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  • Neuro-Techno-Philosophy
    ↪SunLoki
    Welcome to TPF.

    Nayef Al-Rodhan is new to me but his proposal of "Neuro-Techno-Philosophy" very much reminds me of transhumanism. For context, here's a 2024 article from Philosophy Now:

    https://philosophynow.org/issues/160/A_Philosophical_History_of_Transhumanism

    And on these fora, here are three discussions in which I and quite a few others had participated in back in 2021:

    What is your opinion of Transhumanism?

    Transhumanism: Treating death as a problem (with British philosopher David Pearce)

    Transhumanist theodicy
  • PROCESS COSMOLOGY --- a worldview for our time
    As usual, 180 alcohol content responds to my philosophical arguments --- in favor of a Cosmic Cause (hidden hand) for the contingent universe we living & thinking beings inhabit --- with ad hominem political attacks : e.g. liberal (logical) inference bad vs conservative (physical) evidence good. I assume he is appalled at the worldwide popularity of the God of Abraham, Isaac & Jacob, who frequently punished his chosen people with mass death and deportation. 180 may also have had a bad experience with pedophile priests or knuckle-rapping nuns. — Gnomon
    :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

    Like Trump, your fatuous accusations are confessions, Gnomon – I must've struck a raw nerve (i.e. truth hurts! :sweat:) with my last post ...

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/984104 :up:
  • PROCESS COSMOLOGY --- a worldview for our time
    Note --- We read the same science books, but interpret their philosophical implications differently. — Gnomon
    Except that your interpretations consist in appeals to ignorance fallacies, as quite a few members have exhaustively pointed out over the years, and my interpretations do not.

    NB: Philosophy says, in effect, 'here, we don't know (yet)' and thereby rigorously makes explicit the (current) limits of reason and knowledge whereas in contrast sophistry / theology / pseudo-science deludes itself with woo-of-the-gaps fairytales (e.g. "Enformer", "transcendental programmer", "intelligent designer", etc) which purport to explain (i.e. resolve fundamental mysteries) yet do not explain anything.
  • The Political Divide is a Moral Divide
    ↪tim wood
    :up:

    ↪RogueAI
    :up: :up:

    Re: fwiw, contextualizing America's 'polarization' – no doubt a disputable guess (2021) ...

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/504611

    i.e. ethics / moral norms (e.g. OP's "developmental stages" :roll:) are not the drivers or causes of contemporary 'extremism'.
  • The Political Divide is a Moral Divide
    ↪RogueAI
    :up:
  • The Political Divide is a Moral Divide
    I think leftists are in the preconventional stage of morality, and MAGA are in the conventional stage. — Brendan Golledge
    As a libertarian leftist and negative consequentialist, I find reductionist – simplistic – statements like yours, Brendan, meaningless (ahistorical). The last century or so of 'political' events and conflicts amply shows that, especially for most citizens, governing ideologies are not determined by – not consistently derived from – ethical principles (or practices), even though the domains (can) overlap. Of course, any concrete, real world counter-examples would lend some credibility to the OP.
  • Where is AI heading?


    Addendum to
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/983428
  • PROCESS COSMOLOGY --- a worldview for our time
    ↪PoeticUniverse
    ↪Gnomon


    Even if "the universe is a quantum computer", this does not necessitate it was programmed (or is programmable) or that it has a Babbage-Lovelace/Von Neumann/Turing-like architecture. Clearly, there isn't any evidence of a "transcendent programmer" or explanatory function for one.

    Btw, I recommend Programming the Universe by Seth Lloyd (2006); also Stephen Wolfram's work on complexity / computation, David Deutsch's work on MWI quantum computing and Carlo Rovelli's work on RQM.

    ↪Wayfarer
    :smirk:
  • Why the "Wave" in Quantum Physics Isn't Real
    ↪Wayfarer
    Okay. Again, you've got nothing but ...
  • Why the "Wave" in Quantum Physics Isn't Real
    ↪Wayfarer
    So you cannot answer the question?
  • Why the "Wave" in Quantum Physics Isn't Real
    ↪tim wood
    ↪Wayfarer
    What does "real" even mean with respect to a "wave in quantum physics"?

