Philosophy Now Forum

If there is one thing that you can argue that we all share equally relates to something many (if not all) of us has questioned as a child:

"Why do we require any limits or controls on our behavior when it was not OUR choice to be born?"

We would normally not state it this way of course but the point should be understood:

Why do I have to live under any world that I did not choose to be born in by some force beyond my power and yet be expected to conform to rules to any extent that I have not participated in making nor negotiating?

If we were never 'forced' to behave in any way that did not immediately appeal to us we might not have a reason to raise this question. I think that this 'question' is asked by all living conscious beings when they are forced by the environment to NOT continue in some way prior to something that gives us discomfort or pain. These may not be questions in language but the very discomfort an animal or other possible 'conscious' being might find REPELLING. We might equally then ask why we 'suffer' at all, as a form of the same question.

I think that the answer to this might be that we CAN behave any way we like but that the competing realities that also do so CANNOT provide the same 'freedom' to behave without causing conflict due to contradicting outcomes. That is, for anything and everything to HAVE its own preferential way would be indifferent to being non-existent. That is, conscious existence is itself meaningless without the possible conflicts of the physical realities existing as contradictory in some way.

I think this has to be the first issue that all of us should address before challenging other particular issues in philosophy, regardless of backgrounds and specific opinions.

Do you agree and why or why not?

[Voting above is optional and you can change this. This is just for anyone who might like to use this for the discussion as it develops, though not necessary.]

ALL EDITS: In the poll, I'll update to newly proposed questions and replace the x to (1.x) when NOT unanimously agreed and a new proposed one exists.

Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Sat Nov 21, 2020 4:43 pm Why do I have to live under any world that I did not choose to be born in by some force beyond my power and yet be expected to conform to rules to any extent that I have not participated in making nor negotiating?

Well, Scott...your question takes for granted that this is the way it is. And clearly, that IS the way it is.

So what's the point of raising the objection, as if one could change it thereby?

Here's the right question: "Given that I did not choose to be born, and have to conform to rules I haven't negotiated (including things like the law of gravity, the annoying existence of others, my own mortality, and so on -- not just social laws), what do I now do?"

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Nov 21, 2020 4:51 pm

Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Sat Nov 21, 2020 4:43 pm Why do I have to live under any world that I did not choose to be born in by some force beyond my power and yet be expected to conform to rules to any extent that I have not participated in making nor negotiating?

Well, Scott...your question takes for granted that this is the way it is. And clearly, that IS the way it is.

So what's the point of raising the objection, as if one could change it thereby?

Here's the right question: "Given that I did not choose to be born, and have to conform to rules I haven't negotiated (including things like the law of gravity, the annoying existence of others, my own mortality, and so on -- not just social laws), what do I now do?"

I agree to some extent. But the question, "what do I now do?", defaults to us asking the question prior to having a reason to. It misses the point that the environment, as reality is to us, doesn't create barriers for us if we get what we want or expect by default. A rock, for instance, doesn't require questioning this because its existence lacks the concern to 'want to avoid' some sort of discomfort. We don't initially ask why unless and until some reason exists that PREVENTS some default behavior.

Think of it as an extention to Newton's First Law that states that things remain in a constant momentum unless something external (from the environment) causes it to change in any way. This first requires an initial state of 'consistent' behavior whereby we only initially become concerned when things suddenly PREVENT or RESIST our normal behavior. Do we not require having some initial state of behavior we 'expect' in order to even complain about why we are being prevented to behave in the default way?

Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Sat Nov 21, 2020 5:05 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Nov 21, 2020 4:51 pm

Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Sat Nov 21, 2020 4:43 pm Why do I have to live under any world that I did not choose to be born in by some force beyond my power and yet be expected to conform to rules to any extent that I have not participated in making nor negotiating?

Well, Scott...your question takes for granted that this is the way it is. And clearly, that IS the way it is.

So what's the point of raising the objection, as if one could change it thereby?

Here's the right question: "Given that I did not choose to be born, and have to conform to rules I haven't negotiated (including things like the law of gravity, the annoying existence of others, my own mortality, and so on -- not just social laws), what do I now do?"

