• Is "good", indefinable?
    ↪Banno
    :clap:
  • The God Beyond Fiction
    ↪Vera Mont
    :up:

    All paths of the mountain have the same destination. — TheMadMan
    All religions canonize the same superstition.
  • Economic, social, and political crisis
    ↪BC
    ↪BC
    ↪BC
    :lol: :clap: :100:
  • Logic and Evidence: What is the Interplay and What are Fallacies in Philosophical Arguments?
    ↪Tom Storm
    :smirk:
  • Logic and Evidence: What is the Interplay and What are Fallacies in Philosophical Arguments?
    ↪Tom Storm

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/594607 — 180 Proof
  • Logic and Evidence: What is the Interplay and What are Fallacies in Philosophical Arguments?
    I am raising this topic as a way of exploring philosophy arguments as a way of clarity of thinking. — Jack Cummins
    These old posts below (I know you don't care much for links to other posts but ...) suggest how I begin to clarify my thinking (à la Peirce, Dewey, Russell, Witty, Haack et al):
    How do we tell good philosophy from bad philosophy? More philosophy?
    — Tom Storm

    Not "more". We just refrain from

    Pseudo-questions (i.e. context-free), fallacious arguments, obfuscating rhetoric and rationalizing (apologetics for) pseudo-science ...
    — 180 Proof

    ... taking / seeking these paths of least cognitive effort (i.e. sophistry).     — 180 Proof
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/594607

    and, more broadly, struggle against stupidity (in and out of philosophy) ...

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/325726
  • The God Beyond Fiction
    Any agreement amongst the prophets is found only in their silence. — Banno
    :smirk:
  • The God Beyond Fiction
    Many religions, same superstition. :pray:
  • Emergence
    ↪universeness
    If you haven't already, check out my series of recent posts on a current thread about the prospects / hazards of "one world government" where I speculate (try to convince / convert???) that only after "the Singularity" might that even be possiible ...

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/768537 :nerd:
  • Emergence
    Great, now help me convince everyone else on TPF! — universeness
    It's only a speculation, not a mission statement or article of faith. Discussion, not convincing / conversion is my goal. I'll only add this diagram to illustrate that "great potential" we (possibly) have:
    [NHS [HS [ ANI > AGI > ASI < ? ]]] — from *Apotheosis or Bust!*
    :cool: ~There is no spoon, kids.

    NHS - nonhuman sapience (caterpillar)
    HS - human sapience (chrysalis)
    ANI - artificial Narrow intelligence (butterfly⁰)
    AGI - artificial General intelligence (butterfly¹)
    ASI - artificial Super intelligence (butterfly²)
    ? (inconceivable to us)
  • Emergence
    ... that which IS emergent in us as a totality has the strongest potential for impacting the contents of this universe ... — universeness
    :up: Yes, we agree on this, more or less; to wit:
    An 'Artificial General Intelligence —> Artificial Super Intelligence metacognitive explosion' aka "singularity" might be the limit of h. sapiens' "affect on the contents of the universe" (re: the last invention humanity will ever make). — 180 Proof
    :nerd:
  • Emergence
    “When discussing complex systems like brains and other societies, it is easy to oversimplify: I call this Occam’s lobotomy.” ~I.J. Good
    No lifeform on Earth can demonstrate intent and purpose more than humans can. — universeness
    Primates, cetaceans, elephantidae and cephalopods, as examples, recognizably exhibit to h. sapiens (esp. cognitive zoologists) varying degrees of "intent and purpose" as (non-anthropomorphized) intents and purposes in their actions and activities, so the implication that other "life forms" are less than human in this regard seems to me a trivially speciesist non sequitur.
    Treat your inferiors in the way in which you would like to be treated by your own superiors. — Seneca
    Caveat: Humans shouldn't think of other sapient life forms in ways they don't ever want machines to think of humans.
  • Evidence of Consciousness Surviving the Body
    ↪Isaac
    :up: :up:
  • Why Science Has Succeeded But Religion Has Failed
    ↪Agent Smith
    :100:
  • Why Science Has Succeeded But Religion Has Failed
    Are you referring to net entropy? — Agent Smith
    Yes.
  • Why is the Hard Problem of Consciousness so hard?
    Philosophical naturalism is the study of the window.
    — 180 Proof

