Seeing the truth is not conductive to survival

[SanteriSatama]

Oh! I followed this one with minimal Googling, and I agree. I don't think there's any sense in talking about eternal, absolute potential or an infinite superposition which is, by means of self-reflection, collapsed into actualized experiences. That seems to me a combination of words that just doesn't mean anything, which was the issue I ran into in the other thread talking about Kastrup's comments on Rovelli.

AFAIK Gödel's proof was motivated by mathematical Platonism of sorts, perhaps not more that vague sense of idealist ontology of mathematics. But ironically, by proving the impossibility of the project of logicism (reducing mathematics into finite set of logical axioms), he also disproved the more formal idea of Platonia as complete existence of all possible mathematical-logical worlds.

So, here we are, trying to figure out a process philosophical and intuitionist approach to foundations of mathematics, which sounds like a continuous striving to be as coherent as possible

[DandelionSoul]

AFAIK Gödel's proof was motivated by mathematical Platonism of sorts, perhaps not more that vague sense of idealist ontology of mathematics. But ironically, by proving the impossibility of the project of logicism (reducing mathematics into finite set of logical axioms), he also disproved the more formal idea of Platonia as complete existence of all possible mathematical-logical worlds.

So, here we are, trying to figure out a process philosophical and intuitionist approach to foundations of mathematics, which sounds like a continuous striving to be as coherent as possible

I am not nearly educated enough to make inroads in a philosophy of math project, but intuitively I feel like Deleuzian ontology might be a good place to start looking for a post-Platonic grounding for math.

[SanteriSatama]

I am not nearly educated enough to make inroads in a philosophy of math project, but intuitively I feel like Deleuzian ontology might be a good place to start looking for a post-Platonic grounding for math.

IIRC Deleuzian ontology: go schitzo!?

Sounds about rite.

[AshvinP]

To stay in the process of Thinking, instead of taking leaps of faith, we can't postulate independently and eternally existing superposition of all experiences.

Superposition, of more generally 'potential', is by it's origin a relational temporal relation-difference of non-being (read Sophist by Plato!!!) , not an absolute existence postulated by an arbitrary axiom "there exists x" (Hilbert is deeply dishonest and wrong with that tool of logicism). Empirically, potential is projectively created by self-reflection of an actual duration. The dichotomy of actual vs potential is relational, it appears and disappears like dichotomy subject-object. There is so far no careful and honest Thinking that can prove and demonstrate beyond any doubt that actual experiencing is dependent from absolute potential, a "world of all possible worlds". Gödel's proof demonstrates the logical impossibility of "world of possible worlds" as a logically coherent and complete "ground".

Let's be careful with the wily verb "is"!!! E-prime is a great tool for learning to think better, more skillfully, and to avoid obvious traps which our collective and cumulative Thinking have already cleared. To ignore Gödel is not skillful thinking, and to steelman and overcome Gödel's argument, if possible, would require very careful and skillful creative thinking.

Gödel's proof concerns self-reflection, and in that aspect expressis verbis denies the kind of ontological self-reflection suggested above. On the other hand there's no convincing argument against view that reflection can act as a purely dynamic and relational mechanism, which can generate possible worlds of experience. But not the complete totality of all possibilities, as reflection is just a generative algorithm among others.

Oh! I followed this one with minimal Googling, and I agree. I don't think there's any sense in talking about eternal, absolute potential or an infinite superposition which is, by means of self-reflection, collapsed into actualized experiences. That seems to me a combination of words that just doesn't mean anything, which was the issue I ran into in the other thread talking about Kastrup's comments on Rovelli.

That was just a crude abstract concept to help envision the meaning of what is being spoken. I think we all agree linear temporality of experience is not fundamental, but rather the phenomenal appearance of metamorphosing experiential-states. It could not be any other way under a consistent idealism-monism. The question is, does such a phenomenon arise and/or become necessary for beings without any self-reflective capacity or beings who have evolved to much higher 'representational interfaces' which are 'aperspectival'? I say no, the non-self-reflective being does not experience any phenomenon of linear temporality and has no memory. A being without memory as such cannot be said to act with "purpose", because the latter concept presupposes knowledge of how an effect will be brought about by a cause. If you want to redefine "purpose" to exclude the requirement of any knowledge whatsoever, then there is no reason to use the word "purpose" anymore, because every living being is programmed (naturally or otherwise) to react to stimulus (lack of something), even in very highly complex ways.

