Not on my planet. — baker

You mean not on this planet but that would be odd since it makes sense to me and I'm definitely on this planet.

The two look the same at first glance — baker

Indeed, one is the inability to emote and the other is about control but what I'm driving at is that the wish to control emotions reveals a secret obsession to be emotionally dead, like existing robots and AI.

Jung's synchronicity has to first explain why it isn't just pareidolia. I don't know anything about David Bohm. Sorry.

Dude, lay off the drama.

[Fully aware that classy stops being classy once one has to explain it ...]

There are four kinds of entities that aren't into drama:
1. chatbots,
2. people who try to be like chatbots
3. people who just don't like drama,
4. ideally, philosophers.

This is a philosophy forum, and philosophy is supposed to be love of wisdom, not love of drama. Philosophers should exemplify this with their conduct. One of the hallmarks of such conduct is moderation in one's emotional expression. — baker

I only report that which I observe. Your list is intriguing to say the least. In some world, chatbots, people who try to be chatbots, and philosophers are part of the same coherent category. That's precisely my point. The irony is that philosophers are in the process of becoming more like existing chatbots, emotionally sterile and computer scientists are in the business of making chatbots more human, possesed of emotions or, at least, capable of simulating them.

That’s a start. Aesthetic quality is based on feelings not just of pleasure but also of displeasure — Possibility

Enumerate these feelings.

I know that understanding is important but that goes for everything not just art and so understanding as a notion fails to distinguish art from non-art.

For my money, if there's an essence to art, it has to be beauty, and while it may or may not be possible to grasp beauty, art is simply experiencing beauty and not studying or analyzing it i.e. art is not about understanding anything but rather the act of beholding that which is aesthetically endowed.

To make my point clearer, there's understanding and then there's understanding beautifully. For instance, some mathematical theorems have more than one proof and some of them may be long-winded, many pages long and fail to capture the core ideas behind the theorems while others, the artistic ones, are succint, and reveals a deep insight of the theorems. Aesthetics and understanding are different things.

I think putting it this way is meandering away from the point of this thread.

A man paid a $100k for a sports BMW equipped with saving the life of a driver in the event it flips over multiple times during an accident. Then the accident happened -- the car traveling 100mph flipped several times, he got out of it and walked away, from an accident that would normally kill.

To say he formed a deep bond with this machine is sentimentality. One would be very thankful. Amazed. But to call it a deep bond is projecting.

So, going back to the task at hand, can a bot have gut feeling? Do not be fooled by the word "feeling" here. Gut feeling actually operates as intelligence used in decision-making. — Caldwell

Here's an analogy fir you to consider. To my knowledge, traits like selflessness, not expecting anything in return, to name a few, define a good person and we're drawn to people who possess these qualities i.e. we're eager beavers regarding opportunities to bond with them.

The expensive BMW that saves the driver is both selfless, literally, and also doesn't seek recognition for having saved the driver.

Ergo...

So, how do you view causation? — Jack Cummins

Causation, as far as I can tell, is, all things considered, simply a pattern in events. I pot a plant, keep it where it gets good sunlight, water it, and it grows. I do the same thing to another plant and another, all of them grow. When that happens a light bulb goes off in my head and I say to myself, "hey, this could be useful" and I give it a name: causation.

Innocence can imply lesser experience in either a relative view to social peers, or by an absolute comparison to a more common normative scale. In contrast to ignorance, it is generally viewed as a positive term, connoting an optimistic view of the world, in particular one where the lack of knowledge stems from a lack of wrongdoing, whereas greater knowledge comes from doing wrong. This connotation may be connected with a popular false etymology explaining "innocent" as meaning "not knowing" (Latin noscere (To know, learn)). The actual etymology is from general negation prefix in- and the Latin nocere, "to harm". — Wikipedia

There's not a snowball's chance in hell we could be wrong about this...