    Also, more significantly, what existential or epistemological difference do the ontological interpretations of "quantum physics" make to classical beings classically living in a classical world (re: locality¹)?

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_locality [1]
  • What are you listening to right now?
    Bye, "Sundown" 1986-2025 ♡

    I can see her looking fast
    in her faded jeans
    She's a hard loving woman,
    got me feeling mean
    Sometimes
    I think it's a shame
    When I get feeling better
    when I'm feeling no pain
  • What should the EU do when Trump wins the next election?
    @Benkei "@Banno ,@ssu @BC @Christoffer et al, consider ...

  • Where is AI heading?
    @Carlo Roosen @Wayfarer @noAxioms @punos @ssu @Christoffer et al

    Consider this summary of a prospective "step beyond" LLMs & other human knowledge-trained systems towards more robust AI agents and even AGI currently in the works ...

    https://www.zdnet.com/article/ai-has-grown-beyond-human-knowledge-says-googles-deepmind-unit/
  • Donald Trump (All Trump Conversations Here)
    Many, if not most, maga voters just weren't paying attention, and now –

    "Instant karma's gonna get you ..." :victory:
  • The mouthpiece of something worse
    ↪T Clark
    Like much of the NYC establishment "movers and shakers" of 40s-70s, Robert Moses' "work" (in his specific case – inadvertantly?) accelerated urban decay and tax base collapse (e.g. divestment in public services) and the consequential social pathologies (& reactionary politics/policing). All of my family and white brown & black friends (except one Chinese dude who became a felon & successful career criminal) left the Bronx by the mid-80s.

    I tried reading Robert Caro's book in the 90s but I didn't get very far – I skipped around a lot – and lost interest (even though, I had noticed (and just checked again), the book was published on my eleventh birthday). I'm sure the mega-engineering (& machinations) fascinates you, T Clark – I had been a mechanical engineering student for three years before I dropped out of university the first time – but I grew up playing in and making my way out of non-Bronxite Robert Moses' ruins.

    I recommend The Bronx by Evelyn Gonzalez (scholarship) or Before The Fires by Mark Naison & Bob Gumbs (oral history) to give some much needed social context to Caro's biography.
  • Disambiguating the concept of gender
    I agree with this legal ruling and its implications as it's consistent with my own stated position here ...

    https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg7pqzk47zo
  • The mouthpiece of something worse
    Did you ever read the “Power Broker?” — T Clark
    Why do you ask? (I was) a New Yorker, I'd lived in their ruins ...

    Yes, and I guess there's always a risk that my kind of reflections are effectively conservative. — Jamal
    I think it's primarily our actions, practices, commitments & habits which 'define' us politically. My own pessimism can seem "conservative" in isolation from my other overt concerns and agitations.
  • The Myopia of Liberalism
    That’s what’s so compelling in Lefebvre—he rescues liberalism from the charge of moral emptiness not by denying it, but by reframing it. Liberalism isn’t a doctrine, it’s a discipline. It's what we do. A lived ethic of coordination, mutuality, and restraint. Less about asserting the good, more about making life together possible.

    And I liked that Hadot echo too—quiet, but clear. Ethics as practice, not rulebook. That’s why the capabilities approach fits so well here: it’s not just about rights or choices, but cultivating the real power to live well. Not a retreat from meaning, but a wager that meaning can be plural.

