The philosophy thread general discussion

@Florien

If I understand you correctly, I think you are right in noting the underlying appeal to unsolvable and certainly non-empirical information. For example, exactly how similar or dissimilar is my neighbour's experience of Qualia compared to mine? Since I cannot effectively measure it, it is an unsolvable question.

Edited by editerguy on Jun 2nd 2023 at 4:43:50 AM

Yes, essentially.

It's one of the most pointless questions in all of philosophy because either we've already solved it (we experience things because it's useful somehow for survival and reproductive purposes, in which case it's not the hard problem) or it's inherently unsolvable because it can't be measured by definition, and thus not a useful question to think about.

Edited by Florien on Jun 1st 2023 at 11:58:08 AM

Those are answers. I wasn't expecting so agreement.

Let's ground it a bit. The main implication is for ethics towards animals, aliens, and AI. Do they suffer in the way that humans do? It sounds like we mostly agree with something like functionalism. I don't think there is some labeled line in the universe code that says yes or no. There is only functional similarity and whether a given mind cares more about the similarity or difference. Even if there were a label, our behavior has nothing to do with it.

In the Chinese Room thought experiment, the man supposedly serves as the computer and should be the only thing in the room that could understand Chinese or not. The fact that he doesn't or at least doesn't need to is supposed to demonstrate that there would be no understanding if it was a computer. Saying that it is a "problem of other minds" gets to the most common objection. The AI running in his head could understand Chinese without him inheriting that understanding.

I follow Thomas Nagel on this one, in that we can't possibly know what it is to be like a bat, because we are not a bat.

"Nagel challenges the possibility of explaining "the most important and characteristic feature of conscious mental phenomena" by reductive materialism (the philosophical position that all statements about the mind and mental states can be translated, without any loss or change in meaning, into statements about the physical). For example, a reductive physicalist's solution to the mind–body problem holds that whatever "consciousness" is, it can be fully described via physical processes in the brain and body."

I do not disagree that whatever is going on in the mind is physical because a non-material dimension to phenomena is an unnecessary assumption given the data we have (about anything). As beings within the system being explained (in this case, the human mind) however, we may not be in a position where we can comprehensively understand that system (ie, ourselves). We can't "get out" from our position within the system to see what it might be like from another perspective, like that of a bat (or another person).

My best guess (take this for what it's worth, which isn't much) is that our brain is constructing a simplified model or a simulation of itself and the environment around us, mostly for the purpose of saving cognitive resources and providing a basis for learned changes in behavior. It is this simplified model that we experience as our "conscious awareness."

I also tend to believe that there are qualitatively different levels or degrees of conscious awareness. There is the awareness of oneself as an object in space (the mirror problem), awareness of one's own point of view vs. that of another person (the "three mountain problem"), awareness of oneself as a abstract conceptual identity, and so forth.

I propose that we have moral obligation to other entities to the extent to which they possess or approach our level of awareness, possess or could possess (even if only in theory) such a level. We owe more moral obligations to a mouse than a bacteria, more to a dog than a mouse, more to a child than any animal, and so forth. This is because the empathy most people feel for other entities is at least partially determined by the degree of resemblance. If I can imagine being that other person, then I can more acutely feel their joy and pain by proxy, and the closer the interpersonal connection I will feel to that individual.

You will notice that this is a relative standard, not an absolute one. I think the mind makes moral decisions not by means of an intellectual process of weighing quantitative factors, but by comparing our feelings when we imagine someone or something else suffering in some way. Probably our sense of moral obligation never reaches zero (even for inanimate objects) nor 100% (not even for ourselves). I'm also willing to bet that the degree to which we feel empathy for someone depends sensitively on the immediate context: the weights we give to, say, children in Africa vs. a friend of our on the internet will depend on the interaction of many factors, including the stakes involved for each party, our previous interactions with other people like them, and our mood the day we decide.

Which is to say that the degree to which we owe a moral obligation to an alien race will depend on a wide variety of factors, many of which may not be stable over time.

We will have to wait and see.

TL/DR: We see "red" because processing wavelength data and distributing it across the brain is too hard. This also applies to our models of other people and beings, the degree of empathy we feel toward those beings, and the moral obligation we have toward them.

