argument last year.

For the sake of argument, let's say you have unfettered ability to simulate and observe possible worlds for the purposes of evaluating different forms of artificial intelligence. You want to know if an AI which passes the Turing test also possesses consciousness (I think I am correct in assuming that an AI could pass the test without a shred of consciousness in the "hard" sense).

So you run a kind of Borgesian social simulation; your AIs are not interacting with humans, but with each other, in large numbers, preferably over a very long period of local time -- centuries, let's say. Their little AI civilizations rise and fall, produce their own mathematics, art, and literature, and so on, with no access to information about the "outside".

My question is: would it mean anything, if after running this simulation a million times (let's say), none of the AIs -- in their attempts at philosophy -- reproduced the problem of consciousness? Or anything that could reasonably reframed as the same problem? I.e., could a non-sentient intelligence problematize a feature of mind which it does not possess? (One might also wonder whether a non-sentient intelligence would philosophize at all; I assume so -- and it would look just like analytic philosophy.)

My own intuition is "probably not", but I'm also unhappy with my hypothetical. The main problem I see is that it's very plausible that a sentient intelligence could simply ignore the most obvious feature of its own mind (Dennett and plenty of others can, apparently).

Political Philosophy

Sat, 04 May 2013 16:07:45 GMT

1) What are good books on political philosophy?

2) I've decided that since my ethical philosophy is grounded on respect for agency, my political philosophy should be grounded on a consequentialist maximization of liberty. I've heard that most political philosophers write as if politics was divorced from ethics, but I can't think of any possible justification for that. Thoughts?

2 atheists walk into an exorcism....

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 18:31:43 GMT

So here we are.
I'm an atheist/agnostic. Many people out there are. I heard a quote, said by Neil Degrass Tyson (for whatever thats worth) that of academic philosophers, less than 1% are religious. Now, I don't know his citation for that, but it's in the middle of a talk he is giving citing lots of other numbers regarding religiousness, educational level, and scientific education in particular. The comment about philosophers is a sorta side-note for him. He quips "philosophers basically invented atheism" which I smiled when I heard.

This isn't about that, directly, but I suspect many of you here will at least have doubts, serious doubts, about the existence of God. Some here, I suspect, agree with me and would identify as an atheist.

Now, we atheists are fairly happy trotting around the globe and having a ready explanation for the vast majority of hogwash that religious folk throw at us. Either that or it's unverifiable and we must accept that it's a belief that you can hold and we cannot prove or disprove it. For the skeptically minded, the lack of evidence leads to a lack of belief.

Yet when something is experienced that does not compute with our model of reality, what do we do?
An honest person would be open to the possibility that their model of reality is wrong, and this new experience will force them to reconsider it.
Alternatively, maybe the experience not computing with our model of reality is more about our experience, and less of the model of reality. Those are the two options.

So, what might this mean for the atheist?
Well, if while you are walking down the street a shinning figure appears floating in the sky, looking like Jesus, carrying a cross and quoting the NT at you while angels with trumpets fly around him proclaiming "the savior has come!" well, maybe the end of the world is upon us, maybe you were slipped some drugs, maybe you just had a mental break, or maybe something else.

Now, that's a powerful example of an experience, right? In your face kinda experience. Now, that sort of direct experience is far more powerful than watching another, yet, if the person you most trusted in the world said that they had such an experience, that TOO might make you pause.

Where am I going with this? John Safran. You may have heard of him, does segments on religions. He's Jewish by birth, secular by decision and Australian by accent. He's not a believer. Yet when he goes to get an exorcism, there's something strange going on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzyef640HEM

Now a couple explanation exist for what would seem to be a very odd experience.
We could:

1) accept it at face value and believe the exorcism was real and demons were inside Safran and that they were expelled
2) accept it as a total sham--100%. Safran did this deliberately and on purpose in order to stir controversy/boost ratings/other.
3) shenanigans done by the exorcist to make Safran react the way that he did--e.g. slip Safran a powerful psychotropic drug

Since I happen to have a connection to Safran that is friendship-based (not personally, but only 2 degrees of Kevin Bacon), I happen to believe, on account of this personal connection, that Safran was not faking it, at all, not even a little. (I believe Anafalacious is also somehow connected to Safran via personal connections and he seconds this sentiment)

Yet I acknowledge that me saying this isn't sufficient for YOU to accept, it. So OK. He could be faking.

I am a continued atheist, so I also reject the idea that an actual exorcism took place.

Safran has taken peyote and probably dabbled with other psychotropic/hallucinogenic drugs, so I am doubtful that the "exorcism" was a result of him being drugged. Also, it does not appear that they give him anything, although in the first segment of the exorcism, they do rub some oil on him, so that *could* have been laced with something.

TL;DR--for those who don't wanna read/watch the video I link to, short version:

If you are an atheist and you witness another atheist undergoing what appears to be an exorcism, and your atheist buddy is reacting as if he WAS possessed, what do you make of it?
Is your buddy faking, was he drugged, is exoricism real? What else do you make of it?

Why would an atheist start flailing around during an exorcism ritual that he thinks is hollow?

a philosophy of flowers and death

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 15:30:36 GMT

I came from the distant flower, to explore this planet of death. It smells strangely. Francois came, and never told me his name. He said he is love, and I knew he sometimes really says the truth. Pablo came, like the rain, and that that he is love, and I knew he was right but sometimes said the wrong words. Then I knew something, this planet was right in accepting death, and that all the flowers had agreed to it, kinda forcefully, in the planet parliament where God is granting almost every wish. My calculator said I am an easy flower. I knew I could breathe something, and an old hippy came who granted me visitor rights to his heaven. I got a piece of earthen tree bark, and General Rose, whose name had nothing to do with roses, told me to study some philosophy. There would be many philosophers with broken ears and excellents minds and languages like in this exercise here. They could need a funny remark sometimes, from the planet of flowers of course, where God hid Nietzsche's true beard. And sometimes wears it, only without poetic syphilis. He wants to understand why rose doesn't sound like a flower sometimes. Death was startled and I ran away, like a real flower, and not like this strange bee that only understands colors and beauty. This planet is very simply I thought. Thank you for the ascetic hours of loneliness in the mountain tops where God proves his insanity every day. Oh yes, sorry God, I wasn't polite. Thank you for watching the fuel meter in my spaceship. One day I will reach Earth, then I won't need to use these intelligence simulators in the lotus flower. Such flowers grow in comets only, where thick old love guards mountains of the future.