    And still, what is the alternative?
    — Banno
    :clap: :fire:
  • The mouthpiece of something worse
    ↪Jamal
    Thanks for the topic and the Adorno & Linus quotes. :smirk:

    I'm a child of the South Bronx (NYC) in the post-Civil Rights seventies in a union household with a single mother (nurse) who was too overworked to be political or even talk about politics. Fortunately, I was educated by conservative Dominicans and Jesuits for twelve years that by the end (somehow) made me an avowed atheist and nascent Marxist. But I was too pessimistic / anti-utopian (by nature? by experience even then?) so soon I dropped Marxism and, along with having read F. Douglass, Malcolm X and MLK, Jr, had also found N. Chomsky, M. Bakunin, P. Kropotkin, R. Luxemberg, A. Gramsci, A. Camus (esp. The Rebel), et al ... what became for me an archive of 'the libertarian left' – for perpetual rebellion, not revolution. Since those undergraduate days in the early eighties agitating for divestment from South Africa to end of apartheid, protesting US aggression in Nicaragua, El Salvador & Guatamala and (violent) opposition to the official "war on drugs" that disproportionately targeted (& disenfranchised) urban minority and rural poor white populations, the decades – the defeats – have only radicalized me so that I've grown even more pessimistic and more anarchistic. Until I drop, for me at least, the struggle against all forms of injustice and dehumanization goes on ...

    My dad was a communist turned socialist - how was I supposed to rebel against that? Oh, I remember now, "turn on, tune in, drop out". — unenlightened
    :victory: :cool:

    I do rather like the developing argumentum ad peanutem. — Banno
    :smirk:
  • Demonstrating Intelligent Design from the Principle of Sufficient Reason
    ↪MoK
    Once again ...

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/982416

    ↪tim wood
    ↪tim wood
    :up: :up:
  • Demonstrating Intelligent Design from the Principle of Sufficient Reason
    ↪MoK
    You're right, it's "not a counterargument" but exposure of the fallacies in your "argument". A thesis riddled with fallacies such as your OP should be withdrawn at the very least, which is why I do not agree with it. No "counterargument" is needed since your invalid argument is not even false.
  • The Myopia of Liberalism
    Do onto others as you would have them do onto you, and communism: To each according to need from each according to ability. Neither can be achieved, or even approached, in the overpopulated, god-ridden, money-driven, propagandized societies of today. All liberals can do is attempt to mitigate the worst outcomes. In some countries they do fairly well; in others, they fail, get knocked on their keesters, get up and try again. And again, and again.... — Vera Mont
    :fire: :up:
  • What caused the Big Bang, in your opinion?
    ↪kindred
    God-of-the-gaps (appleal to ignorance) fallacy. See Hitchens' Razor.
  • The Myopia of Liberalism
    I don't think the answer is found in a dicitionary but a history book. Liberalism and capitalism developed in tandem and share core assumption about the individual, property and greedom (that was a typo but I like it). — Benkei
    A pessimistic view is that capitalists need freedom to operate, so they champion liberalism because it diminishes religious and governmental interference. — frank
    :100:
  • Demonstrating Intelligent Design from the Principle of Sufficient Reason
    ↪MoK
    No, I don't agree as I pointed out on the first page of that thread ...
    Assume that the physical in the state of S1 has the caus[al] power to cause the physical in the state of S2. Physical however is not aware of the passage of time. Therefore, the physical in the state of S1 cannot know the correct instant to cause the physical in the state of S2.
    —MoK

    These misplaced concreteness & anthropomorphic fallacies render your (latest) OP "argument" gibberish, Mok.
    — 180 Proof
  • The Myopia of Liberalism
    And the essence of liberalism is to justify capitalism with the ideology of equality, individual liberty and property rights.

    And not only to justify capitalism, but to justify colonialism, slavery, and class hierarchy.
    — Jamal
    :strong: :mask:

    most collectivist thought wants to maximise democratic processes where they are currently barred due to the structure of liberal/capitalism. — Benkei
    :up: :up: e.g. Demarchic-Economic Democracy (i.e. libertarian socialism) ... as you, no doubt, know.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_democracy

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism
  • Demonstrating Intelligent Design from the Principle of Sufficient Reason
    On your logic, if someone goes looking for the Loch Ness Monster, then there must be a Loch Ness Monster.