I agree to some extent. But the question, "what do I now do?", defaults to us asking the question prior to having a reason to.

Well, the reason is that we cannot do otherwise. That's a very solid reason.

We are, as the Existentialists have said, "thrown into" the world. We appear here before we know it, and discover we are already subject to necessities, laws, vicissitudes, and other unavoidable realities or "laws" that constrict our freedom.

It misses the point that the environment, as reality is to us, doesn't create barriers for us if we get what we want or expect by default.

We don't. That's the point. Nobody gets a "barrier"-free life, or "what we want or expect by default." Not a single person ever has, from the lowest peasant to the highest king. It's only a matter of degree: some people have more restrictions, and others fewer. But nobody cheats death, disease, hazard, or tragedy; these eventually claim us all. And nobody is free from the physical laws and necessities of reality.

Do we not require having some initial state of behavior we 'expect' in order to even complain about why we are being prevented to behave in the default way?

Now, that is a really interesting thought, Scott.

We might well ask ourselves why we don't have such a state -- because clearly, we don't. A baby is no more free from these things than is an old man. There's no pint in life when we are not blocked, thwarted, limited or subject to "barriers" of various kinds.

So we might rightly wonder, as you seem to suggest, how we can complain that we do not have a level of freedom or a state of ability that we have never, even for a single moment, known. That's a remarkable fact. And it raises a hugely important question: how are human beings able to conceptualize of ideals they have never objectively experienced at all?

In this case, the ideal you're describing must be something like "absolute freedom," or "unrestricted autonomy," or to use your terms, "a barrier-free existence," perhaps. It should be impossible for us to conceive such a thing -- none of us has ever known it experientially -- and yet we all seem to have some sort of "coding" in our DNA or "awareness" in our souls that corresponds to that ideal, and makes us want a thing that is empirically unavailable.

I'd be interested in how you think that can come about, if you have an idea about it. Why is it that we human beings can conceive of a "total freedom" we have never had, or of a perfect circle, since no such has ever or can ever be drawn, or of the concept of infinity, which we can never objectively experience, or whatever other such idealizations a person might pick?

You and I are not Platonists, I think...so "the realm of ideal forms" is out as an explanation, as we both agree...so what will we put in its place?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Nov 21, 2020 6:32 pm
You and I are not Platonists, I think...so "the realm of ideal forms" is out as an explanation, as we both agree...so what will we put in its place?

Actually, I've read Plato's works independent and prior to looking at later philosophical reflections and completely interpret 'forms' differently than many. I agree with what I believe I've interpreted his meaning but is distinctly different from what you may think he meant. And I don't see it as related to this particular question, but do think we agree still without reference to Plato.

So, ignoring Plato's works, I think you are correct in recognizing that we have more of a default TO be in defiance. My arguments though may differ for how and why this is the case. For instance, I think that the reason for consciousness at all is DUE TO the fact of contradiction of our 'expectations'. But to expect is itself also not meaningful technically unless we HAVE something that initially goes against it as something unexpected; So I get and share your concern.

I think that another way of thinking of what conscious beings do is summarized as "wanting" itself, as it relates to this. "Why do we 'want", then, would be a kind of reduced question of conscious beings to the same question here. My guess relates to biology and evolution. We have something that intially has no 'value' to behaviors as favorable or unfavorable to us personally. Then, from early development, we take something from the environment and assign it as "that which we will seek", regardless of whether what we seek is constructive or destructive of our biology. And then, IF it has any tendency to PERMIT us to continue existence without being destroyed, the survival rate of ONLY those assigned behaviors that get passed on by continued living things, BECOME what we 'default to' as a normal "expectation", ...and something that we internally assign as "good" to us.

This is a point I suggested to you before regarding how values of 'good' or 'bad' evolve from us independent of others, by the way. But on this thread's concern, the 'default' behavior is assumed already. That is, we run on, "I want X", and this coincides as meaning also, "I do not want some non-X". Where the default is to receive X, we only become relatively shocked when something prevents us from it afterwards.

If I want "mommy", for instance, it is only when "mommy'' is predefined as a norm that we discover her absense as discomforting.