Quasi-Kantianism

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 22:38:42 GMT

This is just a sketch of an ethical system.

A thing's value is a relation between it and other things; a thing's respectability is a measure of worth independent of other things. In order to respect your own agency, you have to do it qua agency, otherwise you are merely valuing yourself above all other things and respect is not value; therefore, in order to respect yourself, you must respect all other agents-qua-agency. Consequently, morality is universal-for-agents, since morality logically follows from respect for agency. That is, the categorical imperative holds for all agents. However, the underlying logic used in deriving a priori duties and rights from the CI isn't standard; it's modal, paraconsistent, and intuitionistic. When a conflict of duties is discovered, one can't just conclude anything; whatever is consequentially best ought to be concluded. When an indeterminancy is reached, one is permitted to choose according to ones purely subjective preferences.

what does it mean to break something

Sat, 09 Mar 2013 09:07:17 GMT

holy crap people are still posting here. Ok, I've got a question for you all:

What does it mean to break something?

Let's consider the case of a locked door. Person A has locked the door to prevent entry. Person B picks the door's lock, enters, then locks the door again when they leave. Person C smashes the door in, enters, and leaves without reconstructing the door.

According to some intuitions (for example the intuitions enshrined in certain laws around breaking and entering, if I'm not mistaken), B broke the door.

That means that to 'break' something, one need only violate the expectations set by that thing's designer.

But you might pick a stronger standard. You might say that Person B did not break the door, but Person C did, because person C changed the physically instantiated functional properties of the door. The door no longer plays the same role in the complex of causes and effects that it once did.

This stronger version of what it means to 'break' something is less metaphysically suspect. We don't think that designer's expectations inhere in designed artifacts, do we?

And yet, we run up against reified social expectations around the use of technology all the time. Weirdly, these social expectations are somehow reified into the technical object itself. The object is so fetishized that the social relations and affordances around it are projected onto its functional nature.

What's going on here?

Reproduction of property

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 14:04:30 GMT

Currently as the law stands in most countries there is a series of restrictions that apply to people being able to buy and sell property (again not including land in this, however the deed to a parcel of land is included). These include

Banning it outright - The sales of most narcotics
Restricting it to authorised people only - The sale of Guns (in most countries) and prescription drugs.
Restricting it to people that fit certain criteria - Age ratings
Unrestricted - Anyone can buy it.

There is also a different set of restrictions that apply to Non-tangible items (such as ideas) which I would like to discuss in another post (which may be null and void if the previous discussion decides that Property includes those items).

Should there be any restrictions on the sale of property?

In my opinion, the restrictions that are currently in place should remain in place due to the fact that property pose a significant risk to people/society that people that are not in the authorised pool of people. The reason I feel this way is that certain drugs like GHB can be (and are) used to make other people compliant to the administers will (well anyones will really) and if they were legal to procure would vastly increase the amount of a) fatalities due to overdose, b) increase the number of untraceable assaults and combined with Barbiturates could even prevent people being able to remember being assaulted/mugged. I also think that certain items are incorrectly categorised in my country, but that's a different discussion.

Beyond the costs in time, equipment, and materials, should there be any restrictions on the reproduction of property?

In my opinion, yes there should be as the restrictions on sale should also apply to the reproduction/manufacture of property. This is because realistically, while it's possible to ban/restrict the acquisition of property, it is not currently possible to prevent it completely. As such it should be possible to restrict the entities that are allowed to manufacture property.

I also think that the categories for reproduction/manufacture of property do not have to be the same as the ones for distributing it although there should be a large amount of overlap.

Edit to ad cut

Property metaphysics and property rights

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 07:21:36 GMT

Should all property be treated the same with regards to the law or not? And are items of a less tangible nature still property.

For the purposes of this discussion I'm going to ignore land as it could be said that they are never actually owned by anyone except the respective government. Everyone else mearly has a perpetual lease to it.

I postulate that while the law treats items differently based on whether it is deamed necessary to restrict access to that item or not based on perceived effects it has on the society. Beyond that AFAIK there are no cases where the law prescribes that the owner or manufacturer of an item must produce/sell more of the item. As such all items should be able to be restricted from sale by changes in the law.

I also postulate that all non/less tangible items should be considered property just as much as tangible items as beyond physicality there are no metatags attached to some in tangible items that can't also be attached to a physical item.

The law generally states that all property must belong to at least one entity, and that entity has the ability to sell or modify that item however they want as long as they are allowed to own that item in the first place. The law also recognises the originality of an item and restricts the ability of someone that is not the originator to reproduce the item if it has passed a certain threshold of originality, one aspect of which is time.

Should ideas be considered to be property, and should the law only apply to property with the metatag of physicality?

Edit to add: metaphysical tags that are common to all property include (but are not limited to)

Owner,
Value,
Legality,
Current holder,
Age.

Edit changed "Should ideas be considered to be items, and should the law only apply to items" to "Should ideas be considered to be property, and should the law only apply to property"

Freud on Art

Sun, 24 Feb 2013 13:30:33 GMT

From “The Paths to the Formation of Symptoms” (1918):

I would put this post in the awesome psychoanalysts' community, but this post seems vulgar enough to warrant the categorization of philosophy.