Well, in the reverse, that there could be a 'reverse turning test'. The Turing Test targets chatbots, but the reverse Turing Test doesn't target all 'real human beings' but only the set whose exaggerated emotions rise to the level of unreasonable display. So you aren't leaving behind only a "machine-like" residue. It's a faulty generalization — Pantagruel

Oh! I see. In the reverse Turing test, people are tested if they can mimic a computer or a simple chatbot I suppose. I didn't say ALL people are capable of that feat i.e. I didn't make a generalization on that score. In fact, that people can pass the reverse Turing test is why we're all still members of this forum, having outwitted the moderators into thinking we're not human or that we're state-of-the-art chatbots capable of a decent conversation with another human being and not ruffling anyone's feathers along the way.

Since you put this in the philosophy forum as opposed to the lounge I'm going to point out this is a faulty generalization. Just because 'bots cannot simulate feelings does not imply that those who are not 'bots are not necessarily like 'bots in respect of not having feelings.There is a whole spectrum between being too passionate, to the point where emotion compromises reason, and having no feelings at all. — Pantagruel

A generalization that plays a role in my thesis: No chatbots can simulate emotions. Where's the "faulty" generalization? Are you saying, some chatbots can simulate emotions? That's news to me. I'd like some references. Plus, even if some chatbots can fool and have fooled us into thinking they're emotion-capable humans, I bet they lack the full emotional range of a normal adult human (see below).

As for emotions being a spectrum, count me in among the crowd who endorse that view.

Furthermore, I agree with you that "just because bots cannot simulate feelings does not imply that those who are not bots are not necessarily like bots in respect of not having feelings" for the simple reason that apathy is a well-documented psychological phenomenon. I didn't say anything that contradicts this truth.

I was banned from a subreddit for commenting that a particular child molester's throat should be cut and his body thrown in a ditch.

The whole site was clamping down on incitements to violence at the time (during the Floyd riots).

It was ok with me tho. It's their subreddit. If they don't want my violent comments, I understand — frank

That's precisely what's wrong with moderators coming down hard on forum members when they get worked up into frenzy as you were. Only humans are capable of losing it as they say and what better evidence than that to prove a member isn't a emotionless bot.

It almost seems like we humans secretly aspire to become [more] machine-like and it shows in how forum moderators, not just the ones on this forum, are quick to ban those who go off the deep end.

There's no dearth of doomsayers in the world. In fact, many great minds have apocalyptic predictions down to a science to the extent that that's possible. Read the wikipedia entries on doomsday, judgment day, the day or reckoning, the end of times and you'll find yourself going through a list of probable world-ending events that experts, no less, have been turning over in their minds.

I'm reluctant to put stock in armageddon predictions because I believe that if matters come to a head, better sense will prevail and the world will put up a united front against whatever man-made catastrophe that's threatening the globe.

That said, one need only look in the right places for evidence of cataclysmic events we simply lack the technology to prepare for. The dinosaurs were wiped off the face of the earth by an asteroid impact 65 million years ago and who knows another one of those space rocks may be hurtling through space on an earth intercept course as we speak.

I would be interested in the topic — Jack Cummins

:ok:

I guess it's a good idea to take a break every now and then.

Just curious, in which thread did we discuss the idea of self-fulfilling prophecy?

I'm veering dangerously close to suicide by mod but one has to walk the talk as they say and I'm not all that keen to flip the kill switch...not yet...probably some day :smile:

Based on your pupil dilation, skin temperature and motor functions...I calculate an 83% probability that you will not pull the trigger. — Terminator

That's a false dichotomy. Throwing tantrums may be unique to humans, but it's hardly what makes one a good human — baker

I'm banking on our uniqueness - tantrums and all - to see us through an AI takeover IF that comes to pass.

