• Emergence
    YOU connected YOUR enformer with deism which means YOU labelled it a deity. All you have done since then, is try to struggle out of those manacles you placed on yourself by trying to redefine deism. Why you choose to cosplay as a theist/deist, whilst denying your dalliances with it [ ... ] Is your 'enformationism' a hot topic of debate within the scientific community? Will it become so, anytime soon? — universeness
    If only @Gnomon & co could (i.e. would make the effort to) understand and appreciate the soundly speculative implications of contemporary sciences such as ...

    ... maybe he (they) would reformulate and convey his (their) woo-of-the-gaps instead as a cogent philosophical system or treatise. :smirk:

    @Jack Cummins @Wayfarer @bert1
  • Descartes' 'Ghost in the Machine' : To What Extent is it a 'Category Mistake' (Gilbert Ryle)?
    I will look out for the one on Descartes, especially as Descartes' shaped so much of current thinking of the mind body/relationship. — Jack Cummins
    Descartes proposes substance dualism and Spinoza a few of decades later countered with, for all intents and purposes, property dualism. Remember: Spinozism was almost completely suppressed for over two centuries after Spinoza's death while Cartesianism (via Kantianism) has been all but celebrated since the mid-17th c. I guess most contemporary neuroscientists like Damasio find experimental agreement with property dualism and reject substance dualism (which has become a Cartesian-folk philosophy that thinkers from Witty, Dewey, Ryle, Dennett, Churchland & Churchland ... to the Buddhist neurophilosopher Thomas Metzinger refute).
  • Psychology of Philosophers
    ↪Mikie
    Thanks for the reference to T.Z. Lavine
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelma_Z._Lavine – this wiki is fascinating, I'd never heard of her –
    but the author of the text I had used in 1980-81 (publ. 1966), with the same title as Lavine's (publ. 1984), was Samuel Enoch Stumpf. (I've never heard of him either and there isn't even a wiki.)

    ↪Mikie
    :up:
  • What are you listening to right now?
    https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_lq26YClxHOBogwoV-LRHDntDFzeeWOiSk

    Your Mother Should Know (48:38), 2023
    Brad Mehldau
  • What is needed to think philosophically?
    ↪TiredThinker
    Patience. Persistence. Creativity. Courage. (And not necessarily in that order.) :chin:
  • Have you ever feel that the universe conspires against you?
    That's why I watch horror movies. — L'éléphant
    :cool:

    Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon. — G.K. Chesterton
  • Bernard Gert’s answer to the question “But what makes it moral?”
    ↪Banno
    Bernard Gert's moral theory seems quite consiliant, or convergent, with my own musings though our respective approaches (emphases) couldn't be more different. I'm looking forward to meeting those devils in his theoretical details.
  • Why being an existential animal matters
    Why would nature ever allow for a level of conscious awareness, of complexity, to undermine its sole drive like that? — Benj96
    Just a guess – it might have something to do with 'Gödel's proof of incompleteness from self-referential complexity' (Seth Lloyd, Douglas Hofstadter). It's reasonable to assume that the vast majority of h. sapiens have not deviated significantly from our 'evolved biological drives' but it is always possible, no matter how improbable, to do so because those drives (which seem computable (i.e. algorithmic)) are either 'incomplete' or, more likely, not always / inexorably 'consistent'. :chin:
  • Bernard Gert’s answer to the question “But what makes it moral?”
    ... It shouldn't happen here. — Banno
    Guilty as charged. I usually barely skim posts with quotes attributed to or artcles about men or women I've never heard of such as Prof. Gert. The video of his lecture did pique my interest (and I reserved his book Common Morality – surprise, surprise – at a local public library) so thanks again, Banno, for pulling my coat.
  • External world: skepticism, non-skeptical realism, or idealism? Poll
    ↪Banno
    :up:
  • Dilbert sez: Stay Away from Blacks
    I suppose "Dilbert" is now bad for business. 'Bottom-line cancel culture' in full effect is on display. Predictable. Like 'suicide by mod' here on TPF. Apparently, saying the quiet part out loud in America is still considered "trashy" (à la MTG) by most of the CEO Class. Maybe this is "Dilbert's" way of kicking off a MAGA campaign for office?
  • The Philosopher will not find God
    ↪universeness
    Thanks. :up:
  • Why being an existential animal matters
    ↪schopenhauer1
    :up: Just like breathing ...
  • Why being an existential animal matters
    ↪schopenhauer1
    Yeah, P.W. Zapffe is one of my favorites listed on my TPF profile. :death: :flower:
  • Bernard Gert’s answer to the question “But what makes it moral?”
    ↪Banno
    Thanks. I'll check it out.
  • TPF Quote Cabinet
    Find a scientific man who proposes to get along without any metaphysics ... and you have found one whose doctrines are thoroughly vitiated by the crude and uncriticized metaphysics with which they are packed. ... Every man of us has a metaphysics, and has to have one; and it will influence his life greatly. Far better, then, that that metaphysics should be criticized and not be allowed to run loose. — Charles Sanders Peirce
  • External world: skepticism, non-skeptical realism, or idealism? Poll
    ↪Janus
    :clap: :up:

    Some metaphysical views must be supported, otherwise transcendental philosophy as a doctrine grounded in synthetic a priori principles, is invalid. And even if the validity is subjected to dispute, it can only be from different initial conditions, which are themselves metaphysical views. — Mww
    :100:

    ↪aletheist
    :fire: Excellent.
  • Why being an existential animal matters
    @schopenhauer1
    Humans are an existential animal.
    — schopenhauer1

    If by "existential" you mean reality-denying, I agree with you     — 180 Proof
    No doubt we're counterfactual (talking) animals.
  • The Philosopher will not find God
    I'm pretty well-informed about pseudo-science. — Gnomon
    No doubt you are, Gnomon, a verifiably expert pseudo-scientist. :lol:

    I stopped responding to ↪180 Proof
    [ ... ] because he seemed to insist that philosophical questions must be settled by empirical methods.
    If you would be so kind, @universeness, check these questions (which Gnomon is too disingenuous to address substantively) for any insistence on my part that they be "settled by empirical methods" where Gnomon's statements lack empirical assumptions:
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/709894

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/718369

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/742056     — 180 Proof
    Gnomon doesn't address them because, in fact, he cannot and is afraid trying to do so will lay bare the very pseudo-science at the heart of his pseudo-philosophizing "personal worldview" and which will confirms my (our) suspicions. :smirk:

    My thesis is definitely not a "what is" assertion,
    Why then, if not an "assertion", Gnomon, do you refer to "Enformationism", etc as "my personal worldview" (and "a non-physical belief system")?

    but a "what if question.
    In other words, "what if" Enformer-of-the-gaps? with which I've taken issue because, like "Intelligent Design", your "what if" doesn't explain anything about how the world is or came to be as you purport to do (which, btw, is empirical – otherwise you wouldn't rely so heavily on "cutting edge" physics for your anachronistic 'Deistic-First Cause' speculations).
  • External world: skepticism, non-skeptical realism, or idealism? Poll
    ↪schopenhauer1
    I've no idea what you're talking about.
  • Emergence
    Ok, so the monolith IS post-human. — universeness
    Post-posthuman (i.e. post-sentient).

    ... what do you think of 2010 ...
    I didn't think much of either book or film. IMO, the latter is quite dated and superficially derivative.

    So do you think 'quantum fluctuations' are deterministic?
    They certainly aren't deterministic to a classical observer.
  • External world: skepticism, non-skeptical realism, or idealism? Poll
    It's not 'hard' to grasp. It's just an option. Unargued for, no evidence, no reasoning... Just a choice. — Isaac
    :up:

    The idea that I've been contemplating is that through rational sentient creatures such as ourselves, the universe comes into being - which is why we're designated 'beings'. — Wayfarer
    This statement is quite incoherent, because the phrase "rational sentient creatures" presupposes – makes sense IFF there is – the universe that brings them "into being" so that they can conceive of "the universe". Mind – "comes into being" because of nonmind (processes) – is embodied. Thus, your disembodied (i.e. transcendental) speculation, Wayfarer, doesn't fit (or explain away) the facts.
  • External world: skepticism, non-skeptical realism, or idealism? Poll
    ↪Janus
    :fire: :100:

    ↪Tom Storm
    :up: :up:
  • External world: skepticism, non-skeptical realism, or idealism? Poll
    ↪Wayfarer
    :roll: What "hypothesis"? Metaphysical naturalism consists of categorica, not hypthetical, statements. Clearly, you still don't understand metaphysics (or naturalism), Wayf.
  • Have you ever feel that the universe conspires against you?
    Have you ever feel that the universe conspires against you? — niki wonoto
    Yeah, but the fucker hasn't beat me down yet. :wink:
  • External world: skepticism, non-skeptical realism, or idealism? Poll
    Personally, I'm not convinced by any metaphysical speculations; I see them as being just imaginative possibilities — Janus
    Same here, except I see metaphysical speculations as criteria for eliminating – filtering-out – impossible objects / worlds (i.e. necessary fictions) from reasoning.

