Ignoring consciousness for a moment, what is life in energetic terms ?
A little replicating piece of crystalfire. A strange but ultimately futile climb away from the unstoppable heat death, its accidental servant. apokrisis understands the details much much better than me, but I think I grasp the basic idea. Life can exploit (release) potential energy by using stored energy to pay the cost of activation, push the heavy boulder off the hill, install the waterwheel, build a fission plant over the course of many years at great expense. Can we measure the 'intensity' of life in these terms maybe ? — plaque flag
Pretty funny stuff: a mixture of sense and nonsense, like a terminator trying to pass as a fellow nerd until its target arrives. — plaque flag
What is it to be the little worker working? — schopenhauer1
I can relate to what you say. Nobby Brown compared lifedeath with undeath or immortality. The immortal is neither alive nor dead. It's frozen. While life, in motion, is always also death.
I think this is part of Heidegger's point about our tendency to identify the permanent with the real. Is there is logical reason for this ? Or an irrational motive ?
At the end of Fast Sofa, a character who was uptight for most of the movie has some insight and loses all fear, basically going 'crazy' and dying in a high speed crash.
I connect this to the 'poisoncure' of philosophy, personified as Hamlet, who questions whether leaving early (dying) is really a thing to be avoided. We typically assume the importance of longevity, as if quantity is not at least threatened with absurdity in the context of the vastness of death.
I'm not equating wisdom with recklessness, but I am challenging the assumption that the goal of life is automatically to live as long as possible (and to identity with something that endures forever). Tristram and Isolde, or the fight for Freedom. We love those plots. Risk is a measure of passion. (Dying for love connects us back to Schopenhauer. The species-pole in us, the genitals, know themselves immortal -- and they overpower the deathfearing ego. — plaque flag
Let's try this in a different key. Imagine two single mothers trading their children, because in both cases they expect a better fit. Does this not offend us ? But is there no cold-bloodedly ethical/rational case to be made for a switch in some situations ? — plaque flag
Schop is saying that philosophy's task is purely critical - in the Kantian sense of making us aware of the limitations of discursive reason. It 'drops you at the border', so to speak. — Wayfarer
I think Schopenhauer is an unstable fusion. I never could take his metaphysics as a whole seriously. — plaque flag
Of all systems of philosophy which start from the object, the most consistent, and that which may be carried furthest, is simple materialism. It regards matter, and with it time and space, as existing absolutely, and ignores the relation to the subject in which alone all this really exists.
It then lays hold of the law of causality as a guiding principle or clue, regarding it as a self-existent order (or arrangement) of things, veritas aeterna, and so fails to take account of the understanding, in which and for which alone causality is. It seeks the primary and most simple state of matter, and then tries to develop all the others from it; ascending from mere mechanism, to chemistry, to polarity, to the vegetable and to the animal kingdom. And if we suppose this to have been done, the last link in the chain would be animal sensibility—that is, knowledge—which would consequently now appear as a mere modification or state of matter produced by causality.
Now if we had followed materialism thus far with clear ideas, when we reached its highest point we would suddenly be seized with a fit of the inextinguishable laughter of the Olympians. As if waking from a dream, we would all at once become aware that its final result—knowledge, which it reached so laboriously, was presupposed as the indispensable condition of its very starting-point, mere matter; and when we imagined that we thought matter, we really thought only the subject that perceives matter; the eye that sees it, the hand that feels it, the understanding that knows it. Thus the tremendous petitio principii (=circular reasoning) reveals itself unexpectedly; for suddenly the last link is seen to be the starting-point, the chain a circle, and the materialist is like Baron Münchausen who, when swimming in water on horseback, drew the horse into the air with his legs, and himself also by his cue.
The fundamental absurdity of materialism is that it starts from the objective, and takes as the ultimate ground of explanation something objective, whether it be matter in the abstract, simply as it is thought, or after it has taken form, is empirically given—that is to say, is substance, the chemical element with its primary relations. Some such thing it takes, as existing absolutely and in itself, in order that it may evolve organic nature and finally the knowing subject from it, and explain them adequately by means of it; whereas in truth all that is objective is already determined as such in manifold ways by the knowing subject through its forms of knowing, and presupposes them; and consequently it entirely disappears if we think the subject away.
