Steve Pinker Lambasts American Left for Political Correctness
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Re: Steve Pinker Lambasts American Left for Political Correctness
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Re: Steve Pinker Lambasts American Left for Political Correctness
The idea that ethics needs something Other than what we are conscious of in our well defined world where language and presence are understood to be one, tells us that the term 'consciousness' will not suffice: we are asking whether there must be something "beyond" what is knowable and beyond even creative imagination in order to make the world make sense. Of course, these are things you can't talk about, and we should do any of that. we need to stay with what is here before us, like Kant stays with judgment as it presents itself, but here, of course, it is not the structure of reason that reveals itself, it is the "structure" of the ethics-in-the-world. It presents itself as incomplete, imperfectly conceived such that our theories about evolution, biology, physics, in short, our empirical theories in their collective paradigmatic foundation of knowledge do not make ethics, make sense.Gertie:
If we call 'Being' consciousness instead, or 'experiential states', we can readily grasp that Value or Meaning or Morality are naturally concomitant with experiential states, well-being and suffering, our Quality of Life, and subsequent duties to each other - 'Oughts' (played out in politics, social mores, myth, religion, institutions, archetypes, etc).
And like I have said often, suffering it the most powerful proof; just consider the worst you can and ask if evolution, e.g., is up to the explanatory task.
Evolutionary utility? Is this term sufficient to encompass horror? Horror denotes phenomena in the world that spill beyond the boundaries of theory (Sartre's Nausea ring a bell?), as do all things.On the other hand we have models of how the material world works, which doesn't encompass experiential states, value or oughts, and suggests free will, and therefore concepts like accountability and deserving, are illusions. And explains the origin of the particular nature of human values in terms of evolutionary utility.
But studying history, evolution, engaging in plitics, these do not take the phenomenon of valuing something, as with anything you can imagine that is reviled or commended, as a theme in itself. One does not come to an insight about the nature of value through voting.What we're missing is an understanding of the relationship between the subjective experiential 'realm' of meaning and value, and the objective material 'realm' of stuff and physics. Without that, well we have philosophical attempts at reconciling the two on the one hand (with no consensus in sight), and 'getting on with your life' as if you have choices on the other. Including engaging in politics. And in my opinion the more we understand about the evolutionary origins of our moral predispositions and how they've played out in our history, the better choices we can make. As well as answering simplistic and uninformed assertions about 'natural heirarchies', for example.
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Re: Steve Pinker Lambasts American Left for Political Correctness
I just meant it is good to have something to aim for. The Chirst mythos is older than Christianity. In some form or another you can see it across the globe both prior to and after the existence of Jesus.
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Re: Steve Pinker Lambasts American Left for Political Correctness
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Re: Steve Pinker Lambasts American Left for Political Correctness
I'd like to clarify an important distinction - science and empiricism can't explain conscious experience itself, but can give a (so far very broad and incomplete) explanation for why we evolved the way we did, ie the character of our phenomenal experience. For example the evolutionary utility of suffering, of altruism, our social/moral predispositions along with our selfish instincts. Strip away the mystique of the language, the awe of existence itself, and a coherent, compelling and easily comprehended story is available. And for now, I'd say that's the best we can do. We can speculate beyond that of course, but not with any authority.The idea that ethics needs something Other than what we are conscious of in our well defined world where language and presence are understood to be one, tells us that the term 'consciousness' will not suffice: we are asking whether there must be something "beyond" what is knowable and beyond even creative imagination in order to make the world make sense. Of course, these are things you can't talk about, and we should do any of that. we need to stay with what is here before us, like Kant stays with judgment as it presents itself, but here, of course, it is not the structure of reason that reveals itself, it is the "structure" of the ethics-in-the-world. It presents itself as incomplete, imperfectly conceived such that our theories about evolution, biology, physics, in short, our empirical theories in their collective paradigmatic foundation of knowledge do not make ethics, make sense.Gertie:
If we call 'Being' consciousness instead, or 'experiential states', we can readily grasp that Value or Meaning or Morality are naturally concomitant with experiential states, well-being and suffering, our Quality of Life, and subsequent duties to each other - 'Oughts' (played out in politics, social mores, myth, religion, institutions, archetypes, etc).
