• Are you against the formation of a techno-optimistic religion?
    ↪Vera Mont
    :fire:
  • Culture is critical
    "The vast majority" of the house is not yet on fire. Where there's smoke, the house is on fire.
  • Are you against the formation of a techno-optimistic religion?
    ↪universeness
    :100:
  • Absolute nothingness is only impossible from the perspective of something
    ↪Ø implies everything
    Your assertion seems unwarranted to me.
  • Absolute nothingness is only impossible from the perspective of something
    [T]here may be no ultimate reason for existence; it may be that reality is a brute fact. — Ø implies everything
    This is entailed by "nothingness is impossible" (i.e. there cannot be not-something), no?
  • Culture is critical
    ↪Vera Mont
    :up: :up:

    ↪180 Proof Wow, I gave a lot of time to my explanation and you have not kept your promise to address democracy. — Athena
    Well, to begin with, I didn't understand your "explanation" (maybe because it doesn't directly address the objections I'd raised here
    ↪180 Proof
    ). Also, I believe I've expressed my position on "democracy" in a number of exchanges with you previously, such as earlier on this thread ...

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/807143

    Okay please list 10 characteristics of democracy and perhaps say something about how they relate to our ideas of right and wrong. — Athena
    Here's an excerpt from an old thread with the disingenuously polemical title Why Must You Be Governed?
    Democratize the economy as much as practically possible.

    Political democracy in the absence of economic democracy (aka "economic autocracy" (becomes neoliberal corporatocracy)) has always been a failing project. [ ... ] Read A. Smith closely. & Read P. Kropotkin closely. Read D. Schweickart & T. Picketty closely.     — 180 Proof
    In other words, "our ideas of right and wrong", Athena, are symptoms of the neoliberal ideology (or there is no alternative (T-I-N-A) to the corporatist status quo). The American Republic was founded on economic autocracy (read Charles A. Beard, 1913) just as classical Athens – your "educated for democracy" ideal – was founded on economic autoocracy (read Orlando Patterson, 1991); and the manifest purpose of "US education before 1958" was the same as it has been ever since 1958 (except maybe in style): generation after generation, for students and their teachers to internalize unquestioning conformity to and support for economic autocracy (e.g. neoliberal corporatism) in order to reinforce being full-time consumers while, at most, being quadrennial citizens. For 'the demos', of course, this is (still) a failing project.
  • Are you against the formation of a techno-optimistic religion?
    ↪Bret Bernhoft
    "I have no idea" because what you describe, Bret, does not make any sense to me. Post-singularity ubiquitous smart nanotech seems more likely to transform planetary civilization into a Global Experience Machine^ (à la "The Matrix" or wireheading^^) than to enable hedonic beings to somehow "transcend" (or to religiously seek "transcendence from") being hedonic.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_machine ^

    https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/wireheading ^^
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Iran has used Hamas to set the trap and Israel must take the bait in Gaza. The US-NATO hegemon will eventually extract Israel from the trap of razing Gaza while (maybe) deterring Iran et al from opening up secondary fronts (e.g. Hezbollah). NYC, Paris and/or London might become tertiary fronts (TBD).
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    ↪Manuel
    :up:
  • If only...
    ↪Vera Mont
    :cool:
  • Metaphysics as an Illegitimate Source of Knowledge
    ↪Bob Ross
    A truth-maker is a referent to which a truth-claim (i.e. truth-bearer) statement refers that makes the statement true; it's not the "agent" asserting or "making" the statement.

    https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truthmakers/
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Eliminate Hamas — 180 Proof
    and then ...
    Free Palestine
    — 180 Proof

    You mean free from Hamas and other terrorist organizations.     — magritte
    Yes, including free from the post-1967, settler-apartheid strategems of the State of Israel.

