Thanks! I believe I have that book in my e-book library. Will read it.

I don't feel how my kidneys produce urine, but I do bleed the lizard at regular intervals. The same goes for my other organs, but the one that has the spotlight on it is the brain - it seems impossible to feel the action potentials that light up our brains like a Christmas tree, and yet we're able to think. I can't wrap my head around that. It blows my mind.

No sensory organs (or pain receptors) inside the brain; so yeah, it is "impossible" for the brain to "feel" itself doing anything.

No sensory organs (or pain receptors) inside the brain; so yeah, it is "impossible" for the brain to "feel" itself doing anything — 180 Proof

Thus, our bodies are like the contraptions/machines we use everyday of our lives, from your humble toaster to an advanced F-35, we can use it without having to know how it actually works. Like how birds fly by instinct alone, with zero knowledge of aeronautics.

What's the point of a person's aeuronautics enginering degree when a 15 year old can fly like an ace whild s/he can't even pilot a model airplane? What's the value of knowledge?

More or less.

More or less. — 180 Proof

Why is it like that? I mean are we machines used by...?

God is soul without a body, like a dead person. — praxis

:clap: Gott ist tot (Friedrich Nietzsche)

What's the value of knowledge? — Agent Smith

"What's the value of" hygiene or fitness (or any adaptive practice)?

[A]re we machines used by...? — Agent Smith

We are macro machines made up of trillions of micro machines "who" make and use macro machines which in various feedback modes re-make us. Or so it seems.

What's the value of hygiene or fitness (or any adaptive practice)? — 180 Proof

They're keys to survival, reducible to 3 primary goals:

1. Finding food
2. Fleeing predators
3. F**cking suitable mates

3Fs :chin: I'm bad at all three. I'm a genetic dead end! :grin: and bear it!

You homed in on a very important point. I congratulated you on it. You went berserk! — Agent Smith

I did not go berserk. Being rational is normal.

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? — Nietzsche

Gotta love the Nietch.

↪Agent Smith For a post-Freudian/Jungian (woo), Nobel Prize winning scientific treatment of functional interactions between the un/subconscious and "conscious" meta/cognition, I recommend Daniel Kahneman's excellent Thinking, Fast and Slow. — 180 Proof

For an antidote to Kahneman’s reductionism I recommend anything by enactivist embodied cognitive
theorists.

Enactivism (which was the focus of my graduate work) is not an "antidote" to prospect theory but, IME, a complementary model.

↪Joshs Enactivism (which was the focus of my graduate work) is not an "antidote" to prospect theory but, IME, a complementary model. — 180 Proof

Not all, but some enactivists, those who integrate phenomenology into their work , argue that there are important philosophical gaps between Kahneman’s metaphysical assumptions and theirs.They also believe this about Dennett, Searle , Clark and free energy principle-based neuroscience models. I would just argue that Kahneman’s approach, like these others, is a sophisticated causal model ( reciprocal, dynamical causality), not as far removed for behaviorism as many would like to believe.

I think that religion, science and art can be fruitfully connected by the context of interpretation, or we can say hermeneutics. You can have a look at Gadamer about this. Religion can be considered an interpretation of existence in reference to supernatural beings. Art is the expression of subjective interpretation of a lot of things. Science tries to build interpretations as well, but with an effort to keep bound to what has evidence. In this context science can help, or be in a dialogue, with artistic and religious interpretations by suggesting methodologies of consistency.

Religion can be considered an interpretation of existence in reference to supernatural beings — Angelo Cannata

Religion, so I think in all intellectual honesty and faithfull commitment, is more than an interpretation of of existence. Religion acknowledges the true existence of supernatural beings about whom many stories are in circulation. The weirdest of these stories, in my respectful opinion, is the gods being the members of an alien, technological super advanced civilization, who created us as simulations in a computer or maybe even in reality...

The importance of hermeneutics may be underplayed in philosophy, with so much focus on science and empirical validation. The understanding of texts, especially sacred ones, is a starting point for thinking about those who created them and the sources they incorporated. It is about coming from a different angle, with the arts drawing on creative imagination. If people try to interpret the texts in a concrete way as if they are scientific accounts it can lead to so much confusion. In this way, both the arts and science are complementary aspects of thinking about understanding reality, including symbolic versus evidence based accounts. Some may value science in preference to the arts and it may be important to see how the two approaches work so differently. When science is seen as all important it can lead to people losing touch with the mythical aspects of thought and even scientific models may have mythical aspects too.

When science is seen as all important it can lead to people losing touch with the mythical aspects of thought and even scientific models may have mythical aspects too — Jack Cummins

I would like to point out that, actually, ignoring the mythical aspects of the text, is not really respectful of science: in order to be fully scientific, it should be obvious to consider the historical and cultural context of the texts: this is normal practice in the science of history, archaelogy. So, I think that people who ignore the myths, the symbols, the literary value of religious ancient texts, in favor of what they call “science”, actually behave against science.

:up:

I did not go berserk. Being rational is normal. — Jackson

:ok:

Jesus is science. God, the Father, supposedly, incarnated in the physical plane, the domain of science, as Mary's son.

As for art, Yeshua was not known for painting or sculpture, but I remain convinced enough that he was a good actor and was a wordsmith in his own right. As a subject of art, however, he had no equal, at least not in medieval Europe.