High level philosophy

[DLJ]

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So what is stopping me, scientifically speaking?
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I'm not sure that I can address the science but I might be able to point a stick at it.

Poetically speaking...

To be, or not to be, fuck that fucking question.

Almost every day, there's the thought: "Do I want to bother with today?"
Often the answer is "No" but the commitment to commitments keeps us ticking along. Yes, it would be a damn sight easier just to not wake up today.

To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis Nobler in the mind to suffer
The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune,
Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them: to die, to sleep
No more; and by a sleep, to say we end
The Heart-ache, and the thousand Natural shocks
That Flesh is heir to? 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished.

... oh, so, very devoutly, to be wished.

But for an atheist and one who declares "nihil" to the question "What is after life?", this bit is bullshit:

To die, to sleep,
To sleep, perchance to Dream; aye, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause.

That's not the rub. The 'legacy' is the rub. The impact of "not to be" on those who depend upon us ... that's what gives us pause.

We have made commitments to those we care for.

So anyway... here's a clue from the pages of the forum that is no more:



Does this apply only to love?  I doubt it.

My Chemistry lesson started before my children were officially diagnosed with various forms of Autism and my knowledge of Governance and Management practices kicked in.  Of particular use were the inter-relationship between four different processes.

I won't bore you with these but I haz flow-diagrams if you want them. These four are:
Events --> Incidents --> Problem --> Change.

So how did this apply?
Event: Son's patterns of behaviour changed.
Incident: Destruction of bedroom (plaster off the walls and everything!)
Problem: Something happened when a neighbour gave him a doughnut.  Lots of 'RCA' (root cause analysis), clueless medical profession, hours of internet searching to match symptoms with other parents' experiences.  
Change: No permanent solution found.

If there's no permanent solution, a temporary 'workaround' must be utilised.
This workaround turned out to be careful diet control.

The whole family changed their diet (no wheat, no dairy, no additives, preservatives or colourants). I mean, if you put the wrong type of fuel into a system, you're gonna get unexpected results (or expected dodgy results).  The outcome was manageable behaviour.

And for me, guess what? Feelings of desperate lethargy started to fade.
Some self diagnosis later (adding / subtracting food types) pin-pointed wheatiness as the culprit.

Voila! Master chemist!  Control of emotions through diet.

Some artists do their best stuff when high. I write my best poetry while doped on pizza.  

OK. So it's not 100% cos of environmental factors but it's a useful control mechanism. And, of course, the same cause (or causes) ain't applicable to everyone.

Back to the main thrust of the question... why choose "be" over "not to be"?  The "commitment to commitments" thing could be the post hoc rationale, of course... Epimetheus, "afterthought"... the press secretary or narrator finding a justification for deterministic actions.  

I suspect it is this...



Looks complicated?  It's not.  
I can't be or an idiot like me wouldn't be able to teach it and get all my students over the past 6 years successfully through their exams.  

The diagrams depict a high level structure for the Intelligent Design (yes, I really said that) of a Governance System.

What is Intelligent Design?  It's the reverse of Evolution.  

So to get from eukaryotes to "doing the right thing" and "doing things right" (which is the short-hand for what governance really is) i.e to get 'decision-making' from 'unthinking cells', all we need to do is look at a governance system and go bottom-up instead of top-down.

The diagrams depict top-down. We start by identifying the stakeholders and their various needs and use the system to produce value.

The top diagram tells us that we need to balance benefits, risks and resources (costs) and can't do much unless we have some prequisites (enablers) and can't take on the world (at least, not alone) so we have a limited scope (ourselves, our family, pets... our football team, our country, the environment...).

The middle diagram (which is an expansion of the bottom block of the top diagram) is where we might find the answer.

The intended use is for an organisation e.g. a company.

Owners and Stakeholders = There are internal and external stakeholders (workers, management, shareholders, unions, regulators, environmental lobby etc.)
Governing Body = Usually rich white males smoking cigars and taking fat salaries for doing very little.
Management = pouring over spreadsheets and probably drinking too much; creating policies to align to governing body's wishes and trying to keep the workers motivated / incentivised and relatively content (or down-trodden if you work for Amazon, Nike etc.)
Operations and Execution = Not paid to think; they are paid to do... Nuremberg defense notwithstanding.