Yes, the explanatory task of understanding why we are the way we are is exactly what evolution is up to. Our evolved reward system is a startlingly obvious explanation for suffering, for example. Our evolved sociality is the obvious basis for the caring and cooperative aspects of human nature, which have become codified into notions of morality. Our knowledge is still crude, but it's getting more detailed as we speak, and the onus is on those who choose to ignore the evidence in favour of speculative alternatives.And like I have said often, suffering it the most powerful proof; just consider the worst you can and ask if evolution, e.g., is up to the explanatory task.
Once you accept the link between consciousness and materialism, as implied by neural correlation, and once you accept that we are material creatures which evolved, the rest falls into place. It doesn't spill the bounds of the theory. Suffering has evolutionary utilitarian purpose, abhorrence at terrible behaviour too, in the context of living in mutually dependent cooperative group, as do notions of fairness and caring for others. It also explains why we care most for the well-being of our kin and those we know well, less so for strangers, and our in-group tribal tendencies. Of course the reality is incredibly complex and messy, but the broad explanatory picture is clear. Morality is no longer a mystery at odds with evolution, it's a key part of it in the story of our species.Evolutionary utility? Is this term sufficient to encompass horror? Horror denotes phenomena in the world that spill beyond the boundaries of theory (Sartre's Nausea ring a bell?), as do all things.On the other hand we have models of how the material world works, which doesn't encompass experiential states, value or oughts, and suggests free will, and therefore concepts like accountability and deserving, are illusions. And explains the origin of the particular nature of human values in terms of evolutionary utility.
These do not explain the phenomenonal experience (consciousness) itself - where it comes from, why it manifests in certain physical entities but apparently not others, etc, nobody knows that. But they do broadly explain why we are the way we are, the nature of the experience. Would you agree with that?But studying history, evolution, engaging in plitics, these do not take the phenomenon of valuing something, as with anything you can imagine that is reviled or commended, as a theme in itself.What we're missing is an understanding of the relationship between the subjective experiential 'realm' of meaning and value, and the objective material 'realm' of stuff and physics. Without that, well we have philosophical attempts at reconciling the two on the one hand (with no consensus in sight), and 'getting on with your life' as if you have choices on the other. Including engaging in politics. And in my opinion the more we understand about the evolutionary origins of our moral predispositions and how they've played out in our history, the better choices we can make. As well as answering simplistic and uninformed assertions about 'natural heirarchies', for example.
No you misunderstood, that's one of the ways we put our values into practice in our daily 'getting on with life'. Understanding ourselves better through studying our evolved biases (such as the tribalism which is clearly not 'designed' by evolution to work well in our modern globalised, inter-connected world of strangers) must be a good thing.One does not come to an insight about the nature of value through voting.
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Re: Steve Pinker Lambasts American Left for Political Correctness
I think it is fair enough to say "pain" and "suffering" are an issue due to time appreciation? If I cannot understand the reach of pain and suffering then they don't exist for me.
Ethics ans morality are also wrapped up in the understanding (appreciation) of "other". One instance where the mirror neurons give us a physical substrate for this to take place - after all ethics is dealing with the refined environment we call "society" not merely a bunch of purely personal events bound by our body as one human among things.
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Re: Steve Pinker Lambasts American Left for Political Correctness
At some point the disourse has to admit to limit. It is limit that makes us.