"Popped a molly, I'm sweatin' woo" - Trinidad James, "All Gold Everything"

The desire of the artist is for fame, money, and women. But artists are social rejects, and so they initially fail to get these things [sic]. Consequently the artist turns his [sic] emotional investments away from his disappointing reality towards wish-fulfilling fantasies. This makes the artist neurotically sensitive, meaning that his psychologically unguarded, fantasy state makes him likely to receive rebellious impressions from his unconscious. While all of this may describe neurotics in general (the unconscious impressions become unpleasurable symptoms), the artist in particular has a capacity to sublimate his day-dreams into a pleasurable material image. Art is a path from an artist’s fantasy to a certain reality. The degree of skill of the artist is reflected in his degree of ability to make it possible for others to put down their guard for a certain impression of the unconscious. The successful artist is the one who has, through his profession as an artist, really obtained fame, money, and women.

Agamben on Language

Sun, 17 Feb 2013 02:07:34 GMT

From Homo Sacer (1995):

Agamben introduces us to the “presuppositional structure of human language” (21). What are the conditions for the possibility of language? Now Agamben has read Jakobson’s development of Russell, and so he begins by complicating the issue further. Remember that Russell says we need to know nonlinguistic aspects of ‘cheese’ to understand ‘cheese,’ and Jakobson adds that we need to know the linguistic coding (like conventions of English) to understand ‘cheese.’ What is the relationship between the linguistic and the non-linguistic?

Because “language presupposes the nonlinguistic as that with which it must maintain itself in a virtual relation in the form of a langue or, more precisely, a grammatical game,” Agamben claims that the relationship between the linguistic aspects of an object and the nonlinguistic aspects of an object is one of exception, like when the law suspends itself under its own emergency clause (20). Language sits atop objects, but not directly - only virtually, wherein the virtual system tends towards consistency over time. Agamben expresses this by saying, “only language as the pure potentiality to signify, withdrawing itself from every concrete instance of speech, divides the linguistic from the nonlinguistic and allows for the opening of areas of meaningful speech in which certain terms correspond to certain denotations” (21).

Historically “Hegel was the first to truly understand the presuppositional structure thanks to which language is at once outside and inside itself and the immediate (the nonlinguistic) reveals itself to be nothing but a presupposition of language. ‘Language,’ he wrote in the Phenomenology of Spirit, ‘is the perfect element in which interiority is as external as exteriority is internal’” (21). Thus Agamben will make the claim that “that there is nothing outside language and that language is already beyond itself” (21).

Derrida also comes to such a conclusion about the conditions for the possibility of translation in Monolingualism of the Other. Derrida, discussing the fundamental antinomy of language (Do I always speak one language, or do I only ever speak multiple languages?), similarly declares that they are both true (i.e. what Kant calls a dynamic antinomy), and so states that I only ever have one language, but it is not my own. Earlier, in the book The Ear of the Other, Derrida prefigures this condition of possibility by discussing the double bind of the proper name, which is untranslatable, on one hand (God says, I am who I am, in the beginning was the Word), yet demands translation on the other (God divides the languages at la tour de babel and says, go forth and spread the Word); Agamben can thus be understood when claiming that the logic of language “expresses the bond of inclusive exclusion to which a thing is subject because of the fact of being in language, of being named” (21).

Jakobson on Language

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 06:35:15 GMT

From “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation” (1959):

Anyone who has read Saussure’s seminal course on linguistics knows that signs are the basic unit of language. How does language relate to understanding and to objects? “According to Bertrand Russell, ‘no one can understand the word ‘cheese’ unless he has a nonlinguistic acquaintance with cheese’” (138). But to understand the word ‘cheese’ one must also be able to relate other signifiers to ‘cheese,’ viz. those coded in English, in this case. The cheese itself doesn’t carry meaning, but the signifier does, since “nobody has ever smelled or tasted the meaning of ‘cheese’” (138). Basically, like Kant said, for empirical knowledge you need both (nonlinguistic) sense and (linguistic) concepts. Because knowledge is discursive, i.e. split between two faculties, any empirical concept may be translated into other signs, i.e. reworded as in definitions, or transmuted as in codings. Through the power of understanding signs, or concepts, calibrate themselves to reality, i.e. cohere or co-stabilize over time (again, science).

As linguists we are enjoined to translate constantly, e.g. making sense of the term ‘sunset’ after the advent of Copernican doctrine. Jakobson is committed to the in-principle translatability of any cognition into any language as such, “All cognitive experience and its classification is conveyable in any existing language,” and “Any assumption of ineffable or untranslatable cognitive data would be a contradiction in terms (140). Since languages may in-principle convey the same thing, languages are distinguished by what they must do, not what they may do. This ‘must’ refers to the momentum of signs or representations for any given language user, so you are compelled to think in certain ways when encountering a certain sign due to a certain history you have had with the sign. These compulsions are not general like transcendental categories, but are differentiated; to illustrate, mere pointing will not teach us whether “cheese” is the name of the given specimen, or of any box of camembert, or of camembert in general or of any cheese, any milk product, any food, any refreshment, or perhaps any box irrespective of contents. (There is no word in Russian for ‘cheese,’ since the Russian word usually used to translate cheese, ‘сыр’ does not cover e.g. cream cheese.) There is always a remainder of definability with any given empirical concept/sign.

Thinking of this remainder, how do we translate a poem? What is cognitive or non-cognitive in a poem? Sometimes the meaning of a poem and the beauty of a poem cannot be translated into a different language with equal fidelity, since accurate translation of meaning may require a grammar convention which contorts the beauty, and translation of aesthetic form (e.g. alliteration) may limit possible signs for conveying meaning accurately. Jakobson says, “poetry by definition is untranslatable. Only creative transposition is possible: either intralingual transposition - from one poetic shape into another, or interlingual transposition - from one language into another, or finally intersemiotic transposition - from one system of signs into another, e.g., from verbal art into music, dance, cinema, or painting” (143).

Methodological question

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 23:34:15 GMT

Collingwood's The Principles of Art opens with the claim that it is asking what art is. But it doesn't actually ask that question. Working out what Collingwood is asking is the first big hurdle for anyone wanting to open Collingwood's philosophy to those who aren't persuaded by Collingwood's own statement of it. This I don't want to go into here. Suffice it to say, Collingwood is asking after the nature of something, which has a lot to do with art, which many people - and certainly those who find the book a masterpiece - consider to be of the highest importance.

