DocWatts

The United States needs to be a functioning democracy before it has any realistic chance of addressing Climate Change, or any other systemic issue for that matter. Which means that democratization politics needs to be prioritized before any other issues facing the country can realistically be addressed. Which in actionable terms means restoring the Voting Rights Act, ending gerrymandering, major overhauls to how the Supreme Court functions, abolishing the Electoral College, publicly funded elections, removing corporate personhood, Statehood for DC and Puerto Rico, and disrupting the right wing radicalization pipeline which is fueling the mainstreaming of fascism. Of course all of this is easier said than done, and won't happen without widespread political engagement. My fear is that this won't happen until conditions imposed by a far right reactionary regime become so bad that life becomes unbearable for a large portion of the country.

It's not at all clear that it's even possible to build an artificial general intelligence using machines that operate on deterministic, context free logic. So pondering whether artificial intelligence could be conscious is a bit premature at this stage, as it presupposes that we could even build a machine intelligent enough for that question to make sense.

Well the most common version of the Self that the majority of people subscribe to in the West is that of the Transcendental-Ego Self. Namely that a seperate 'Self' exists apart from the context you inhabit and apart from the continuity of your experiences. While this is most easily encapsulated in the idea of a Soul, this has become such a central part of our culture that a completely secularized version of this is accepted by many people. And not just in the West, the transcendental ego self is also central to metaphysical systems that believe in reincarnation (such as Hinduism). A good litmus test to see if you subscribe to this notion of a Transcendental Ego is to try and imagine being born in a completely time and place. And then contemplate if that person would be 'you', or a completely different person. The other well trod perspective is that instead of an enduring transcendental ego self, the Self has no independent ground apart from it's embodied context and the continuity of experience. This is the perspective of 'no-self' Buddhism, but has also popped up at times in the writings of certain Western philosophers (such as David Hume). For myself, the latter perspective seems more coherent.

Correct. But the deeper point is that any concept of Self is going to be an abstraction built upon axiomatic metaphysical assumptions. Now that's not at all to say that there are not ways of determining how apt a particular abstraction is, by examining how well it allows us to make sense of our experience. The map is not the territory, but that doesn't mean that map isn't extremely useful. Correct, and this is an aspect of the embodied nature of our minds that I was describing earlier. What I was contrasting embodiment with are mistaken Enlightenment era notions that there's a clear boundary between our minds and our bodies, and our minds and our environment. The reason that this is important is because Enlightenment Era assumptions which about what a 'Self' is are still present in the materialist paradigm despite being shown to be untenable. The notion that the mind is a biological version of a digital computer is a good example of a paradigm with with the underlying assumption of a disembodied mind. While Freud and Jung do emphasize that there are important aspects of mind that exist outside of conscious awareness, the subconscious is still something that can in principle be accessed through conscious awareness (for example through the use psychoanalysis or the examination of dreams). This is a far cry from the unconscious (rather than subconscious) processes posited by cognitive science, where there's no way that much of what goes on in our minds could ever in principle be made available to conscious awareness (for example the complex mental activity that goes on when you move your arm to catch a ball).

To answer what this abstraction that we call the 'Self' actually entails, it's critical to unpack the epistemic and ontological assumptions about the Self tend to be left unexamined (in the West at least). The idea that everything in the mind must (at least in principle) be able to formalized as a collection of context free facts that can (again, at least in principle) be made explicit, is a mistaken epistemic assumption that stretches back to the beginnings of Western philosophy. And yet somehow these assumptions still linger on despite the illusion of a disembodied and dis-worlded mind being thoroughly discredited by both cognitive science and from penetrating philosophical critique from the likes of Heidegger and Wittgenstein. The primary mistake is the idea that the mind (which we equate to our sense of self) can be disembodied and disembedded from our physical bodies and from the world. With the reframing that comes from making this assumption explicit, the unconscious processes that make awareness possible are more properly understood as an aspect of our embodiment. While the hard and fast decision between the conscious awareness and unconscious processes can be useful for some purposes, at the end of the day the two and interlinked and interdependent. And because the mind can't be seperated from the embodied context which makes conscious awareness possible, it makes little sense to exclude conscious processes from the construct that is the Self.