    No, that would be philosophy of science     — Wayfarer
    As a philodophical naturalist myself, I'm sure you're wrong about thst, sir

    ↪RogueAI
    Non sequitur. Physicalism is a paradigm for generating conjectures or models and not a theoretical explanation of phenomena. Also, non-physicalism (e.g. panpsychism, mind-body dualism, idealism) accounts for "consciousness" (or anything) even less so than physicalism.
  • Why is the Hard Problem of Consciousness so hard?
    You could paraphrase it as "naturalism is the study of what you see looking out the window. Phenomenology is a study of you looking out the window." — Wayfarer
    Philosophical naturalism is the study of the window.

    ↪Janus
    :cool:
  • Why is the Hard Problem of Consciousness so hard?
    ↪Janus
    Thanks for the David Loy reconmendation. :up:
  • The "self" under materialism
    ↪unenlightened
    :fire:

    ↪tom111
    Ephemeral self-continuity, n o t static self-"identity" (i.e. Neurath's Boat contra Descartes Cogito). "Self does not exist" as a material / physical thing.
  • Why Science Has Succeeded But Religion Has Failed
    ↪Agent Smith

    ... emergence of organization despite the obstacle of Entropy.

    With those anti-entropy developments in mind ...     — Gnomon
    :lol: If you get the physics so wrong, G-mon, then your "Meta-physics" is bound to be ... not even wrong.

    fyi: Order (i.e. dissipative structures / processes) emerges because of – as it net increases – the asymmetric gradient of entropy.
  • Emergence
    Is it possible that 'the singularity' is the distant echo of 'the One' in Plotinus? — Wayfarer
    Analogously, "the Big Bang" maybe, not e.g. the black hole at the center of our galaxy. Certainly not the prospect of a tech singularity.
  • Should humanity be unified under a single government?
    ↪jorndoe
    :clap: :rofl: :100:
  • Economic, social, and political crisis
    "After all, the chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world." ~Pres. Calvin Coolidge, 1925

    it is destroying our liberty and some people want to take this even further by making us dependent on AI. — Athena
    Too late! In America, our "liberty" has been "dependent" on algorithms aka "AI" (i.e. corporations (i.e. "artificial persons")) for over a century already. If we're lucky, AGI will emerge sooner rather than ... before it's too late.

    ... we are at each other's throats politically pushing and shoving in power struggles that have nothing to do with reasoning, human dignity, respect, or being a democracy.
    And yet, Athena, these 'moral defects' have everything to do with being human – gregarious bald primates – while barely surviving under social conditions of (self-reproducing) scarcity.

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/770469
  • Why Science Has Succeeded But Religion Has Failed
    ↪Agent Smith
    Well, that was the only pattern which you recognized ... order in disorder, signal in noise ...
    ... matter of fact, it's all dark.
    :smirk:
  • Should humanity be unified under a single government?
    We have the mindset that leads to your belief we must depend on a god or AI because we can not figure things out for ourselves. — Athena
    I don't claim "we cannot figure things out for ourselves" but rather
    We're at "the peak" of our civilization now – just look around! 'Global goverance for global welfare' is demonstrably beyond the hyper-glandular mindset of our primate species. — 180 Proof
    The classical humanism of "The Enlightenment" you're espousing, Athena, reminds me of Ptolemy's epicycles. :eyes:

    From my reading of history, it seems to me, human beings are too susceptible to corruption by power dynamics for us to globally govern ourselves without moral hazards further exacerbating intractible social injustices and the geoeconomic inequalities which fuel global conflicts as well as accelerate climate change. Yeah, clearly we are smart enough for liberty, but we are driven by – our value systems are derived from – scarcity; thus, macro inequality and corruption have always been and continue to be intractable constraints on exercising liberty, and so scarcity drives us to reproduce scarcity (e.g. 'the business cycle', 'man-made famines', 'hot / cold wars', etc) undermining liberty for the vast majority of human beings in most places. "Figuring things out" has always been easy: consistent, win-win execution of our best solutions has always been made much more difficult, however, by the greater ease of playing win-lose (& lose-lose) games. Aristotle's concept of akrasia is encapsulated in Jesus' admonishment to Peter in Gesthemane: "The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak." :fire:

    Gods don't exist and AGI might never be achieved by us. The OP concerns "one world government" and my argument is that the political economics of scarcity makes that highly improbable, even impossible, for humanity. If AGI emerges, it will at least be as intelligent as its makers but will also be free of its makers' evolutionary defects (e.g. scarcity-drives); the rational solution to this historically intractable 'global governance problem' – which only AGI (or ASI) can produce – IMO, can be formulated as:
    Fully realized, optimal, human liberty requires post-scarcity conditions to be sustainable.
    Do you really believe, Athena, that 'the global governance problem' (e.g. climate change) is going to be solved, or even effectivey managed, by "Enlightenment" / classical democracy under material & axiological conditions of scarcity? :chin:
  • Emergence
    ↪universeness
    I said human history is unpredictable after – on the other side of – "The Singularity", not cosmological history. :roll:
  • Emergence
    ↪universeness
    I'm not posthuman and the reason the emergence of AGI is called "the singularity" is because human history beyond that point is completely unpredictable by us.

    As for theism, the idea or concept will be around as long as there are records or terrestrial radio transmissions propagating throughout the Milky Way; religious belief in "God", however, I suspect will rapidly die out as advances in molecular medicine (and nanotech) reduce death from an irreparable inevitability to a treatable condition – again, AGI, etc will probably cure us of that defect, and thereby exorcise "our" emotional need for "God". After all, without fear of death, what use is "God"?

    We were barred from the "Tree of Life" once we'd tasted "Forbidden Knowledge" because, as scripture says "Lest they become like us", that is, like gods who are immortal with knowledge and no longer needing a "God". This insight of the ancient Hebrews is quite telling. Like animism and polytheism before it, monotheism might soon (e.g. post-Singularity) become nothing but a museum relic (and psychiatric disorder of delusional outliers).

    ↪universeness
    The problem with this line of thinking, universeness, is theism is not true. :fire:
  • Emergence
    ↪universeness
    :up:
  • Emergence
    Then why do we ask questions? — universeness
    Well, that's what children do. :wink:

    Definitely, at the start, but do you think there is any possibility in terraforming? — universeness
    Asteroid (or moon) interiors, not planetary surfaces.
  • Happiness? Rapture?
    For as long as I can remember I believe my feelings of "happiness" have fluctuated daily, even weekly, from -2 to +2 (at most), but always only in hindsight. I suppose I'm "moody" enough not to flatline or numbly sleepwalk through my daily grind.

    NB: Santana (esp. Lotus & Moonflower) always has me grinning like an idiot, stoned or not. :up:
  • Evidence of Consciousness Surviving the Body
    ↪Sam26
    A press release isn't a peer-reviewed scientific study of repeatable experiments or observations. Isaac Newton was also an alchemist, y'know. :sparkle: :roll:
  • Why Science Has Succeeded But Religion Has Failed
    The Cause always exists. — Agent Smith
    And the cause of "The Cause" ...?
  • Evidence of Consciousness Surviving the Body
    ↪Noble Dust
    Well, I've never subscribed to the early twenthieth century "tradition of strident materialism" and my criticisms of the "NDE & OBE" craze isn't a reaction to anything "being taken away" or threatened. On this site dedicated to critical reasoning and dialectic, I'm just pointing out as I see it, and as succinctly as I can, why @Sam26 et al's claims are not even false.
  • Evidence of Consciousness Surviving the Body
    ... out-of-hand dismissals of fundamentalists like 180 Proof — Noble Dust
    :smirk: This ad hominem must mean my criticism has struck a raw nerve in you wishful (magical) thinkers. So what kind of "fundie" am I / are we supposed to be, ND?
  • Should humanity be unified under a single government?
    What is essential to democracy and can it be implemented everywhere? — Athena
    'Political democracy' without effective economic democracy is democracy-in-name-only (DINO). In the last few centuries, however, "the Enlightenment" hasn't been radical enough for that much 'democracy' ...