Collingwood points out that our concept of this thing is pretty vague, and tied up with other concepts, so much so that there isn't even a name for it that is not equally naturally applied to many other concepts. So in specifying our vague notion, we will find that we uncover mistakes in our vague concept, and find that the concept we are interested in has some properties (and extensions and so on) we thought it didn't, and hasn't other properties we thought it did. It is like we have a patch of earth covered in various objects, and we are interested in capturing one in a translucent sheet, through which sheet, held in our hands, we survey the scene. The light from the objects is distorted by the sheet, so that as we lower the sheet onto our chosen object, we find that it is different to how it appeared from a distance. It is of course more sharply defined, but it is also a different shape; further, it is a similar colour to some of its neighbours, and from a distance we thought that some of the neighbouring objects were actually one and the same as our object.

The problem with this approach to clarifying a concept is this: How can we know that the object we now have hold of is in fact the one we were originally after? Could it not be that what we were originally after was in fact two objects (or half of the object), and that in covering only one, we have only captured half of what we were after? Or could it be that what we were after was something vague, and by covering something definite, we have not captured what we were after? To bring this back to concepts: We are after something best called art, which is not actually art, but which has a lot to do with art. When we have it in our hands, we see that it turns out not to include a lot of what we call art - e.g., muzak and its equivalents in the other arts - and to include a lot of what we would never call art - e.g., much of our everyday speech.

Now, for me, personally, the problem is not so acute. I had been told when being given my translucent sheet that the object has a certain magnetism, and that I would know it when I had it, and indeed I do. But this is of no concern to anyone else. I am trying to share Collingwood's insights with other people; to demonstrate that what he ends up with, although jagged and bright in ways few would have suspected, is in fact what he set out to capture. Or if it turns out that he has picked up the wrong object, I want to be able to see where he went wrong without abandoning the entire approach. So my question here is: who else has grappled with this problem? How would you deal with it?

Philosophy of color: relationalism

Mon, 28 Jan 2013 08:13:51 GMT

Hi everyone! I was hoping you could lend me your brilliant minds to help check an argument from color relationalism, a position in the philosophy of color.

In the philosophy of color, the problem is essentially about color realism (which is usually equated to objectivism/ mind-independence). Realism basically means that objects have color, color is an intrinsic property of objects, and color is mind-independent, as opposed to objects being subjective and that the nature of color is dependent on the perceiver.

Discussions about color is usually about whether or not our naive perception about color is correct. Our perception tells us that objects have colors, that color is a property of the object and it is objective. But science says otherwise, that objects have no color. Does this mean that our common sense perception about colors is wrong? The question now then is whether or not objects really do have the properties that they appear to have, and whether our perception represents the world correctly, especially about colors. If color is objective, then our naive perception must be right.

One of the challenges that color realism faces is the perceptual variance. There are instances when two different perceivers (could be interpersonal, intrapersonal etc), viewing the same object under the same lighting condition during the same time, have a different experience of the color of the object. Let's say p1's experience of the object is blue and p2 experiences the object as green. If color is objective, then it's either one of them is correct about the color of the object, or neither of them is correct. If color is objective, both of them can NOT be correct. It's like saying that in a test of true or false, an item in a school exam is both true and false. It's objective so there can only be one answer.

The problem now is, how do we know which of the perceiver's perception of the color is veridical or correct? It is not controversial to say that we can't know. So the obstacle here is epistemic. Since we can not know which perceptual variant (p1 and p2's perceptions) is veridical over the other, Cohen proposes his position which is relationalism. Relationalism basically considers color as a relation between the perceivers, object, the circumstance like the viewing condition etc. To solve the problem of perceptual variance, Cohen suggests that we should just accept both perceptions as correct, meaning, if the object looks blue to p1, then the object is blue. If it is green to p2, then it is green. This then removes the problem of choosing one variant over the other. So according to him, we must accept relationalism on the grounds that we don't know which variant is veridical over the other so it would make sense to just accept both variants as veridical.

I apologize if this doesn't sound charitable enough, but if you look at articles about cohen's relationalism, this is essentially what his argument is about. We have no way of knowing which variant is more veridical over the other so we should just accept relationalism, the view that accepts both variants as veridical. Is it just me who isn't too impressed about this? I find it hard to accept that just because we have no epistemic way of choosing one variant over the other, then it necessarily follows that we should accept relationalism. I find that the epistemic problem doesn't necessarily threaten color realism. Kind of like arguing about god (please forgive me if this isn't a valid analogy). Just because there is no way of knowing that god exists it doesn't mean he doesn't/ or we can't argue about it. One needs to offer other arguments to support their position. Similarly with color, just because I have no way of knowing which perceiver is right about the color, doesn't mean that color is not objective. Does this make sense to anybody? If cohen is committing a fallacy, what did he commit?

Also, why are philosophers quick to assume that just because the color perception of one person is different from another person, it immediately means that colors are purely subjective? For me, objects have color, whether or not there is a perceiver. Even though my perception of one color is different from yours, the point is that we can still agree that objects like ripe apple, blood of our wounds, the stop sign, the flag of denmark have the same color. And the reason why we have different perceptions of color is because of our biological aspects. My eyes, or visual system is different than yours, but that doesn't mean objects have no color. It's somewhat similarly with sounds, in a way that just because one person is deaf, it doesn't mean sound does not exist, or that sound is subjective. It still exists whether or not people can hear it. I'd like to believe in a framework where both objects and perceivers are involved.

Thank you for reading all the way up here. Tried to make this as short and sweet as possible, not sure though if I was succesful. Now THAT is subjective. Anyway, I want to know if I'm making sense. Do you agree with my "sentiments?" Is there something wrong with my views? Did I overlook something? Would you like me to clarify something? Do you also agree that relationalism makes an error in logic somewhere? Would appreciate your thoughts very much.

Objections to Qualia (updated)

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 21:20:40 GMT

I seem to have a yearly extended argument with someone about qualia. On this most recent occasion, a friend had an objection which he couldn't fully articulate, but which seemed likely to have defenders amongst professional or prominent philosophers somewhere at some time. Could you help point me towards articles, books, or key phrases which represent it? It does not strike me as plausible at first glance, but I'm willing to believe there's some meat to it given some modifications.