[AshvinP]

Yes definitely! We are non-reflective in our early infancy and our thinking metamorphoses to self-reflective later (perhaps after "object permanence" develops - which is also when faculty of memory develops).

I would suggest that memory emerges before object permanence and grounds object permanence. It's like this: a baby acts as though an object that's no longer directly in view no longer exists, so the object is impermanent. But the interesting thing is, it's also not forgotten. In fact, the disappearance of the object can be extremely distressing to the infant precisely because the infant knows what they've lost. It's only by remembering the pattern of things disappearing and then returning that the infant begins to understand that things don't stop existing when they disappear from sight.

So, does the early infant act with purpose or intention? I don't think so, and another one of those affirmative defenses to otherwise criminal behavior is "infancy", although many jurisdictions in U.S. actually extend that up to about 7 years of age, which is obviously past the point of basic self-reflective thinking.

An infant absolutely does act with intention and purpose, just not with comprehension. Infants are curious little things, and given the opportunity, they will act to satisfy their own curiosity -- how does this taste or how does that feel? Experimenting with their environment is a behavior we even see in utero. They scream or cry when they need to be fed or changed, and they can even be taught sign language to express clearly what they need from much earlier on than they can express it verbally. Very young children are constantly testing out the limitations of their bodies -- an infant will start crawling quite on their own as soon as they can coordinate their limbs well enough to do so. But it's that lack of comprehension, I think, that makes it useful to differentiate meaning and purpose broadly from specifically ethical (or legal) meaning.

The key point is that, as you also agreed before, there is a time when the infant is not self-reflective. By definition, that means it has no subject-object distinction which allows it to remember that there are "objects" which exist when its ego-self does not perceive them. The infant's psychic processes are completely interwoven with the world around them, as in the state of "original participation" that Barfield describes of archaic man. How can a being have a "purpose" without any clear sense of their ego-self apart from the objects that they are acting upon so that their ego-self can go from point A to point B?

It sounds to me like you are saying, people, from infants to adults and everyone in between, can have all sorts of "purposes" they are completely unaware of, so there is always purpose. This "purpose" without any knowledge whatsoever obviates the need to distinguish "purposes" from any mechanized behavior that is motivated by stimulus. I also see the legal-ethical meaning of these terms as being grounded in the natural and intuitive understanding of them - the law does not recognize "purposive" or "intentional" action in infants, in the amount sufficient to justify punishment for that action, because we intuitively know some level of "comprehension" is a prerequisite for purpose-intention.

There are many metaphysical issues tangled up in this point, but I would offer first that I do not hold anything in Reality to be "non-living". That conclusion can be rooted in empirical observation, but also I think setting up dualism of "living" vs. "non-living" is very problematic philosophically. Of course, that does not mean everything we see with physical boundaries and which appears as an "object" to our senses is alive, it just means the living beings responsible for those appearances are non-physical and go well beyond what most people can observe now.

I don't think we disagree here. We can regard the fundamental reality as alive without regarding everything we see as having its own subjective center. I think we agree (based on the next snippet) that robots don't have their own subjective center in the same way that a human or even a cat does. Whether a robot with that internal sense of selfhood is even, in principle, possible is a conversation for another night, but I feel safe in saying that a robot programmed to make omelets can easily be conceptualized as not having anything of the sort. To draw on Sartre's language, the robot is "in itself," not "for itself." When I distinguish between the living and the nonliving, that "in itself/for itself" dichotomy is what I'm driving at, and that language might work better.

It can be "easily conceptualized" because we naturally do not associate mechanized behavior, i.e. mere stimulus-response mechanisms without any knowledge of them, as being "purposeful".

The other issue is this nexus between inner desire and instinct. I agree machines do not have any inner desire or living instinct, but it seems to me your view would leave that as a likely possibility, since you infer inner desire and "purpose" of animals from their instinctual behavior. So I think the assertion that machines "has no desires at all", even as far as we know, is problematic under your view. How can we say the programmed machine has no purpose-intention and the crocodile does, when both behave very predictably and out of "instinct" (programmed by another person or by Nature-God)?

