• 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).
  • Descartes' 'Ghost in the Machine' : To What Extent is it a 'Category Mistake' (Gilbert Ryle)?
    I don't think this follows (or I'm not understanding your comment).
  • External world: skepticism, non-skeptical realism, or idealism? Poll
    Minds other than human minds are invoked to account for object permanence.bert1
    Cite evidence of "minds other than human minds" that does not beg the question of 'what is "mind"?' whether human or not. :chin:
  • Descartes' 'Ghost in the Machine' : To What Extent is it a 'Category Mistake' (Gilbert Ryle)?
    [T]o what extent is Ryle's thinking compatible with nondualistic philosophy perspectives?Jack Cummins
    What exactly do you mean by "nondualistic"?

    Is the idea of the 'ghost in the machine' one which is to be abandoned completely?Jack Cummins
    I think it had been decisively dismissed back in the 17th c. by Spinoza's dissolution of Descartes' MBP (substance dualism). Most philosophers have been in denial of this for almost three centuries even despite the ascent of cognitive sciences and methodological physicalism in the last several decades. It's been decades since I've read Ryle, but I recall appreciating his analytical deflation of "mind" and "consciousness" which probably inspired Dennett's methodological elimination of "qualia" from prospective empirical inquiries into the nature / mechanisms of 'phenomenal metacognition' (or consciousness).

    I think Descartes was right that the only thing we can't doubt is that we exist ...Andrew4Handel
    I read Descartes' "Cogito" as demonstrating nothing more than this: 'when doubting, one cannot doubt that one is doubting' (i.e. I thnk, therefore thinking exists.) :chin:
  • Emergence
    You have always displayed a rather pessimistic viewpoint for the future of the human race, and I have always, and will always, disagree with that aspect of your current world view.universeness
    I know this was a reply to Athena but it applies to me as well. In my case, while deeply pessimistic about human existence, I'm cautiously optimistic about post-human intelligence (whether or not it's an extinction event for us).

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/770390

    I would prefer homo nova to homo superioruniverseness
    :cool:

    In a similar vein, my post-human (post-biomorphic) preference is nano sapien.

    ... you didn't offer your personal interpretation of the final scene you posted above ...universeness
    You must have missed this (below) from that old thread ...

    I've imagined Kubrick/Clarke's "Monolith" as the ultimate  intelligent descendant of terrestrial life interacting with its primeval ancestors (us) in "higher dimensional" quantum-level simulations (e.g. "pocket universes"). Symbolically, for us, the "Monolith" is both mirror and window (i.e. "film screen") of the unknown ...

    When (movie) Dave Bowman transforms (chrysalis-like) into the "Starchild", the Monolith's simulation, I imagine, becomes aware of itself as (manifested as an avatar of) the Monolith's simulation. (Book) Bowman's last transmission as his pod falls onto / into the Great Monolith "My God, it's full of stars ..." in which "stars" could mean souls, or minds, or intelligences ... perhaps all there ever has been and will ever be ... simulated. No doubt, another inspiration for Frank Tipler's cosmological "Omega Point"?
    180 Proof
    I imagine the Monolith is (for our species) the enabling-constraint of becoming (fractally joining) the Monolith. A quasi-gnostic odyssey of re/turning to the source (pleroma), or the prodigal homecoming – monomyth – of all intelligences ...180 Proof

    "However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light". ~Stanley Kubrick
  • Emergence
    :nerd:

    "My God, it's full of stars!"
    ~Cmdr. Dave Bowman, last transmission ...
  • Bernard Gert’s answer to the question “But what makes it moral?”
    Does anyone have an alternate criterion for what is morally normative that they prefer?Mark S
    Sure, I'll bite ...
    [M]y normative ethics is Negative Hedonic Utilitarianism (i.e. "right" judgments and conduct which prevent or reduce harm);180 Proof
    ... excerpt from an old post (click on my handle if you're interested in (some of) my reasoning for the above).
  • External world: skepticism, non-skeptical realism, or idealism? Poll
    No thoughts of your own. Got it. I'm out, Wayf. :shade:
  • The Philosopher will not find God
    ... challenged for empirical evidence, rather than logical reasons.Gnomon
    "Enformer"-of-the-gaps, unsound arguments (about your own citations), and continuous strawman & ad hominem replies are among the parade of logical challenges I, @universeness, @bert1 & others have raised collectively over hundreds of posts just in the last twelve months. All you do lately is whinge on about what a victim you are of "materialist, reductionist, anti-metaphysical bias" or whatever. :ok: :sweat:
  • External world: skepticism, non-skeptical realism, or idealism? Poll
    What about that exchange is not clear?Wayfarer
    We're talking past each other again. I've been taking issue with 'transcendental idealism' and you're advocating various Eastern mystical traditions without making a case for how 'transcendental idealism' follows from or is consistent with them. Citing topical literatures do not explicate your thinking on idealism, Wayfarer, only distracts (deliberately?) from directly addressing or refuting the issues with idealism I've raised. If we've gone as far in this discussion as you care to go, then just say so. I'm only interested in what you think, sir, and not with your sources or you interpreting them for me.
  • External world: skepticism, non-skeptical realism, or idealism? Poll
    IIRC, the 'idealism' of Parmenides (or Pythagoras) preceeded Plato by a century or so.

    "As far as I'm concerned" ... i.e. a cop-out. :roll:

    Idealism sounds to closer to mysticism.Wayfarer
    Such as your references to "Buddhist idealism" and Upanishads ... :sparkle:
  • External world: skepticism, non-skeptical realism, or idealism? Poll
    :fire:

    One way I have put it is that whilst we may be distinct and separate - an inevitable consequence of existence! - we are not, as it were, outside of, or apart from, reality itself. That, I think, is the key insight of non-dualism.Wayfarer
    Again, thanks for the clarifying response. The question remains though: is "reality itself" ideal? Anyway, your conception of idealism, Wayf, seems fairly idiosyncratic to me as nonduality (e.g. Advaita) contrasts profoundly with the transcendental schools of idealism which are dualist. I find nonduality quite congenial with my own conception of naturalism (which has strong affinities with Spinoza as well as Nietzsche, neither of whom I consider 'idealists').

    However, nonduality does not imply "the world is the idea of mind" but rather, IMO, that "world" and "mind" are complementary ways (yinyang) of experiencing (e.g. "I-It" / "I-Thou" ways of encountering). Not so unlike Spinoza's post-Cartesian parallelism, or property dualism. "Mind" is just one way of talking – relating – and "world" is another way of talking – relating; and understood as such makes explicit the ontologically inseparable plane of immanence (Deleuze) or Brahman (à la natura naturans (Spinoza)) encompassing (Jaspers) "reality itself". I just don't see how nonduality prioritizes "mind" "subject" "experience" over above "world" "object" "thing" as transcendental idealism does, Wayf, so maybe you can explain to me. :chin:
  • External world: skepticism, non-skeptical realism, or idealism? Poll
    :up:

    I asked because I'm interested in what you understand your own 'commitment to idealism' to presuppose and imply. I'm familiar enough with many historically prominent idealists. To sum up my previous two questions (please address them in the following): What exactly do you, Wayfarer, mean when you say "I am an idealist"?
  • Bannings
    Thanks for the info. :up:
  • Bannings
    Is the banning of Agent Smith permanent?

    (No implicit criticism intended by this question.)
  • Psychology of Philosophers
    Stoicism for me, but like Seneca, I have great regard for EpicurusCiceronianus
    Likewise, I've also learned from Seneca (& Epictetus).
  • External world: skepticism, non-skeptical realism, or idealism? Poll
    Is mind ontologically separate from / independent of (the) world?

    Does mind correspond to Being and ideas to Beings (well isn't Being / mind also an "idea" – the one we're discussing)?