Let's look at the middle diagram from first a zoom-out perspective, then an evolutionary perspective and then a zoom-in perspective.

Zooming out, example:
Owners and Stakeholders = "We the people"
Governing Body = The Supreme Court
Management = Congress
Operations and Execution = The Executive Branch.

[it doesn't take a genius (very stable genius or otherwise) to work out where the US has been going wrong:
- They've never quite achieved "we the people"
- Congress gives away too much power to the executive branch and
- The Supreme Court can't decide whether the Constitution the sacred text is like the Jewish one (the first word of god) or the Islamic one (the last word of god).]

Evolutionary perspective (in reverse):
Operations and Execution = Reptilian brain
Management = Mammalian brain
Governing Body = Neo-Cortex
Owners and Stakeholders = Genes and memes, the bacteria in our gut etc. etc.

< Insert your own joke about Trump and Reptilian brain, here >

Zooming in, example:
Owners and Stakeholders = Your family, your pets.
Governing Body = Your consciousness
Management = Your limbic and endocrine systems (dopamine and all that shit)
Operations and Execution = Your immune system and motor system.

As an aside... I've watched a few lectures by John Searle.  He often expresses exasperation that people can't see that it's obvious that when you want your arm to go up, your arm goes up.  He's talking shite.  Try it.  Focus all your attention on your arm and, with pure thought alone, try to raise your arm... it can't be done.  Our thoughts do not (at least, do not directly) cause action.

Our thoughts evaluate, direct and monitor (using the governing body's sets of indicators (like the dashboard in a car)) - bottom diagram - but it's our operating and executing systems (the workers) who get the job done.

Due to evolution / natural selection, the management team and the operations team form a survival machine.  They have no thoughts at all about closing down the company.  
Or in the zoomed-out version... surrendering the USA to the Russians (Mexicans, Canadians, Martians, whoever)? Unthinkable!

But the governing body (after evaluation of environmental conditions) might think that.  Close the company.  "Not to be".

If all the 'monitoring' information / management feedback (bottom diagram, red arrows pointing up) are signalling (perhaps, silently screaming at you) that all is well, that value is being produced, that benefits can still be achieved (if not immediately then in the near future i.e. there is hope) then the governing body (your consciousness) will adjust its benefits/risk/costs calculation accordingly. You will choose "to be".

Am I wrong? Consider whether the "not to be" thoughts happen when you are asleep, i.e. when consciousness is switched to 'stand-by' mode.

"Guilt" is a (post hoc) word we use to describe the bio-chemical sensation when Direct (of Evaluate, Direct and Monitor) is at odds with Evaluate and Monitor i.e. a directive to do the wrong thing rather than the right thing.

[of course, as discussed, 'wrong' and 'right' are goal/value (and values) oriented and relate to morality.  Thus morality can be called a 'value stream'.]

Phew!  

Too much?

Well, you did ask.

[robvalue]

Thank you! I appreciate the answer very much. I shall try and work my way through it!

I’m doing much better than I used to, even though I’m still always at the cliff edge. I don't spend all day fantasising about being dead like I did a few years ago.

[Angrboda]

Here’s the interesting part, in this morbid scenario. If I killed myself, there would be no guilt. As well as ending all my problems, that final barrier doesn’t exist. Yet I don’t do it. So clearly it’s not such a simple setup as it may seem. My next idea is that my behaviour has been conditioned to avoid doing "wrong" things for fear of the guilt, to the point where the deterrent itself is no longer actually relevant. Yet I can sit here and analyse myself, to see how I have (so to speak) indoctrinated myself into a certain mode of behaviour, and I can clearly see how the reasoning behind it does not apply here.

So what is stopping me, scientifically speaking? I suppose the power of the emotions of me knowing how much suffering my actions would cause, even though I wouldn’t be there to experience them or feel guilty about them, is strong enough to counter my freely available escape from the misery of my life. I guess it makes some sort of sense from an evolutionary point of view, too. Those who value others to such a degree that they will endure misery themselves will survive and get the opportunity to reproduce, whereas those who "opt out" lose all such rights.