If you are able to, consider donating your time or money to one of the organizations that's fighting this in the legal system, and providing relief to people who are being negativity impacted by these rulings. A few good organizations to consider donating to: The ACLU OxFam National Network of Abortion Funds While 'just voting' on its own is not enough, doing whatever you can to ensure that everyone you know comes out to vote in the mid-term elections will make it more difficult for Republicans to turn the country into a christo-fascist theocracy. For the time being the battle for the continuance of democracy will be fought at the States, so become knowledge about local politics Beyond that, some sort of large scale civil disobedience that leads to civil disruption is one of the few tools we have, but short of a general strike it's not clear how that would materialize. If you live in an urban area, be prepared to defend your community and neighbors from fascist gangs like the Proud Boys and Patriot Front, since local law enforcement is often sympathetic to these groups and not interested in protecting citizens from them. Consider firearm ownsership, since if there's some sort of civil strife (ala a modern version of Bleeding Kansas) it would be better if fascists weren't the only ones who managed to arm themselves. And as Uvalde horrifically demonstrated, the police are not under any legal obligation to protect anyone.

@UnbornTao I suppose that depends on where you're at, since there's many different entry points depending on what your pre-existing Frame of Reference happens to be. If you want to learn more about how paradigms work, Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is a great starting point that will teach you some epistomology, and is a fairly accessible read. For another fairly accessible book that deals with epistomology, Lakoff and Johnson wrote a book called Metaphors We Live By which deals with how our embodiment frames the ways in we learn about and interact with the world. If you already have a basic understanding of how paradigms work and at least some familiarity with meditative practices, you may find The Embodied Mind to be highly helpful. I found it useful primarily as a way to reframe how I would approach meta-theories. While the focus of the work is cognitive science, the basic idea is broad enough to apply to other meta-paradigms. If you're curious enough to put in the work for a challenging but very rewarding read, Heidegger's Being and Time is probably the most useful book on epistomology I've come across. But it's also very, very challenging, and not the sort of thing one can jump into without a good grasp of philosophy.

Great chart by the way. When I think back I can definitely relate to Naive-Metatheorism, particularly when I was learning about both Spiral Dynamics and metamodernism for the first time. Naive-Metatheorism may be a necessary stepping stone for many people to begin to appreciate the limitations of any conceptual model to fully capture the depth of Reality. It certainly was for me, at any rate. As for transcending that pitfall, learning and eventually beginning to grok the Buddhist notion of emptiness (along with Heidegger's critique of all of Western philosophy) was definitely helpful. Though not something I would have been properly prepared to jump into without immersing myself in meta-theorizing for a good few years.

In Michigan we've tackled this problem by taking redistricting powers away from political parties, and giving that responsibility to an unaffiliated and decentralized independent citizens commission that's held to a much higher oversight standards. Is this a perfect solution? Well no system run by humans ever is. But it's innumerably better than the districting process that existed before these reforms, with the overwhelming conflict of interest that existed from political parties being allowed to draw their own districts. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2021/12/29/us/politics/michigan-congressional-maps.amp.html

Love this. Marxism if applied with care and in light of the changes that have taken place over the last century and a half still is insightful and adaptable enough to be relevant to modern problems, as Richard Wolff aptly demonstrates. At the same time I have trouble finding anything at all of value in the revolutionary vanguardism of Marx-Leninism, which in my mind is little more than a template for how to use Marxism to justify brutal acts of retributive violence in the service of authoritarianism.

I sure wouldn't, which is why I find JP's reactionary brand of politics that are actively stripping us of our Civil Rights here in the States so appalling. For someone who talks a big game about freedom he sure is happy to push people towards the fascist ideologies that he claims to abhor. The Cultural Marxism he goes into fits of hysteria over is quite literally a recycled Nazi conspiracy theory, to list just one example of this. Think about living in a society where you have to register your political views with the State to attend a public University. Am I describing the actions of the Communist Party of China, or something signed into law recently in the state of Florida by governor Ron DeSantis?

This is literally the most important thing happening in our country right now since it's effectively a legal coup to end democracy in the United States. Everyone and their brother should be talking about this.

The proximate reason a turtle shell is able to exist is because our Reality seems to be structured so that self organizing structures are the vehicles for change and novelty. It's not due to random chance. Now, why it is that Reality seems to be structured in this way is a fair arena to question whether or not teleology plays a role. This is in principle a metaphysical and ontological question rather than a scientific one.

No. What they want is a return to the white, male, and Christian dominated apartheid state that existed from the end of the Civil War up until the Civil Rights movement. What they basically want is for the ethno-state that existed during Jim Crowe to be restored, for LGBT people to be suppressed, and for (thier twisted version of) Christianity to become the State religion.