    Evict Settlers.
    — 180 Proof

    Israel has actually evicted settlers.     — ssu
    Evict settlers from ALL of the internationally recognized Occupied Palestinian Territories.

    https://www.btselem.org/publications/summaries/201007_by_hook_and_by_crook

    https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-205221/
  • If only...
    ↪Vera Mont
    :up:

    Lucid daydream/s of a (not-dystopian) post-singularity, posthuman f u t u r e is my "ideal place". My damn novel (series), however, just hasn't gotten – let itself be – written yet.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Eliminate Hamas :fire:
    Remove Likud.
    Evict All Settlers.
    Free Palestine :flower:
  • Culture is critical
    Unfortunately, I doubt that anyone understands the importance of what I am saying. — Athena
    :roll: :shade:
  • If only...
    ↪Vera Mont
    I've never heard of Islandia so thanks for that. I guess I liked Huxley's Island when I read it as a high school freshman. A few years later I read Ursula Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea trilogy, and though I was mad for Tolkien's "Middle Earth" back then (re: my fantasy roleplaying games days), the only fantasy world that was ever an "ideal place" for me was the archipelago-world of "Earthsea" – especially the islands of "Roke" & "Gont" – which became more real to me with each subsequent book.

    Btw, a sister of my best 'non-jock' friend in high school was a huge fan of both Anne McCafferty's Pern & Andre Norton's Witch World series, IIRC – I never got past the first volume of either series. Now that I think of it, my earliest "ideal place" during the '70s even before "Earthsea" was probably Clarke/Kubrick's alt-"Earth" in 2001: A Space Odyssey (though I was (still am) a '60s Star Trek obsessive too – "The Federation" was cool but not "science fiction-y" enough even for my grade school nerdiness :nerd: ).
  • If only...
    My "ideal place" is (still) the late anarchist and novelist Iain M. Banks' galaxy-spanning civilization The Culture developed and explored through nine space opera novels and one collection of short stories (start here).
  • Perverse Desire
    ↪Tom Storm
    :up:
  • TPF Quote Cabinet
    Two women with
    the same claim
    came to the feet of
    the wise king. Two women,
    but only one baby.
    The king knew
    someone was lying.
    What he said was
    Let the child be
    cut in half; that way
    no one will go
    empty-handed. He
    drew his sword.
    Then, of the two
    women, one
    renounced her share:
    this was
    the sign, the lesson.
    Suppose
    you saw your mother
    torn between two daughters:
    what could you do
    to save her but be
    willing to destroy
    yourself—she would know
    who was the rightful child,
    the one who couldn't bear
    to divide the mother.     — A Fable, Louise Glück

    d. 2023
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    An interesting interview with former Israel PM Ehud Olmert from 11Oct23 ...
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    What is 'zionism without justice' but ...?
    He who sows injustice will reap violence, and the rod of his wrath will fail. — Proverbs 22:8
  • Pacifism and the future of humanity
    ↪Agree-to-Disagree
    :up:

    I was an idealist when I was young, but life turned me into a realist — Agree-to-Disagree
    It's called "maturity", no? Having become wiser.

    ↪Vera Mont
    :up:
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    No justice, no peace.

    When the oppressor Goliath has been (by any means necessary) bled enough by the knives & slings of their oppressed David, (maybe) they will try coexisting without oppression (e.g. overwhelming rejection of Likud's hardline apartheid-terror policies). The tragedy is, however, it may be decades-too-late for oppressed David to give up on Goliath's oppression even if Goliath relents one day and gives it up. Like survivors of genocide, slavery, ethnic cleansing, mass dispossession – "Never Again" (also) means forever wounded, crippled, haunted, cursed ... vengeful. :death: :fire:

    No peace, no justice.

    Has there ever been a version of "Waiting For God" in which "Estragon & Vladimir" are portrayed by two elderly women, an Israeli (Golia) and a Palestinian (Davi), on a low dusty hill in a refugee camp? Is "Godot" their fathers, husbands, sons & daughters ... ancestors? Were these widows once cousins? step-sisters? in-laws? lovers? Maybe :flower:

    Friday prayers. And the children of Abraham are murdering each other's children again. Why?! Well, why not ...
  • Culture is critical
    ↪Vera Mont
    :up:
  • Culture is critical
    ↪Vera Mont
    Those assertions do not account for the objections raised (again) herein
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/845168

    addendum to
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/807895
  • Pacifism and the future of humanity
    ↪Benkei
    :cool: :up: Ah, the good old Dialectic strikes again!
  • Pacifism and the future of humanity
    @Vera Mont @Pantagruel
    History teaches ad nauseam that we, as a species, are incapable of deliberative self-governance (i.e. liberty) above the municipal scale, as the contemporary state of "global affairs" savagely demonstrates. — 180 Proof
    By "history" I mean only recorded history, which is the operational framework of modern civilization/s, no? Left to our own state-capitalist (plutocratic) devices, IMO, "global governance / unity" is thereby manifestly improbable (i.e. an intractable N-body problem).
  • Culture is critical
    ↪Athena
    Once you have (or someone else has) explicitly addressed the questions I've raised to you, ma'am, then I'll gladly discuss "democracy" (what that has to do with a fundamentallly undemocratic, 'constitutional republic' like the US is lost on me) and its "characteristics". :up:
  • Culture is critical
    Seriously, I believe humans are capable of good reasoning based on truth, but I also think that requires an education that we are not getting.
    — Athena

    When and where in the last half millenium did most, or many, human beings get such an education? And why did such an education fall out of favor with educated leaders (i.e. movers & shakers) so much so that, apparently, "we are not getting" it any longer?     — 180 Proof

    We have been going through social breakdown or what some may call creative destruction at least since 1958 when the National Defense Education Act radically changed the purpose of education. — Athena
    My question above still stands, Athena, to which I add: so what was the pre-"1958" "purpose of education" vis-à-vis state-sanctioned racial terrorism / legal segregation, systemic discrimination against women & gays, widespread unfair & unsafe labor practices, endemic populist antisemitism, wholesale environmental degregation by agriculture & heavy industry, and ongoing land (and mineral rights) theft from and 'public erasure' of Indigenous Americans ... at least since the ratification of the US Constitution in 1788?

    I do not remember the ramifications of "the social breakdown" after "1958" being any more structurally exploitative and systemically discriminatory than it was before "1958" ... but in fact (gradually) quite a bit less so. Help me / us to understand, Athena, exactly how things have fallen off the proverbial cliff since "1958" as compared to the preceeding "good old days" (& centuries ...) Thanks.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    What apartheid is referring to in this case is not the situation within Israel, but the situation between Israel and the Palestinian territories. — Tzeentch
    :up:
  • Pacifism and the future of humanity
    ↪Pantagruel
    "We" are bald, semi-delusional (akratic!), gossipy primates gifted / gimped with large Stone Age brains which are insufficiently adapted to solving accelerating Information Age problems. Very clever cunts are we pseudo-sapiens; yet tens of millennia of oligarchic dominance hierarchies, euphemistically called "civilizations", have maldeveloped our cooperative instincts/habits by naturalizing the countless 'divide-n-control' strategems with which we have administratively straitjacketed or hog-tied ourselves on a planetary scale. History teaches ad nauseam that we, as a species, are incapable of deliberative self-governance (i.e. liberty) above the municipal scale, as the contemporary state of "global affairs" savagely demonstrates. I'm afraid, Pantagruel, 'public reason' is, though indispensible, wholly inadequate for overcoming cynical / sectarian populisms ... Oh yeah, also there are no "pacificists" alive for long in foxholes. :victory: :mask:

    Slaves to stupidity with no master but greed. — Pantagruel
    :clap: Well said!
  • The Mind-Created World
    I interpret Kant's idea of in-itself as signifying that we know only what appears to us, which is not to say we know nothing of consciousness-independent real things, but that the reality of those things is not exhausted by how they appear to us and other cognitive beings. — Janus
    Yes! :100:
  • Culture is critical
    ↪universeness
    Even though this thread's been tossed into The Lounge, I prefer compelling arguments to "personal tastes".
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    I think we'll see the worst slaughter of Palestinians in our lifetime the coming weeks. — Benkei
    :100:

    So why doesn't Israel just kill off all the Palestinians and end this interminable cycle of atrocities? Maybe the Jews don't (or haven't yet) for "the reason" whites in America don't kill off all Indigenous Peoples: to keep them dispossessed and under jackboot on 'reservations' – the cruelty must be the point – as a living monument to 'the settler-republic's supremacy', or some such inhumane delusion.
  • Culture is critical
    ↪universeness
    My notion of "ASI" is neither providential nor petty-punitive like "the god of theism" so your comparison doesn't make sense. Apparently, it's just unimaginable to you that humanity might not be the summit or goal of the universe (which indicates your own religious idealism (i.e. theism), mate). We are the caterpillar whose significance is to begin (maybe even "merge with") a chrysalis that will develop until it transforms and releases its butterfly. I happen to find post-human fables more believable and uplifting than super-human (or supernatural) fantasies.
  • The Mind-Created World
    ↪plaque flag
    :fire:
  • Culture is critical
    Why do we not choose to just ignore such low bio forms in the same way 180 Proof suggests an ASI would be justified in ignoring the low human bioforms? — universeness
    Well, for starters, "low human bioforms" are more like fossils to "ASI" than insects are to h. sapiens. We "do not choose to ignore such low bioforns" because we are also "such low bioforms" which are fundamentally inseparable from the biosphere shared by all "such low bioforms" and, therefore, in the interest of survival (& development), we do not "choose to ignore" (i.e. ignorance of) them.

    "ASI", on the other hand, will have near-instantaneous access to the total database of the terrestrial biosphere, including humans & insects (& our entomologies), as a complete fossil record of all extinct and relatively-soon-to-be-extinct "bioforms" on Earth. There's no issue of "choosing to ignore" or being "justified to ignore" already exhaustively studied fossils (like us), universeness.

    From the perspective of "low human bioforms", we may feel as ignored by "AGI" as we feel ignored by distant stars but, like those distant stars (and Epicurus' gods, circa 4th c. BCE), we "low human bioforms" will always have been long dead, even extinct remnants, from the perspective of "ASI" (à la simulations run / explored by the Monolith).
  • The Mind-Created World
    Kant's radicality makes the brain itself a mere piece of appearance, not to be trusted. He saws off the branch he's sitting on. Hoffman does the same thing. — plaque flag
    :up:

    It seems to me odd that Wayfarer will say that universals have mind-independent existence, but he will not admit that ordinary objects do. As I see it universals, or generalities, are only possible on account of the observed differences between, and commonalties shared by, objects. — Janus
    :up: :up: Universals / generalities are abstracted from concrete particulars.

    My argument is simpy that the mind or brain assimilates sensory and rational information and from this constructs what we understand as 'the world'. — Wayfarer
    "The world" for me (dream)? for us (culture)? for all (nature)? :chin:

    I'm not denying that there is a world apart from the mind, but saying that whatever we think or say about that purported world absent any mind is meaningless.
    Yes, "meaningless" logico-mathematical (i.e. view from everywhere, or subject/pov-invariant) rather than "meaningful" linguistic-narrative (i.e. view from being there, or a relative / perspectival point-of-view).

    NB: subject/pov-invariant is, of course, synonymous with "absent any mind".

    Anyway, 'unknown unknowns' are "meaningless" and yet ineluctably encompassing, even constraining, of "whatever we think or say ... absent any mind" or not. What you call "meaningless", sir, seems to me the most meaningful thing we (philosophers & poets) can think or say about the world. :fire:

    I'm struggling to understand what about this is controversial or confusing, it seems very straightforward to me.
    It's that you (idealists) metaphysically prioritize meaning (i.e. mind (e.g. ideals, idols) over – in denial of – more/other-than-meaning (i.e. more/other-than-mind (e.g. practices)). I'm afraid this puts the proverbial cart before the horse ...

    What I'm arguing against is the commonly-held view that mind is a product of physical causes. That is the general view of evolutionary naturalism, is it not? — Wayfarer
    IMO, not for philosophy in general or metaphysics specifically. Naturalism simply excludes, or coarse-grains, super-natural concepts or entities from arguments and models.

    I hold to a view that the mind transcends physical causes.
    So you're an epiphenomenalist? Bodies are, in effect, mind-less automatons (deluded that they are more than that)? Or is it your position, Wayfarer, that "physical causes" are mere illusions, and that all events are intentional?

    But I'm also not wishing to appeal to theism.
    'Animism' instead? :eyes:
  • Order from Disorder
    If entropy is a law, then the tendency to disorder introduces order to the universe. — Pantagruel
    IMO, less vaguely: "The tendency to global disorder" is accelerated by emergent, local order (i.e. dissipative structures) in the universe.
  • Culture is critical
    ↪Vera Mont
    :up: :up:
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