No it's not. Philology and Etymology are Nietzsche's methodology for a reason. — Vaskane

That doesn't mean that it's not a silly basis for thinking oneself to have insight, into the perspectives of diverse people, by comparison with making a lot of observations of diverse people.

I'm just not interested in any mental masturbation you might want to do, regarding the etymology is atheism.

what's the etymology of atheism? — Vaskane

That's not an interesting topic and besides the point.

You just don't like being associated with God. But atheism always highlights your association so does theism. Both titles are easily forgettable and one doesn't have to wear any of the titles at all if they choose not to. It's like the concept of free will, best to just erase the concept from your mind all together. — Vaskane

Nah, it's just that I've dealt with a lot of bullshit artists before, and you are declaring yourself to be one.

They're fundamentally the same starting point one's a pushing away from, and the other one's a feeling of attraction towards. — Vaskane

It looks to me like you are happily making up stories about figments of your imagination. That doesn't sound like something, which anyone with the experience to know what they are talking about, would say.

I would think that "physicalism" is quite strict, not allowing for the possibility of an open door. Isn't that what physicalism is, saying that there is no possibility of anything other than the physical? Opening the door would be rejecting physicalism. — Metaphysician Undercover

From my perspective, anthropomorphizing physicalism, as something that can be "strict" seems weird.

Perhaps it is because I come from a more science based perspective, but I would expect a physicalist to be open to physicalism being falsified, as a matter of intellectual integrity. I don't see any problem with leaving the door wide open for evidence which might falsify physicalism. Having left the door open for a long time, and never having seen any evidence falsifying physicalism walk through the door, is why I am a physicalist. That and the explanatory power of relevant scientific understanding.

This seems bizarre and untrue to me. It experiences the water it swims in, along with a number of other discreet elements of it's world (plankton, sharks, coral, whatever..). But, that's a digression and another thing to talk about. Is the idea here that anything within the Universe 'experiences the Universe'? I can't understand that, if so, and that might be the issue. — AmadeusD

I would think that only parts of the universe with some sort of 'brain' and sensory organs could experience the universe.

The following might help convey my perspective somewhat:

Under what notion are you suggesting we can experience the Universe? — AmadeusD

Under the notion that a fish experiences the universe through the water it swims in. You seem to place great significance on the idea of somehow experiencing the universe as a whole thing. I don't understand why. We are experiencing the universe as we can, right here and now.

For all I know, we are in one, of several possible types of multiverse. However, I don't see my inability to know the truth about such a situation to be a good reason to think that we aren't experiencing the universe.

But how do you know others aren't doing the same? What is it that makes this change a higher change such that one's consciousness is increased? How do we numerate or compare consciousnesses to one another? — Moliere

:100:

The fact that anything exists at all is proof that something exists which we can't understand. It might very well be God. — Brendan Golledge

It seems worth questioning that last sentence. Why might it very well be God?

But then there is the question of what you mean by "God" as well.

Do you consider God to be a mind? Do you see minds as the sort of things that are likely to exist without reasons for their existence?

Of course there is all sorts of stuff we can't understand. Is that is what is to be referred to as "God"?

A discussion of recent research:

https://fortune.com/2023/05/02/stanford-researchers-scoured-every-reputable-study-link-between-video-games-gun-violence-politics-mental-health-dupee-thvar-vasan/

The reason is because we can see the laws of the universe playing out here on earth, and this allows us to know, or experience, what is happening out there as well.
— Beverley

To me, no it doesn't, and I can't grasp how your getting there. — AmadeusD

Do you think no one had any idea of how things would go on the moon, before people went to the moon?

Is there mostly an issue here, of you not knowing how the laws of the universe play out?

Even though you probably didn't learn much from me because I have not been making sense, eeek! — Beverley

You are selling yourself too short. You have brought up plenty of good points.

Sounds like a grandiose rationalization for being scientifically uneducated to me.

I quoted what he said about idealism verbatim. If you missed it go back and have another look. Note the distinction he makes between subjective idealism and Kant - 'Kant's sense of "transcendental"' - and Kant's is still an idealism. — Wayfarer

Okay, it would have been better if I had said, "shouldn't be taken as supporting idealism in a broad sense or radical sense.