    @bert1
  • Emergence
    As usual, you and ↪180 Proof interpret my philosophical & technical terminology differently from my intention. — Gnomon
    More of the same Jabberwocky, @universenessthere's just no there there.
  • Psychology of Philosophers
    Name one cheerful philosopher.Ciceronianus
    Democritus (et al).

    I became convinced, and still am convinced, that what philosophers had to say in this respect was said long, long ago as part of the effort to determine how best to live. That took place before Christianity, before Romanticism, before people came to understand that "God is dead" and despaired because of it, before nihilism, existentialism; in short, before we became devotees of angst.Ciceronianus
    Thus, I've always had a strong affinity for Epicureanism (second only to Spinozism in recent decades).

    I don't mean to say that great questions are unimportant or should not be addressed, but I don't think philosophy is useful in addressing them, unless we mean by philosophy art, poetry, meditation and pursuits which evoke rather than seek to explain. Those are pursuits which are better left to those who aren't philosophers.
    Well, 'academic philosophers' for sure. :wink:
  • Emergence
    What might be more interesting a fitting on a philosophy forum is if you looked at a topic, said why the existing answers are unsatisfactory, and narrowly and specifically say why enformationism is different and peculiarly suited to solving the problem. Maybe you've already done that and I haven't noticed.bert1
    Gnomon hasn't done so. I've repeatedly tried to get this out of him for at least the last several months with a short set of questions which he still refuses to address ...

    I share 180 Proof's 'impatience,' with your attempts to deny that your enformer, IS a god of the gaps posit. If you had honestly and earnestly stated your enformer as a theological proposal from the start, then I think @180 Proof would just have disagreed with you, and moved on, but, trying to suggest that your enformer is a legitimate scientific projection, based on current quantum mechanics, is like a red rag to a bull imo. That's why @180 Proof's and my reactions are more 'aggravated,' imo.universeness
    Thanks, universeness, for joining me and others in calling @Gnomon on his pseudo-philosophical BS.

    Increasing the number of our existential options as a species, as you suggest, would indeed be substantial progress. :up:
  • External world: skepticism, non-skeptical realism, or idealism? Poll
    No question is begged because nonmind is entailed by mind; which is more reasonable to conceive of as the dependent variable of the other is the crux of the issue for me, Jamal. So it does come down to a philosophical choice: the conceptual incoherences (sketched above) which result from conflating ontology with – reducing ontology to – epistemology and thereby eliminates 'the "world" as mind-dependent' of transcendental idealism as a rational option and leaving, by default, the pragmatic alternative of 'mind as world-dependent' of naturalism (or "transcendental realism" as you prefer) – incoherent or pragmatic? I choose the latter.
  • External world: skepticism, non-skeptical realism, or idealism? Poll
    I appreciate the citations and your reflections on (transcendental) idealism. Still, there's that confusion, or conflation, of ontology with epistemology, which plagues even Kant-Schopenhauer-Magee, that yields conceptual incoherences such as (e.g.)

    (A) "mind" must be an idea of itself that has an anxiliary idea called "world" (which is, in effect, solipsism (the noumenon?))

    or

    (B) 'world is an idea' (shadow?) of a mind in a world (cave?) with 'other minds' (which is just an unparsimoniously convoluted route back to ... naturalism).

    As I discern it, Wayf, mind is nonmind-dependent insofar as it is embodied, ergo nonmind (aka "world") is not "mind-dependent" and is much more than just "my idea" in the way (e.g.) the territory must exceed in every way (re: dynamics, complexity) mapping of that territory. Kantianism sells that 'the territory is mapmaker-dependent' story (i.e. "world" is mind-dependent) which – like epicycles, etc – I'm still not buying. :smirk:
  • External world: skepticism, non-skeptical realism, or idealism? Poll
    I'm not sure why idealism is on there. Idealism is not a position on whether or not there is an external world, but about whether that world (external or not) is independent of any minds.bert1
    I think the predicate "external" in this context is assumed to be synonymous with "independent of any minds". I don't see in what sense you / idealists mean that an "external world" might not be "independent of any minds" – such as the primordial universe before (the physical instantiation / embodiment of) "any minds" was possible – necessarily external of and independent of all minds, no? :chin:
  • Psychology of Philosophers
    Interesting OP.
    A. What had 'motivated' my interest in philosophy?
    Suffering; then later, that stupidity is somehow related to suffering.