I will answer that, but before I do, I'd like to turn the difficulty around: do you believe that animals feel anything at all, that they feel hunger or thirst or fear? It seems if you agree that machines have no inner desire, and if you believe that instincts are indistinguishable from a machine's programming, then you'd have to say "no" to that question. If you're inclined to say that yes, they do, then... why? Where do you ground the distinction between an animal and a machine? You have not committed to holding that any nonhuman animal can feel anything, at least that I recall, so simply saying "No, no animal feels anything" is a bullet your view seems to allow you to bite, but if you don't, then you yourself must make that distinction in some way or another.

I believe animals have feeling because they are ensouled. But my reasons for thinking they are ensouled have little to do with how I observe their instinctual behavior apart from myself. Rather it is because I can observe my own interaction with many animals at a deep emotional level that makes me conclude they are ensouled despite their highly mechanized (instinctual) behavior. For certain beings like insects, though, I am not sure whether or to what extent they are ensouled, because I have no such interactions with them.

Now for my answer. Fundamentally, it comes back to "in itself" versus "for itself." Something built with a preconception of what it's to be and what it's to do, something whose essence precedes its existence, is "in itself." Something that emerges spontaneously, a self-organized locus of conatus, is "for itself." The latter will necessarily exist, from its own perspective, as where the world appears, and the world will be made of relevance to its own self-motivated conative purposes. That self-organized, self-motivated conatus is the essence of desire, and with it comes the capacity to suffer. The Omeletron does not actually desire to make omelets -- it doesn't suffer when it's not making omelets. Making omelets has no relevance to it. It's an expression of someone else's desire for omelets. It isn't self-organized or self-motivated.

I can accept that distinction, but what I find odd is defining "for itself" as self-organized and self-motivated but also claiming that those qualities have little to do with self-reflection. Maybe you can tease out that apparent discrepancy for me?

Under idealism, especially of the Western variety, ideational activity and meaning are fundamental. The very essence of the Cosmos is meaning. Our perspective on that meaning is certainly different and becomes even more different when abstract intellect is involved without any higher cognition, but that is our shortcoming and not that of the Cosmos. There is no such thing as my meaning of any given phenomenon and your meaning of that same phenomenon in essence. If we consider how it is possible for us to communicate so well and empathize with what others may be experiencing, and we acknowledge it is truly possible, then I think we are pretty much forced to this conclusion of "shared meaning". It is also roots our ability to truly integrate our conscious perspectives with others in the spiritual evolutionary process.

Fundamentally, I don't accept the idea of a singular all-encompassing perspective from which the play of meaning-making is concluded and to which meaning is fully and finally disclosed, so if that's the sort of thing you're proposing, we may have stumbled upon a big disagreement. For me, meaning is always created, negotiated, and renegotiated subjectively and intersubjectively, and there is no Greatest Subject who gets the final say, and there never will be.

I am not asking anyone to accept a full and final conclusion to the disclosure of meaning. But, even without that, I do not think it is reasonable to say meaning is "created" at any sort of personal level. I am going to refer to an illustration provided by Cleric awhile ago, as I found it extremely helpful. I will try to circle back on the rest of your comments later, but it has become sort of unwieldly so maybe it will help to limit the points discussed for now.

To give a simplified example, if I think about 1 and 2, then 4 and 5, does this mean that 3 doesn't exist until it is experienced? From experiential perspective every idea exists for me only when I experience it. But still, the relation between 2 and 4 is such that they can only be what they are if there's 3 in between. That's why I've always said (when you bring the Platonism argument) that it's irrelevant to me to fantasize some abstract container for ideas, which I can never experience in its purity. The important thing is that when I discover 3, nothing really changes for 1,2,4,5 - they are only complemented, the ideal picture becomes more complete. Even if 3 was never discovered, the relation between the above numbers would be as if 3 exists. This would be different if after the discovery of 3 all other numbers change relations. Then we would really have justification to speak of ideas being created. The act of creation of the idea has measurable effect and displaces all other ideas in some way. But as long as I discover ideas and beings, which only complement my own experiential ideal landscape, all talks about if these ideas and beings exist in 'pure form' before I experience them, is pointless.