    Very good.
    — Banno
    ↪Banno
    :smirk:
  • Demonstrating Intelligent Design from the Principle of Sufficient Reason
    ↪Banno
    :up:
  • PROCESS COSMOLOGY --- a worldview for our time
    an update of Spinoza's deus sive natura, to accommodate modern cosmology — Gnomon
    Funny thing, though, Einstein didn't see a reason for "an update of Spinoza's Deus, sive nature, perhaps because he actually studied Spinoza, unlike you, Mr Enformer-of-the-gaps, and therefore does not conflate, or confuse, metaphysics with physics as pseudo-thinkers do. Fwiw, the philosophical speculation I find most parsimonious and consistent with "modern cosmology" is pandeism¹ (not your "PanEnDeism" or panentheism or pantheism).

    (2022)
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/607424 [1]
  • Demonstrating Intelligent Design from the Principle of Sufficient Reason
    I agree that the laws of nature are enforced by an entity called the Mind — MoK
    Fundamental physical regularities are not legistlated "laws" that need to be "enforced" but are mathematically derived from countless, extraordinarily precise observations (measurements) of the most explanatory physical theories available (SR, GR, QFT, Standard Model, etc). The term "laws of nature" is a metaphorical shorthand that it makes no sense to attribute some hidden (occult) agency such as "the Mind" to – which only begs the question 'and whence the Mind?' leading either to an infinite regress or unwarranted, arbitrary terminus (e.g. "first cause", "unmoved mover", "intelligent designer", "creator", etc).
  • Demonstrating Intelligent Design from the Principle of Sufficient Reason
    But we need a reason for the existence of the laws of nature in the first place. — A Christian Philosophy
    Why?

    continuation of ...
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/981975
  • More Sophisticated, Philosophical Accounts of God
    [deleted]
  • Phaenomenological or fundamental?
    The search for metaphysical causes is essentially religious in its origins, and has been a great hindrance to the advancement of human knowledge. — alan1000
    :up: :up:
  • In Support of Western Supremacy, Nationalism, and Imperialism.
    There is an impressive lack of self-awareness in that article — Count Timothy von Icarus
    When you say "lack of self-awareness", are you referring to the article's author, American readers? American writers? or ???
  • In Support of Western Supremacy, Nationalism, and Imperialism.
    @Bob Ross

    An incisive précis on literature in Pax Americana ...
    https://lithub.com/viet-thanh-nguyen-most-american-literature-is-the-literature-of-empire/

    addendum to
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/961000
  • Demonstrating Intelligent Design from the Principle of Sufficient Reason
    Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR): For every thing that exists, there is a sufficient reason/explanation/ground for its existence or occurrence. — A Christian Philosophy
    And the "sufficient reason" for (every instantiation of) the "PSR" is what exactly? :chin:
  • Is there any argument against the experience machine?
    Matter doesn't exist. This is all an elaborate dream. — RogueAI
    :roll:

    I guess you didn't get the memo, Rogue: There are no antirealists (immaterialists, disembodied minds, etc) in foxholes.

    On the one hand you are saying it's all just chemicals and yet on the other you say that these thoughts about it all being chemicals are not due to chemicals but are "logical conclusions". Do you not see that you are contradicting yourself? — Janus
    :up: :up:
  • British Politics (Fixing the NHS and Welfare State): What Has Gone Wrong?
    ↪Jack Cummins

    This cannot be repeated enough (esp. here in the effin' United States of Kakistan since 1980) ...
    Translating the bullshit we have been sold in plain English, the trade unions have lost their bargaining power, the population has been taught that it is not the rich that are responsible for their misery but gays and foreigners, and that a state that supports the poor and the sick is undesirable and cost them too much. Hence taxes have gone down, real wages have gone down, and government spending on social care has gone down. This is also partly because we no longer have an Empire covering a third of the world to exploit. Those wretched foreigners again wanting to run their own lives. — unenlightened
    :100: :fire:
  • Is there any argument against the experience machine?
    if it's all just chemicals — Darkneos
    From what perspective? At what level of analysis? Why not instead: if it's all just quarks ...? C'mon, the premise is weak, reductive nonsense.
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