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Re: Steve Pinker Lambasts American Left for Political Correctness
Look at it like this: an artist has a variety of physical media at her disposal, and she chooses, say, marble, then proceeds to sculpt a statue. We can describe the statue in terms what she put into it, we can examine the technique, the way the tool's chiseling surface was applied; we can examine the verisimilitude of the rendering, the symmetry of the eyes, and so forth. But logically prior to all of this there is the stone with its specific nature that has possibilities and limitations that are there providing what can and cannot be done at all with a stone medium. Evolution is the sculptor, and the question of suffering goes to the stone itself. The point is clear: it is out of Being that evolution, as we call it, brought forth suffering, presumably as an advantage of avoidance, but evolution did not determine the possibilities logically or dispositionally there, prior, such that suffering could arise at all. The same argument could be applied to anything, but here it is critical to understanding suffering and joy not as evolutionary contingencies, but possibilities embedded in Being prior to the first muddy swamp thing with DNA. If you would like to keep the matter about physical science, you could say even at that extraordinary Big Bang moment, ethical value was among the possibilities of the Being unleashed. It is not with evolution that our mystery lies, it is within the Being itself, that it can DO this thing called the human condition.Gertie
I'd like to clarify an important distinction - science and empiricism can't explain conscious experience itself, but can give a (so far very broad and incomplete) explanation for why we evolved the way we did, ie the character of our phenomenal experience. For example the evolutionary utility of suffering, of altruism, our social/moral predispositions along with our selfish instincts. Strip away the mystique of the language, the awe of existence itself, and a coherent, compelling and easily comprehended story is available. And for now, I'd say that's the best we can do. We can speculate beyond that of course, but not with any authority.
But I don't look at the matter like this so much, because evolution is an empirical science, and this does not deal with absolutes. Evolution is not a theory that is a mirror of nature; no theory is. I look elusively at the phenomenon and ask: what is this? I take value as an absolute.
Strip away the mystique of language, and there is no story. The language IS the story, and it is a pragmatic story, not one that reveals some absolute. The only absolute that I accept is very difficult to say. So I just point: there, that gangrenous leg and the agony it makes! But it is not to be said.
Empirical theories tell us nothing of value as such. Value is invisible, so to speak, and yet, there is nothing more striking or profound; indeed, it IS the profundity. This Tikka Masala I made for dinner is amazingly good. What dos this mean? Yes, the spices are well blended and balanced, and the chiken, so tender,and so on; and if you observe my brain enjoying the dish you will see the pleasure centers light up; and you can hear me make yummy noises; and so on. But where is the good??? The good of it, the valuative good of it is simply not observable. This is why Wittgenstein said that in the book of all facts that are the case, there would be no fact of ethical value. Such things are transcendental (my conclusion).Yes, the explanatory task of understanding why we are the way we are is exactly what evolution is up to. Our evolved reward system is a startlingly obvious explanation for suffering, for example. Our evolved sociality is the obvious basis for the caring and cooperative aspects of human nature, which have become codified into notions of morality. Our knowledge is still crude, but it's getting more detailed as we speak, and the onus is on those who choose to ignore the evidence in favour of speculative alternatives.
This is very hard to say and be understood. Materialism and the seamless neuronal production of consciousness obviates the need for any terms of distinction. I think it is all of a piece, and the ontology I am trying to focus on is ethical or valuative ontology. I want to ask, not the question of how ethical value is taken up in observation based theory, I want to address the matter at the level of basic assumptions, not unlike asking a question about, say, spatial direction, and not being satisfied until the questions run awash into eternity. The Being of ethical value is the where the transcendental argument begins.Once you accept the link between consciousness and materialism, as implied by neural correlation, and once you accept that we are material creatures which evolved, the rest falls into place. It doesn't spill the bounds of the theory. Suffering has evolutionary utilitarian purpose, abhorrence at terrible behaviour too, in the context of living in mutually dependent cooperative group, as do notions of fairness and caring for others. It also explains why we care most for the well-being of our kin and those we know well, less so for strangers, and our in-group tribal tendencies. Of course the reality is incredibly complex and messy, but the broad explanatory picture is clear. Morality is no longer a mystery at odds with evolution, it's a key part of it in the story of our species.
I hope, at least, you see that, given that evolution is the current be an end all in popular secularsim, evolution in no way serves up an answer to the explanatory vacuum of ethics. It gives form to ethics, you might say, but cannot say why we are born to suffer and die. It merely accepts this as an assumption. But again, this is where the question begins, not ends.