    ... metaphysical naturalism [ ... ] taken to prove, or disprove, any ultimate facts about the world. — Wayfarer
    I don't know about "ultimate facts" but naturalism, as I understand the concept, certainly entails negation of unconditional (i.e. supernatural, non-immanent, non-contingent) facts.
  • Why being an existential animal matters
    ↪Wayfarer
    Every animal is more than just an "animal". Don't be speciesist :smirk:
  • Shouldn't we want to die?
    ↪MojaveMan
    :death: :flower:
    Fear is your best friend or your worst enemy. It’s like fire. If you can control it, it can cook for you; it can heat your house. If you can’t control it, it will burn everything around you and destroy you. — Mike Tyson
    I fear death and use that fear to live the best life I can every day so that nightly I can fall asleep at ease without needing any assurance that I will wake again. Like sleep and love, there's no need to seek, or hurry, death because it'll come when it comes. This life is a song, I feel, and its meaning is in singing, not ending, it.
  • Why being an existential animal matters
    Humans are an existential animal. — schopenhauer1
    If by "existential" you mean reality-denying, I agree with you.
  • Bernard Gert’s answer to the question “But what makes it moral?”
    ↪unenlightened
    :up:
  • Emergence
    In a similar vein, my post-human (post-biomorphic) preference is nano sapien.
    — 180 Proof

    :grin: but why so small?     — universeness
    You've invoked "Moore's Law"; well, in a similiar vein, the miniaturization of tech, like natural complexity (i.e. life), accelerates ... and I think Buckminster Fuller waa right about ephemeralization in the 1930s (later updated by John Smart et al in the 2000s with the transcension hypothesis) that intelligent systems will also continue to miniaturize, such that AGI —> ASI will eventually be instantiated in matter itself (and maybe then somehow in entangled quantum systems). Thus, nano sapiens. Will they be us? I imagine them as our post-biomorphic – infomorphic – descendsnts, and, to me, Clark/Kubrick's "Monolith symbolizes this apotheosis.

    Do you completely reject that a future ASI may choose to remain separate from us, but will augment us, and protect us, when we are in danger.
    I don't think ASI's goals, especially with respect to humanity, are predictable since ASI is over the event horizon of the "technological singularity" (which is the advent of AGI).

    As for AGI and whether or not it will be a benefit or hazard to us, I think that mostly depends on how we engineer / (metacognitively train, not just program) the transition from ANI to AGI. I don't see AGI being inherently hazardous to – motivated to deliberately harm – other sentient species.

    Do you think the monolith is 'learning' or 'teaching' or both, in this scene?
    I imagine the movie 2001 in its entirety as the "Monolith" simulating within itself to its-human ancestral-self ("Kubrick's audience") a reenactment of its human ancestors' becoming post-human.

    So does this depict, for you, an 'ascendance' moment for the human, or a 'completion of purpose' moment for the human.
    Yes.

    Is the monolith making an equivalent style statement, to such as 'as you are now, so once was I, as I am now, so will you be, prepare yourself to follow me?
    No. I imagine that a human astronaut's transformation into the "Star Child" happened long ago (from the Monolith's perspective) as the third(?) and (possibly last) irreverisible step on the developmental path to becoming itself: a nano sapien hypercivilization (aka from our perspective "the Monolith").

    Is this then imagery, of completing the circle, or perhaps even the cycle?
    For us, perhaps it is, given our mythopoetic bias.

    Would you find anything in this final scene then, that is relatable to cyclical universe posits, such as CCC or do you think Kubrick was going for something more akin to the buddhist 'wheel of life?'
    No.

    So do you think the universe is, in the final analysis deterministic or not?
    I think the post-planck era universe is deterministic.