It goes like this:

Minds are not some special non-material substance. We merely have two different ways of talking about material reality in this case -- we can speak about an instance of pain as a brain state, and we can speak about an instance of pain as an experience, but ultimately these both refer to one thing, the material world. Something like that -- multiple perspectives, one substance; somehow this is different than a variety of dualism; the mind-body problem as a language problem.

Also, does anyone other than Daniel Dennett outright deny the concept of qualia? I find Dennett to be an almost unbearable writer. Maybe it's just me.

Update:
There was a second, related objection that I couldn't remember, but I checked in with my friend, and this is how he put it:
Since we, as human consciousnesses, experience nothing but qualia we have difficulty adequately describing or understanding linguistically any non-qualia aspects of things. We describe everything in our world using metaphors pointing back to our subjective experience but cannot understand radiation or magnetic fields or electricity or anything else that cannot be sensed directly. My assertion is that it is this that results in the perceived unbridgeable divide (or difference in kind or what have you) between qualia and non-qualia rather than some difference that lies outside of our subjectivity.

If you can think of any prominent defenders of something that sounds similar to this, it'd be much appreciated.

Charland on Voluntarism

Sat, 29 Dec 2012 05:06:23 GMT

From “Revival of Voluntarism”: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/decision-capacity/#RevVol

“Voluntarism” is the philosophical position which believes subjects to have “the capacity for voluntary choice.” Voluntarism is a doctrine of the basic superiority of the will to other subjective forces, and thus is a kind of doctrine of free will. This position has been an important pillar of laws that require consent. Rape and brainwashing are said to be non-consensual if someone did not choose the sex or education voluntarily, i.e. consent requires voluntary choice.

But to what extent do humans really have voluntary choice? As in the case of addiction, “human will and agency can be impaired in various ways by diseases of many sorts. The problem is that[,] how exactly these deficits [make an] impact on decision-making capacity, and what they mean for the doctrine of informed consent, remains largely unclear.”

Further, voluntarism has problems with grounding a philosophy of right, which is a formal way of saying that voluntarism cannot see how public education, though mandatory and often non-voluntary, is still consensual. Voluntarism cannot separate the volunteering will from the consenting subject, each of which may have different values (e.g. happiness and worthiness to be happy, respectively).

So here is the problem: On one hand you have to gerrymander your definition of consent in such a way as to legislate against rape, but on the other hand you have to gerrymander your definition of consent in such a way as to legislate in favor of mandatory public education. How do you do it? What is the definition of consent?

Please help me find the source for a quote!

Fri, 21 Dec 2012 16:16:26 GMT

Hi all! Years ago I read a quote by a philosopher where he advised that if you are given advice from someone who doesn't follow his own advice, it doesn't necessarily negate its applicability to you. I cannot find the actual quote now. At first, I thought it might be Erasmus, but I couldn't find it. It is certainly one of the more classically-recognized philosophers. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you.

Kant on Your Vulgarity

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 16:58:24 GMT

From “First part: The conflict of the philosophy faculty with the theological faculty” in The Conflict of the Faculties:

Kant admits that people really don’t need philosophy departments or theologists to set moral rules for them if they properly exercise their reason, but “since this [the exercise of reason] requires self-exertion, it does not suit the people,” especially on account of “their inclination to enjoyment and their aversion from working for it” (7:30).

So “the demands they make on these scholars run like this. ‘As for the philosophers’ twaddle, I’ve known that all along. What I want you, as scholars, to tell me is this: if I’ve been a scoundrel all my life, how can I get an eleventh-hour ticket to heaven? If I’ve broken the law, how can I still win my case? And even if I’ve used and abused my physical powers as I’ve pleased, how can I stay healthy and live a long time? Surely this is why you have studied - so that you would know more than someone like ourselves (you call us idiots), who can claim nothing more than sound understanding” (7:30).

Being so vulgar, “the people will flock” to “a miracle-worker” and “contemptuously desert the philosophy faculty” (7:30-31). “The people want to be led... they want to be duped. But they want to be led not by the scholars of the faculties (whose wisdom is too high for them), but by the businessmen of the faculties - clergymen, legal officials, and doctors - who understand a botched job (savoir faire) and have the people’s confidence” (7:31). Lacking refinement, “the people naturally adhere most to doctrines which demand the least self-exertion and the least use of their own reason” (7:31). Shame on you!

I've got notes on the rest of The Conflict of the Faculties here: Kant on the Institutionalization of Reason, Kant on Progress and Education, Wilmans on a Pure Mysticism in Religion (the last paragraph is awesome), and Kant on a Proper Regimen.

Foucault on the Return of Language

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 22:15:12 GMT

From “Man and His Doubles” in The Order of Things:

In the pre-modern period, which Foucault calls the classical period (pre-1800s), philosophers didn’t think about language too much. In this classical period “the identities of representation... express[ed] the order of beings completely and openly” (303). But “the development of philology” ruined classical philosophy (303). With philosophical reflection on the role of language, “words have become weighed down with their own material history” (303).

“The threshold between Classicism and modernity... had been definitively crossed when words ceased to intersect with representations and to provide a spontaneous grid for the knowledge of things” (304). When words no longer naïvely correspond to representations but rather disperse around representations, this “dispersion imposes upon language, if not a privileged position, at least a destiny that seems singular” (304). Our modernity is logocentric.

“Language did not return into the field of thought directly and in its own right until the end of the nineteenth century. We might even have said until the twentieth, had not Nietzsche the philologist... been the first to connect the philosophical task with a radical reflection upon language” (305). Inside “this philosophical-philological space opened up for us by Nietzsche... it was not a matter of knowing what good and evil were in themselves, but of who was being designated, or rather who was speaking” (305).

