Enduring Problems in Philosophy

Ren said:
Yes, I suppose that's right.

This is the enduring problems thread though, Pinny. Therefore we must identify a problem to discuss in Baudrillard's work. How about this: you say you 'agree' with him on things becoming less real. This is another way of saying that you think some of the propositions he makes are true. But what makes them true?

On the most common interpretation of truth, we would say Baudrillard says things that correspond to reality -- with how things really are, 'the facts', etc. But he himself says that the real is no longer real but hyperreal. Therefore he seems to lack a basis (i.e. reality) for saying true things. Therefore we seem to be in a position to neither agree or disagree with him.

How would you address this paradox?
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Me personally, I'd just reject the idea that everything is hyperreality and assert that the word hyperreality only has meaning if there's an underlying reality to compare it to. That reality can be influenced by hyperreality (i.e. when two people who don't really feel anything for each other anymore fake it because their image of a relationship involves it lasting forever and reflecting a genuine interest in the person they're with, etc.), but it's still the actual experience, which can differ from the fantastic image. And within the actual experience, you could have another layer of hyperreality in the feelings they display to the other, and the reality of their actual feelings which they keep to themselves except under stress.

Nutritional science and psych may have other examples of hyperreality, hah. Stuff is said with authority that turns out to be wrong a fair amount, as shown here: https://www.bmj.com/content/361/bmj.k2392 and here https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/why-is-nutrition-so-hard-to-study . The solution to the sort of problems this creates is (for yourself) to start by using the data to make decisions, but then adjusting based on what seems to be working for yourself based on how it's supposed to work for others, and on the data science end to always be aware of how data collection can be improved, and to continuously improve it.
 
Krypton said:
Me personally, I'd just reject the idea that everything is hyperreality and assert that the word hyperreality only has meaning if there's an underlying reality to compare it to. That reality can be influenced by hyperreality (i.e. when two people who don't really feel anything for each other anymore fake it because their image of a relationship involves it lasting forever and reflecting a genuine interest in the person they're with, etc.), but it's still the actual experience, which can differ from the fantastic image. And within the actual experience, you could have another layer of hyperreality in the feelings they display to the other, and the reality of their actual feelings which they keep to themselves except under stress.

Nutritional science and psych may have other examples of hyperreality, hah. Stuff is said with authority that turns out to be wrong a fair amount, as shown here: https://www.bmj.com/content/361/bmj.k2392 and here https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/why-is-nutrition-so-hard-to-study . The solution to the sort of problems this creates is (for yourself) to start by using the data to make decisions, but then adjusting based on what seems to be working for yourself based on how it's supposed to work for others, and on the data science end to always be aware of how data collection can be improved, and to continuously improve it.
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Sorry Wingsy, I forgot to get back to you.

I agree with everything you said, of course. I think the crux of the matter is indeed whether "hyperreality only has meanning if there's an underlying reality to compare it to".

What I should have done, though, is clarify the very specific sense in which Baudrillard uses the word hyperreal. It has a lot to do with the relationship between signifier and signified at the heart of a sign (e.g. a word). So for example, if I used the word 'brother' to refer to my brother, the word would be the sign that brings together the signifier (the marks and noises) and the signified (the living human who is my brother). This correspondence is the mark of the real. What Baudrillard argues, in a nutshell, is that in late capitalist societies the signs begin to float about autonomously, where they no longer actually perform the function of correlating signifier and signified. All they do is relate to other signs, which are equally emptied of their original function. (One can really see the influence of structuralism here).

This gives some context to some of his infamous quotes:
"The transition from signs that dissimulate something to signs that dissimulate nothing marks a decisive turning point."
"Illusion is no longer possible, because the real is no longer possible."
"Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real. But it is no longer a question of a false representation of reality but of concealing the fact that the real is no longer real."

Among his favorite examples are advertising and theme parks. Disneyland is an incredibly intricate systems of signs that don't actually refer to anything except themselves (and other, mass reproduced, theme parks). In essence he thinks reality has become more and more like a theme park, hence hyperreal.

My criticism of him would be that he takes a few really profound observations and makes a generality out of them. He even has a controversial essay called The Gulf War Didn't Happen.
 
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Ren said:
He even has a controversial essay called The Gulf War Didn't Happen.
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Was the Gulf War the first hyperreal war...
 
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I don't think it's a problem in philosophy, but rather an ongoing disagreement.

Free will

Free will gets defined into an impossible corner too often, I suspect for alterior unethical reasons.