    Or is my general interpretations of your analysis of the final scene you posted and your typings, in Javi's thread, way off?
    Yeah it is, but I didn't elaborate there as much as I have here. Maybe my interpretation of Kubrick's final scene is clearer now? (Btw, both Kubrick's interpretation and mine differ from Arthur C. Clarke's too.) :nerd:
  • Descartes' 'Ghost in the Machine' : To What Extent is it a 'Category Mistake' (Gilbert Ryle)?
    ↪Jack Cummins
    In his Ethics, Spinoza demonstrates that "substance dualism" is conceptually incoherent. He argues for what I have many times referred to as property dualism. I don't know if this is the thread on "substance dualism" you mean, Jack, but here's the link to a debate on differences with property dualism, in particular a post which illustrustrates my point:

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/561804

    The cognitive neuroscientist Antonio Damasio's Descartes' Error and Looking for Spinoza are quite good at demonstrating how "mind & body" by conceived by Descartes as separate "substances" is completely inconsistent with what experimental sciences of the human brain show thereby vindicating much of Spinoza's insight.
  • External world: skepticism, non-skeptical realism, or idealism? Poll
    It's astonishing. Idealism begins by looking for certainty in one's individual perceptions - "esse est percipi" - and almost immediately finds itself supposing some universal spirit, god or some such.

    As if such a fable were more acceptable than the independent existence of trees, tables and cups of our everyday experience     — Banno
    :up: "Looking for certainty" —> illusion of control (e.g. conspiracy / magical thinking).
  • The Philosopher will not find God
    Deism = Theism? — Gnomon
    Variations on the god-of-the-gaps theme: deism is "theism minus answering prayers" or theism is "deism plus answering prayers" – theological interpretations of the same ontologically transcendent – super-natural – entity (i.e. "creator" "first cause" "intelligent designer", etc).

    Thoughts, @universeness?
  • Descartes' 'Ghost in the Machine' : To What Extent is it a 'Category Mistake' (Gilbert Ryle)?
    ↪Jack Cummins
    I don't undrrstand the question. It seems you've mixed different points I've made from a number of our exchanges.
  • External world: skepticism, non-skeptical realism, or idealism? Poll
    Of course the same problem exists with materialism; how could you know that everything, independently of anything human, is material or even what that could mean? — Janus
    I have to disagree. At the very least, "materialism" is a far more useful epistemological paradigm than any version of "immaterialism" for learning about – adapting to – nature.

    I'm asking you to look at the logic of the claim that the Universe is a single mind, and that all the things in it, including human minds, are ideas. There is nothing in that admittedly entirely speculative idea of a universal mind ... — Janus
    Insofar as this "universe is a single mind" is a "speculative idea", it follows that it's an "idea" of either (A) the human mind or (B) some other mind not located witnin "the universe" – which seems to me (B) amounts to "mind"-of-the-gaps and (A) amounts to a compositional fallacy – or (C) there are minds within the universe which are not themselves mere "ideas" (i.e. reals) rendering this "speculative idea" itself conceptually incoherent.

    Whatever its limitations, Janus, I don't think 'realism' has these self-refuting problems.

    Life is a mystery and we are mired in ignorance when it comes to anything purportedly outside of the human empirical and logic-based understanding. — Janus
    No doubt. :up:
  • External world: skepticism, non-skeptical realism, or idealism? Poll
    If what is, is what we will, then whence will? — Banno
    :fire:

    Yes, or put another way: if everything is an idea of mind, then mind is an idea of mind ... ad infinitum. Insert arbitrary terminus here (X-of-the-gaps).
  • External world: skepticism, non-skeptical realism, or idealism? Poll
    [A]re there not forms of idealism that hold that everything you see is real, it just isn't what you think - it isn't material, it is made from the one stuff of the universe - consciousness / Will. That's the Schopenhauer, Kastrup, Hoffman formulation [ ... ] Cue quantum speculations, quotes from Hinduism, Plato's cave, past lives accounts and critiques of scientism.... — Tom Storm
    :100: :clap: :smirk:

    @bert1 @Wayfarer @Gnomon
  • External world: skepticism, non-skeptical realism, or idealism? Poll
    ↪bert1
    "By analogy?" Okay, no evidence. Got it.
  • Bernard Gert’s answer to the question “But what makes it moral?”
    I don't think facts about the world or reality have the power to compel us to act. — Andrew4Handel
    I agree. Only habits – embodied facts / dispositions – can do that; thus, practice virtues rather than follow rules (norms).
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