So today we ask questions like, “What is language? What is a sign? What is unspoken in the world, in our gestures, in the whole enigmatic heraldry of our behavior, our dreams, our sicknesses - does all that speak, and if so in what language and in obedience to what grammar? Is everything significant, and, if not, what is, and for whom, and in accordance with what rules? What relation is there between language and being, and is it really to being that language is always addressed - at least, language that speaks truly?” (306). “We know now where these questions come from” (306). They were made possible by departing from the representational regime of philosophy, and they were made inevitable when Nietzsche brought thought to bear on language in its dispersion, fragmentation, or multiplicity.

It is hard to say whether or not the linguistic turn is a historical break or a historical maturation. Perhaps thinking about language is completely different than thinking about representation, or perhaps thinking about language is the fruit of thinking about representation, just as thinking about representation was the fruit of thinking about being. Foucault states the problematic by saying, “is one carrying to its conclusion a thought which is that of the nineteenth century, or is one pursuing forms that are already incompatible with it?” (307). “I do not know what to reply to such questions... I cannot even guess whether I shall ever be able to answer them... Nevertheless, I now know why I am able, like everyone else, to ask them - and I am unable not to ask them today” (307).

Kant on the Question of Man

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 04:41:34 GMT

From the course on Logic (~1800):

Kant’s course on Logic is cited by Foucault (1966), Vergote (1990), and Balibar (1994) as a major sign-post in the history of philosophical anthropology. “This Treatise on Logic, which is intended for a manual for lectures, is a posthumous work, and it is the editor Gottlob Benjamin Fesche (doctor and private teacher of philosophy in the university of Königsberg, fellow of the Learned Society of Francfort on the Oder, disciple, follower, and friend of Kant) whom we have to thank for having thus faithfully published his illustrious master’s manuscript,” and this is a “manuscript in Kant’s own writing” (editor iv).

Kant tells us that “philosophy is the idea of a perfect wisdom that shows us the final ends of human reason” (29). The final end of human reason is “a unity” to which “all other ends are subordinated” (29). So philosophy’s regulatory idea is the formal possibility of a unity, under which representations and ends are regulated. That is to say, philosophy is not just speculative, but is also practical, since we are talking about “philosophy, in this cosmopolitical sense” (29). Thus the Kantian subject is not merely theoretical, but is an active citizen of the world. So when dividing up the questions of philosophy, a superior place is given to the question, “What is man?” such that all other questions “at bottom might all be considered as pertaining to anthropology” because all other questions “refer” to the anthropological question (30). Epistemology, ethics, and theology are merely in service of anthropology, and so Kantian philosophy is logically anthropocentric.

Kant on Faith and Internal Difference

Fri, 23 Nov 2012 21:48:40 GMT

From “What does it mean to orient oneself in thinking?”:

What is faith? Kant explains that “a rational belief or faith is one grounded on no data other than those contained in pure reason” (8:141). Rational faith “is not inferior in degree to knowing, even though it is completely different from it in kind” (8:141). “A pure rational faith is therefore the signpost or compass by means of which the speculative thinker orients himself in his rational excursions into the field of supersensible objects... it is this rational faith which must also be taken as the ground of every other faith, and even of every revelation” (8:142).

In this way we must respect “the right of reason’s need... for orienting itself in thinking... in that immeasurable space of the supersensible, which for us is filled with dark night” (8:137). If we are “at least [to] think of something supersensible in a way which is serviceable to the experiential use of our reason,” then we must “examine the concept with which we would venture to go beyond all possible experience to see if it is free of contradiction... bring the relation of the object to objects of experience under pure concepts of the understanding” (8:136).

For those who are not familiar with the Kantian orientation in the first Critique, wherein the Ideas of faith (of Reason) are brought into relation with the Concepts of science (of the Understanding), Kant gives us a much more plain example, saying, “to orient oneself means to use a given direction (when we divide the horizon into four of them) in order to find the others - literally, to find the sunrise” (8:134). “For this, however, I also need the feeling of a difference in my own subject, namely, the difference between my right and left hands” (8:134). “Thus even with all the objective data of the sky, I orient myself geographically only through a subjective ground of differentiation” (8:135). In other words, an internal, subjective difference gives the key to external organization.

“I can extend this concept even further, since it could be taken as consisting in the faculty of orienting myself not merely in space, i.e. mathematically, but in thinking in general, i.e. logically” (8:136). How do you derive a rule for thinking? You start with the experience you have, you subtract your perception, then take the remaining concepts as general obligations for thought. “It is in just such a way that general logic comes about” (8:133). In other words, you should go as far as the external, empirical field will take you, until you reach the internal limits of experience itself, then you adopt these internal forms as necessary signposts for organizing external contents.

Given that there is an internal, subjective self-difference by which we must orient ourselves, we cannot understand Kant to be naïve when stating his famous Enlightenment principle of “thinking for one’s self,” since this self has internal difference. Kant clarifies this by saying that truly free/autonomous/self-ruled thought requires communication with others; “it is said that the freedom to speak or to write could be taken from us by a superior power, but the freedom to think cannot be. Yet how much and how much and how correctly would we think if we did not think as it were in community with others to whom we communicate our thoughts, and who communicate theirs with us” (8:144)? “Thus one can very well say that this external power which wrenches away people’s freedom publicly to communicate their thoughts also takes from them the freedom to think” (8:144). Thus the Kantian self, the subject of faith or the disciple (one who willingly identifies with the discipline under which they are subjugated), is already internally divided (grounded in its Other), and the ethical action is to avow this internal difference, “through which alone we can devise means of overcoming all the evils of our [external] condition” (8:144).

“Friends of the human race and of what is holiest to it! Accept what appears to you most worthy of belief after careful and sincere examination, whether of facts or rational grounds; only do not dispute that prerogative of reason which makes it the highest good on earth, the prerogative of being the final touchstone of truth. Failing here, you will become unworthy of this freedom, and you will surely forfeit it too; and besides that you will bring the same misfortune down on the heads of other, innocent parties who would otherwise have been well disposed and would have used their freedom lawfully and hence in a way which is conducive to what is best for the world!” (8:146).

