Is the statement "Claims demand evidence" always true?

[emjay]

Yeah me too... almost tears but not quite... just very moving and involving... like being a direct witness at a pivotal moment in history. I have the feeling I'm going to be reading it many times in the future; I want to really understand the arguments in depth, and see what arguments I'd put against it in a thorough refutation. My main objection is that it seems to take too much for granted... essences for instance are things I've only ever really thought about in neuroscientific terms (because it is neurons that 'extract' the essences of things they represent... that's what they do... so all this talk of categorisation, classes etc seems to me to be only describing how the brain works rather than talking about anything objective), and absolutes of beauty, truth, goodness etc again are things that I see as essentially arbitrary perceptions in the mind... that might be different, or non existent, or replaced with something else in different animals. So I don't take any aspect of perception for granted even if it appears to be something that is objectively 'out there'. But by reading this stuff more thoroughly I'm hoping I'll get a better and more foundational understanding of all this causes, essences, absolutes stuff and see if it really is at odds with my understanding of the mind, or whether I'm just conflating the two and there's room for both interpretations to co-exist.

Anyway, thanks for your further reading list I'll try and read them in roughly the order you suggest. At the moment I've got a 'complete works' compendium of Plato's to go through... you can't really argue with 49p for all of that on Kindle... so that should keep me busy and what's cool is the one I've got has got a lot of analysis and commentary as well, so that'll be very helpful in getting the very most out of each one

That sounds like a wonderful plan.  I'm currently in the latter stages of a project that began about two years ago, which was an undertaking to read all of the major philosophers and their primary works beginning with Plato (well, actually, I began with all of the important Ancient Near-Eastern texts, at least those that were known by the 1970s or whenever the compilation was published; I know many more have since been discovered; and Homer -- my goodness, if you haven't read Homer!) and working my up towards the present-day.  Currently, I am about to start Kant once I finish this more recent philosophy book by Derek Parfit called Reasons and Persons (I've taken a number of detours along the way), and honestly, though I now understand many of the issues much better, talk of abstract objects like numbers or essences or substances or beings is just really intuitively difficult, I think, because we are such sensual creatures.  You'll find this not only to be a common theme in Plato's works, but in most of Western philosophy -- the tension between mind and body and the attempt to make sense of how it is that subjects perceive objects, and what these tell us about both, one or the other, or neither; in a word, what is "truth" and how can one understand it?  The 19th century mathematician/philosopher Alfred North Whitehead once famously said that, "The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato."  I'm not entirely sure I'd disagree.

Wow... it's amazing that you've got that far in two years... you must have read hundreds of books? It sounds a pretty cool project but as for me I'll take it one day at a time Nope, I haven't read any Homer except the excerpts in Phaedo... unfortunately all that came to mind when reading it was Homer Simpson hehe, so I'm going to need to read a lot to dislodge that image   I'll take all these other suggestions on board as well, and surely refer to them in the future, but for the moment just a day at a time. It does sound great though, because ultimately what else has philosophy to argue/ponder about than perception vs reality and how we fit into it all, so yeah, I'm really looking forward to going down a similar route to you  

Now, when you write that 

My main objection is that it seems to take too much for granted... essences for instance are things I've only ever really thought about in neuroscientific terms (because it is neurons that 'extract' the essences of things they represent... that's what they do... so all this talk of categorisation, classes etc seems to me to be only describing how the brain works rather than talking about anything objective), and absolutes of beauty, truth, goodness etc again are things that I see as essentially arbitrary perceptions in the mind... that might be different, or non existent, or replaced with something else in different animals

I have to inquire, if neurons weren't, in evolutionary terms, designed to track truth -- not for the sake of truth but simply because the more accurate the representation of the world, the easier can harms be avoided and the more can energy-saving advantages be procured -- then what explains our success as a species at overcoming nature and the ignorance she fosters upon us all, especially when this ignorance can be so dangerous?  Did humans invent the concepts or merely the terms by which to communicate them?  Did they invent the "categories" -- of space and time and relation and action -- and the internal consistency that allows us to map our signs/symbols and their theoretical relations onto a world?  And through it we have discovered ourselves to be this privileged species, living on a giant ball that orbits around a much larger ball of gas, all of which is in fact less than a spec of dust in the grand scheme of things!  It's all too odd to rule anything out, but it seems less odd to me that the world is as fundamentally abstract as it is physical, perhaps counterparts to the ancient notions of "form and "matter," rather than that the world is only a figment of my mind.  Can one really believe that the only difference in beauty between the Sistine Chapel and some ordinary six year old's finger painting is an arbitrary or irrational judgment formed by one's brain that the former is far more beautiful?

Just to clarify what I meant when I said beauty etc was arbitrary, I didn't mean the content that we judge to be more or less beautiful... i.e. the Sistine Chapel vs a child's finger painting... though that is as well, but rather the actual measure that we call beauty is arbitrary... there might be some animals that do not detect/represent what we call beauty. The way I see it is that any and every changeable thing in consciousness represents some changeable state or measure in the neural networks of the brain. The most obvious examples of that are our sensory qualia (colour, sound, pain etc) but I see no difference other than subtlety between them and any other emotion or sense we can feel, including the sense of the beauty of something... it's something that can come into and go out of awareness. So the only questions for me are what beauty is a measure of, why it's needed, and how is it achieved in the NNs. There is the arbitrary, subjective kind of beauty that is learned and/or conditioned and different in everyone and that's comparatively easier to theorise about than the innate, natural sense of beauty that seems to be pretty universal... of which your Sistine Chapel example is a good example. It's a mystery to me too. My best guess is that it's a measure of 'majesty', similar to the awe you feel when standing in front of a mountain. Would the Sistine Chapel be more beautiful if you were actually standing in it looking up, as opposed to looking at a picture of it? I think it would. I think that sense of awe that accompanies looking at something large and with multiple depths of focus (?parallax(es)) is a kind of inherent measure of beauty that we have... a kind of mixture of fear and wonder. But that's just a guess... there's probably many types of beauty, innate or not, and composite or not (i.e. mixtures of different emotions, like awe may be).

I won't put words into your mouth but it may be the case that you and I have a fundamentally different way of viewing the world, in that you may be looking 'out there' for objective beauty etc, but to me technically there is no 'out there' because everything out there must first be translated, through neural signals, into a model 'in here' and only that is perceived... and moreover, everything we perceive about anything [implicitly; in the model]... every differentiated and changeable state in consciousness... is part of the same system and signifies something in the state of that system. So at that fundamental level, I can't see beauty or any other emotion/sense/perception as anything other that a measurement of some state of the system. So that's why I tend to have difficulty with these 'objective' discussions, and don't usually partake.