    An alternative that might minimize constraints on optimal 'liberty, equality and security' would be a post-scarcity economy which probably can only be developed and maintained by AGI automation of global supply chains, manufacturing and information services.

    ... we are in big trouble with no better way forward than to rely on a god or AI to save our sorry asses? — Athena
    :100:
    I agree we are in very grave trouble!
    We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. — Albert Einstein
  • Evidence of Consciousness Surviving the Body
    While the patient is "down" and there is a complete cessation of brain activity, this is proof that the patient's brain is not forming any new memory traces of the so-called "NDE" the patient believes she had while her brain activity was zero. So whence the "NDE"? It likely happens during the patient's revival after brain activity has resumed. — 180 Proof

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/727848
  • Should humanity be unified under a single government?
    ↪I like sushi
    :up:

    One question: "Could humanity be united under one government?" Another question: "Should humanity be united under one government?"

    I vote NO in both case. Can't be done; shouldn't be done.     — BC
    If "humanity under one government" run by humans, then I completely agree with you in both cases, BC. The inmates are congenitally too defective to run the entire asylum.
  • Mind-body problem
    Since life only begins at the molecular level, there is no need to search for life on all the scales below. — Wolfgang
    :up:

    Since the philosophy of mind addresses consciousness as an entity in its own right, it fails to present it as an (emergent) consequence of life.
    :fire: Ergo the 'panpsychic' woo-of-the-gaps of (pseudo-scientistic) idealists / anti-physicalists.

    NB: Excerpt from an old post ...
    The MBP was dis-solved in the 17th century by Spinoza (re: property dualism). Furthermore, given that mind is an activity or process (i.e. minding) and not a thing, the dualistic fetish of "mind" separate from, or without, "body" (or brain) is a category error (e.g. dancing without legs? digesting without guts?) ...

    And why confuse the scientific problem of explaining 'mind' with antiquated metaphysics of making up shit without evidence or sound reasoning about 'mind'?     — 180 Proof
  • Should humanity be unified under a single government?
    I think our faith in technology and failed faith in each other is a tragedy unfolding. — Athena
    At least ten millennia of grinding out of our lives together in a spectrum of dominance hierarchies of our own contrivance is "faith in each other" manifest as civilization (which is still only a vaneer, mostly a banal pretense). We're at "the peak" of our civilization now – just look around! 'Global goverance for global welfare' is demonstrably beyond the hyper-glandular mindset of our primate species. A 'tech singularity' (not to be confused with "the internet" which we use as a tool) is a plausible off-ramp from an increasingly probable 'extinction-event' (e.g. accelerating climate change and/or global pandemics and/or nuclear war) self-inflicted by corporate-state corruption / negligence and reactionary populisms (i.e. top-down vs bottom-up modes of "liberty"). 'Intelligent machines' might be the only agency which can saves us as a species from our worse selves in the long run, and I'm convinced that "merely having faith in each other" won't – IMO, that's, as you say, Athena, "the tragedy".
  • Emergence
    The human race is in desperate need of a mommy, something that acts for the benefit of the race and not just the individual or subset. No human is capable of this task. So the zoo isn't the worst thing if the preservation of the species is a goal. — noAxioms
    :100:

    ... the next 10,000 years of science? — universeness
    I suspect, if we aren't extinct before or by then, h. sapiens won't be doing science in "10,000 years" –
    It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God but to create him. — Arthur C. Clarke
    – our last invention will do that much science in its first decade or so of 'life'.
    'God isn't dead', universeness, because AGI—>ASI ["god"] hasn't even emerged yet (as far as we know). — 180 Proof
    :nerd:
    I hope yo[ur] prediction of 'posthuman' is more transhuman. — universeness
    My speculation isn't a "prediction" merely, IMO, a plausible prospect (or forecast). I think it's a best case scenario and therefore unlikely.
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