Foucault on Parrhesia

Sat, 10 Nov 2012 03:48:14 GMT

From the lecture “2 February 1983 - Second Hour” in The Government of Self and Others: Lectures at the Collège de France:

What does the Greek word parrhesia mean? It is used in the New Testament to characterize the attitude a disciple ought to have about their discipline, and it feels kind of like a courageous outspokenness (franc-parler), though it is not at all a naïve confidence. Philosophers like Socrates and Plato, rather than prophets or sages, were parrhesiasts. Parrhesia is also an important reference for Athenian political philosophy:

Foucault understands parrhesia as a certain relationship between four poles. Here Foucault gives us the poles of a certain political parrhesia: democracy, ascendency/election, truth-telling, and political antagonism. This means that to be proper (political) disciples we must try to be true to our disciplines as primary ideals (e.g. democratically fair), but there really exists an impossibility blocking this ideal (e.g. due to class/representational differences), so we demand a stable secondary standard (e.g. truth) by which to regulate our practice, and then there results an antagonism between the primary, constitutive notion (e.g. democracy) and the secondary, regulatory notion (e.g. truth), which it takes courage to continue to hold together as dynamic opposites and not reduce to a mere contradiction. Thus Foucault says, “this good adjustment of the democratic constitution to truth-telling through the game of parhessia involves the problem, which you know is not a minor problem: how can democracy withstand the truth?” (174). In Kantian terms, how can we be a proper disciple, holding together the constitutive concepts of the understanding with the regulatory ideas of reason?

It seems that there are difference “discourses” depending on where one begins the circuit of parrhesia, but regardless of where one starts, the “good parrhesia” is characterized by a mutual adoption of risk by each agent, such that the politicians and the people (“both the person who persuades and those who are persuaded”) identify with the general limits of their practice (177). So “the great circuit, the great trajectory of parrhesia” in its democratic manifestation is a structured practice “in which, on the basis of a democratic structure, a legitimate ascendency exercised through a true discourse, actually ensures that the city will take the best decisions for all” (178).

“Only there is also the image of the bad parrhesia, the parrhesia which does not work in a democracy and does not remain true to is own principles” (180). For example “there is bad parrhesia when measures are taken against orators, or orators are threatened with such measures, like expulsion” or ostracization or death (181). The fear and threat of death inhibits good parrhesia. The “bad parrhesiast... speaks only because and to the extent that what he says represents the prevailing opinion, which is that of the majority” (183). These bad politicians “seek only one thing: to ensure their own safety and their own success by pleasing their listeners... ‘everybody,’ ‘anybody,’ saying anything, provided it is well received by anybody, that is to say, everybody” (183). Bad parrhesia is “basically the elimination of the distinctive difference of truth-telling in the game of democracy” (183).

Thus we learn that “the problem of parrhesia, good or bad, is basically the problem of the indispensable, but always fragile difference introduced by the exercise of true [i.e. regulatory] discourse in the structure of democracy” (183). The regulatory norm introduces a crack or impasse in the constituted order, and ‘goodness’ and ‘badness’ revolve around this impasse. “True discourse and the emergence of true discourse underpins the process of governmentality,” i.e. regulatory norms and their invocation structure governmentality. Perhaps this is similar to the way the regulatory Ideas (e.g. God) and fidelity to them structure a subject of faith like Kant.

So “a new paradox appears” (184). I understand Foucault to be saying that democracy must tend toward truth-telling as its regulatory ideal, but truth-telling interrupts the order of democracy because not everyone can speak at once; and truth-telling must tend toward democracy as its constitutive base for existing at all, though democracy also interrupts truth-telling because of the resulting antagonism. Some might try to get out of this by asking, but what is the real truth? What is the regulatory idea or figure as such? “I think it may be a good to recall this old question... namely the question of the true discourse and the necessary, indispensable, and fragile caesura that true discourse cannot fail to introduce into a democracy which both makes this discourse possible and constantly threatens it” (185).

From the lecture “1 February 1984 - First Hour” in The Government of Self and Others: Lectures at the Collège de France:

“I would like, as quickly as possible, to move on to another way of envisaging the same notion of parrhesia” (9). We are told that “etymologically, parrhesia is the activity that consists in saying everything: pan rema,” like someone with no filter or self-editing (9). The heart is on the sleeve. This person can seem like a “chatterbox,” and even a bad democracy “practices parrhesia: anyone can say anything” (10). But the person who “says anything,” like someone in an all-out argument who resorts to extreme or cheap insults, is perhaps indeed hiding something - the truth. Thus practicing parrhesia may also be “concealing nothing” in the sense of allowing the truth to come forth, which does not “say anything.” So how do we recognize genuine parrhesia?

For proper parrhesia there must be an identification between the speaker and the truth, so “he must say it as being what he thinks, [an not] reluctantly - and this is what makes him a parrhesiast... he personally signs, as it were, the truth he states, he binds himself to this truth, and he is consequently bound to it and by it” (11). Further, “the subject must be taking some kind of risk [in speaking] this truth which he signs as his opinion, his thought, his belief, a risk which concerns his relationship with the person to whom he is speaking... one must open up, establish, and confront the risk of offending the other person, of irritating him, of making him angry and provoking him to conduct which may even be extremely violent” (11). Thus confrontation with an other is required for self-identification, parrhesia as an act of the truth of the self. The addressing of one’s self, this care of the self, requires some other person to complete the circuit to one’s self (7). In order to identify as something, one must confess one’s truth to doctors, philosophers, teachers, analysts, or someone standing in for a certain other-subject-than-the-self.

Due to this structured relationship to another who stands in a certain role, “parrhesia may be organized, developed, and stabilized in what could be called a parrhesiastic game” (12). “This kind of pact, between the person who takes the risk of telling the truth and the person who agrees to listen to it, is at the heart of what could be called the parrhesiastic game” (13). The consummate parrhesia requires the courage to tell the truth, and the courage to hear the truth, so the game is really “a way of being which is akin to virtue, a mode of action... a modality of truth-telling” (14). Now go forth and spread the Word with frankness!

