• Why is the Hard Problem of Consciousness so hard?
    I;d say it [consciousness] has been explained. — FrancisRay
    How is this explanation tested? Do any unique predicttions follow from this explanation? Please elaborate. Thanks.
  • Why is the Hard Problem of Consciousness so hard?
    ↪bert1
    :lol:
  • Culture is critical
    He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool.
    — Albert Camus

    Sounds like a man who experienced a lot of self-contradiction. He probably died quite young in a car accident.     — universeness
    He was a candle who burned at both ends, lit by an older, fluttering flame ...
    Oh, plenty of hope, an infinite amount of hope – but not for us. — Franz Kafka
  • Does Entropy Exist?
    I use the term spiritual, as referring to human breathing and movement and nothing of the transcendent or esoteric. — universeness
    :up: :up:
  • What creates suffering if god created the world ?
    R. Scott Bakker has a good short story he published in some philosophy journal about accomplishing this in the near future through neural implants. The idea is that you can just tweak your pleasure, mirth, contentment, aggression, etc. upwards, on demand using a neurally controlled app.

    The rub is in how one's ability to control how they feel, almost regardless of circumstances ...     — Count Timothy von Icarus
    IIRC, this idea (re: Bakker's Neuropath) goes back about two decades earlier (at least) to George Alec Effinger's notion of cybernetic augments (re: "daddies" & "moddies") in When Gravity Fails and Iain M. Bank's genengineered "drug glands" in his early Culture novels Consider Phlebas and The Player of Games. Decades earlier, adjusting oneself to suit or despite circumstances biochemically / physiologically also is explored, though differently, in both Ursula Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness (re: "changing sex back and forth") and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (re: "soma drug"). I think the "neuro app", however, is the most likely version of this idea to manifest as feasible tech. :nerd:
  • What is freedom?
    Two apt quotes I came across this morning:

    The function of freedom is to free someone else. — Toni Morrison
    We feel free because we lack the very language to articulate our unfreedom. — Slavoj Žižek
  • Culture is critical
    ↪Vera Mont
    :up:

    @universeness
    He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool. — Albert Camus
  • Why is the Hard Problem of Consciousness so hard?
    So when someone says "materialism can't explain consciousness", that's true, right now - right now materialism can't explain consciousness - but that's not some unique failing of materialism. Right now, NO ONE can explain consciousness - not with matter, and not with anything else either. Materialism can't explain it right now, non-materialism can't explain it right now, it's entirely (or just mostly?) unexplained right now. The explanation is yet to be found. — flannel jesus
    :100: :up:

    The dogma "not yet means never will" (i.e. unknown = unknowable :roll:) has always been mysterian / idealist – pseudo-philosophical (i.e. religious / magical thinking) – nonsense.
  • "Why I don't believe in God" —Greta Christina
    ↪Bob Ross
    :roll:
  • To be an atheist, but not a materialist, is completely reasonable
    ↪praxis
    :100:
  • What is freedom?
    May I assume that we all distinguish positive and negative freedom - freedom to do something and freedom from restraint by another ? — Vera Mont
    Well I do.

    Is it possible for anyone to have total freedom?
    No. Free acts are necessarily constrained by consequences.

    What kinds of freedom can a person have?
    Liberty. Morality. Freethought. Agency Ecstacy.

    What kinds of freedom can subgroups have within a greater society?
    Individuals, not (sub)groups are free.

    Are there natural, insurmountable limits to individual freedom?
    Yes.

    Are socially imposed limits necessary?
    No.

    Can and should all people have the same amount of personal freedom?
    This question doesn't make sense to me.

    How do we distinguish a freedom from a right?
    The latter limits – protects – the former (aka "liberty").
  • Does Entropy Exist?
    ↪ucarr
    And you have proven me (us) wrong, sir, that you can reason cogently and honestly.
  • "Why I don't believe in God" —Greta Christina
    ↪Bob Ross
    I don't doubt that I have them (i.e. cognitive functions) but instead question what they are and how they work. Clearly, "thoughts" (or experiences) are not only what they seem to us subjectively to be.
  • Does Entropy Exist?
    Is belief in the Trinity magical thinking? — ucarr
    No doubt.
  • "Why I don't believe in God" —Greta Christina
    ↪Count Timothy von Icarus
    A field of strawmen not worth setting ablaze. :smirk:
  • To be an atheist, but not a materialist, is completely reasonable
    ↪flannel jesus
    :up:
  • "Why I don't believe in God" —Greta Christina
    ↪Bob Ross
    My position is that it's (more) reasonable to be "confident" only in those experiences and facts which we do not have compelling (more-than-subjective) grounds to question or doubt. Reducing ontology (what there is) to epistemology (my/our experiences) makes idealism absurd (i.e. a form of philosophical suicide).
  • Literary writing process
    How do you write? — hypericin
    This question works for both literary and philosophical 'pieces'. The way we think. [ ... ] Is it down to personality? Or what? — Amity
    To start with, I suspect it comes down to each writer's practiced instincts for exploring ambiguity and for clarifying in spite of ambiguity, respectively.