Still, what are your thoughts on using idealism as a rhetorical ploy, along the lines of Stephen Law's "Going Nuclear"?

There are approaches within psychology which argue that
‘mind’ is not an inside set off against an outside, but an inseparable interaction, a system of coordinations with an environment in which what constitutes the perceiving (the inside) and the perceived environment ( the outside) are defined and changed by their reciprocal interaction. Because as individuals embodied and embedded in the world we are already outside ourselves in this way, there is no radical distinction between perceiving ourselves ( we come back to ourselves from the world) and perceiving others.
Mind is thus treated no differently than organism , which has no true ‘inside’ given they it is nothing but a system of interactions with an environment it defines on the basis of its normative way of functioning. But neither is there a true ‘outside’. So this modifies Wayfarer’s idealism somewhat into a play better the ideal and the real in which neither side has priority. — Joshs

I hold a somewhat similar view, however I'd say there is a lack of nuance to the following:

...there is no radical distinction between perceiving ourselves ( we come back to ourselves from the world) and perceiving others. — Joshs

I wouldn't use the adjective "radical", but there certainly are distinctions between our perceptions of ourselves and our perception of others. Furthermore, understanding the bigger scientific picture, allows us to recognize and take such distinctions into account in a more informed way.

Sticking specifically to perception, the way we hear own voices is typically through bone conduction. Similarly, the way we see ourselves is typically mirror imaged. Now of course these days we can take out our phones and record ourselves on video, and to a degree mitigate those differences between first and third person perception, but there are all sorts of such distinctions to be recognized.

What do you think of Thompson's comment towards the end of the video, about idealism being a philosophical crutch?
— wonderer1

Not sure, since he didn’t have time to elaborate. How do you interpret it? — Joshs

I think it suggests that Thompson thinks that the matters he brings up shouldn't be taken as supporting idealism.

This is more of a stretch, but perhaps Thompson also recognizes how Stephen Law's Going Nuclear is of relevance in the case of many who profess idealism, and use idealist arguments to feign philosophical sophistication and to avoid the apperance of losing arguments.

How can we trust reason and logic, given that we have no way to assess them without using them again? How can I trust my brain, since I have no way to assess it without making itself in charge of making the assessment, without giving it the responsibility of assessing itself? — Angelo Cannata

Unless one has fallen into the black hole of solipsism, it really isn't so difficult if one is willing to get out of the philosophical armchair. You can give the responsibility of evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of your cognitive faculties to a psychologist trained to makes such evaluations. You can study the workings of brains and perceptual systems to develop a more nuanced understanding of the various degrees of reliability of human cognitive faculties.

Depending on health insurance it may not be cheap, but you can take a WAIS test (or whatever the equivalent is where you may be) and get some relatively fine grained detail on the subject of your idiosyncratic constellation of cognitive strengths and weaknesses.

Perhaps you aren't alone with your armchair? :chin:

Often these authors write their arguments and perspectives in the midst of the high winds of modern empirical science, and they have the proper corrective force when they are in conversation with modern empiricists, but yet their force is not properly calibrated for speaking to those of us who are not coming from that perspective. — Leontiskos

:up:

No, I am 188cm tall with a five pack, the top two blocks of my abs fuse into one. Sorry for posting a picture of one of your flatmates. — Lionino

:monkey:

I was just testing out my hypothesis, that you really didn't know what you were talking about when you said:

This is the very last post I ever write in reply to you. — Lionino

Thanks for playing. :lol:

Radar is not a pulsating machine gun shooting bullets (matter) & spaces (absence) at a target. Or is it? — Gnomon

Are photons a new concept for you?

In that case, the normal default is you side with the OP's accusation and expect the accused to answer it. If the OP is of course lying or unfairly accusing, feel free to point out where the OP's accusations fail. But it should be specifics, not general. — Philosophim

LOL

I'm afraid life has given me an inability to take OPs so seriously, on the basis of them being OPs.