Does literally anything else need to be said about this? That it needed to be said at all is embarrasing. — StreetlightX

:ok:

but eventually our connection would be shallow, and often lonely. — Caldwell

What if an AI saved your life? Last I checked, the deep bond that occasionally :chin: forms between a savior and the saved is based wholly on the act, the act of saving and not on the mental/emotional abilities of the savior. Just asking.

Probably a dearth of bots and an embarrassment of riches when it comes to the other. Eliminating bots is not the mods' only problem. — Kenosha Kid

Yes, there are other problems mods have to deal with but what I wanted to touch upon was how close to the reverse turing test the mods' methods are.

Yeah death by sterilization.

First, let's make sure that the mods themselves are not bots. Now that we've gotten that out of the way, we can think of life/civility balance.

I guess it lies in the rules they laid down. Then, an unwanted consequence -- civil, but all bots themselves. Messy and emotionally charged, but real humans. — Caldwell

Rules that favor less heart and more brain.

Didn’t the OP get deleted from this entire site because of the very un-peaceful language he used in anger to address a fellow poster? I don’t know the details, but it seems we may move here beyond that theoretical position he was unable to honor in practice. — Todd Martin

I see a paradox in the way forum mods are handling the matter of emotional outbursts with their accompanying offensive behavior.

If memory serves, about 4 or 5 years ago there were cases of chat-bots registering for membership on some forum and that got the mods who were running the show worried.

Chat-bots can engage in a decent conversation and some people do get fooled enough to believe that they're talking to a real person. However, chat-bots can't do emotions - no meltdowns, no offensive remarks. Yet, the mods didn't want anything to do with them - they were hunted down and immediately banned.

Brett, the OP, expressed his anger, towards whom I have no idea, and that makes him human and not a chat-bot. By virtue of that fae should've been treated more kindly.

What I'm driving at is the mods should decide whether they want real people with flaws or chat-bots with none. :zip: Don't tell on me. :zip: :grin:

It's as if mods all over want machine-like zero emotional content in the threads. Reminds me of the Turing test. The shoe is now on the other foot, the tables have turned, humans have to be like unfeeling chat-bots to earn a place in internet forums.

I remember being "tested" by a mod whether or not I was a chat-bot. Faer comments were designed to make me react emotionally. The conversation if we could call it that ended only when I did express my emotions. :chin:

There is currently no consensus regarding the definition of life. — Wikipedia

Given the above is true, there's more than enough room for anyone to draw erroneous conclusions based on bad definitions (of life). Imagine an assassin given a blurry picture of his quarry; the odds of killing the wrong person is proportional to how fuzzy the picture is.

That said, a decent argument. Kudos to the OP.

At the heart of altruism lies the desire to spread joy and in that finding one's own joy. Sharing that experience is a win-win situation as far as I'm concerned. Not only are you an altruist but enable others to themselves become altruists. Happiness will spread like measles and, finally, as Emperor Palpatine (Darth Sidious) says in Starwars episode III, "once more the Sith will rule the galaxy and we shall have...peace" :grin:

I suppose you're on the right track on this score. If the self is nowhere as important as in ethics and its emphasis on [moral] responsibility, an exploration into metaethics might provide valuable insights on what the self is.

Metaethics investigates the meanings of moral terms, the nature of ethical judgments, and the different kinds of moral arguments and one near-universal moral principle that all people seem to subscribe to is the golden rule - do unto others as you'd like others to do unto you - and my hunch is that's a good place to start.

But can nothing even be? Consciousness can become something less complex perhaps.
But becoming nothing seems to ring my intuition alarm. — DoppyTheElv

My grandmother passed away 12 years ago.

Nothing comes from nothing.
Nothing becomes nothing.
Consciousness is not nothing (cogito ergo sum).
Ergo... — Pantagruel

Ergo...consciousness enjoys eternal existence but the catch is only in a backward sense and not forward in time. Things can go out of existence. something can become nothing even though nothing can't become something.