Discussion Starter: Online Ethics and Personal Identity

Fri, 09 Nov 2012 22:34:06 GMT

I find it difficult to maintain interest in this community. I have found myself turning into an instigator of conflict for fun. It is difficult to maintain a correspondence with someone for any sustained duration. I feel like no one is who they say they are and because of this I am sort of absolved of all need to be civil. This is because I don't think my participation on the site impacts anyone as they really are. It is like the difference between killing your friend in a video game and killing him in real life. There is no comparison. Online existence is an almost completely different mode of existence.

I definately have an alter-ego when I'm on this site. I am a Harvard graduate, fluent in German, and have wined and dined with famous intellectuals. I have a Aston Martin. I own a winery. I sleep with exotic women. I am the most interesting man in the world and no one can prove otherwise. It may seem sadistic, but I actually enjoy when people are gullible enough to believe me. In some cases its like they want to believe.

Now, I know what you are thinking. Mike has gone off the deep end and is amoral. But, that is missing the point. I am not me. A whole new virtual-entity is born out of the primordial virtual ooze, so to speak. A whole new epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and personal-identity, i.e. a whole new existence is possible. The young know it and I agree that for some people this new existence is better than the old, because in the old I drive a 1997 Honda Accord and in the new I drive a Aston Martin.

There is a strange apprehension that borderlines on the realm of fear when one decides to embrace the new existence of which I speak. The only ethical problems that arise are those who are bent on conflating the two existences: the real and virtual.

Charney on Film and Modern Subjectivity

Sun, 04 Nov 2012 00:08:10 GMT

From “In a Moment: Film and the Philosophy of Modernity”:

Our modernity has been described as an age of hyper-stimuli, a loss of stability (e.g. Kracauer, Benjamin, Simmel). Without the naïve stability of pre-modern subjectivity, the modern subject is the split subject, which means a lot of things. In this sense it is helpful to keep in mind different notions of the modern or split subject when reading Charney. I think of the Kantian and psychoanalytic subjects, for example, to help me understand Charney argument that “the evacuation of stable presence by movement and the resulting split between sensation, which feels the moment in the moment, and cognition, which recognizes the moment only after the moment. These two aspects of the modern moment came together to create a new form of experience in cinema” (280). Charney is conceptually tying modern, split subjectivity to film. (Also remember, psychoanalysis and cinema were invented at the same time.)

This unstable form of experience is modeled after a recognition of real objects which is delayed by, or buffered by, sensation of those objects. In Kantian terms we say perception is subsumed under conception, although this phrasing immediately suggests that one instability (the loss of naïve, metaphysical certainty) implies a new stability (we can do science). An experience of this unstable kind loses a certain something by virtue of the buffer or stimulus shield/receiver. We lose access to reality in itself, das Ding an sich. We realize that all we know is things as they appear to us, buffered by a faculty of sensory organization, and so we are “always already alienated” (281).

In order for us to sense anything at all, reality in itself must be organized into sensible packets, i.e. bounded by space and time. In order for us to understand or to make sense of sense packets, sensation has to be organized, cut up or subsumed under boundaries. For a (hypostatic) example consider that a film makes different kinds of sense depending on how it is edited (cut up and arranged), and consider that sense is produced on film through the dynamic of movement (establishing and uprooting boundaries).

Benjamin understood modern subjectivity as an avowal of and exploration of this cut of subjectivity, the flâneur’s “montage” experience (283). In a montage there is a certain ‘shock’ affected by juxtaposing two representations, in the sense that montage runs one representation into another, like the slaughterhouse and the factory. The shock is only registered retrospectively, as the collision of representations gives our thought a momentum to fly beyond the track of representations and into the limits of representation, the editorial cuts or categorical conditions for the possibility of determinate experience.

Film is particularly modern in its editorial and shocking capacity to run so many widely differing representations into one another so quickly. This is what allowed film to dominate the market for astonishment, over panoramas and wax museums. “Cinema is above all about movement” (287). Charney helps us further distinguish cinematic movement as embedded in the crash of representations; cinematic movement is discontinuous or overtly dynamic/editorial, e.g. filmmakers “used new technologies to re-present continuous motion as a chain of fragmentary moments” such as “collage form” and “explicit recognition of separation” (290). “The pictures do not really move: they just follow each other. Editing thus creates a collage of fragments that cannot help render the viewer's experience discontinuous. Editing's discontinuity opens up gaps and spaces throughout the action, nagging echoes of discontinuity which haunt the film's premise of continuity” (291).

We are, like good Kantians, avowing the editorial cut of representational experience: “in the constitution and reconstitution of movement, it is never possible to recapture the whole movement. The fissures between the separate moments remind us that we are seeing something that simply replicates a continuous movement but can never be one. We have, that is, entered the zone of representation” (290). And we’ve lost the fantasy that we might know things independent of the way they are represented to us, according to the forms of representation.

“It was above all this form of moving experience which tied the experience of film to the experience of daily life in modernity. The experience of cinema mirrored the wider epistemological experience of modernity. Modern subjects (re)discovered their place as buffers between past and future by (re)experiencing this condition as film-viewers. Past and future clashed not in a hypothetical zone but on the terrain of the body. This alienation both grounded and arose out of the modem aspiration to seize fleeting moments of sensation as a hedge against their inexorable evisceration. The quest to locate a fixed moment of sensual feeling inside the body could never succeed” (292-293). The modern subject is not self-transparent, but split from themselves, not even knowing what they really want. The types of modern subjects are then categorized according to the different ways people respond to this onset of (self-)representation anxiety - neurotic denial, perverse disavowal, psychotic foreclosure, analytic identification...

Quick serious question.

Fri, 02 Nov 2012 14:05:58 GMT

Can anyone point me to any literature on the philosophy of linguistics, and the seeming problem of using language to explain language? It strikes me as a parallel to the issue of understanding the brain using the brain.

Fri, 26 Oct 2012 13:54:51 GMT

So, what do you think of the philosophy of Otto Weininger? Does anyone know where I can view his works online?