But as I said, now I actually do want to learn more about causes, essences, and absolutes from the philosophical point of view, and see whether I'm conflating things or whether it is possible to view the world through both perspectives. And your questions here seem to hint at the essence of that problem; on the one hand we have brains that have evolved to model the world and present us with both irrational (emotional, generalising, bias etc) and rational (sequential, logical) modes of thinking but on the other hand we have developed systems of thought that implement and expand on those same lessons that the brain learned long ago So in that sense, we, the system have kind of overtaken evolution, as a result of self-awareness and the modes of thinking at our disposal, but still heading in the same direction (i.e. the system of formal logic, and the ability to write and talk about it, expands our logical our logical abilities exponentially compared to if it had to be done entirely in the mind)... towards truth. That could imply one of two things; that objectively truth is something that both we and evolution aim for for whatever reason or that we have only modelled and expanded upon what we know from our own mental experience... just as we are incapable of and have no desire to create art for senses that we do not possess, in which case our pursuit of truth through formal logic would just be indicative of the expansion of our own mode of thought into the outside world and the exponential benefits that provides for learning both in terms of magnitude and scope (as in knowledge shared, and passed down through the ages through writing etc)... but not necessarily indicative of that 'truth' being anything other than a certain arbitrary nature of the brain being emulated. I'm not saying I don't think truth exists, but I'm just illustrating some possibilities.

But with regard to our irrational nature, that's a different matter altogether. I think in general that produces more bad in the world than good. In practice in our emotional minds it's usually not a good thing, when it's either negative or positive (for instance Buddhism sees this... that there is suffering in both positive and negative irrational thought... as did Socrates but in a different way), but it seems that reason can tame even this and that's what's particularly interesting about this causes, essences, absolutes stuff... that it appears to be modelling and expanding upon our irrational mode of thinking... i.e. generalisation/categorisation. It is the emotional/irrational part of our mind that generalises and categorises; stereotypes... which cause so much pain in the world when combined with negative emotion/bias... are one type of 'essence' that NNs extract... the common features of a thing after repeated presentations of different examples of that thing to the network. So in my thinking, the essence of say a chair would simply be the stereotype of a chair, and that would be in essence a statistical summary (though neurally much more involved than that, and not as clear cut) over all examples of chairs I've ever seen. And the question of what makes the perfect, or absolute, chair is related to this; that far from there being an objective perfect chair, it would be, in my opinion, different for every individual and based on their individual representations of chairs... that there is no absolute chair and it's all subjective based on prior experience. The perfect chair for an individual would be related to how closely the incoming pattern matches some existing pattern, though I don't know what... whether it would be the stereotype or some previous instance from the set, or both... but in whatever way it would be related to the comparison of the incoming with an existing representation. Too perfect and intuition will tell you it's not right... because you've never actually seen an instance that is perfect... you feel 'it's too good to be true'; if you represent objects ABCDE + CDEFG then the stereotype will probably come out as CDE but if you then present ABCDEFG I reckon you'd get that feeling of 'too perfect' because the presence of a stereotype doesn't dissolve the individual instances... they're still there for comparison and retrieval, they just require more constraints to activate. So the too perfect case may be a measure of the disharmony in the network of trying to activate both of those at the same time, maybe... just thought of that. So anyway, where was I? This is why I've always had trouble thinking in terms of philosophical absolutes and essences... because I view those feelings and their causes from a very different perspective. But now we're onto a different issue... the issue of us modelling and expanding on these processes through reason. I have to say, as much fun as it is trying to define things and find their essence with logic, I think it's ultimately a fool's errand that will always be left wanting... because it is trying to model with reason and logic a system that is inherently fuzzy logic in nature. That's not to say it's not worth doing and that there aren't plenty of useful examples of systems of generalisation/categorisation... such as the philosophical stuff we're talking about, the notion of tags in websites etc for categorising things into more than one category at a time, just as the brain does, classes in programming etc. It's good that reason has tamed and capitalised on those processes but all I'm saying is that the true essence can only be found by the fuzzy systems that find it... that logic is too discrete and will always have boundary problems.

Anyway, I think that's enough for today. Did that answer anything that you were asking?  

[Chas]

I have to inquire, if neurons weren't, in evolutionary terms, designed to track truth

Neurons do no such thing. Nor do brains. Minds do that sort of thing.

-- not for the sake of truth but simply because the more accurate the representation of the world, the easier can harms be avoided and the more can energy-saving advantages be procured -- then what explains our success as a species at overcoming nature and the ignorance she fosters upon us all, especially when this ignorance can be so dangerous?  

What ignorance is that? And I think the word you want is 'foists' not 'fosters'.

Did humans invent the concepts or merely the terms by which to communicate them?  

Of course humans invented the concepts. Those concepts are part of our modeling reality; the underlying reality that exists irrespective of the existence of minds.

Did they invent the "categories" -- of space and time and relation and action -- and the internal consistency that allows us to map our signs/symbols and their theoretical relations onto a world?  

See above.

And through it we have discovered ourselves to be this privileged species, living on a giant ball that orbits around a much larger ball of gas, all of which is in fact less than a spec of dust in the grand scheme of things!  It's all too odd to rule anything out, but it seems less odd to me that the world is as fundamentally abstract as it is physical, perhaps counterparts to the ancient notions of "form and "matter," rather than that the world is only a figment of my mind.  Can one really believe that the only difference in beauty between the Sistine Chapel and some ordinary six year old's finger painting is an arbitrary or irrational judgment formed by one's brain that the former is far more beautiful?

We can objectively determine that the paintings in the Sistine Chapel are statistically less likely that a child's finger painting.
We can objectively determine that those paintings communicate more effectively than a child's finger painting.
We can value them because they are rare and unlikely. We can measure that their emotional effects are greater than those of a child's finger painting.
None of that is arbitrary or irrational.

[Mudhammam]

Just to clarify what I meant when I said beauty etc was arbitrary, I didn't mean the content that we judge to be more or less beautiful... i.e. the Sistine Chapel vs a child's finger painting... though that is as well, but rather the actual measure that we call beauty is arbitrary... there might be some animals that do not detect/represent what we call beauty. The way I see it is that any and every changeable thing in consciousness represents some changeable state or measure in the neural networks of the brain. The most obvious examples of that are our sensory qualia (colour, sound, pain etc) but I see no difference other than subtlety between them and any other emotion or sense we can feel, including the sense of the beauty of something... it's something that can come into and go out of awareness. So the only questions for me are what beauty is a measure of, why it's needed, and how is it achieved in the NNs. There is the arbitrary, subjective kind of beauty that is learned and/or conditioned and different in everyone and that's comparatively easier to theorise about than the innate, natural sense of beauty that seems to be pretty universal... of which your Sistine Chapel example is a good example. It's a mystery to me too. My best guess is that it's a measure of 'majesty', similar to the awe you feel when standing in front of a mountain. Would the Sistine Chapel be more beautiful if you were actually standing in it looking up, as opposed to looking at a picture of it? I think it would. I think that sense of awe that accompanies looking at something large and with multiple depths of focus (?parallax(es)) is a kind of inherent measure of beauty that we have... a kind of mixture of fear and wonder. But that's just a guess... there's probably many types of beauty, innate or not, and composite or not (i.e. mixtures of different emotions, like awe may be).

I think you put that well.  I don't mean to discredit the subjective and relative nature of experience, but only to suggest that it matters less than objective standards (of truth, beauty, justice, etc.); that our judgments are oftentimes affected by both, and that good philosophy is by and large an exercise in learning how to better discriminate between the two.