[SanteriSatama]

That was just a crude abstract concept to help envision the meaning of what is being spoken. I think we all agree linear temporality of experience is not fundamental, but rather the phenomenal appearance of metamorphosing experiential-states. It could not be any other way under a consistent idealism-monism. The question is, does such a phenomenon arise and/or become necessary for beings without any self-reflective capacity or beings who have evolved to much higher 'representational interfaces' which are 'aperspectival'? I say no, the non-self-reflective being does not experience any phenomenon of linear temporality and has no memory. A being without memory as such cannot be said to act with "purpose", because the latter concept presupposes knowledge of how an effect will be brought about by a cause. If you want to redefine "purpose" to exclude the requirement of any knowledge whatsoever, then there is no reason to use the word "purpose" anymore, because every living being is programmed (naturally or otherwise) to react to stimulus (lack of something), even in very highly complex ways.

A) Linear temporality is not fundamental. - agreed, this seems hard to argue against.

We are not able to think of line without the context of plane, it seems. This is an empirical observation and as such falsifiable. And plane, by definition, can't extend only in one direction. A plane can extend in one direction more than in others, but that's not same as unilinear line.

So, from A) it does not appear meaningful to postulate "linear time" and "linear being" as ontologies, except, perhaps, to present thought-experiment which could serve e.g. as proofs by absurdity.

Thinking the relation of line and plane, isn't that already a kind of reflection? A projective reflection or a rotation of plane so that only edge of a plane is directly observable. If so, what is the meaning of "self" in the expression "self-reflection"? Is it a consequence of reifying verb 'being' into noun 'being'? Perhaps so, at least partially. But let's not a priori assume there can be only single kind of self-reflection.

Let's go back to the reflection of line and plane, remembering that re-flex translates literally as "again-turning". On the plane we can imagine a line keeping on turning so that it returns to where turning started. The ouroboros line, the "self" of a loop. Douglass Hofstadger, firm materialist, discusses self-reflection as a "Strange Loop". An observation event observes a loop, and goes: I am that! I am what-goes-in-circles, a self-reflecting being with a closure, that separates inside and outside of a loop.

Douglass is not stupid, so we can't just assume that his materialism is inconsistent with loopy self-reflection, going around in circles, declaring "I am the line I was!"

Before the self-reflecting self-identification as a loop, there was also something planar involved. Maybe I'm a planar reflection, a mirror world?

***

What have we established so far? Not much, just some geometric visual imaginations. Where did light come from, to reflect those?

Could there be some analogue of self-reflection, how ever vague, without light? What about relative spatio-temporal densities? Here-now feels more thick and dence than there-then, there-now more thin than here-then... etc. But would it be fair to call such relativities 'reflection', which is so closely associated with light? What about 'self'? Well, where-when else could we feel relative differences of densities, except in self?

[AshvinP]

That was just a crude abstract concept to help envision the meaning of what is being spoken. I think we all agree linear temporality of experience is not fundamental, but rather the phenomenal appearance of metamorphosing experiential-states. It could not be any other way under a consistent idealism-monism. The question is, does such a phenomenon arise and/or become necessary for beings without any self-reflective capacity or beings who have evolved to much higher 'representational interfaces' which are 'aperspectival'? I say no, the non-self-reflective being does not experience any phenomenon of linear temporality and has no memory. A being without memory as such cannot be said to act with "purpose", because the latter concept presupposes knowledge of how an effect will be brought about by a cause. If you want to redefine "purpose" to exclude the requirement of any knowledge whatsoever, then there is no reason to use the word "purpose" anymore, because every living being is programmed (naturally or otherwise) to react to stimulus (lack of something), even in very highly complex ways.

A) Linear temporality is not fundamental. - agreed, this seems hard to argue against.

We are not able to think of line without the context of plane, it seems. This is an empirical observation and as such falsifiable. And plane, by definition, can't extend only in one direction. A plane can extend in one direction more than in others, but that's not same as unilinear line.

So, from A) it does not appear meaningful to postulate "linear time" and "linear being" as ontologies, except, perhaps, to present thought-experiment which could serve e.g. as proofs by absurdity.

Thinking the relation of line and plane, isn't that already a kind of reflection? A projective reflection or a rotation of plane so that only edge of a plane is directly observable. If so, what is the meaning of "self" in the expression "self-reflection"? Is it a consequence of reifying verb 'being' into noun 'being'? Perhaps so, at least partially. But let's not a priori assume there can be only single kind of self-reflection.

Let's go back to the reflection of line and plane, remembering that re-flex translates literally as "again-turning". On the plane we can imagine a line keeping on turning so that it returns to where turning started. The ouroboros line, the "self" of a loop. Douglass Hofstadger, firm materialist, discusses self-reflection as a "Strange Loop". An observation event observes a loop, and goes: I am that! I am what-goes-in-circles, a self-reflecting being with a closure, that separates inside and outside of a loop.

Douglass is not stupid, so we can't just assume that his materialism is inconsistent with loopy self-reflection, going around in circles, declaring "I am the line I was!"

Before the self-reflecting self-identification as a loop, there was also something planar involved. Maybe I'm a planar reflection, a mirror world?

***

What have we established so far? Not much, just some geometric visual imaginations. Where did light come from, to reflect those?

Could there be some analogue of self-reflection, how ever vague, without light? What about relative spatio-temporal densities? Here-now feels more thick and dence than there-then, there-now more thin than here-then... etc. But would it be fair to call such relativities 'reflection', which is so closely associated with light? What about 'self'? Well, where-when else could we feel relative differences of densities, except in self?

I don't know, but I think science has adequately demonstrated there is some infant mode of consciousness in humans (probably for a very short time) which is not self-reflective. They experience and react, but not with knowledge of their ego-self as distinct from that which is beyond the boundaries of their physical body. So if we agree on that, the question becomes whether infant in that mode can be said to act with "purpose". If so, then I think we are defining "purpose" in a way that means we may as well ditch the word "purpose" altogether.

[AshvinP]

I'd affirm that purpose comes before meaning, sure, but what I actually meant to reverse was the relationship between self-reflection and memory. I think self-reflection emerges from memory, and not memory from self-reflection.

I think maybe I am starting to see where we are truly diverging here. It seems like you are holding to an "instinctive MAL" view (similar to BK) where humans are merely advanced instinctual animals and our self-reflective capacity does not raise us qualitatively beyond the level of animal.

I'm not sure that's quite accurate about me or Kastrup. Kastrup's view suggests a kind of transcendental attractor guiding the "blind" impulses of Will, an eternal Telos realized in time that acts as the condition under which the unreflective Will moves at all. Humans are unique in our ability to grasp that Telos, to understand the workings of Will, to grasp the eternal Ideas, and that very ability was the thing Will was striving for the whole time:

To put it more directly, the metaphysical meaning of human life is to achieve meta-conscious awareness of the dynamics of the will. Through introspection we can meta-cognize it as it manifests within ourselves, and through contemplation of the eternal Ideas we can meta-cognize it as it manifests in the world beyond ourselves, both organic and inorganic realms. The metaphysical meaning of all non-human life, in turn, is to enable the realization of the meaning of human life.

I do not understand how there can be experience of past experience without an "I" existing relative to that past experience. Put another way, we can only talk about past, present, and future in relation to some "I" perspective. If we talk about those as absolute states of existence regardless of "I" perspective, then we are adopting naïve realism with respect to linear time (as mostly materialists-dualists do, but I suppose some idealists as well).

re: BK - yes I have a big disagreement with him there. He views "meta-cognitive" ideation as epiphenomenal result of "dynamics of the will". I actually never understood how metaphysical idealist-monist could take such a view without implicitly positing a metaphysical dualism between Will and Idea. I view ideational activity as fundamental aspect along with willing and feeling, existing in Tri-Unity. His implicitly dualist and reductionist view of Idea basically rules out the possibility of non-human living beings in spiritual realm (the only actual realm there is), which then lets him make the bolded statement which I disagree with. At its very best, I think it is such a low resolution understanding of spiritual reality that it is practically counter-productive.

But I disagree. That's to posit a "why" for the whole thing, a Big Reason behind all this -- ultimately, it's to posit a final disclosure of meaning.

Here I think we might have disagreed to such an extent that we've come around to an odd sort of agreement: we agree that self-reflection enables the meaning of knowing meaning, just not on what it means to know meaning.

I think we kind of agree on the above - I don't see it necessary to posit an overarching Big Reason for everything apart from the naturally unfolding and refolding experience of the Whole. I think there is much more utility in looking at the "why" of what is happening in our own experience of the world at any given moment, which then points in the direction of our essence as spiritual beings interwoven with many other spiritual beings, who we are both dependent on and responsible for. That is a crude snapshot of what I think it means to "know meaning".

[SanteriSatama]

I don't know, but I think science has adequately demonstrated there is some infant mode of consciousness in humans (probably for a very short time) which is not self-reflective. They experience and react, but not with knowledge of their ego-self as distinct from that which is beyond the boundaries of their physical body. So if we agree on that, the question becomes whether infant in that mode can be said to act with "purpose". If so, then I think we are defining "purpose" in a way that means we may as well ditch the word "purpose" altogether.

So, ego-loop thinks of body as the boundary, and self-reflects its separation inside the boundary?

Do you identify self as ego-loop and its boundaries and nothing else?

Does bodily awareness have boundary?

Which is more coherent way to think: A) Body is bounded object. B) Body is bodily awareness?

[DandelionSoul]

The key point is that, as you also agreed before, there is a time when the infant is not self-reflective. By definition, that means it has no subject-object distinction which allows it to remember that there are "objects" which exist when its ego-self does not perceive them. The infant's psychic processes are completely interwoven with the world around them, as in the state of "original participation" that Barfield describes of archaic man. How can a being have a "purpose" without any clear sense of their ego-self apart from the objects that they are acting upon so that their ego-self can go from point A to point B?

Oh, I think we're getting close to the core tension here. All the fundamental felt distinctions that you would ground in a pre-existing ego-self created by self-reflection are the felt distinctions that, in my mind, provide the "self" that's reflected upon in the first place and thus are those things in which ego-self is grounded. Hence, self-reflection emerges out of the felt subject-object distinction, the past/present distinction (in memory), etc. While it facilitates a deeper experience of those distinctions, it is itself grounded in them, such that they form the preconditions for an emerging sense of self in the infant.

It sounds to me like you are saying, people, from infants to adults and everyone in between, can have all sorts of "purposes" they are completely unaware of, so there is always purpose.

Sort of. Let me see if I can explain it a little better. I think that infants know what their purpose is, inasmuch as, say, to be curious is already to know curiosity and to be hungry is already to know food as the object of desire. This kind of knowledge is pre-built into the experience of the desire. But they don't comprehend in that they don't understand well enough how the world works to know that they shouldn't swallow those brightly colored pills or grab the electric fence (... I was that child, bless my mother's heart). They don't yet understand consequences because that knowledge emerges from experience, which they haven't yet had. This is why when a child finds a parent's loaded gun and shoots someone with it, we put the responsibility on the parent -- who should have known better -- and not the child.

This "purpose" without any knowledge whatsoever obviates the need to distinguish "purposes" from any mechanized behavior that is motivated by stimulus.

I don't think it does, because animals have, in addition to instincts, just such mechanized behaviors: reflexive actions. In fact, these sorts of involuntary actions themselves become objects of curiosity as the child explores their body: how long can they go without breathing or blinking? Just where do they have to tap their knee to make it jerk on its own? The reflexive action is not the fulfillment of a felt desire (though the voluntary act of triggering it might be); it's just something the body does on its own. Rub an infant's cheek and their mouth will open, regardless of whether the infant is actually hungry. Reflexes have different neurological correlates, too -- you jerk your hand away from something hot before you've become consciously aware of the heat, and this is reflected in the fact that the nerve signals for the reflexive action simply don't have to travel as far to be processed. A person in a vegetative state still has physiological reflexes, and it was thought that all plant behavior worked like this, but recent work on plant cognition is problematizing that notion (plants seem to demonstrate a capacity for learning and memory).

When I reflect upon my instincts, I notice that they are felt emotionally as desire: the desire to fight or flee when I'm threatened, the desire to have sex when I'm aroused, the desire to eat when I'm hungry, etc. Even our capacity to be social is to some extent instinctive. And all of these instincts are the basis for myriad ways of expressing and fulfilling the desires to which they're connected.

I also see the legal-ethical meaning of these terms as being grounded in the natural and intuitive understanding of them - the law does not recognize "purposive" or "intentional" action in infants, in the amount sufficient to justify punishment for that action, because we intuitively know some level of "comprehension" is a prerequisite for purpose-intention.

