>Justice, for example. I wouldn't want to bet that all intelligent beings would understand the concept of justice, but I wouldn't want to bet against it either.
Justice is a biased concept. It's a biological phenomenon. Most of us are born with justice modules in our brain. Certain people aren't, they're called psychopaths and these people are basically proof about the genetic component of justice.
Justice is simply a set of behaviors that helps you and your tribe survive from an evolutionary perspective. If you robbed and killed people all the time, well that doesn't help with survival does it? So brains evolve justice modules. There are alternative survival strategies that involve behaviors that are unjustified... and your emotions reflect this possible alternative path. One can be emotionally tempted by unjustified behavior and move in that direction when the situation allows for it. It's all preprogrammed...
For PG to talk about justice as possibly universal is like talking about English as possibly universal. Clearly these are biased concepts unique to humanities biological situation. It's unlikely that a frog feels justice simply because the evolutionary pressures to make him feel that way don't exist. Hardly a candidate for even consideration of being universal.
There can be aliens that are highly intelligent but anti-social. Such creatures have little need to develop a biological justice module as part of their intelligence. I would imagine communities of these creatures are only held at equilibrium because of mutually assured destruction. This has certainly been the case for humanity as humanity has multiple modes of operation, justice is just one component, fear of death is another.
Without our body we cannot see, feel and experience.
Something is true when it is useful, predictive to us, to our body, when it allow us to move away from pain and toward pleasure.
If there is no observer and no sensations(feedback) I don’t think we can ever come to any truth.
Can we derive logic without an observer that is embodied, that experience pain and pleasure?
Every experiment we do are motivated by a desired for knowledge (information to avoid pain)
Without that biological framework there is no experiment, the external observer is an illusion.
To me justice is another emergent concept of the human games, a concept that allow to maximise fitness at a larger scale. We keep track of the freeloaders and punish them so we get to a higher total fitness if we force everyone to contribute more or less equally.
>Without that biological framework there is no experiment, the external observer is an illusion.
No but we can make a guess. A hypothesis. Our observations seemingly indicate that only humans feel happy and rocks do not. Neither do plants.
But it seems like both humans and plants both obey logic.
Given that biology is required for US and YOU to do an observation, it may very well be that biology is required for observation period.. and nothing exists outside of that. But our observations present us a view that seemingly looks like a reality exists when it is not observed. One is unable to validate either conclusion. Most of us go about our day to day lives assuming the later conclusion. and thus when we assume that later conclusion is true and we look at logic... our observations clearly present to us a dichotomy between logic and happiness. Not all living beings on this planet seem to share it. But logic is universal and we assume it exists even when not observed.
Justice is a biased concept. It's a biological phenomenon. Most of us are born with justice modules in our brain. Certain people aren't, they're called psychopaths and these people are basically proof about the genetic component of justice.
Justice is simply a set of behaviors that helps you and your tribe survive from an evolutionary perspective. If you robbed and killed people all the time, well that doesn't help with survival does it? So brains evolve justice modules. There are alternative survival strategies that involve behaviors that are unjustified... and your emotions reflect this possible alternative path. One can be emotionally tempted by unjustified behavior and move in that direction when the situation allows for it. It's all preprogrammed...
For PG to talk about justice as possibly universal is like talking about English as possibly universal. Clearly these are biased concepts unique to humanities biological situation. It's unlikely that a frog feels justice simply because the evolutionary pressures to make him feel that way don't exist. Hardly a candidate for even consideration of being universal.
There can be aliens that are highly intelligent but anti-social. Such creatures have little need to develop a biological justice module as part of their intelligence. I would imagine communities of these creatures are only held at equilibrium because of mutually assured destruction. This has certainly been the case for humanity as humanity has multiple modes of operation, justice is just one component, fear of death is another.