I won't put words into your mouth but it may be the case that you and I have a fundamentally different way of viewing the world, in that you may be looking 'out there' for objective beauty etc, but to me technically there is no 'out there' because everything out there must first be translated, through neural signals, into a model 'in here' and only that is perceived... and moreover, everything we perceive about anything [implicitly; in the model]... every differentiated and changeable state in consciousness... is part of the same system and signifies something in the state of that system. So at that fundamental level, I can't see beauty or any other emotion/sense/perception as anything other that a measurement of some state of the system. So that's why I tend to have difficulty with these 'objective' discussions, and don't usually partake.

I agree that epistemologically we can only speak of knowledge about the world "out there" as it has been modeled by neural networks and the patterns that have developed "in here"; but in terms of the ontology of "being" -- both of the microcosm ("in here") and of the macrocosm ("out there") -- I think we are justified in our projects to understand both, and that epistemology is fundamentally related to the ontology of the world "out there" in ways that make such attempts possible.  Whether or not ontology includes abstract objects which can only be conceived by minds but are every bit as real as -- if not more than -- the interactions between bodies, which seem to make the existence of abstract objects knowable by creatures such as ourselves, is, in my view, an open question.  But I should distinguish one thing:  Even if abstract objects or "essences" are in some sense distinct from bodies, it does not necessarily mean that they are separately existing entities.  The physical and the abstract may or may not be two properties of some further substratum that is ultimately unknowable.

That could imply one of two things; that objectively truth is something that both we and evolution aim for for whatever reason or that we have only modelled and expanded upon what we know from our own mental experience... just as we are incapable of and have no desire to create art for senses that we do not possess, in which case our pursuit of truth through formal logic would just be indicative of the expansion of our own mode of thought into the outside world and the exponential benefits that provides for learning both in terms of magnitude and scope (as in knowledge shared, and passed down through the ages through writing etc)... but not necessarily indicative of that 'truth' being anything other than a certain arbitrary nature of the brain being emulated. I'm not saying I don't think truth exists, but I'm just illustrating some possibilities.

I think it may be arbitrary to the extent that we as a species could have evolved brains which enjoyed the taste of plastic, or hands that boasted of seven fingers instead of five, but I don't think it is arbitrary that we have the intuitive understanding that 1+1=2 or that torturing a child to derive sadistic pleasure is morally wrong.  These are facts about ourselves as subjects of experiences, yes, but unlike mental events that merely express or reveal our personal preferences, these latter are, as you put it, "pretty universal."  Does an appeal to our evolutionary history undermine an interpretation of these universal traits that defines them to be features of and in the world as well as minds, that minds have not invented but discovered?  I don't think so, at least as long as we want to avoid a slide into extreme subjectivism or relativism, positions which I don't find intellectually defensible.  But perhaps I'm rushing to judgment and have overlooked a more moderate interpretation that retains the objectivity of rational determinations, whether these be about truth, morality, or aesthetically pleasing experiences, without placing this objectivity "out there"... To put it a different way, if we were to delineate three views, call them A, B, and C, as...

A. "Man is the measure of all things."
B. "God is the measure of all things."
C. "The Good (the True, The Just, etc.) is the measure of all things."

...I would go with C.  But admittedly, I haven't the slightest clue what the Good or the True is outside of my experience of it , that is, my experience of making different judgments about the world, and believing that at least some of these are true (or good, or beautiful, etc.) regardless of my having been previously unaware of them.  Maybe it is "no more" than something like an overarching "principle of rationality."  But what is said principle, and if it is not distinct from brain activity, at least we have to acknowledge that we have, in some capacity, discovered(?) such principles to be responsible for that very brain activity, whether its math or physics or the relations that these bear to one another.  What I find most significant is that we have accomplished this using those principles (of, and/or made possible by, rationality).  It's almost like one big circle jerk.

So in my thinking, the essence of say a chair would simply be the stereotype of a chair, and that would be in essence a statistical summary (though neurally much more involved than that, and not as clear cut) over all examples of chairs I've ever seen. And the question of what makes the perfect, or absolute, chair is related to this; that far from there being an objective perfect chair, it would be, in my opinion, different for every individual and based on their individual representations of chairs... that there is no absolute chair and it's all subjective based on prior experience.

But this information that occasions the modeling of different objects in the mind, interpreting some of these objects to be "partakers in chair-ness," still involves the "problem of universals," that something "out there" -- as represented by these various sensations -- shares these common properties which can be categorized by a machine that is as much a part of the whole "out there"; that is, it begs the question as to whether these relations exist in (a) the subject, (b) the object, or © both -- or (d) only in the resulting interactions between them.  So long as we discard (a), I think we have grounds for discussing "objective" truths, values, etc.

I have to say, as much fun as it is trying to define things and find their essence with logic, I think it's ultimately a fool's errand that will always be left wanting... because it is trying to model with reason and logic a system that is inherently fuzzy logic in nature. That's not to say it's not worth doing and that there aren't plenty of useful examples of systems of generalisation/categorisation... such as the philosophical stuff we're talking about, the notion of tags in websites etc for categorising things into more than one category at a time, just as the brain does, classes in programming etc. It's good that reason has tamed and capitalised on those processes but all I'm saying is that the true essence can only be found by the fuzzy systems that find it... that logic is too discrete and will always have boundary problems.

That may be true, in part, but it is only logic that can get us to the point of distrusting logic.  I find that not only profound but very reassuring (especially as someone who is studying to be a philosopher by trade).  

---

Neurons do no such thing.  Nor do brains.  Minds do that sort of thing.  

Sure, but I am under the working assumption that neurons are related to minds in such a way that, to put it crudely, you might call them the "atoms of minds."

Of course humans invented the concepts.  Those concepts are part of our modeling reality; the underlying reality that exists irrespective of the existence of minds.

How could we invent all of said concepts if they are "part of our modeling... [of] the underlying reality"? We certainly didn't invent the underlying reality or the manner in which it gets modeled... and isn't this manner equivalent to what our most fundamental concepts basically represent? It doesn't sound quite right to claim that we invented the concept of "space" in the sense that one would (rightly) say we invented the concept of "sinners in the hands of an angry god."

We can objectively determine that the paintings in the Sistine Chapel are statistically less likely that a child's finger painting.  
We can objectively determine that those paintings communicate more effectively than a child's finger painting.
We can value them because they are rare and unlikely.  We can measure that their emotional effects are greater than those of a child's finger painting.
None of that is arbitrary or irrational.

I agree with this. But further, I don't see that it is in tension with the further possibilities about objective standards of truth or beauty, or our objective (i.e. rational) judgments about them, that I have suggested. If anything, it only defines those various aspects that may or may not be intrinsic to such standards or judgments.