Why is it that when I cry, that mommy isn't coming? This is not fair! What is wrong with this world? I didn't choose to be here. So what am I supposed to do NOW that is preventing mommy from being here and making me so sad?

Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Sat Nov 21, 2020 7:06 pm I think that the reason for consciousness at all is DUE TO the fact of contradiction of our 'expectations'.

That's interesting. So we'd have to think that if we only got what we expect, we might not be genuinely "conscious"?

If that's so, then we might have a partial answer to the question: namely, we have "barriers" so that we can become conscious. Would you say that?

But to expect is itself also not meaningful technically unless we HAVE something that initially goes against it as something unexpected; So I get and share your concern.

Yes, that's it. How do we get this "expectation" of something we have never had? That's a puzzling one, at least initially...

I think that another way of thinking of what conscious beings do is summarized as "wanting" itself, as it relates to this. "Why do we 'want", then, would be a kind of reduced question of conscious beings to the same question here.

Yes, or even more, "Why do we want what we have never had?" or even, "How do we manage to conceive of ideal states like freedom, so that we can want them, even though we don't ever have them?

My guess relates to biology and evolution. We have something that intially has no 'value' to behaviors as favorable or unfavorable to us personally. Then, from early development, we take something from the environment and assign it as "that which we will seek", regardless of whether what we seek is constructive or destructive of our biology. And then, IF it has any tendency to PERMIT us to continue existence without being destroyed, the survival rate of ONLY those assigned behaviors that get passed on by continued living things, BECOME what we 'default to' as a normal "expectation", ...and something that we internally assign as "good" to us.

Okay. But if that were the case, would there not have to be a neat fit between what is "good" and what is "adaptive"? But some things that we take as good are surely not very "adaptive." For example, an "adaptive" strategy would be maximizing our own survival by acquiring as many advantages as we can...but we have law that say, "Thou shalt not steal." Or an "adaptive" strategy might be to maximize promiscuity...but we have rules that say "Don't sleep with everybody."

If we can find even one such rule, that requires of us something "good" but which is not evolutionarily advantageous to us personally, then why do we feel obligated to follow it?

Nietzsche thought it was that the weak were imposing their "Judeo-Christian" morality on us, as he put it. And he thought that being really adaptive, that is, becoming an "Overman" or "Superman" would entail seeing those moral precepts as the fakes they were, and getting past them all.

If "good" = "adaptive," then can we say he was wrong?

If I want "mommy", for instance, it is only when "mommy'' is predefined as a norm that we discover her absense as discomforting.

Right. I get that. But a baby has already experienced "mommy" -- not as a concept, surely, but as a reality...as a warm presence, the absence of which is unpleasant. So that can perhaps be explained.

But what about some value like "total freedom"? That's an ideal we've NEVER experienced, not even once. So "How do we learn to desire it?" is the next question. We shouldn't even be able to conceptualize it...much less recognize the absence of it as somehow "wrong." We should, one would think, experience our restrictions and "barriers" as just...well...normal.

Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Sat Nov 21, 2020 4:43 pm
"Why do we require any limits or controls on our behavior when it was not OUR choice to be born?"

One’s behavior is only limited by the laws of physics. All other laws are actually conditional and depend on one’s willingness or reluctance to experience consequences.

No human can fly unaided.

Any normal human can punch another human in the face, if willing to be punched back, arrested and fined, possibly jailed, or just ostracized by people in general.

So the question posed above is really: why was I born into a world wherein the laws of physics were created without my input?

Some may say the answer is: because I’m not God.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Nov 21, 2020 8:24 pm

Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Sat Nov 21, 2020 7:06 pm I think that the reason for consciousness at all is DUE TO the fact of contradiction of our 'expectations'.

That's interesting. So we'd have to think that if we only got what we expect, we might not be genuinely "conscious"?

If that's so, then we might have a partial answer to the question: namely, we have "barriers" so that we can become conscious. Would you say that?