There are several things beyond the practical aspect of the guilt that you would feel, most of them flowing from our evolved nature as social animals. The first of which is our impulse to follow the rules and meet the expectations of the group. We feel compelled to do things which would please the group because feeling compelled to do so, and finding doing so more pleasant than not, was a productive survival strategy. Second, we evolved an instinct for conformity with the group, and being moral is something the group considers important, and so we adopt it as something we consider important as well. Third, we have evolved certain intuitions and emotional reactions to encourage us to behave in certain ways independent of any ability to rationally arrive at the conclusion that we should do so. We feel that we should eat when we are hungry because our brains evoke feelings of desire to eat when we need to do so. In a similar way, nature has imbued us with a desire to act in line with our moral intuitions and to feel compelled to obey them regardless of whether we can see any rational benefit from doing so. And finally, our moral intuitions represent themselves to us as objective facts about the world, and we have evolved to act based upon what we believe to be objectively true about the world, regardless of whether we have any rational way of knowing that our moral intuitions are objectively true. This is similar to our constantly believing ourselves right in our conclusions simply because believing that we are right and our reasoning sound led to productive and survival enhancing behaviors. Likewise, believing that our moral intuitions reflect objective truths motivates us to act in accordance with them more strongly than if we didn't believe they were actual truths about the world, or doubted their veracity.

So from multiple angles we evolved emotional and mental responses which encourage us to behave in ways which we consider moral, independent of whether we can rationally derive some potential benefit from doing so, and indeed, often in spite of clearly foreseeable benefits we would obtain from not doing so. Like always believing our reasoning to be sound and correct, doing so has tangible benefits for us as a species. You may or may not feel that the survival of our species is a good in and of itself, but if you do, then you have a motive for behaving morally and obeying your moral inclinations independent of the possible consequences. So you may consider not feeling guilt to be a good worth seeking, but these other things are also goods worth seeking, and so compel you to behave morally both rationally and emotionally.

(As a side note, you not killing yourself definitely promotes the survival of the species by promoting the survival of one of its members, who himself contributes to the survival of the whole. So, again, if you feel the survival of the species is a good worth seeking, you have an independent reason for not killing yourself aside from specific personal or local consequences.)

[DLJ]

Thank you! I appreciate the answer very much. I shall try and work my way through it!
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No worries, take your time.

And while you read note, and appreciate that I didn't need to use fluffy fillysofical terms like 'objective', 'subjective', 'truth' or 'belief' at all.

The only term I haven't pinned down (or don't have an Information Technology (thinking tools) equivalent for) is 'thoughts'. I'm still working on that.

[The Grand Nudger]

They're implied and required for the description to be sensible and true. 

Try states for thoughts?

[Cod]

The only term I haven't pinned down (or don't have an Information Technology (thinking tools) equivalent for) is 'thoughts'.  I'm still working on that.

Just ask Cod....

Thoughts: Past events. Present necessity. Future maybe's.

You're welcome.

[DLJ]

They're implied and required for the description to be sensible and true. 

Try states for thoughts?

I'm not sure whether that was a response to my comment but I'll take it as such.

Yes, it seems reasonable to consider 'status accounting' and 'monitoring of changes of state' to be part of the equation. That would lead us to 'asset management' as a prerequisite to both security (confidentiality, integrity, availability of data) and 'risk management'.  The calculation for 'risk' is asset value x threat value x vulnerability.  

The only term I haven't pinned down (or don't have an Information Technology (thinking tools) equivalent for) is 'thoughts'.  I'm still working on that.

Just ask Cod....

Thoughts: Past events. Present necessity. Future maybe's.

You're welcome.

Yes.  This leads us to pattern recognition (therefore 'memory' is essential) and predictive modelling. This in turn implies 'simulator capabilities'... self, other and future.  

This then opens the door to discussions regarding concepts of time (circle of and arrow of) and furthermore the relative value that different people place on time states... living in the past (conservatives or Yorkshiremen), the present (hedonists), the future (fatalists or meliorists) and/or the after-life (weirdos).