[emjay]

Just to clarify what I meant when I said beauty etc was arbitrary, I didn't mean the content that we judge to be more or less beautiful... i.e. the Sistine Chapel vs a child's finger painting... though that is as well, but rather the actual measure that we call beauty is arbitrary... there might be some animals that do not detect/represent what we call beauty. The way I see it is that any and every changeable thing in consciousness represents some changeable state or measure in the neural networks of the brain. The most obvious examples of that are our sensory qualia (colour, sound, pain etc) but I see no difference other than subtlety between them and any other emotion or sense we can feel, including the sense of the beauty of something... it's something that can come into and go out of awareness. So the only questions for me are what beauty is a measure of, why it's needed, and how is it achieved in the NNs. There is the arbitrary, subjective kind of beauty that is learned and/or conditioned and different in everyone and that's comparatively easier to theorise about than the innate, natural sense of beauty that seems to be pretty universal... of which your Sistine Chapel example is a good example. It's a mystery to me too. My best guess is that it's a measure of 'majesty', similar to the awe you feel when standing in front of a mountain. Would the Sistine Chapel be more beautiful if you were actually standing in it looking up, as opposed to looking at a picture of it? I think it would. I think that sense of awe that accompanies looking at something large and with multiple depths of focus (?parallax(es)) is a kind of inherent measure of beauty that we have... a kind of mixture of fear and wonder. But that's just a guess... there's probably many types of beauty, innate or not, and composite or not (i.e. mixtures of different emotions, like awe may be).

I think you put that well.  I don't mean to discredit the subjective and relative nature of experience, but only to suggest that it matters less than objective standards (of truth, beauty, justice, etc.); that our judgments are oftentimes affected by both, and that good philosophy is by and large an exercise in learning how to better discriminate between the two.

Fair enough. I'll get to my issues with objective standards further down, but no disagreement that our judgements are affected by both the subjective and what may or may not be objective standards, but what we treat and/or perceive as such.

I won't put words into your mouth but it may be the case that you and I have a fundamentally different way of viewing the world, in that you may be looking 'out there' for objective beauty etc, but to me technically there is no 'out there' because everything out there must first be translated, through neural signals, into a model 'in here' and only that is perceived... and moreover, everything we perceive about anything [implicitly; in the model]... every differentiated and changeable state in consciousness... is part of the same system and signifies something in the state of that system. So at that fundamental level, I can't see beauty or any other emotion/sense/perception as anything other that a measurement of some state of the system. So that's why I tend to have difficulty with these 'objective' discussions, and don't usually partake.

I agree that epistemologically we can only speak of knowledge about the world "out there" as it has been modeled by neural networks and the patterns that have developed "in here"; but in terms of the ontology of "being" -- both of the microcosm ("in here") and of the macrocosm ("out there") -- I think we are justified in our projects to understand both, and that epistemology is fundamentally related to the ontology of the world "out there" in ways that make such attempts possible.  Whether or not ontology includes abstract objects which can only be conceived by minds but are every bit as real as -- if not more than -- the interactions between bodies, which seem to make the existence of abstract objects knowable by creatures such as ourselves, is, in my view, an open question.  But I should distinguish one thing:  Even if abstract objects or "essences" are in some sense distinct from bodies, it does not necessarily mean that they are separately existing entities.  The physical and the abstract may or may not be two properties of some further substratum that is ultimately unknowable.

Fair enough on the first sentence, but I admit I'm ignorant on the meaning of the rest... what you mean by abstract objects distinct from bodies. But that'll come in time as I read your recommended reading.

That could imply one of two things; that objectively truth is something that both we and evolution aim for for whatever reason or that we have only modelled and expanded upon what we know from our own mental experience... just as we are incapable of and have no desire to create art for senses that we do not possess, in which case our pursuit of truth through formal logic would just be indicative of the expansion of our own mode of thought into the outside world and the exponential benefits that provides for learning both in terms of magnitude and scope (as in knowledge shared, and passed down through the ages through writing etc)... but not necessarily indicative of that 'truth' being anything other than a certain arbitrary nature of the brain being emulated. I'm not saying I don't think truth exists, but I'm just illustrating some possibilities.

I think it may be arbitrary to the extent that we as a species could have evolved brains which enjoyed the taste of plastic, or hands that boasted of seven fingers instead of five, but I don't think it is arbitrary that we have the intuitive understanding that 1+1=2 or that torturing a child to derive sadistic pleasure is morally wrong.  These are facts about ourselves as subjects of experiences, yes, but unlike mental events that merely express or reveal our personal preferences, these latter are, as you put it, "pretty universal."  Does an appeal to our evolutionary history undermine an interpretation of these universal traits that defines them to be features of and in the world as well as minds, that minds have not invented but discovered?  I don't think so, at least as long as we want to avoid a slide into extreme subjectivism or relativism, positions which I don't find intellectually defensible.  But perhaps I'm rushing to judgment and have overlooked a more moderate interpretation that retains the objectivity of rational determinations, whether these be about truth, morality, or aesthetically pleasing experiences, without placing this objectivity "out there"... To put it a different way, if we were to delineate three views, call them A, B, and C, as...

A. "Man is the measure of all things."
B. "God is the measure of all things."
C. "The Good (the True, The Just, etc.) is the measure of all things."

...I would go with C.  But admittedly, I haven't the slightest clue what the Good or the True is outside of my experience of it , that is, my experience of making different judgments about the world, and believing that at least some of these are true (or good, or beautiful, etc.) regardless of my having been previously unaware of them.  Maybe it is "no more" than something like an overarching "principle of rationality."  But what is said principle, and if it is not distinct from brain activity, at least we have to acknowledge that we have, in some capacity, discovered(?) such principles to be responsible for that very brain activity, whether its math or physics or the relations that these bear to one another.  What I find most significant is that we have accomplished this using those principles (of, and/or made possible by, rationality).  It's almost like one big circle jerk.

Again, what I mean by arbitrary in this case is probably a rare view, but it just comes from my mechanistic/reductionistic view of the mind, psychology, and neuroscience. What I mean is that it's arbitrary in the sense that in my view, each changeable aspect of consciousness represents a changeable state of the underlying system, and therefore as a whole a conscious system can be described as an arbitrary collection of states... and a different system (say another type of animal when referring to biological systems) represents a different collection of states. So from my perspective, when defined/viewed like that, there's nothing special about any particular state... they come into awareness, they change, they leave awareness... regardless of what phenomenological form they take. Perhaps to put it in your terms, that's the core essence of a conscious perception, regardless of type? And moreover, the system represented by states includes the 'observer'... what has the illusion of being the homunculous... the self, is a state like any other in my view. Therefore there is no distinction between the observer and the observed, the content and the container, the measured and the measurement... all are represented states that come, change, and go.

Granted when two similar systems are compared, such as from the same species of animal, there may be some shared states... which would likely be what we would call the innate aspects of the animal... those states that represent the [evolutionary] 'design' of the system... from above paragraph they would most likely be on the 'container' side of the equation... the actual visual field and its form etc... along with any innate drives for the animal. In this view I would class beauty as one of those shared innate states... the measurement itself... the ruler as it were. And likewise there would be some states that are less shared and more unique/subjective... generally on the content side of the equation. It may turn out to be the case that all sentient life shares some of these states at a core level, depending on how you define life, for instance if you say that all life, at its core, seeks what it wants/needs to survive and seeks to avoid what is dangerous to that survival, then arguably all life would have states representing attraction and aversion, of which beauty could be an example.