Workable definitions of free will seem to land on something like: the ability to subjectively own one's decisions and actions as both intended and desirable. That is, subjective moral agency.

The above definition is entirely compatible with absolute determinism, and doesn't concern itself with questions of ultimate causality, but rather with whether a person identifies with their actions as either voluntary or involuntary. Since it is a subjective consideration, even a wrongly convicted inmate in severely controlled solitary confinement could exercise complete free will, by making their own decisions to live the best life they can within extremely limited options.

...

When people get into trying to define free will as impossibility, citing determinism and objective creative freedom, I suspect there's a cynical motivation to dismiss all responsibility, or identification with one's own actions. Perhaps there's even an implied denial of individual identity, reducing persons to localised areas of deterministic phenomena.

While determinism is vaguely interesting in a "welcome to philosophy" sort of way, it doesn't lend any weight to ethical or moral considerations, and is always a red herring. For example, if someone argues that since our actions are determined, no one should be held accountable or punished, a consistent reply would be: holding people accountable and punishing them is determined behaviour, and is equally exempt from being held to account.

Nevertheless, I always see people trotting out free will red herrings in an attempt to avoid responsibility (by denying agency), or to avoid obligation (denying true personhood).
 
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Just curious @Sometimes Yeah -

You refer to the above definition of free will. What is this definition?
 
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in a metaphysical sense there is not free will. the things that happen, happen through causality and there is nothing we can do to control it or avoid it. but within our consciousness we have the ability to freely interpret what we experience in a host of ways. there lies our freedom, but to access that kind of consciousness takes great effort.
 
Ren said:
I'm sure there are philosophical problems emerging from chaos theory. For example, how a system can be both deterministic and unpredictable.

If you are familiar with the theory, it would be great to hear your thoughts.
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Because determined doesn't mean linearly, sequential, or periodically determined but some kind of determined which is none of the aforementioned, so it's unpredictable, but is guaranteed to have some set of interrelating causes behind any manifestation, so is also determinstic. Also, a system doesn't have to be uniformly organized nor closed, so there can be systems that are both predictable and unpredictable patterns and characteristics, like many models of features of the natural world like weather. Also, when it comes to something like an ecosystem, they are sensitive to changes in organizational structures and there are many different local interactions among the members of an ecosystem in holarchical, hierarchical, heterarchical ways that it's impossible to predict just what a change in the composition of the ecosystem will lead to 1,2, 3, or 5 years down the line, so an ecosystem is both predictable and unpredictable. This is why the slippery slope argument isn't always fallacious, because take Yellow Stone national park, taking the wolves out nearly lead to a shift in the climate of yellow stone and the collapse of the entire ecosystem which wasn't something hunters, the government, and park rangers could have anticipated, because an ecosystem is a non-linear self-organizing system, a system that is both predictable and unpredictable.
 
Pin said:
@Ren

So I was thinking about the mind-body debate and in this sense I am a monist. I think that the mind and body are both the same physical process. Cartesian dualism makes no sense to me. However, I don't subscribe to phenomenalism (subjective idealism). I don't think that things that happen physically are reducible only to mental processes.

Am I not being clear enough? Am I a materialist or a physicalist?
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Well, to me the mind isn't reducible to the brain as humans being social tool wielding creatures, so our mind is in the material world and we share our mind with others of our social groups, but the brain, nervous system, and body are one integrate unit and thus the same thing such that there is no dualism, because even our more mysterious aspects of cognition are emergent features of the complex biology of a complex social and tool wielding thing. We don't understand what it means to be human from an empirical standpoint very well, so we flub our reasoning about what it means to exist from a philosophical standpoint.
 
A deterministic system will always evolve chaotic properties given enough complexity, because at a certain point two or more determined 'causes' will 'collide' or occur simultaneously, leading either to paradoxes or probabilistic mechanics.

For instance, imagine a closed room filled with rubber balls bouncing from the walls. The balls move deterministically (and for the purposes of this exercise have unlimited momentum). Now, we add two switches to the room which each activate a light - if one switch is pushed, the light glows blue, if the other, red. The balls can hit the switches to activate them. Given enough balls, a situation will soon arise where both switches are activated simultaneously - perfectly deterministic causal mechanisms can 'collide' in this way, giving rise to unexpected, 'chaotic', paradoxical or probabilistic outcomes, but it does not mean that the system itself is not deterministic; it's just very very complex.
 
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