I recognize Christoffer as having a lot of insight that can be learned from. I can understand you wanting the conversation to go the way you want it to go. However, to my mind that doesn't seem too relevant to whether Cristoffer's posts bring value to the thread.

Of course, I may have seen too many OPs claiming I was in league with the devil, and so it is just me thinking you are kind of control freaky.

But if what we need is healing then it's important to note we usually need help with that, and thinking about it isn't the same as talking about it with a therapist or a trusted friend, and philosophizing about it -- well, only do that when healed. You have more important things to do than philosophize about it when you're hurting. — Moliere

:up: :up:

Antifa mugshots. It seems that outside ugliness does seem to motivate inside ugliness — I don't see how the inverse is so much the case, especially when so many of these people are deformed. — Lionino

Damn, you've gone and busted my irony meter.

Amazing thread though.

I'm curious, are you short? You come across to me like a short guy.

If cognizant organisms did not operate with some basic logic, then a predator could be attacking them AND not attacking them at the same time. Given that those conditions have different response procedures (be they automatic or not), their mind has to, one some level, treat the condition binarily. It's logic, however basic. — Ø implies everything

In the case of ravens using cars to crush nuts, why think it is a matter of logic rather than pattern recognition? (Which is a more basic aspect of neural network behavior than is logic) How do you know you aren't projecting?

In the case of your quoted statement, I'm thinking fight or flight responses aren't something I'd see as a particularly good example of logical reasoning, but more as evidence of the machine inside the ghost. Again, the question of projecting logic, on something more complex than simple logic, comes to mind for me.

The idea that things ‘go out of existence’ when not perceived, is simply their ‘imagined non-existence’. In reality, the supposed ‘unperceived object’ neither exists nor does not exist. Nothing whatever can be said about it. — Wayfarer

That seems a rather silly thing to say to me. A rather significant element of my lived experience is based in knowing that in many cases that there is a huge amount that can be said about it.

What is the point of such a binary statement?

Can you give me a reason to think that it is not a case of Going Nuclear?

I just believe it's a lot more than what most people have done, and I am lonely and disappointed that I have no one to share it with. You are right that there are no immediate material benefits from this. Humans are social creatures and do all of their great accomplishments in groups. If I can't convince other people of what I'm interested in, then I still have only my own 2 hands to work with, no matter what vision I have in my head. — Brendan Golledge

My view is that we are all social primates who are born ignorant and are all going to die only somewhat less ignorant, and finding opportunities to simply be a mensch among mensches is more than enough.

That said, it seems to me that some ability to lead others to recognize wisdom is a rather important mensch skill. The notion of being an ubermensch seems counterproductive to such a goal from my perspective, because for me, understanding of our mere humanness plays a hugely important role in recognizing what influences others.

I can brag too. On the forum I was hanging out at before coming to TPF, there was a sort of multithreaded and multimedia event which lead to myself and other atheists being seen as Christ-like (by a religiously skeptical but also very much hopeful universalist retired biology professor) and a Presbyterian minister referring to me with the line, "Zen Mind is embracing the traffic, and finding a way to groove with it in your own way in order to both be a part of it and transcend it." Most important to me, is that these events brought home to a rather fundamentalist Christian that I as an atheist recognized him as a loving brother.

So what is it that you want to share, and what is it that you are ignorant of, that keeps you from being able to share it?

For my part, you can check out my forum mix tape.

The blind spot keeps us from recognizing these things. — Joshs

What do you think of Thompson's comment towards the end of the video, about idealism being a philosophical crutch?

I'm afraid it's you who is confused. There is no such thing as "the 'is' of equality". That's just a misconception. — Metaphysician Undercover

Your lack of recognition of the distinction, doesn't eliminate the value that the distinction has, for those who recognize the distinction.

Everything we know points to mind (as an activity) being dependent on non-mind, on material existence/ existents.
— Janus

From a perspective outside both, treating mind as an observed phenomena, which we can't actually do, as we're not outside it. — Wayfarer

We are outside the minds of other people. Do you think that we can learn about the workings of other people's minds by observation of their behavior? Doesn't your statement amount to saying psychology is impossible?