Science and the rest are not of a nature to explain things at the level of basic assumptions. They assume what is given. Here, we do not. We question the given, as we should, when the given, so to speak, has thrown us under the bus.These do not explain the phenomenonal experience (consciousness) itself - where it comes from, why it manifests in certain physical entities but apparently not others, etc, nobody knows that. But they do broadly explain why we are the way we are, the nature of the experience. Would you agree with that?
But the matter is not how to put things into practice. It is a question gives the human condition its religious dimension. What is ethical value?No you misunderstood, that's one of the ways we put our values into practice in our daily 'getting on with life'. Understanding ourselves better through studying our evolved biases (such as the tribalism which is clearly not 'designed' by evolution to work well in our modern globalised, inter-connected world of strangers) must be a good thing.
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Re: Steve Pinker Lambasts American Left for Political Correctness
And when I see some Other before me, the ethical possibilities present themselves, don't they? So many options, most well controlled and stabilized with social norms. Let's call these norms accidents, not because they were mistakes, but because they could have been anything and have been many things in many cultures. What is this whole affair about, ethics? I don't mean this in the usual sense,I mean it ontologically, and a dimension of just being here. After all, while ethics may be an institution of rules among people, the "stuff" under its control is value, and value is not reducible to descriptions of our politics or our anthropology, it is a term that is primordial, originary, given. Apply a Bunsen burner to your arm: that is what I am talking about.Burning Ghost:
I think it is fair enough to say "pain" and "suffering" are an issue due to time appreciation? If I cannot understand the reach of pain and suffering then they don't exist for me.
Ethics ans morality are also wrapped up in the understanding (appreciation) of "other". One instance where the mirror neurons give us a physical substrate for this to take place - after all ethics is dealing with the refined environment we call "society" not merely a bunch of purely personal events bound by our body as one human among things.
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Re: Steve Pinker Lambasts American Left for Political Correctness
We cannot talk about the meaning of language without using languags anymore than we can talk about ethics without emotion. Emotions exist, and the "tool" (for want of a better word!) of emotion is put to use in groups as an ethical map to guide and nurture our emotional interactions (which means ALL our actions on an emotional level, and interpersonal on an ethical level.) Therr is certainly no possible way for us to unlearn living in a society, we're social creatures and able to understand the changes of emotion to some degree across time.
Ethical "rules" culminate from personal ideas of what is good and bad, and they hold true in so far as they mesh with our base emotional constitution. The law is a culmination over time of averaging out our emotional views and setting boundaries on social behavior. The individual is not forced to abide by the law, and very few people do so in all areas.
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Re: Steve Pinker Lambasts American Left for Political Correctness
I did not know this.Burning ghost wrote: ↑March 16th, 2018, 7:56 pm Belindi -
I just meant it is good to have something to aim for. The Chirst mythos is older than Christianity. In some form or another you can see it across the globe both prior to and after the existence of Jesus.
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Re: Steve Pinker Lambasts American Left for Political Correctness
Belindi wrote: ↑March 17th, 2018, 4:48 amI did not know this.Burning ghost wrote: ↑March 16th, 2018, 7:56 pm Belindi -
I just meant it is good to have something to aim for. The Chirst mythos is older than Christianity. In some form or another you can see it across the globe both prior to and after the existence of Jesus.
Eduk mentioned Frodo as a Christ figure but Tolkien invented Frodo in a year of our Lord.
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Re: Steve Pinker Lambasts American Left for Political Correctness
Belindi wrote: ↑March 17th, 2018, 4:50 amBelindi wrote: ↑March 17th, 2018, 4:48 am
I did not know this.
Eduk mentioned Frodo as a Christ figure but Tolkien invented Frodo in a year AD.
As for its being "good to have something to aim for" I agree on condition that the object of the aim is a good ethic. What is a good ethic? I don't know. One criticism of Christ (Nietzsche's I think) is that he pandered to helplessness. One of the advantages of the Christian Christ myth is that this myth can move as times need it. So at two separate points in time the Christ myth guides Everyman in Pilgrim's Progress, or Frodo on his quest.
Talking of quest, that's a common theme in narratives which is sometimes adapted to psychological quest. I doubt if any quest is possible without an end to it.
The myth of the Biblical Christ did arise at a historical juncture when the Golden Rule ethic was prominent. The Golden Rule ethic still is prominent. And it can be observed being referred to implicitly when for instance allies proclaim that to attack people in a foreign country is evil (Salisbury poisonnings).
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Re: Steve Pinker Lambasts American Left for Political Correctness
Stories of men who were gods and the offspring of men and gods is far older and no doubt the source of the myth of Christ. In Genesis there is the story of the sons of God and daughters of men (6:2). The ancient myth of apotheosis, deification was the basis of another myth of Christ, one supported by Arius at the Council of Nicea, , according to which there was nothing unique about Jesus. He did what others are also capable of, becoming divine. According to this view, Christ’s perfection is attainable.As far as I am aware there is no other mythical icon quite as final as Christ.
There were two stories in the Old Testament that informed the quest for the perfectibility of man in the work of Descartes, Bacon, and others. Bacon claimed that mathematics is the universal language, the language that God destroyed at the tower of Babel because God says that with one language and the knowledge of how to build “then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them”. (Genesis 11:6). In Descartes’ Meditations we find a “recipe” for man’s infinite perfectibility - a) the algebraic method by which to solve for any unknown, b) to will without error (sin) by willing only what is known, and c) an immortal mind (soul) in which all that is unknown can become known. (Compare Genesis 3:22. Man has become like the gods knowing good and evil but is prevented from eating of the tree of life and becoming immortal).
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Re: Steve Pinker Lambasts American Left for Political Correctness
I accept all of what you wrote. I have been thinking that the myth of Christ differs from the antecedent god-men as Christ did not use his power to save himself from being tortured to death, or to advantage himself during his life in any way. If I'm not mistaken he is the first god-man character to be perfectible in that totally self- sacrificing manner. He's called Lamb of God both because of historical antecedents of animal and human sacrifice and also because of his total obedience to God. But I'm not too well informed about other mythical self-sacrificing heroes. Socrates sacrificed himself in a similar spirit, of loyalty to reason. Giordano Bruno too.Fooloso4 wrote: ↑March 17th, 2018, 10:35 am Belindi:
Stories of men who were gods and the offspring of men and gods is far older and no doubt the source of the myth of Christ. In Genesis there is the story of the sons of God and daughters of men (6:2). The ancient myth of apotheosis, deification was the basis of another myth of Christ, one supported by Arius at the Council of Nicea, , according to which there was nothing unique about Jesus. He did what others are also capable of, becoming divine. According to this view, Christ’s perfection is attainable.As far as I am aware there is no other mythical icon quite as final as Christ.
There were two stories in the Old Testament that informed the quest for the perfectibility of man in the work of Descartes, Bacon, and others. Bacon claimed that mathematics is the universal language, the language that God destroyed at the tower of Babel because God says that with one language and the knowledge of how to build “then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them”. (Genesis 11:6). In Descartes’ Meditations we find a “recipe” for man’s infinite perfectibility - a) the algebraic method by which to solve for any unknown, b) to will without error (sin) by willing only what is known, and c) an immortal mind (soul) in which all that is unknown can become known. (Compare Genesis 3:22. Man has become like the gods knowing good and evil but is prevented from eating of the tree of life and becoming immortal).
Regarding Bacon and perfectibility via mathematics, if mathematics is deductive/tautological how could it be a way for man to synthesise any perfections except as a tool to help him to learn?
The tree of the knowledge of good and evil seems to me to be too limited in its application, as stated in my copy of The Bible anyway.(King James) Good and evil are one parameter of relativity among countless others. God ruled over the Garden where there is no good or evil, no relativity ,in the eternal now which God rules over. Isn't it acceptable to interpret any text so that it has a meaning that is useful to oneself?
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