Edited by DeMarquis on Jun 2nd 2023 at 1:03:45 PM

I'm late responding, but thanks for the link. I found reading about Nagel's take to be extremely interesting

Thank you. I was looking forward to what Evans Verres thought, but oh well.

Sorry about that. I got very busy the last few days. I think I agree with the first half. I think knowing what a sensation is like requires being able to put your brain into a certain state or being able to recognize when you are in it. At least for humans, no amount of technical knowledge will let you imagine red if you've never seen it. By analogy, there's a type distinction between motor knowledge and statement knowledge. If you haven't been able to move your arm before a recent surgery, knowing what nerves are involved doesn't help the right connections form in your motor cortex.

What it's like to be a bat is far worst. At best, a physical theory of experience might let you know where it is similar or different from you. There are always going to be parts of your inner world that come along with trying to imagine that bats world, and like parts of that world that just don't translate.

The moral side of it is tricky because of the difference between how humans process moral issues vs how they maybe should. I agree that consciousness is related. I think that humans and some other animals construct, as you put it, a simplified model of themselves and their environment. I don't think anything that isn't doing that has a solidified point of view for us to worry about. If it follows that we only have to worry about the kind of stuff that could make it into a given mind's model that could give a framework for how to treat animals and AI depending on how much we know or suspect about how their inner worlds are constructed.

I'm not sure that a lot of animals have enough of a concept of their own death to have a preference for their life to continue. But, this feels like a dangerous rationalization even if I believe it.

Edited by EvansVerres on Jun 7th 2023 at 10:59:55 AM

I find the moral side interesting here. Going back to an earlier post:

Here I think we can make an 'is' versus 'ought' distinction. It is true that we tend to empathise more with others with a degree of resemblance to us. It doesn't follow that we ought to see our morality as being grounded in resemblance (even in part).

I would suggest that we can consider certain factors as morally significant, such as pain/sensory experience and intelligence, even in entities in which these features do not really resemble human pain/sensory experience or intelligence. This would make these observable features morally significant regardless of how much the entity resembles us.

To get a bit sci-fi for a moment, we could imagine an AI or an intelligent animal in the future which is as morally significant as a human due to having recognisably sophisticated intelligence and sensory experience.

I don't think sensory experience is something that should necessarily be afforded moral weight.

After all, there are people who lack sensory nerves (or just the ability to feel pain), but it's still just as wrong to chop their fingers off for no particular reason by most people's estimates. (Presumably)

Point taken, but it's significant in the sense that causing pain for fun or to stave off boredom is unethical. For example, don't torture mice (my PSA for today).

It's more that the easier it is to imagine being that person or entity, the easier it is to feel a sense of connection to them, and therefore feel morally obligated. A blind person who is a normal human being in every other way isn't hard to identify with.

This makes verbal communication a kind of line in the sand, in that any entity capable of engaging in casual conversation with you is going to seem more human that one who isn't, unless you can imagine them having a causal conversation with you.

I'm not sure if this is the right thread to ask this questions, but does anyone know some good, high-level books about fascism?

With the new rise of fascism in both America and some parts of Europe, I feel the need to build some more concrete, structured, and academic knowledge on the ideology.

Due to my current writing job (my webnovel is an Alternate History World War II military fiction), I have decent enough sources on the history of Nazi Germany, such as Adolf Hitler's biographies by, respectively, John Tolland and Ian Kershaw, as well as The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer. I also heard good things about Anatomy of Fascism, by Robert O. Paxton.

I'm open to suggestions for further reading.

@dRoy I think the General Politics thread is a better choice for this.

I myself am a writer for Operation Deep Freeze, a canon submod of the alt-history mod The New Order: the Last Days of Europe.

I probably can't give you high-level books, but I can suggest some resources on the topic:

• Between Two Wars, a youtube playlist by Time Ghost TV. Season 1 here and Season 2 here.

• War Against Humanity, by the same people. This is an incredibly well-done series about atrocities committed during World War II, exploring what motivates people to do these things and the human cost of these actions. They heavily avert A Million Is a Statistic, and treat the topic with the amount of seriousness and empathy for the victims it deserves. Which, in turn, means that I should warn you that it's one hell of a tear jerker, plenty of nightmare fuel too.

• The Master Plan: Himmler's Scholars and the Holocaust. This is a book about the Ahnenerbe, an archeologist organization founded by Himmler in an attempt to prove his pseudoscientific and vaguely occult ideas. The key take aways from it are:
  • The way that pseudoscience can be used to promote extremely sinister agendas.
  • The Ahnenerbe were not as fringe within Nazism as people tend to believe.
  • The Ahnenerbe were very much Not So Harmless Villains. It's easy to laugh at the guys trying to find Thor's hammer or Atlantis. However, it also should be remembered that the Ahnenerbe committed horrific atrocities.

Umberto Eco wrote a lot about fascism, that would be a good start. Reading the bibliography to well-regarded papers and books is also a good way to find more.

Also, asking at a university library will get you a lot of sources as well.

Well, fascism IS a political theory, after all.

Anyhow thanks for the recommendations. I sure got a lot of reading to do.

I would recommend "The Origins of Totalitarianism" by Hannah Arendt. A classic in the field.

Belated but thanks for another suggestion! I'm also reminded that I still haven't started on Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.

In another, but not too unrelated topic, with my recent transition into a socialist (specifically, democratic socialism) I asked one of my friend, who has a BA in economy and also a history buff, for book recommendation on socialism.

And during the conversation I realized: Man, I'm living in a good time, in that unlike our parents me and my friend could freely discuss that kind of topic without fearing repercussion.

I wouldn't put much stock in Arendt's take on Eichmann. The whole "banality of evil" thing is a Real Life case of Good Cannot Comprehend Evil. Eichmann in particular was actually quite proud of the atrocities he committed — he simply pretended to be just a "cog in a machine" in a vain attempt to lighten his punishment.

Oh, I read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer, among others, and I have been dropping Nazi trivia in this subforum for a while now. Believe me, I know.

Just like I'm still gonna try at least some of Sigmund Freud works like the Interpretation of Dream, despite fully knowing how much of a quack he was, Banality of Evil has my enough interest to try at least once.

Edited by dRoy on Jun 25th 2023 at 2:35:52 AM

But does that necessarily mean that's always the case? She could have just been wrong about Eichmann specifically.

Edited by PresidentStalkeyes on Jun 24th 2023 at 6:42:28 PM

She based her whole case on Eichmann. She developed a whole philosophy of morality because she couldn't comprehend that an asshole might have lied about his motivations to escape punishment.

I get that, but does that necessarily invalidate the entire theory? I mean, even if it's not true for Eichmann I can imagine it is true for other evildoers. It's hard to say how true on a macro level but it feels wrong to imply 'she was wrong about this person therefore the whole concept is invalid'.

Edited by PresidentStalkeyes on Jun 24th 2023 at 6:51:30 PM

If you can come up with other examples who weren't lying their asses off, feel free to name them.

And yeah, it's totally valid to claim a concept is horseshit when it's based on a single faulty premise.

If someone claimed unicorns are real because they saw one horse with a fake horn glued to its head, I'm not going to go "oh but maybe unicorns really exist anyway." You want to prove unicorns are real, find an actual horned horse.

Though it may arguably be easier to find a unicorn than a willing and knowing genocidaire with zero true malice towards the group they committed genocide against.

Edit:

I've come to find the banality of evil really annoying since it feels more and more like a backhanded excuse for people who do shitty things.

Edited by M84 on Jun 25th 2023 at 2:08:58 AM

So just to be clear, is the argument you're making something along the lines of 'people who actively commit atrocities know exactly what they're doing because they can't possibly be that oblivious?'

I'll admit it's been a while and my understanding of the concept of the banality of evil might be a little off. I was thinking of, say, people who indirectly support sweatshops by buying their output but will still be very anti-sweatshop if asked for an opinion on them, or factory farms or businesses that have committed known labour abuses, etc. Though that might be a more 'no ethical consumption under capitalism' thing.

That is not what the banality of evil is about. And that's also a misunderstanding of the meaning behind "no ethical consumption under capitalism". That phrase is actually meant to excuse lower-income people who cannot afford to buy goods made with more ethical means.