So how does the physical brain generate consciousness or awareness? — Corvus

Physically.

If you want to consider the question seriously it will involve studying a lot of science. However, I suspect you just wanted to do philosophical performance art, by asking a non-serious question. Am I right?

From a philosopher's perspective, I feel Sean Carroll, exemplary science communicator and all around gentleman that he might be, is a poor philosopher. Prone to just this kind of error: — Wayfarer

I'm not sure what you see as the significance, of how you feel about it.

Can you provide a quote by Carroll, that you see as exemplifying the sort of error you are talking about?

I'll add this:

Neuroscientists usually investigate one brain at a time. They observe how neurons fire as a person reads certain words, for example, or plays a video game. As social animals, however, those same scientists do much of their work together—brainstorming hypotheses, puzzling over problems and fine-tuning experimental designs. Increasingly, researchers are bringing that reality into how they study brains.

Collective neuroscience, as some practitioners call it, is a rapidly growing field of research. An early, consistent finding is that when people converse or share an experience, their brain waves synchronize. Neurons in corresponding locations of the different brains fire at the same time, creating matching patterns, like dancers moving together. Auditory and visual areas respond to shape, sound and movement in similar ways, whereas higher-order brain areas seem to behave similarly during more challenging tasks such as making meaning out of something seen or heard. The experience of “being on the same wavelength” as another person is real, and it is visible in the activity of the brain.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brain-waves-synchronize-when-people-interact

This position, 'the soul is a harmony' is very much similar to the modern physicalist position which apprehends ideas, concepts, mind and consciousness in general, as something distinct from the physical body (as the harmony is distinct from the lyre), but insists that these are dependent on the physical body as properties of it, or emergent from it, like the harmony is dependent on the lyre. — Metaphysician Undercover

Beautifully said! :pray:

That can't be right, for today's physics will be different tomorrow, and physics does not tell us anything about the mind or brain, only that they are at the very bottom, made of the stuff physics describes, but that leaves a lot of stuff out. — Manuel

For a scientist's perspective, here's Sean Carroll:

https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2010/09/23/the-laws-underlying-the-physics-of-everyday-life-are-completely-understood/

https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2010/09/29/seriously-the-laws-underlying-the-physics-of-everyday-life-really-are-completely-understood/

From my perspective, in light the huge variety of technology working as well as it does these days, it would seem rather ludicrous to think that physics of tomorrow will be much different in a pragmatic sense. The fact is, modern technology involves having gotten an awful lot of things pretty much right.

Isaac Asimov's essay, The Relativity of Wrong, is well worth reading in considering this topic.

Honestly, people. How do you expect to be taken seriously when you can't get the most basic facts straight?? — Patterner

:rofl: :up:

All the clever sensible people who wouldn't ever join a cult surely neglected their responsibility to educate their fellow citizens rather better than they have done, because clearly those people are not capable of educating themselves. — unenlightened

Not all. There are some on this forum who have put significant time into educating our fellow citizens, since well before Trump came down the escalator. It seems to me, that painting things in such black and white terms is likely to incline people to a fatalism you don't want to see.

If something exists and is knowable, then it has a determinate form and, therefore, it has an essence. We can know essences to a greater or lesser degree. If clinical depression exists and is knowable, then it has an essence, and the definition from the DSM is attempting to set out that essence. The idea that some words have equivocal senses is an ignoratio elenchi, unrelated to the question of essentialism. — Leontiskos

Suppose that rather than things having essences, our minds recognize certain 'signatures' in things. Is there a good reasons to think that 'there are essences' is a better way of understanding things than, "our minds recognize patterns'?

Fear of religion. — Wayfarer

This is just slinging rhetorical shit, at those you see as part of the social band you are opposed to.

Since our brains/minds seem to be capable of believing anything, true or false, having some grounding in the physical basis might keep us from getting off track. — Mark Nyquist

:up:

Hey nice cherry pick :up: — Wayfarer

Picked especially for you. :grin: