That brings up a point about personality. What is personality? How is it constructed? — schopenhauer1
Let me add, I am very much a naturalist in terms of science essentially and materialist explanations are what I see to be the best structures of explanation. — schopenhauer1
The rock bottom core of our "human problem" is that we are animals who imagine that we have transcended our animal nature. — Bitter Crank
Fortunately, some are born with spiritual immune systems that sooner or later give rejection to the illusory worldview grafted upon them from birth through social conditioning. They begin sensing that something is amiss, and start looking for answers. Inner knowledge and anomalous outer experiences show them a side of reality others are oblivious to, and so begins their journey of awakening. Each step of the journey is made by following the heart instead of following the crowd and by choosing knowledge over the veils of ignorance. — Henri Bergson
Each step of the journey is made by following the heart instead of following the crowd and by choosing knowledge over the veils of ignorance — Henri Bergson
the merely biological — Wayfarer
There is a tendency for "just so" stories. Everything becomes an instinct rather than constructed via the virtual world of concept formation. We have to be careful what to delineate as a true instinct and what is culturally-linguistically based in our behaviors and habit-formations. We are so ready to place ourselves as "just another animal" that we often overlook the complicated way that linguistic-minds shape us. Let me add, I am very much a naturalist in terms of science essentially and materialist explanations are what I see to be the best structures of explanation. However, I don't jump the gun in explanations that reduce assumed instinctual behavior into instinct when in fact, it may just be a cultural trope that is so embedded and assumed, it seems like instinct. — schopenhauer1
My claim is that most of human behavior originates through linguistic-conceptual thought and not instinct. — schopenhauer1
I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more ? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination—stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern—of which I am a part—perhaps my stuff was belched from some forgotten star, as one is belching there. Or see them with the greater eye of Palomar, rushing all apart from some common starting point when they were perhaps all together. What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined! Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were like a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?”
― Richard Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics — Bitter Crank
Piaget argued against claims by Chomsky and Fodor for a genetic basis of semantic language content. — Joshs
Materialism adopts the language and rhetoric of philosophy, but its conclusions are strictly anti-philosophical. — Wayfarer
Now it is the case that being conceptual creatures, we have progressed to the point where even our own existence - individually, or collectively - becomes something we can question the value of. — apokrisis
The question now is have they become unstuck in some meaningful fashion. Have we become so enlightened about certain metaphysical facts that we should volunteer to strike ourselves from the evolutionary record? If that is your case, then present the argument. — apokrisis
But trying to both draw a sharp line between instinctive and encultured behaviour in a way that denies a historic continuity of evolutionary logic is a waste of time. Bad philosophy from the get go.
If you want to argue for the legitimacy of anti-evolutionary ethics, then that is what you should stick to as the focus. — apokrisis
Yes, a major point- humans can do this and are the only Earthly animals to do this. — schopenhauer1
I have no idea what evidence you have to conclude this. — Rich
I don't even know what that means "anti-evolutionary ethics". We can choose not to procreate. That in itself is obvious. — schopenhauer1
Do you mean to ask whether we as humans can reflect on our own existence, find it wanting, and decide not to continue procreating? In that case, indeed we can do that on an individual level. — schopenhauer1
Of course, my argument all along is not everyone will stop procreating, but rather to get people to question the ends of their own existence, what they are living for in the first place, and to recognize certain aspects of existence- instrumental nature, striving-for-no-ends, etc. — schopenhauer1
But how is seeing humans as acting a way that is part of this super-organism (i.e. cannot help but lead towards some telos) not simply being a self-fulfilling prophecy? — schopenhauer1
In fact, by somehow promoting grandiose notions of participating in the super-organism, this seems more Romantic than many other philosophies you slap with that label. — schopenhauer1
I guess I cannot show you the mind of other animals, but based on their behavior and the fact that they lack linguistic ability- I can feel confident saying that other animals don't really reflect very much on why they are alive or the value of existence, or other existential questions. — schopenhauer1
Is it that difficult? If evolutionary logic defines what is natural, then doing something contrary to that logic lacks a natural justification. You would have to explain why the choice - as a general one you advocate for a whole species - is not merely possible but somehow ethically cogent. — apokrisis
Yeah sure. If that is your choice, then who cares. The breeders win in the end. — apokrisis
OK. Then that is a change of tune. Great. You are not against procreation itself, you are against a social system with poor general outcomes.
Who could disagree there? — apokrisis
Well it probably is inevitable. But still, at least recognising the true nature of the situation gives a possibility of choosing a different path.
Or more pragmatically, if you view things as already fated by nature, you can make your own life plans accordingly. — apokrisis
Who knows what they may be thinking? Probably nothing like humans and so what? They may have evolved beyond humans and just enjoying life. — Rich
Hey, in a way I agree with you. To have a bird's life. — schopenhauer1
Yes, that is the point. Personally I like the whales or maybe the highest form of life, the great Methusalah tree. Now that's living. — Rich
Salvation? Whatever diminishes the kingdom of consciousness and compromises its supremacy.” — schopenhauer1
it tends to dissolve the imagination into the doings of neurons, genes, endocrines, enzymes, and so on. It is deliberately deflationary to the imagination. — Wayfarer
but there seems to be a difference not only in degree but in type as to how human personalities are constructed from linguistic-conceptual cues combined with genetic predispositions. — schopenhauer1
The do nothing no-goodnik or the do-everything-over-achiever. It's all the same.. what is it all about. — schopenhauer1
...what matters is that we survive/maintain our comfort levels/get bored and need entertainment. — schopenhauer1
I've asked people in other threads to explain Platonic perfection, what a utopia looks like, what does completeness look like, etc. No one usually has a good answer. — schopenhauer1
Don't forget experience -- another factor in us being who we individually are. — Bitter Crank
I think you may be right here, but maybe you can elaborate. — schopenhauer1
Even though neurotransmitters operate in synaptic gaps, and neurons operate both chemically and electrically, and even though genes direct the activities of all this stuff, it is still YOU that have experiences, imagine, compose, write, philosophize, not the glands and synapses. — Bitter Crank
Materialism adopts the language and rhetoric of philosophy, but its conclusions are strictly anti-philosophical.
— Wayfarer
Can you elaborate on this? — schopenhauer1
So, you wouldn't have agreed with Francis Crick, when he said that '“You,” your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.' (where 'no more' is pretty well an exact synonym for 'mere')? — Wayfarer
But the reason I say it's anti-philosophical, is because, if materialism is true, then there's no wisdom (sophia) to be had. We are simply a species of animal, that makes patterns of sounds, that create an illusion of meaning, for the brief moment of a meaningless existence. — Wayfarer
I don't know why Crick, or anybody else, takes the view that we are "no more than" the mechanism. — Bitter Crank
Did wisdom come through and within human thought or did it come from outside human thought? Aren't we the authors of such wisdom as we know? — Bitter Crank
Is every animal species something more than animal? If it is so, then how can the distinction between humans and mere animals be maintained? — Πετροκότσυφας
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.