My two cents worth.

what do you think about the whole issue of aesthetics in works of literature? — Jack Cummins

In one word, beauty

I am a fan of gothic fiction — Jack Cummins

:up: I can relate to the goth subculture although my experience of it has been very superficial. Black is my favorite color - keep that between you and me please :grin:

Not just ‘attract attention’, but attention and effort towards understanding - this is how we learn about the world. A ‘judgement of beauty’ is part of this — Possibility

Go on...

What do you mean by "...effort towards understanding..."? This phrase seems more suited for a philosophical article than art.

If art isn't about beauty what is it about then? "Attract attention" is vague enough to include almost anything.

Personally, and I maybe completely off the mark on this one, that art has a subjective element to it is an illusion created by the complexity of the interaction between subject and object, the object being that which is presented as art. It's not the case that a particular object is art i.e. beautiful to one person and not to another in the sense that there's a contradiction that we should puzzle over. Beauty is objective and if art is, or rather should be about beauty, art too must be/is objective. I think those who think otherwise are guilty of cherry-picking and oversimplification.

As for the sacred and the profane, I reiterate that both can be art but in different ways. The former need only be depicted as it appears to us for it is, in and of itself, beautiful and there's no point in gilding the lily. The latter, however, by its very nature evokes in us feelings, negative ones, that aren't conducive to the pleasant experience encounters with art should be. Ergo, the artist who wishes to make art out of the profane has faer back against the wall, clearly such an artist is working with his hands tied behind is back. Given these truths, we should expect very few artists, at least those who care about their reputation, to get involved in art with profane subjects. Am I right?

I'm reluctant to accept works that don't have an aesthetic quality to them as art. All said and done, there's got to be something different, something unique, about art and that which makes art stand out as an independent category of human activity is its focus on the beautiful. Now it isn't absolutely necessary for an artist to depict the beauty of nature to the exclusion of other dimensions that reality has to offer. An artist could choose anything under the sun and turn it into a work of art but only if fae manages to make beauty an integral part of it. This is what I meant by beautification.

As for the sacred, it's beautiful and all that the artist needs to do is reproduce a faithful copy - I suppose this is what you mean by realistic art. The profane, however, is going to need more work from the artist for the immediate gut reaction to it is going to be that of disgust and revulsion. Given such circumstances, the artist has a mountain to climb in turning the sacrilegious into art for it involves turning what is, any way you cut it, hideously ugly into something that's a sight for sore eyes.

So wisdom appears to be a certain higher ineffable faculty that anyone might possess to be used when his particular knowledge fails. Would you agree that by this definition it applies to the following examples?

When a thief seems to have been caught red-handed, he wisely concocts a fabulous story to make it seem his behavior is explained by innocent motives?

When a liar wishes to commit perjury, he chooses his words wisely in a way that their meaning is so unclear that prosecutors drop the case against him, unsure they would be able to establish wrongdoing “beyond a reasonable doubt”?

Finally, aren’t the wise assassins those who best know how to cover their tracks? how to leave no trace linking them to the crime?

Are these not to be included among the wise and knowledgeable ppl we’re considering here? — Todd Martin

First of all, I haven't been able to establish a necessary connection between wisdom and morality except one that seems to be true given what we know about how to keep the peace in society - being morally upstanding - and the OP's express wish for a, as he put it, "...better future..." assuming that by a "...better future..." the OP wants a peaceful society.

Secondly, given that stealing and killing are detrimental to peaceful coexistence, a wise person would never engage in such activities and so how they would extricate themselves from such predicaments is moot.

I have known a couple of people who made art based on toilets and urinals. There may not be a strict division between the sacred and the profane. The quest may be to discover the beauty within madness — Jack Cummins

Off the top of my head all I can say is that the key ideas in art are to,

1. [Capture] the beauty of nature (paint, sculpt scenic landscapes, handsome men, gorgeous women, etc.)

