This Post Generator Is Surprisingly Coherent 

Here’s a post about Hard Problem of Consciousness, since @argumate​ and @foolishmeowing​ have talking about it lately:

I think it’s a mistake to view the Hard Problem as unique to materialism.  Idealism can’t answer it either, and generally doesn’t try to.  IMO, the problem is not really about matter, but about description or explanation.

(I also don’t think it’s unique to “formal” systems or approaches, except in a sense so broad that any philosophy that could ever be done is “formal,” because it involves strings of words and/or arguments.)

The Hard Problem is very similar to the problem of existence – “why is there something rather than nothing?”  Both of these are questions about what “animates” or “turns on” any given description – what makes a description (such as a formal system) more than “mere words on a page.”  This is a distinctive class of problem because any familiar kind of explanation would simply become part of the description, and thereby be subject to the exact same problem.

If you add some sort of “existence-maker” mechanism to your description of what exists, you’re still open to the objection that the entire description, existence-maker and all, could just as well be an inert logical structure, without the extra magic of existence.  This is a pretty familiar, standard point in the context of the existence question, but in discussions about consciousness, the analogous point tends to get buried under arguments about whether or not there is more of a problem for certain kinds of description – “material” or “formal” or “functional” ones, or whatever.

It seems to me that this is a problem for descriptions, period.  If you look at the various dualistic and idealistic systems that have been proposed, they tend to be, well … systems: descriptive accounts of what is supposed to exist (some or all of it mental/spiritual), along with some arguments about why we should assent to the description, but nothing inherent in them to light the flame and turn these descriptions necessarily into the realities they talk about.  These systems do claim that the flame is in fact lit, but they generally treat this as self-evident via Descartes’ cogito or similar.  At least one mind/spirit exists (by cogito), and here are some things it can conclude a priori about other existents – Leibniz’s various principles, McTaggart’s theory of determining correspondences, or whatever – and we’re off to the races.

These can be perfectly fine theories of what mind/spirit is, insofar as it exists, but they simply do not touch why/how it exists: you need the spark of a cogito to get things started, and the cogito doesn’t leave you any less in the dark about why there’s an existing mind (instead of there not being one).  It just convinces you that there is one.  And once you’ve decided to work within a frame where that is taken as given, you’ve given up on Hard Problems.  These theories only “explain” the ineluctable experiencey-ness of experience in the way that the observation “as a matter of fact, something exists” explains why there is something rather than nothing – which is to say, not at all.

It seems intuitively clear to me that these Hard Problems are unanswerable, because they ask for something that is incompatible with what we take to constitute an “answer” to a question.  They ask for an argument that some description is necessarily animated, that there’s no mystery about how it becomes more than words on a page because there is something impossible about the merely-words version of it.  But such an argument is either:

(1) An argument for purely logical necessity, i.e. necessity within the terms of the description, in which case the necessity property is just one more fact about the description and could be as “mere” as the rest, or

(2) An argument that the description gets necessarily lit up by the animating fire of something else that already has it, in which case we need some initial spark to start things up, one that is not explained within the terms of the description. Generally this spark is supposed to be “obvious” / a priori, but the fact that we have a priori knowledge of something doesn’t constitute an explanation of why we have that knowledge, so this doesn’t get the job done.

The beacons of Gondor are alight, calling for aid. War is kindled. See, there is the fire on Amon Dîn, and flame on Eilenach; and there they go speeding west: Nardol, Erelas, Min-Rimmon, Calenhad, and the Halifirien on the borders of Rohan.

THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING

Fear Itself

I get the point of all the “can’t you just wear a fucking mask, it’s not like anyone’s asking you to storm the beach at Normandy” discourse, but I think it misses something about our current predicament. 

Wearing a mask is actually a big deal. I mean for me it is. It feels really weird, it restricts your air flow, and the longer you wear it the more you have this big wet cloth sticking to your nose and mouth which makes you feel like something is very wrong. And all of that makes the whole pandemic thing real in a sensory way and not just an intellectual way. It’s scary.

I do it anyway, and just, you know, am scared, and am learning to get over it, the way I’ve always learned to deal with my various anxieties.

It occurred to me at some point that this is probably true for a lot of the anti-mask assholes too. Wearing a mask is a scary prospect. It involves acknowledging that the risk exists…and also *feeling* and *seeing* the risk in a way that you don’t have to if you don’t wear them. All the macho bullshit about “freedom” is really a screen for a completely different kind of emotion, which would be fear. Not just fear of the virus, but fear of fear itself. 

This truly deranged behavior that we see people exhibiting when asked to wear masks is of course a product of entitlement, but it is also, I am willing to bet, driven by fear. Instead of accepting their fear and dealing with it, these people turn their anxiety into anger and direct it outwards, attacking the people who ask them to mask so that they don’t have to think about *why* they’re being asked to mask. They go after people who they think they have not only the right but the *ability* to defeat, in order to protect themselves from the fear that the real danger is beyond their control.

That doesn’t make any of it right. But we would all probably benefit from acknowledging that wearing a mask is not a trivial thing that is easy for everyone to do. Wearing a mask requires us to acknowledge that we are surrounded by an invisible and potentially deadly threat, and that we have a terrifying responsibility now for the wellbeing of total strangers because your own breath could now actually kill people. It requires us to be aware, on a visceral level, of the danger we are all in.

Anyway. Good for you if you’re wearing a mask even though it makes you feel weird and unsettled and freaked out. We are grateful to you for being brave and doing it anyway.

oh god you don't even know

Oh man, I'll give you a challenge, but you must pass the Turing Test.

LMAO I just found out that it’s Stress Awareness week.

A surprising amount of my knowledge of philosophy is not derived from textbooks or even research papers, but from people explaining how other people are bad at philosophy to me

ANTHROPOLOGY

Homecoming

High schools in the south of the United States, especially in Texas, often have a tradition of the girls wearing “mums” and boys wearing “garters” to the Homecoming football game. Mums usually consist of artificial Chrysanthemum flowers (originally real Chrysanthemums were used) surrounded by decorated floor-length ribbon and little trinkets. The tradition is that the boys create a personalized mum in their school colors, white and silver for seniors, for their date. Girls make garters for their date which are similar to mums but shorter and worn on the guy’s arm rather than around their neck like mums. The size of the mums and garters tend to grow along with the grade the person that is receiving the mum is in. Around the 1980s, mums were usually about a maximum of three Chrysanthemum flowers and a few ribbons and only worn by the Homecoming Court/Homecoming Prince and/or Princess but as the years have gone by, the size and expectations of mums have increased and have gotten more elaborate and are worn by almost all of the students. Depending on the school, mums can get quite competitive, expensive, and drastically bigger than they previously were intended to be. New items are also placed on mums than there previously were like LED lights, bubble containers, cow bells, feather boas, stuffed animals of all sizes, and even more. They now sometimes act like scrapbooks made of ribbon and even contain passages and photos of the mum/garter-receiver and their date. The detail, size, and price usually varies depending on the school, town, and couple. The tradition is to make the mum and garter after the couple is asked to Homecoming and exchange the night of the Homecoming game and wear it throughout tailgating and the game. Couples often take group pictures with their mums and garters the night of or before the night of the Homecoming Game to showcase them.

Link

I’d really like structural critiques to move away from using words like “scum” in general. Individualist moralizing doesn’t belong in discussion of systemic forces; in fact, the two are directly at odds. And it’s a mindfuck of a double-bind for people who are prone to taking ideas seriously: “this issue is very large and touches many aspects of society, and you personally are directly responsible for it.” Structural problems will not be solved by obsessively purifying your own heart.