Moving on. On the question of truth, I think the explanation that makes the most sense to me is that evolution drives towards truth simply out of necessity... only those creatures with an accurate (i.e. true) model of the world (in the sphere in which they inhabit, and the constraints of that environment) will prosper. And then we, using the gifts that evolution has given us (the ability to reason), have emulated and exponentially expanded upon those processes by taking them out of our heads into formal systems of thought that can be shared and built upon through language and writing etc. So in that sense I can agree that there is some sort of objective truth that both we and evolution drive towards. But I'm still not comfortable really calling it that until I understand what you mean by objective truth. But close enough for the time being.

But regarding the other things... morality, beauty etc, the problem I see with how you seem to be describing it, is that any 'objective standard' seems to me to at the very least to presume the existence of sentient life capable of perceiving it, and more specifically, of a particular form of life to which it is tailored. In other words, if moral truths are absolute and unchanging, just waiting out there to be discovered, what is their scope? To what do they apply? Would a hypothetical alien form of life, completely different from human or any other life on earth, benefit from it for instance? Or would there be another, different one for them? I admit I am very confused by this and may be fundamentally misunderstanding what you mean by objective standards, but those are the questions that come to mind as my knowledge stands. It just seems to imply that if objective truths have to be tailored to a particular audience... human morality for humans, bee morality for bees etc, then it just just makes it arbitrary again. From my current position I'd simply say that all inherent morality, beauty etc is just innate... part of our evolutionary design... shared and inherited states of the system. Are you for instance suggesting that there is a web of objective truths out there, comprised of essences and what have you, and therefore that a moral truth applies to some class in that framework?

So of your three choices as it stands I would have to choose A, but I suppose I would replace 'man' with 'system' such that 'the system is the measure of all things, whatever that system may be.' As I said, I am willing and interested to explore your perspective and that of Plato etc (if different), but I don't think I'm in the position to do so yet without further reading... I don't think I even understand the basics... it's clearly completely alien to my way of thinking. One thing I will say though is this; we're only in a position to have this discussion because of 'the gift of reason' that evolution has furnished us with... no other animal has intellectually conquered the world and that's because they don't have the capacity to reason. So we can only probe the depths of truth, objective or not, through the use of tools that evolution has already discovered/invented for us. So yes, I do see what you mean by the circle jerk... like we're caught in some huge cosmic dance where the system and its 'designer' (ie evolution) have the same goals (ie the pursuit of truth), and both feed off and expand upon what the other has learned in a sort of feedback loop.

So in my thinking, the essence of say a chair would simply be the stereotype of a chair, and that would be in essence a statistical summary (though neurally much more involved than that, and not as clear cut) over all examples of chairs I've ever seen. And the question of what makes the perfect, or absolute, chair is related to this; that far from there being an objective perfect chair, it would be, in my opinion, different for every individual and based on their individual representations of chairs... that there is no absolute chair and it's all subjective based on prior experience.

But this information that occasions the modeling of different objects in the mind, interpreting some of these objects to be "partakers in chair-ness," still involves the "problem of universals," that something "out there" -- as represented by these various sensations -- shares these common properties which can be categorized by a machine that is as much a part of the whole "out there"; that is, it begs the question as to whether these relations exist in (a) the subject, (b) the object, or © both -- or (d) only in the resulting interactions between them.  So long as we discard (a), I think we have grounds for discussing "objective" truths, values, etc.

Again there seems to me to be a scope problem with this... a chair is only a chair because we perceive and use it as such... or that's how I see it at least. It's something we've fashioned out of materials for our use, but ultimately it's just an arrangement of materials. So I don't see how you can rule out (a), but I guess even without knowing what it's for, other animals could form a representation of it, and identify the same stereotypical essence of it. But to the extent that its essence includes its purpose... if it does... then it might only make sense as a chair, to its designers/users... humans.

I have to say, as much fun as it is trying to define things and find their essence with logic, I think it's ultimately a fool's errand that will always be left wanting... because it is trying to model with reason and logic a system that is inherently fuzzy logic in nature. That's not to say it's not worth doing and that there aren't plenty of useful examples of systems of generalisation/categorisation... such as the philosophical stuff we're talking about, the notion of tags in websites etc for categorising things into more than one category at a time, just as the brain does, classes in programming etc. It's good that reason has tamed and capitalised on those processes but all I'm saying is that the true essence can only be found by the fuzzy systems that find it... that logic is too discrete and will always have boundary problems.

That may be true, in part, but it is only logic that can get us to the point of distrusting logic.  I find that not only profound but very reassuring (especially as someone who is studying to be a philosopher by trade).  

Fair enough... I concede that point. If anything I've learned from this post is that logic... reason... is key to it all, and as I said we now build upon our innate logical abilities exponentially by taking them out of the mind, so the sky's the limit in what can be achieved with it

[Mudhammam]

I'm ignorant on the meaning of the rest... what you mean by abstract objects distinct from bodies.

By abstract "objects" I mean entities like persons or selves, or if those are too controversial, then numbers or the relations between them; or relations as find expression in physical regularities or statistical laws; perhaps even such principles as those to which one might make appeal when forming a theory of rationality or morality, things of that sort.  Do metaphysical entities need to be conceived as A. merely the products of a linguistic system of thought that attempts to understand itself and reality as a cohesive whole or as B. weird platonic "essences" that exist in the sense that Cartesian Egos are often thought to "exist," within spacetime but in a nonspatial or nontemporal manner? I'm confident that these aren't the only alternatives.  But what the correct answer is, I don't know.

Again, what I mean by arbitrary in this case is probably a rare view, but it just comes from my mechanistic/reductionistic view of the mind, psychology, and neuroscience. What I mean is that it's arbitrary in the sense that in my view, each changeable aspect of consciousness represents a changeable state of the underlying system, and therefore as a whole a conscious system can be described as an arbitrary collection of states... and a different system (say another type of animal when referring to biological systems) represents a different collection of states. So from my perspective, when defined/viewed like that, there's nothing special about any particular state... they come into awareness, they change, they leave awareness... regardless of what phenomenological form they take. Perhaps to put it in your terms, that's the core essence of a conscious perception, regardless of type?

(bold mine)
I would like to concede what you say here, because I too find the mechanistic/reductionistic view most fruitful in its attempt to dig further down into our conceptual understanding of ourselves and the world, but to answer -- and add a bit -- to your suggestion, sure, we could call such a state "the core essence of a conscious perception"; however, it still seems to leave unresolved whether the types of abstract objects (or metaphysical entities--whatever we wish to call them--including numbers, relations, principles, etc.) that these changeable states involve are 1. part of the underlying reality or 2. simply part of the resulting conscious systems.  Either way, that these seem to possess rational and ethical "essences" or properties or what have you, which make discussions of underlying realities or moral duties intelligible, still seems fundamentally mysterious as it relates to physical beings.

And moreover, the system represented by states includes the 'observer'... what has the illusion of being the homunculous... the self, is a state like any other in my view. Therefore there is no distinction between the observer and the observed, the content and the container, the measured and the measurement... all are represented states that come, change, and go.