    B. Which aspects of my biography 'determine' my philosophical commitments?
    Born into an urban, working class family; an ethnic minority male (older sibling); raised in a loving, secure home by a single immigrant mother, daily threats of street / gang crime & police violence (but never any domestic abuse); disciplined parochial schooling K-12; all of my closest friends also came from close, polyglot, immigrant families; early love of science fiction & (electric) Blues ... then @16 I lost 'my religion' (I'd realized I did not 'believe in' Catholicism or the God of the Bible) and then @17 had my first philosophy class (textbook – From Socrates to Sartre).

    Forty-odd years later, my (macro) philosophical commitments are (more or less, still): fallibilsm, secularism & naturalism.:death::flower: The bolded above, I suspect, may be (implicitly) 'axiomatic' to my philosophizing.
  • Evidence of Consciousness Surviving the Body
    ↪180 Proof .... Don't you have any arguments?Sam26
    :roll: You know I do ...

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/776786 (criticism posted above which still stands)

    from 2022 ...
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/762279 (an argument from a recent "NDE" which you could not counter)
  • Emergence
    180's terms seem to be those proposed by the Vienna Circle — Gnomon
    :lol:
  • Evidence of Consciousness Surviving the Body
    The title of this thread is "Evidence of Consciousness Surviving the Body" and you go on cherry picking "evidence" that are testimonial and you ignore all the scientific body of evidence.This is dishonest. Then you declare testimonial evidence to be "academic" when Science rejects subjective opinions by default!
    Ignoring credible epistemology makes your claims pseudo philosophical
    Nickolasgaspar
    :clap: :100:
    This summary observation is very much worth repeating.
  • External world: skepticism, non-skeptical realism, or idealism? Poll
    Is there an external world? Yes.

    Do we experience it as it is [not experienced by us]? No.

    Is our knowledge of it an accurate representation of it? We try
    Fooloso4
    :up: :up: :up:
  • Emergence
    Human ability to manifest intent, purpose and intelligent design is being combined and enhanced by memorialised information which has resulted in an ever increasing pace of human invention of new tech and discovery of new knowledge.
    This IS evidence that we are moving towards 'points of pivotal change,' at a faster pace. Movement towards advanced AI for example ... observable emergence ...
    universeness
    True. However, the jury's still out whether or not emergence like this is (or will attain) substantial 'progress'.

    Since he won't listen to me
    — Gnomon

    You're not the only one he doesn't listen to, but nor is he the only one that doesn't listen to you. I struggle with your posts, and I suspect others ignore your stuff too.
    bert1
    :clap: :100: Claiming I don't "listen to him" is just disingenuous whining coming from someone who over the last several months repeatedly won't answer (or refute as invalid) a handful of my straightforward questions about his "worldview" ...
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/775453 (and the posts which follow on that page are telling).
  • Are we alive/real?
    Others understood what I wrote. I'm sure their replies are not "unintelligible". Also, an online thesaurus doesn't bite.
  • New Atheism
    The only self-described "new atheist" who impresses me with his approach and arguments is the late particle physicist & philosopher Victor J Stenger. Also, the philosopher-novelist Rebecca Goldstein's anti-god writings are worthwhile for being much more philosophical than polemical.
  • External world: skepticism, non-skeptical realism, or idealism? Poll
    I voted for "non-skeptical realism" because I lack compelling grounds to doubt that the "external world" is real (i.e. ineluctable, subject-invariant, fatal).
  • Bannings
    :up: I'll miss him.
  • The Philosopher will not find God
    Universal is not synonymous with conceivable.
  • The Philosopher will not find God
    My position is that philosophy concerns intelligible-explicable concepts and "god of religion" is neither an intelligible nor explicable concept.