    Iris Murdoch's differentiation of philosophical texts and literary texts, and the different implications for reading them ... — 180 Proof
    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=m47A0AmqxQE
  • Does Entropy Exist?
    The hell you speak of is a product of your own primal fear. It only exists in your mind, put there by liars. — universeness
    :fire:

    ↪ucarr
    At best your post is disingenuous since "the question" is merely rhetorical given my previously stated philosophical commitments. Again, ucarr, for 45 years now I haven't had any religious or supernatural beliefs whatsoever as I reject all species of magical thinking (such as yours :sparkle:).
  • Literary writing process
    You're too damn cryptic — Vera Mont
    :smirk:
  • Walking & Thinking
    ↪praxis
    Excellent. :fire:
  • What is real?
    In other words, that which is ineluctable, involuntary and/or immanent (encompassing) is real. All else are either (incidental) properties or (cognitive) illusions.
  • Literary writing process
    ↪Amity
    I'm not 'meta' enough about TPF itself as a specimen of online social media.
  • "Why I don't believe in God" —Greta Christina
    ↪Bob Ross
    So what's your point, Bob?
  • Does Entropy Exist?
    ↪ucarr
    I lost my religion (i.e. ritualized magical thinking) @15 and became godless. I'm even more godless now @60 after decades of readings in e.g. cultural anthropology, comparative religion, comparative philosophy, post-secondary engineering, natural sciences & cognitive science studies as well as surviving/thriving from many limit-experiences (epiphanies). I'm an everyday absurdist bluesman who has done his homework and paid his dues, ucarr, and have made my commitments to antitheism, irreligion, freethought & naturalism abundantly clear over thousands of posts on TPF and on my member profile. :death: :flower:

    Are you willing to commit yourself, in the emphatic mode of your above words, to a written statement declaring that you permanently reject the personal presence of the Holy Spirit as a worthless and meaningless fiction?
    I don't understand this question in light of the above.

    ↪universeness
    :clap: :up:

    My job, as a believer ... — ucarr
    ... does not trump your responsibilities as a thinker (especially here on TPF), at minimum, not to degenerate 'philosophical discussions' into proselytizing cant rationalized by vapid, dogmatic, apologia (or woo woo). :brow:
  • Does Entropy Exist?
    Click on the link below and watch the short YouTube video.

    Trinity Logic     — ucarr
    I clicked the link but I didn't bother watching. Twelve years of primary & seconary Jesuit education (four years of Latin, one year of Greek) and in particular study of the theological apologetics of Early Church Fathers, etc have left me confident that I understand the 'Doctrine of the Holy Trinity' well enough already. Also, I think I've made it abundantly clear, ucarr, I'm neither a religious believer nor a metapjysical supernaturalist, so why refer me to this video. I prefer not to have to regret losing five minutes which I can never get back again.

    As for the rest of your post ... :roll:

    ↪universeness
    :up:
  • "Why I don't believe in God" —Greta Christina
  • "Why I don't believe in God" —Greta Christina
    ↪wonderer1
    :up: :up:
  • Culture is critical
    Your mecha based technophilia, seems to trump your biophilia. :sad: — universeness
    Perhap orga is only mecha's way of – raison d'être for – making more mecha. :smirk:
  • "Why I don't believe in God" —Greta Christina
    I think this is partly the idea behind apophatic theology at least. — Count Timothy von Icarus
    :up:
  • The Insignificance of Moral Realism
    This is very good. — Count Timothy von Icarus
    Thanks.

    But there is the epistemic challenge of "how do we come to know the good?"
    I do not see a basis for "the epistemic challenge". Consider my more explanatory post linked at the top of the post to which you've responded
  • "Why I don't believe in God" —Greta Christina
    Otherwise, I don't know why ... — Bob Ross
    Exactly.
  • Culture is critical
    ↪universeness
    With or without AGI+, meat payloads are not – never have been or will be – mission critical. :smirk:
  • What creates suffering if god created the world ?
    ↪simplyG
    So god created suffering in order to help – torture – us sufferers to strive to become "perfect"? Sounds like apologetic gibberish. :mask:
  • What creates suffering if god created the world ?
    I wouldn’t go that far ... — simplyG
    :roll:
  • What creates suffering if god created the world ?
    ↪simplyG
    Yes, then you agree that the answer to thread's question is god creates suffering and therefore, that god is, in effect, indistinguishable from the devil (i.e. wholly unworthy of, or is immorsl to, worship). :pray: :naughty:

    NB: Also, most living creatures are microbial parasites ((or symbionts), not "predators". The living were allegedly "created" to consume the living – cannibalesque coprophagy – to involuntarily afflict pain or injury on one another. "Creation" (aka "the best of all possible worlds") is a cosmic abattoir.
  • Culture is critical
    To boldy go .......... — universeness
    ... where no Artilect has gone before. :nerd:

    The stars "beckon" mankind the same way a diamond beckons a jewel thief or a bottle calls to a drunk. They don't want you; you want them. — Vera Mont
    :smirk: :up:
  • What creates suffering if god created the world ?
    Suffering is an ineluctable aspect of the world; if g/G created the world, then g/G created suffering (e.g. creatures devouring one another in order to sirvive, etc). "Thy will be done", no?
  • "Why I don't believe in God" —Greta Christina
    ↪simplyG
    Public evidence.
  • "Why I don't believe in God" —Greta Christina
    The real question should be not “is there a god” but do I have faith that there is no god. — simplyG
    Or, better yet: Is anything we say or claim about "god" (any deity) that is demonstrably true and therefore consistent with the world (existence) as we know it?
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