I don't know if I would say that there is no distinction, in so far as my observation of an object may be different from some other being for reasons that are grounded in the state of "myself" as an observer.  If we want to say that these differences are explained by different states, we still have to agree, it seems to me anyway, that logic and mathematics and even the empirical sciences suggest that the underlying reality which these different states represent coheres by a set of non-arbitrary rules.  Furthermore, it is only because these rules are in a framework that is basically intelligible that the rational facilities which our conscious states involve can establish "truths" (whether absolute or provisional), and then communicate these truths with one another using arbitrary expressions of speech.  My question is not even so much "What is true?" but rather the one that Pontius Pilate is alleged to have asked Christ in the Gospels: "What is truth?"

Granted when two similar systems are compared, such as from the same species of animal, there may be some shared states... which would likely be what we would call the innate aspects of the animal... those states that represent the [evolutionary] 'design' of the system... from above paragraph they would most likely be on the 'container' side of the equation... the actual visual field and its form etc... along with any innate drives for the animal. In this view I would class beauty as one of those shared innate states... the measurement itself... the ruler as it were. And likewise there would be some states that are less shared and more unique/subjective... generally on the content side of the equation. It may turn out to be the case that all sentient life shares some of these states at a core level, depending on how you define life, for instance if you say that all life, at its core, seeks what it wants/needs to survive and seeks to avoid what is dangerous to that survival, then arguably all life would have states representing attraction and aversion, of which beauty could be an example.

(bold mine)
So, are you saying that "beauty", on this view, is objective or subjective? (Or is that a distinction which collapses given your prior remarks?) That is, to the extent that certain cognitive systems, for evolutionary purposes, come to "share innate states" which they then identify as beautiful.  Is beauty intrinsic to the conscious system, i.e. to the changeable states of the underlying reality that these represent (and is this ideal of beauty really changeable? Is this always so?)?  Would you also say that truth, expressed in the following statements, "One plus one is always equivalent to two", or "Molesting children is always wrong even if it fulfills my greatest desires", is nothing but a description of particular "shared innate states" that happen to intelligibly express certain intuitions regarding the correctness of such claims?  But what does "correctness" even mean outside the context of these innate states?  What does it mean for something to be "immoral" on this view?

And then we, using the gifts that evolution has given us (the ability to reason), have emulated and exponentially expanded upon those processes by taking them out of our heads into formal systems of thought that can be shared and built upon through language and writing etc. So in that sense I can agree that there is some sort of objective truth that both we and evolution drive towards. But I'm still not comfortable really calling it that until I understand what you mean by objective truth. But close enough for the time being.

You and me both.  I don't have trouble calling it objective truth but I am equally reluctant to definitively say whatever it is that formal systems of thought are, not only supposed to be illuminating, but themselves supposed to be (in terms of A or B or some other alternative, as I suggested above).  To what degree are ideals imaginary?  How do they correlate to the underlying reality that has brought forth conscious systems, which contemplate these ideals, and are even driven towards them (in ways that are often contrary to the tendencies of natural selection)?

But regarding the other things... morality, beauty etc, the problem I see with how you seem to be describing it, is that any 'objective standard' seems to me to at the very least to presume the existence of sentient life capable of perceiving it, and more specifically, of a particular form of life to which it is tailored. In other words, if moral truths are absolute and unchanging, just waiting out there to be discovered, what is their scope? To what do they apply? Would a hypothetical alien form of life, completely different from human or any other life on earth, benefit from it for instance? Or would there be another, different one for them? I admit I am very confused by this and may be fundamentally misunderstanding what you mean by objective standards, but those are the questions that come to mind as my knowledge stands. It just seems to imply that if objective truths have to be tailored to a particular audience... human morality for humans, bee morality for bees etc, then it just just makes it arbitrary again. From my current position I'd simply say that all inherent morality, beauty etc is just innate... part of our evolutionary design... shared and inherited states of the system. Are you for instance suggesting that there is a web of objective truths out there, comprised of essences and what have you, and therefore that a moral truth applies to some class in that framework?

Those are great philosophical questions.  I see no issue with the possibility that morality could have various solutions for different situations, or other species, but I doubt that all aspects would be equally pliable or susceptible to change.  If a bee can suffer in ways that are comparable to conscious systems such as human beings (thankfully, recent scientific research has suggested that insects likely do not suffer pain), then any ideal morality would reflect that.  This might be digressing from your remarks, but I want to add that it can be the case that there are, say, "imperatives" such as the Kantian principle that one should "act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law," and it could be true that the act one would be restricted from doing given their adherence to said imperative becomes permissible when the conditions change.  Take lying, for instance.  I can fulfill the imperative of acting only in those ways that I would require all to act, and decide that in normal circumstances nobody ought to lie ever.  Yet if I am hiding Anne Frank in the attic, say, I will modify my imperative so as to now declare that in all circumstances in which one is hiding an innocent life from one would who seek to harm that life, I require that all should lie.  Does this mean that the statement "lying is an immoral act" is not absolutely true?  Yes, in so far as we are speaking of all circumstances and not all normal circumstances.  Does this mean that "lying is a wrong act" is no longer objective?  No, because it remains objectively wrong in normal circumstances and objectively right in those involving innocent persons, like Anne Frank, and a murderous fiend.  

As far as your last question is concerned, I don't know if that is really a helpful way of looking at it.  But I don't know if there is a good way, or if it matters so much, as long as it is generally understood what it is we mean by objective moral truths and whatnot.

So of your three choices as it stands I would have to choose A, but I suppose I would replace 'man' with 'system' such that 'the system is the measure of all things, whatever that system may be.'

Doesn't that just result in relativism/subjectivism though?  And doesn't it make impossible any meaningful talk of, well, moral progress, if all boils down to nothing but a matter of perspective?

[emjay]

@mud. I'm not sure I can answer your previous post in five thousand words or less, figuratively if not literally speaking; it would be a long post. So since I'm currently sleep-deprived and playing a Mafia game that's taking up all my time and energy, do you mind if I wait until the game is over, or at least until I'm out of it and rested, before I reply? I'm enjoying our conversation but these sorts of posts take me hours to write, and on top of a mafia game, it's really hard work. So if you're willing to postpone continuation of this discussion for a week or so, that would be much appreciated But in the meantime, if you want to understand my perspective on mind/body/reality/neuroscience in detail... the thinking behind my first post in this thread among other things... then I'd recommend reading the "Seeing Red" thread in this, the Philosophy, forum. It was a very involved and thorough discussion - principally between me, bennyboy, Rhythm, Jormungandr, and ChatWooters - on these questions, with many multi-hour posts, and as far as I was concerned was an absolute goldmine of insight. And this discussion here with you feels pleasantly reminiscent of it

[Mudhammam]

@mud. I'm not sure I can answer your previous post in five thousand words or less, figuratively if not literally speaking; it would be a long post. So since I'm currently sleep-deprived and playing a Mafia game that's taking up all my time and energy, do you mind if I wait until the game is over, or at least until I'm out of it and rested, before I reply? I'm enjoying our conversation but these sorts of posts take me hours to write, and on top of a mafia game, it's really hard work. So if you're willing to postpone continuation of this discussion for a week or so, that would be much appreciated But in the meantime, if you want to understand my perspective on mind/body/reality/neuroscience in detail... the thinking behind my first post in this thread among other things... then I'd recommend reading the "Seeing Red" thread in this, the Philosophy, forum. It was a very involved and thorough discussion - principally between me, bennyboy, Rhythm, Jormungandr, and ChatWooters - on these questions, with many multi-hour posts, and as far as I was concerned was an absolute goldmine of insight. And this discussion here with you feels pleasantly reminiscent of it

No worries, man. Threads tend to be like universes, in that a single topic slowly evolves into many, many different strains of thought. And since I'm the OP, like Yahweh I take it personally upon myself to respond to each member, which I admit, can sometimes be overwhelming.

No, I'm just bullshitting. But it really did take me like 2 hours to type out that reply yesterday, so I'm good with a break. Maybe we can try to focus on one or two of the core issues if or when we decide to resume it.

[emjay]

@mud. I'm not sure I can answer your previous post in five thousand words or less, figuratively if not literally speaking; it would be a long post. So since I'm currently sleep-deprived and playing a Mafia game that's taking up all my time and energy, do you mind if I wait until the game is over, or at least until I'm out of it and rested, before I reply? I'm enjoying our conversation but these sorts of posts take me hours to write, and on top of a mafia game, it's really hard work. So if you're willing to postpone continuation of this discussion for a week or so, that would be much appreciated But in the meantime, if you want to understand my perspective on mind/body/reality/neuroscience in detail... the thinking behind my first post in this thread among other things... then I'd recommend reading the "Seeing Red" thread in this, the Philosophy, forum. It was a very involved and thorough discussion - principally between me, bennyboy, Rhythm, Jormungandr, and ChatWooters - on these questions, with many multi-hour posts, and as far as I was concerned was an absolute goldmine of insight. And this discussion here with you feels pleasantly reminiscent of it

No worries, man. Threads tend to be like universes, in that a single topic slowly evolves into many, many different strains of thought. And since I'm the OP, like Yahweh I take it personally upon myself to respond to each member, which I admit, can sometimes be overwhelming.

No, I'm just bullshitting. But it really did take me like 2 hours to type out that reply yesterday, so I'm good with a break. Maybe we can try to focus on one or two of the core issues if or when we decide to resume it.

Cool, I'll see you in about a week then you enjoy u our break too

And yeah, when I come back to it I'll try and focus on the core issues and get my posts more concise (rather than for instance giving a point by point analysis of neuroscience as I see it... which is a guaranteed page filler ). It's just difficult because mind and brain are very highly correlated in my view of the world, so talking about one is essentially talking about the other. But I'll leave discussion of that till when we resume

[Tangra]

It's funny you should be thinking about the nature of truth just as I was. Not funny really.. just a coincidence... but still. Anyway I was thinking about it from it from a different perspective... a psychological perspective ...so who knows if it has relevance at all to what you're saying, but I'll say it anyway just because, why not?

That psychologically truth is only what you believe is real. So waking reality is truth to the extent that you believe it is real. But dreams can also be believed to be real as can imagination/hypnosis. So in my considered opinion, truth is a measure of the coherency of a context and nothing more. In waking life you have a lot of 'truths' active in a context... such as where you are, knowledge of gravity, what you see and hear etc... and they 'constrain' any further additions of truth. If you imagine something... say that you're somewhere else... it can't be believed as truth whilst those constraining truths are active/in focus but there comes a point where you can get 'lost in thought' and that is, in my opinion, when the new, imagined context becomes strong and active enough to push the truths in the waking consciousness out of awareness so they no longer constrain it, thus when lost in thought that becomes truth. So in my thinking, the experience of truth... belief... is basically the measure of the activity and coherency of an uncontested/isolated context in mental focus, whether it be waking reality, a dream, hypnosis, or even just a good book.

You don't even need to go so deep. It's as simple as two people holding opposing views. You've already got two realities.

Sent from my SM-G930P using Tapatalk

---

I frequently come across the claim that "claims demand evidence."  Is this always true?  Does the claim that "claims demand evidence" itself demand evidence?  And does the claim of the claim that "claims demand evidence" demand evidence that the claim itself demands evidence?  And....

No, I'm just kidding.  But in all earnestness, what evidence do I have that true claims are always accompanied by evidence?  Isn't that a claim that asserts itself to be true by definition?  And if not, then in what sense are claims about our various conceptual relations evident, in a world where seemingly no two people agree on the minutest details?  Are not our reasons, and the very persons whom we believe to be in possession of them, namely, ourselves, in some true sense no more than unique structures of sight and sound produced by (or conducive of?) an inward understanding that forms sets of propositions which we (it?) accept to be true by definition? Hence, minds are creators of meaning, inventors or (discoverers?) of truth, such as the statement that "claims demand evidence."  If this is ultimately question-begging, then what is the non-question-begging point from which to start?

I think that if you want to argue a claim you should have evidence. You're asking an ontological question as to the nature of knowledge should such exist

Sent from my SM-G930P using Tapatalk

[emjay]

I'm ignorant on the meaning of the rest... what you mean by abstract objects distinct from bodies.

By abstract "objects" I mean entities like persons or selves, or if those are too controversial, then numbers or the relations between them; or relations as find expression in physical regularities or statistical laws; perhaps even such principles as those to which one might make appeal when forming a theory of rationality or morality, things of that sort.  Do metaphysical entities need to be conceived as A. merely the products of a linguistic system of thought that attempts to understand itself and reality as a cohesive whole or as B. weird platonic "essences" that exist in the sense that Cartesian Egos are often thought to "exist," within spacetime but in a nonspatial or nontemporal manner? I'm confident that these aren't the only alternatives.  But what the correct answer is, I don't know.

Again, what I mean by arbitrary in this case is probably a rare view, but it just comes from my mechanistic/reductionistic view of the mind, psychology, and neuroscience. What I mean is that it's arbitrary in the sense that in my view, each changeable aspect of consciousness represents a changeable state of the underlying system, and therefore as a whole a conscious system can be described as an arbitrary collection of states... and a different system (say another type of animal when referring to biological systems) represents a different collection of states. So from my perspective, when defined/viewed like that, there's nothing special about any particular state... they come into awareness, they change, they leave awareness... regardless of what phenomenological form they take. Perhaps to put it in your terms, that's the core essence of a conscious perception, regardless of type?

(bold mine)
I would like to concede what you say here, because I too find the mechanistic/reductionistic view most fruitful in its attempt to dig further down into our conceptual understanding of ourselves and the world, but to answer -- and add a bit -- to your suggestion, sure, we could call such a state "the core essence of a conscious perception"; however, it still seems to leave unresolved whether the types of abstract objects (or metaphysical entities--whatever we wish to call them--including numbers, relations, principles, etc.) that these changeable states involve are 1. part of the underlying reality or 2. simply part of the resulting conscious systems.  Either way, that these seem to possess rational and ethical "essences" or properties or what have you, which make discussions of underlying realities or moral duties intelligible, still seems fundamentally mysterious as it relates to physical beings.

And moreover, the system represented by states includes the 'observer'... what has the illusion of being the homunculous... the self, is a state like any other in my view. Therefore there is no distinction between the observer and the observed, the content and the container, the measured and the measurement... all are represented states that come, change, and go.

I don't know if I would say that there is no distinction, in so far as my observation of an object may be different from some other being for reasons that are grounded in the state of "myself" as an observer.  If we want to say that these differences are explained by different states, we still have to agree, it seems to me anyway, that logic and mathematics and even the empirical sciences suggest that the underlying reality which these different states represent coheres by a set of non-arbitrary rules.  Furthermore, it is only because these rules are in a framework that is basically intelligible that the rational facilities which our conscious states involve can establish "truths" (whether absolute or provisional), and then communicate these truths with one another using arbitrary expressions of speech.  My question is not even so much "What is true?" but rather the one that Pontius Pilate is alleged to have asked Christ in the Gospels: "What is truth?"

Granted when two similar systems are compared, such as from the same species of animal, there may be some shared states... which would likely be what we would call the innate aspects of the animal... those states that represent the [evolutionary] 'design' of the system... from above paragraph they would most likely be on the 'container' side of the equation... the actual visual field and its form etc... along with any innate drives for the animal. In this view I would class beauty as one of those shared innate states... the measurement itself... the ruler as it were. And likewise there would be some states that are less shared and more unique/subjective... generally on the content side of the equation. It may turn out to be the case that all sentient life shares some of these states at a core level, depending on how you define life, for instance if you say that all life, at its core, seeks what it wants/needs to survive and seeks to avoid what is dangerous to that survival, then arguably all life would have states representing attraction and aversion, of which beauty could be an example.

(bold mine)
So, are you saying that "beauty", on this view, is objective or subjective? (Or is that a distinction which collapses given your prior remarks?) That is, to the extent that certain cognitive systems, for evolutionary purposes, come to "share innate states" which they then identify as beautiful.  Is beauty intrinsic to the conscious system, i.e. to the changeable states of the underlying reality that these represent (and is this ideal of beauty really changeable? Is this always so?)?  Would you also say that truth, expressed in the following statements, "One plus one is always equivalent to two", or "Molesting children is always wrong even if it fulfills my greatest desires", is nothing but a description of particular "shared innate states" that happen to intelligibly express certain intuitions regarding the correctness of such claims?  But what does "correctness" even mean outside the context of these innate states?  What does it mean for something to be "immoral" on this view?

And then we, using the gifts that evolution has given us (the ability to reason), have emulated and exponentially expanded upon those processes by taking them out of our heads into formal systems of thought that can be shared and built upon through language and writing etc. So in that sense I can agree that there is some sort of objective truth that both we and evolution drive towards. But I'm still not comfortable really calling it that until I understand what you mean by objective truth. But close enough for the time being.

You and me both.  I don't have trouble calling it objective truth but I am equally reluctant to definitively say whatever it is that formal systems of thought are, not only supposed to be illuminating, but themselves supposed to be (in terms of A or B or some other alternative, as I suggested above).  To what degree are ideals imaginary?  How do they correlate to the underlying reality that has brought forth conscious systems, which contemplate these ideals, and are even driven towards them (in ways that are often contrary to the tendencies of natural selection)?

But regarding the other things... morality, beauty etc, the problem I see with how you seem to be describing it, is that any 'objective standard' seems to me to at the very least to presume the existence of sentient life capable of perceiving it, and more specifically, of a particular form of life to which it is tailored. In other words, if moral truths are absolute and unchanging, just waiting out there to be discovered, what is their scope? To what do they apply? Would a hypothetical alien form of life, completely different from human or any other life on earth, benefit from it for instance? Or would there be another, different one for them? I admit I am very confused by this and may be fundamentally misunderstanding what you mean by objective standards, but those are the questions that come to mind as my knowledge stands. It just seems to imply that if objective truths have to be tailored to a particular audience... human morality for humans, bee morality for bees etc, then it just just makes it arbitrary again. From my current position I'd simply say that all inherent morality, beauty etc is just innate... part of our evolutionary design... shared and inherited states of the system. Are you for instance suggesting that there is a web of objective truths out there, comprised of essences and what have you, and therefore that a moral truth applies to some class in that framework?

Those are great philosophical questions.  I see no issue with the possibility that morality could have various solutions for different situations, or other species, but I doubt that all aspects would be equally pliable or susceptible to change.  If a bee can suffer in ways that are comparable to conscious systems such as human beings (thankfully, recent scientific research has suggested that insects likely do not suffer pain), then any ideal morality would reflect that.  This might be digressing from your remarks, but I want to add that it can be the case that there are, say, "imperatives" such as the Kantian principle that one should "act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law," and it could be true that the act one would be restricted from doing given their adherence to said imperative becomes permissible when the conditions change.  Take lying, for instance.  I can fulfill the imperative of acting only in those ways that I would require all to act, and decide that in normal circumstances nobody ought to lie ever.  Yet if I am hiding Anne Frank in the attic, say, I will modify my imperative so as to now declare that in all circumstances in which one is hiding an innocent life from one would who seek to harm that life, I require that all should lie.  Does this mean that the statement "lying is an immoral act" is not absolutely true?  Yes, in so far as we are speaking of all circumstances and not all normal circumstances.  Does this mean that "lying is a wrong act" is no longer objective?  No, because it remains objectively wrong in normal circumstances and objectively right in those involving innocent persons, like Anne Frank, and a murderous fiend.  

As far as your last question is concerned, I don't know if that is really a helpful way of looking at it.  But I don't know if there is a good way, or if it matters so much, as long as it is generally understood what it is we mean by objective moral truths and whatnot.

So of your three choices as it stands I would have to choose A, but I suppose I would replace 'man' with 'system' such that 'the system is the measure of all things, whatever that system may be.'

Doesn't that just result in relativism/subjectivism though?  And doesn't it make impossible any meaningful talk of, well, moral progress, if all boils down to nothing but a matter of perspective?

Actually mud, do you mind if we call it a day on this discussion? Before I posted in this thread I had already resolved to have a break from the site, or at least from posting, and had already started that withdrawal, so when I posted in here it wasn't with the expectation of a long conversation but rather just dumping a thought. These sorts of discussions take a lot out of me, and it was fine in the case of Seeing Red - which was very intensive and went on for about a month - because my heart and soul was in it, but that's not what I'm looking for at the moment. I think if we continue we'll just go round and round in circles, talking past each other ad infinitum because not only are we talking from fundamentally different perspectives, we're also talking at different levels of description, so it's creating a lot of confusion and conflation of terms and making it hard for us to establish enough common ground/definitions to have a meaningful discussion... like I'm not sure we even agree on our definitions of objective and subjective from our respective perspectives. It's entirely my fault, because I'm basically the pain in the arse that's always looking at not only what we see but how we see... and indeed why we see and if we see what we think we see etc ... so I tend to bring a level of metaphysical confusion to a subject when there didn't need to be any, and just end up complicating the matter and making it harder to establish terms. Like my first post in this thread; it may have been interesting but ultimately it was not an answer at the same level of description as you asked, and therefore could only serve to add unnecessary confusion to the subject. Anyway I started having my break and actually found time to read, which I haven't done in ages, and that included your plato book, but suffice it to say since we started talking more, I haven't read any more, but I'd like to. So if it's okay with you I just like to call it a day here, finish my mafia game, and then get stuck in to your reading list