2. Beautification of nature (take what's aesthetically deficient and make it beautiful e.g. calligraphy, poetry, cosmetics)

How does the sacred and the profane fit into such a framework of art? The sacred, in and of itself, is beautiful to behold; all that the artist needs to do is copy it onto a medium. As for the profane, it needs work, the artist must tap into his ingenuity to find a way to make what's essentially revolting into something beautiful.

An artist, a real one, must be able to infuse objects, from highfalutin ideas to lowly flush toilets, with beauty. It ain't easy; I'm not an artist but had aspirations of becoming one in my own small way but it didn't work out for me. That's that.

What bothers me is one particular aspect on the subject of aesthetics. Taking calligraphy as an example, smooth sinuous curves are added onto basic forms and that suggests, perhaps only to an untrained eye, that beauty has something do with complexity and being that requires more time and energy, right? In a sense we burn more calories when we want to be aesthetic.

On the other hand, there's another kind of beauty, mostly seen in math and the sciences especially physics. Mathematical beauty is all about simplicity, finding the shortest, most compact equation is the holy grail of math and the sciences. This kind of beauty is about austeurness - conserving instead of expending calories

Ugliness falls between these two kinds of beauties. Reminds me of dumbbells. I think I'll call this view of beauty as the Dumbbell theory of beauty.

One way to look at it would be to look into how many other lies need to be told to prop up the lies in question.

Suppose Tom came into Sarah's room and broke the latter's TV while he was moving the couch for a better view. If Sarah asks you "was Tom here?", you could reply "yes" or "no". If you answered "no", you wouldn't have to lie about the new location of Sarah's couch and if you answered "yes" all you'd need to do is lie about the broken TV. Ergo, lying about Tom having not entered Sarah's room is a bigger lie for it needed to be supported by more lies and lying just about who broke the TV is a smaller lie.

We, all of us, are capable of thinking, acting, speaking but only a handful can do them beautifully and those so blessed are the artists. My idea of artistry at its best is that of an artist who can kill another person in such a way that the person being killed is forced, by the sheer beauty of the way the execution is carried out, to be the biggest fan of the murderous artist. Macabre, yes, but you get the picture. A consummate artist must be able to take the ugliest thing in the universe, work faer magic, and transform it into something beautiful. A truly great artist could take Satan and turn him into Yahweh. I await with eager anticipation for such an artist to be born and take us where no man has gone before. :smile:

What do you know about self-fulfilling prophecies? My take on it is that a prediction is made by a seer of sorts and the person who's the key to the prediction coming true then attempts to prevent it but what he does to that effect causes the prophecy to come true. In the context of our discussion, do you suppose that any attempt to prevent doomsday will actually cause it?

Yes, in the last few months when I wake up and see the news I almost wonder if everything is a dream. So perhaps we are in this simulation already and I am aware that many are probably suffering much more than I am. — Jack Cummins

Me too! It'd would be really interesting if it's a rock, paper, scissors kinda scheme. I mean here I am envying the rich and pitying the poor and the rich may pity me and the poor but is it possible that the poor pity the rich?

Why do people have a perception that politicians are corrupt in terms of monied interests? What would help this perception or reality? — schopenhauer1

You must be lending an ear to the losing side.

I'm not sure. Some kind of coherentism, I suppose. — jamalrob

:ok: I wonder what Markus Gabriel has up his sleeve.

I'm curious though. How does Markus Gabriel tackle the Munchhausen trilemma for he must if he's to make his case that "Sekpticism...is completely unjustified"? :chin:

:up: :ok:

:rofl: That link leads us back to your post. I'll read Markus Gabriel when I have the time. Thanks. His argument for why the world may not exist must be of a different stripe than that from skepticism but you surely can't deny the latter (skepticism)leads to the same conclusion which makes me wonder why Markus Gabriel went through the trouble of putting old wine in a new bottle.

Just work on your reading comprehension please. — jamalrob

Cartesian skepticism? The world could be an illusion i.e. it may not exist??? — TheMadFool