Maybe. My statement is more like, "IF/SINCE (barriers exist), THEN (consciousness evolves for animals)" because the benefit of the living being that happens to succeed with more likelihood would be those that can induce patterns useful to overcome barriers. The consciousness that we feel is just a subset of all of our cells that acts like a sort of External Affairs department of a government. It is an 'interface' of an outside world that lacks CONSISTENCY. (Thus is relatively 'contradictory' to our individual collection of cells without because those animals that lack it, would be eaten up by those that have it to overcome such conflicts in a relatively unpredictable set of different environments.)

But to expect is itself also not meaningful technically unless we HAVE something that initially goes against it as something unexpected; So I get and share your concern.

Yes, that's it. How do we get this "expectation" of something we have never had? That's a puzzling one, at least initially...

In artificial intelligence, the logic required to get computers or robots to learn requires a predefining PROGRAM something like:

(0)Experience = 0
(1)take a sample of the environment as an experience, X = (whatever it finds); Make Experience(new) = Experience(old) + 1
(2) assign whatever it senses first as what it 'wants'. (Seek for what is in X)
(3) Try to find what it wants, (Compare an arbitrary selection to see if it is a match to what you 'want' = contents of X)
(4) If it finds the same kind of object with its new 'programmed' assigned target, its runs a reward program by goint to (6); if not, goto (5)
(5) Penalty Program: Subtract one from your experience. If Experience = 0, goto (1), Else goto (3)
(6)Reward Program: Add one from your experience. (Experience = Experience(old) + 1) Goto(3)

[I tried to present only a simplified program here in a way I hope you might follow. If you cannot, don't be too concerned. I was just giving a possible example of how such a non-thinking mechanism can lead to one that 'evolves towards something that could.]

I think that another way of thinking of what conscious beings do is summarized as "wanting" itself, as it relates to this. "Why do we 'want", then, would be a kind of reduced question of conscious beings to the same question here.

Yes, or even more, "Why do we want what we have never had?" or even, "How do we manage to conceive of ideal states like freedom, so that we can want them, even though we don't ever have them?

I'm presently watching the series, "Brave New World", based upon the Huxley's original. It is a Utopian model that works well but is challenged by one from outside who asked of his new admirers inside this utopia, "Do you want 'happiness' or do you want 'freedom'?" Personally, the contrived utopia actually seems favorable to me in context of the series. But the members inside this utopia are relatively naive and has a caste system and each takes pills for each emotional risk. This reminded me of that.

Unfortunately, I just learned by looking it up now, that the series will be cancelled. Perhaps its present plot made some think as I did: why NOT stay in bliss if 'happiness' is still an end in itself. But the intent of the lesson of the story was that some actual degree of 'happiness' is lost should we all be on the same level. I think that if this kind of utopian world could exist, we'd be reduced to more literal vegetables in actual fact. Then we'd become 'cells' of another larger entity that repeats the process of the 'whole' society as an organism in its own right.

Basically, consciousness has no purpose if we get what we want directly. We'd lack the need to seek the environment when we get it automatically and so become as plants. But, of course, as plants are relatively restricted to succeed with complete dependence upon the environment, we risk potential annihilation by some other possible environmental event, as the dinosaurs had. Consciousness is uniquely of animals because we roam to different environments whereas plants have to accept the environment as is.

My guess relates to biology and evolution. We have something that intially has no 'value' to behaviors as favorable or unfavorable to us personally. Then, from early development, we take something from the environment and assign it as "that which we will seek", regardless of whether what we seek is constructive or destructive of our biology. And then, IF it has any tendency to PERMIT us to continue existence without being destroyed, the survival rate of ONLY those assigned behaviors that get passed on by continued living things, BECOME what we 'default to' as a normal "expectation", ...and something that we internally assign as "good" to us.

Okay. But if that were the case, would there not have to be a neat fit between what is "good" and what is "adaptive"? But some things that we take as good are surely not very "adaptive." For example, an "adaptive" strategy would be maximizing our own survival by acquiring as many advantages as we can...but we have law that say, "Thou shalt not steal." Or an "adaptive" strategy might be to maximize promiscuity...but we have rules that say "Don't sleep with everybody."

If we can find even one such rule, that requires of us something "good" but which is not evolutionarily advantageous to us personally, then why do we feel obligated to follow it?

Nietzsche thought it was that the weak were imposing their "Judeo-Christian" morality on us, as he put it. And he thought that being really adaptive, that is, becoming an "Overman" or "Superman" would entail seeing those moral precepts as the fakes they were, and getting past them all.

If "good" = "adaptive," then can we say he was wrong?

This is the point at which political movements had looked at Darwins theory and thought to question what 'fitness' meant. On the surface, what is 'adaptive' can be "good" but still depends upon an environment that simply doesn't utterly destroy it by some other competing body. Darwin's 'fit' meant "that which matched the present environment's coinciding favor, not the particular individual's prosperity or happiness." By contrast, if for whatever means you happen to BE 'happy' regardless, then happiness assures your 'fitness'.

So the logic is a condition:

If I am 'happy' (a 'good' thing), then I am 'fit'

NOT, if I am 'fit', then I must be 'happy'.

That is, you can be 'adaptive' but not in a 'good' way (because you can possibly be sad or simply lack emotions, like a plant).

If I want "mommy", for instance, it is only when "mommy'' is predefined as a norm that we discover her absense as discomforting.

Right. I get that. But a baby has already experienced "mommy" -- not as a concept, surely, but as a reality...as a warm presence, the absence of which is unpleasant. So that can perhaps be explained.

But what about some value like "total freedom"? That's an ideal we've NEVER experienced, not even once. So "How do we learn to desire it?" is the next question. We shouldn't even be able to conceptualize it...much less recognize the absence of it as somehow "wrong." We should, one would think, experience our restrictions and "barriers" as just...well...normal.

See above. I cannot interpret 'freedom' without a prior evalation. You might think of the mechanism that seeks a value in the environment in the example program above as 'neutrally free'. Freedom is not necessary for 'happiness' and why I question this in essence. We only find disapproval of this one we experience it and find it meaningful. If we are born without having knowledge of its meaning, then like the relative 'automatons' in Huxley's Brave New World, we'd be satisfied. In the series, the outsider's intent to entertain the value of freedom derived from his own selfish expressions that went against the norm. The others thought it entertaining for being something highly unusual but were not so able to handle the 'freedom' once released. It is something valued as a complex of having both 'good' and 'bad'. Like being bipolar, the high of freedom is due to the way one can increase the illusion of pleasure by experiencing the extremes of pain (or discomfort). As such, freedom can advance the degree of distinction between happiness to sadness, like we have the degrees of rich to poor. But it isn't in itself a PRIOR necessity to experiencing, just as one learns their addiction to some drug AFTER experiencing the 'freedom' to do it. Though, I know that after experiencing the degree, it is even hard for me to ever suggest that it would be good to go back for myself. You can't undo the experience of the roller coaster's power of experience once experienced without brain damage or death, something that drug users are sure to prove is common.

commonsense wrote: ↑Sat Nov 21, 2020 9:16 pm

Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Sat Nov 21, 2020 4:43 pm
"Why do we require any limits or controls on our behavior when it was not OUR choice to be born?"

One’s behavior is only limited by the laws of physics. All other laws are actually conditional and depend on one’s willingness or reluctance to experience consequences.

No human can fly unaided.

Any normal human can punch another human in the face, if willing to be punched back, arrested and fined, possibly jailed, or just ostracized by people in general.

So the question posed above is really: why was I born into a world wherein the laws of physics were created without my input?

Some may say the answer is: because I’m not God.

Makes sense why we might want to seek 'God' or become it ourselves. Personally, I think becoming it exactly is identical to death because if we were cursed to BE as omniscent, being able to evade any discomfort we choose, then what is left is all downhill from there. Death is then the thrill of getting to that ultimate bottom. Everything else would then look 'uphill' from there, ...if you could still have the senses to notice, of course.

Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Sat Nov 21, 2020 4:43 pm Why do I have to live under any world that I did not choose to be born in by some force beyond my power and yet be expected to conform to rules to any extent that I have not participated in making nor negotiating?

What if the truth is that the “rules” you must conform to are what were literally required to actually birth you into existence in the first place?