We know intuitively that comprehension is a prerequisite for responsibility. You aren't fully responsible for what happened if you had no way to know what would happen. That doesn't mean you didn't have an intention going in. A child playing with their parents' gun has an intention: to play or to satisfy curiosity or something like that. The intention has nothing to do with harming anyone, because the child doesn't comprehend that that's a possible outcome. And that's part of what self-reflection does for us: it enables us to connect purposes (which is to say, the fulfillment of desire) with actual outcomes far more accurately. It enables us, in other words, to better discern meaning and generate new meaning.

It can be "easily conceptualized" because we naturally do not associate mechanized behavior, i.e. mere stimulus-response mechanisms without any knowledge of them, as being "purposeful".

Yes! Now the question is, are instincts mere stimulus-response mechanisms, or are they something more than that? I would argue that they're something more: they're ways of knowing that can spiral into complex and even creative ways of being. The instinctive desire for food can make a cat hunt. It can also make a cat beg their person for food. Cats can hunt creatively and adaptively. Instincts can also overlap. A cat's instinctive desire to eat and their instinctive to play come together pretty frequently (to the horror of the poor mouse who is their target). But my cat experiences them separately, because the things she plays with are not the things she eats.

I believe animals have feeling because they are ensouled. But my reasons for thinking they are ensouled have little to do with how I observe their instinctual behavior apart from myself. Rather it is because I can observe my own interaction with many animals at a deep emotional level that makes me conclude they are ensouled despite their highly mechanized (instinctual) behavior. For certain beings like insects, though, I am not sure whether or to what extent they are ensouled, because I have no such interactions with them.

Can you elaborate on this notion of ensoulment and how your own interactions with animals leads you to believe that they're ensouled?

Incidentally, I know I've talked a little about Hofstadter with Santeri, but you might enjoy the discussion on the sizes of souls in the beginning of I Am a Strange Loop.

I can accept that distinction, but what I find odd is defining "for itself" as self-organized and self-motivated but also claiming that those qualities have little to do with self-reflection. Maybe you can tease out that apparent discrepancy for me?

Oh, they have tons to do with self-reflection -- they're the ground upon which self-reflection is built. Without self-realization (that is, self-organization and self-motivation) there simply is no self upon which to reflect. Self-reflection emerges from selfhood. In the same way a mirror reflects my body to me -- and, hence, a body is a precondition to body-reflection -- my self-reflecting mind reflects my self back to me. This is why I never had the experience of coming into being: when we become capable of self-reflection, there is already a self-presence upon which to reflect.

I am not asking anyone to accept a full and final conclusion to the disclosure of meaning. But, even without that, I do not think it is reasonable to say meaning is "created" at any sort of personal level. I am going to refer to an illustration provided by Cleric awhile ago, as I found it extremely helpful. I will try to circle back on the rest of your comments later, but it has become sort of unwieldly so maybe it will help to limit the points discussed for now.

To give a simplified example, if I think about 1 and 2, then 4 and 5, does this mean that 3 doesn't exist until it is experienced? From experiential perspective every idea exists for me only when I experience it. But still, the relation between 2 and 4 is such that they can only be what they are if there's 3 in between. That's why I've always said (when you bring the Platonism argument) that it's irrelevant to me to fantasize some abstract container for ideas, which I can never experience in its purity. The important thing is that when I discover 3, nothing really changes for 1,2,4,5 - they are only complemented, the ideal picture becomes more complete. Even if 3 was never discovered, the relation between the above numbers would be as if 3 exists. This would be different if after the discovery of 3 all other numbers change relations. Then we would really have justification to speak of ideas being created. The act of creation of the idea has measurable effect and displaces all other ideas in some way. But as long as I discover ideas and beings, which only complement my own experiential ideal landscape, all talks about if these ideas and beings exist in 'pure form' before I experience them, is pointless.

I read the entire thread that the above paragraph came from, and I'm having a little trouble making conceptual headway with it. Let me see if I'm understanding the point Cleric is making (and if Cleric would like to chime in personally to clarify, that would also be lovely). It seems to me that the thesis here is that there is no argument to be made that meaning is created, nor that meaning is uncreated -- that, prior to its instantiation in experience, we can say nothing about it whatsoever. In either case, whenever we experience meaning as new, that meaning seems as though it has always been there waiting to be discovered. Am I following the argument, and if so, what's the upshot for the conversation we're having now?