Well first off let's understand what fascism actually entails, so that the term is being used in a precise way rather than as a pejorative. Of course this isn't the only valid definition of fascism, just the one I'm choosing to use. Fascism is a symptom of failing democracy. It's a mass based political movement obsessed with victimization and decline in which nationalist militants coordinate with traditional forms of authority to dismantle the existing democracy, and to return to the former glory of a romanticized past. In multicultural societies like the United States, this romanticized past is always one where one's own ethno-cultutal group sat at the top of an entrenched dominator hierarchy. While a white supremacist aparthied state may have been consistent with societal sensibilities of the 1700 and 1800s, the rise of mass based political movements with a desire to return to that previous state of affairs well after marginalized groups have gained some semblance of equality is indicative of fascism.

No other way to frame this than as the drawn out collapse of US democracy.

For what's it's worth, I totally agree with you on that criticism. If you're interested in the topic, the philosopher Thomas Nagel write an entire book about just this topic that might be worth checking out.

Anyone who was already on board the MAGA train is foaming at the mouth at the prospect of getting their chance to further persecute what they consider to be their social inferiors. The question is whether enough otherwise disengaged and apathetic people will bother to put in the effort to resist the country's slide towards fascism by voting in the 2022 election. It's really on the Democratic Party and on social activists to keep people engaged until the November election. If you're in the States, you should be being very vocal about what's happening right now so that half a century's worth of Civil Rights being overturned doesn't have the opportunity to become a half remembered news item a few months from now. Don't let the country's slide towards fascism and theocracy become normalized. Call out what's happening right now loudly and repeatedly, and do what you can to encourage political engagement.

@SQAAD I wouldn't go so far as to say that evolution by natural selection is full of crap as you put it, but it is fair to question whether or not it's the whole story. Similiar to how Newtonian mechanics uncovered something important about how Reality behaves (even if its ontology later proved to be inadequate), the same can probably be said for evolution. Neither theory is 'wrong', so much as it is partial and incomplete. Calling either theory 'wrong' simply for being partial incomplete seems to be a case of bad epistemological standards since no theory can ever capture the fullness of Reality. The best it can do is uncover very partial aspects of Reality as they are disclosed to human interests. For evolution in particular, it does not and cannot answer the more fundamental question of why we seem to be living in a Reality that gives rise to self organizing systems and creative novelty. Evolution does inarguably tell us something important about how that happens, but it can't in principle give a satisfying answer as to why that is.

On the off-chance that there's someone here who has a good understanding of a notoriously difficult philosopher, any tips for productive ways on how to approach his work would be appreciated. My initial interest in this topic was sparked by Ken Wilber who references Whitehead at several points in his work, and by some of the parrellels between Process-Relational Philosophy and secular Buddhism as it's been articulated by people like Stephen Bachelor. After reading an introductory work on Whitehead which gives a basic overview on the subject of Process-Relational Philosophy, I became interested in learning more about how this philosophy is actually practiced. So I picked up 'Process and Reality', yet so far I'm finding his writing style to be mostly impenetrable so far. And this is coming from someone who finished Heidegger's 'Being and Time', and has read plenty of academic philosophy. Somehow Whithead is even more difficult, despite there not being the language barrier that exists from the translation of Heidegger into English

Interesting to note that this very point, about conceptual theories always being inadequate to describe the full depth of Reality, is actually integrated into Whitehead's philosophical system. Which is to say Whitehead fully aware of this point, and part of his motivation was to demonstrate how ignoring this leads to bad epistomology. In contrast, he contests that good philosophy both begins and ends in mystery and wonder .

Lots of offramps from religion that one can find in our society, since it's not hard to find the likes of a Sam Harris or a Neil deGrasse Tyson to hand hold you through the process. While the exit from unexamined scientific materialism is more akin to getting a pilot's license.

No other way to say it: what we're witnessing is US democracy in the process of collapsing. US institutions have proven themselves incapable of solving any of the underlying systemic problems which are fueling fascism, and the best it can do is play whackamole until reactionaries within the US finally succeed in their coup. Trying to keep Republicans out of power forever is unsustainable, and whenever Republicans do have control of the presidency and Congress you can be sure that they're going to do everything in their power to make it so that they'll never be threatened by another election again. I wouldn't blame my fellow Americans for seriously considering emigrating to another country, as things are poised to get really bad here over the next decade or two.