And I am talking about being born into a world where the jury is still out on the question of whether or not a higher (and more pleasing) level of existence awaits us after the death of the body.

The question is: if you yourself were the higher “force” (i.e., God) that could create the physiological conditions that made it possible for the awakening of new human souls into existence, then what would YOU do differently (as in what rules would you change) to remedy the issues you are raising in the OP?
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seeds wrote: ↑Sun Nov 22, 2020 12:06 am

Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Sat Nov 21, 2020 4:43 pm Why do I have to live under any world that I did not choose to be born in by some force beyond my power and yet be expected to conform to rules to any extent that I have not participated in making nor negotiating?

What if the truth is that the “rules” you must conform to are what were literally required to actually birth you into existence in the first place?

And I am talking about being born into a world where the jury is still out on the question of whether or not a higher (and more pleasing) level of existence awaits us after the death of the body.

The question is: if you yourself were the higher “force” (i.e., God) that could create the physiological conditions that made it possible for the awakening of new human souls into existence, then what would YOU do differently (as in what rules would you change) to remedy the issues you are raising in the OP?
_______

I don't follow. My point here is that we are born into reality UNEQUAL to same genetics, the same places, the same parents, etc. Given that we have these differences, how does the parent class have any right to expect EQUAL acceptance of one's preconditioned reality? Why or how is it fair to expect one to abide by what one is given unfairly?

Note that I am not suggesting the solution in asking the question. I'm asserting that this type of question is what is asked in a kind of general way. For instance, if I am born on an island with only one other person whom was there before me, AND I am expected to abide by their prior claim of ownership to the whole island, why should I accept being a slave to their will as though it were a 'fair' expectation? I perceive the other as an equal being yet am expected to be subserviant to their accident of the order of birth. The question would be, "should I conform without my own preconsent to their rule?" We can guess that this would be what the other thinks I should accept of their authority, of course. But I can argue this as unfair appropriately.

I, for one, did not abide by what was given to me unfairly.

My big brother acted like he was in charge of me throughout our upbringing. His rules—stay out of his way, don’t touch his stuff, don’t change the TV channel—were unfairly made by him before I showed up.

I didn’t think his unfair rules should apply to me. After all, we were both the same, just 2 brothers. Everything needed to be 50-50 as far as I was concerned.

But my brother didn’t see things that way. Whenever I chose not to abide by his unfair rules, he proceeded to “wrestle” me, squash me and bend my limbs until I’d cry “uncle”.

There you have it. I was forced to live in an unfair world.

Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Sat Nov 21, 2020 5:05 pm Why do I have to live under any world that I did not choose to be born in ...?

You Don't!

You have to choose to live and then do the work required by your nature to survive.

If you don't like living in this world, just don't do anything.

Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Tue Nov 24, 2020 12:15 am I don't follow. My point here is that we are born into reality UNEQUAL to same genetics, the same places, the same parents, etc. Given that we have these differences, how does the parent class have any right to expect EQUAL acceptance of one's preconditioned reality? Why or how is it fair to expect one to abide by what one is given unfairly?

...For instance, if I am born on an island with only one other person whom was there before me, AND I am expected to abide by their prior claim of ownership to the whole island, why should I accept being a slave to their will as though it were a 'fair' expectation?

Sorry, my mistake. When I read your following complaint: “...Why do I have to live under any world that I did not choose to be born in by some force beyond my power...” I thought you were speaking in loftier terms.

Anyway,...

(and setting aside the fact that nowhere in this Darwinian “survival-of-the-fittest” world is it written in stone that life is fair)

...the solution to the issue you are raising is that you don’t have to accept it. And as soon as you gain the will and the means to do so (by developing your physical strengths and or intellect), you can change your lot in life and force (or persuade) the greedy, self-entitled island owner to see things your way.
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Scott

Why do I have to live under any world that I did not choose to be born in by some force beyond my power and yet be expected to conform to rules to any extent that I have not participated in making nor negotiating?

Does the universe exist to serve Man or does Man exist to serve the universe? If the universe exists to serve Man, suggesting it is doing a bad job of it is reasonable But if Man's objective purpose is to serve universal needs, How can we consciously grow to understand human purpose?