Thus materialism is the attempt to explain what is immediately given us by what is given us indirectly. All that is objective, extended, active—that is to say, all that is material—is regarded by materialism as affording so solid a basis for its explanation, that a reduction of everything to this can leave nothing to be desired (especially if in ultimate analysis this reduction should resolve itself into action and reaction). But we have shown that all this is given indirectly and in the highest degree determined, and is therefore merely a relatively present object, for it has passed through the machinery and manufactory of the brain, and has thus come under the forms of space, time and causality, by means of which it is first presented to us as extended in space and ever active in time. From such an indirectly given object, materialism seeks to explain what is immediately given, the idea (in which alone the object that materialism starts with exists), and finally even the will from which all those fundamental forces, that manifest themselves, under the guidance of causes, and therefore according to law, are in truth to be explained.
To the assertion that thought is a modification of matter we may always, with equal right, oppose the contrary assertion that all matter is merely the modification of the knowing subject, as its idea. Yet the aim and ideal of all natural science is at bottom a consistent materialism. The recognition here of the obvious impossibility of such a system establishes another truth which will appear in the course of our exposition, the truth that all science properly so called, by which I understand systematic knowledge under the guidance of the principle of sufficient reason, can never reach its final goal, nor give a complete and adequate explanation: for it is not concerned with the inmost nature of the world, it cannot get beyond the idea; indeed, it really teaches nothing more than the relation of one idea to another.
I had to talk her into going, against my own wishes, because I didn't want to be the one to hold her back. I suffered immensely for a couple years, but I still would not do anything different if I had that time over again. — Janus
I am not familiar with Nobby Brown. — Janus
Our own impermanence bothers us, but that seems to be an ego-driven concern. — Janus
Many of the problems we face today seem to have come about on account of the predominating belief in human exceptionalism. — Janus
all that is objective is already determined as such in manifold ways by the knowing subject through its forms of knowing, and presupposes them; and consequently it entirely disappears if we think the subject away.
But we have shown that all this is given indirectly and in the highest degree determined, and is therefore merely a relatively present object, for it has passed through the machinery and manufactory of the brain, and has thus come under the forms of space, time and causality, by means of which it is first presented to us as extended in space and ever active in time.
Note how science is trapped 'outside' with mere relations of ideas, while intuition will have intimate access to the thing-in-itself, that ocean of Will.for it is not concerned with the inmost nature of the world, it cannot get beyond the idea; indeed, it really teaches nothing more than the relation of one idea to another.
Here though Schopenhauer is guilty of an error in the opposite direction. He paradoxically makes the brain, a familiar object in the familiar space of the lifeworld, the cause of the presentation of space and time. — plaque flag
How can that be an error? — Wayfarer
Isn't it amply confirmed by neuro- and cognitive science? — Wayfarer
It does not make sense to say that the brain is its own product, as if it's the dream of itself. — plaque flag
It's the direct realist idea that the brain is just a mirror "catching" reality (such as the objectivity of time and space) and reflecting it back. — schopenhauer1
. Schopenhauer looks to me like an indirect realist who thinks the Will appears as everyday stuff through the lens of the nervous system. But our intuition and music lets us peak around the rest of our cognition at the essence of reality, blind striving. — plaque flag
:up:But why the Forms and not just Will. Why the bifurcation of subject to object in the first place? Then it is just duality, not unity. — schopenhauer1
That gels with my memory of his bold claim to do what Kant said could not be done. — plaque flag
Also know as Norman O. Brown. One of those radical 60s thinkers. An almost mystical use of psychoanalysis by a humanities scholar. — plaque flag
To me it makes sense that we'd evolve an (irrational) fear of death. Schopenhauer filtered through Darwin is a strong dark brew. But I like it as a map for hacking the system (condoms are a great example of this, like steeling cheese from the trap.) — plaque flag
Christianity? and Abrahamic religions in general? Capitalism? Marxism? I don't know, maybe they are symtpoms of something inevitable. We keep cheating extinction just because we can, because unlike the other animals we can come up with strategies, plan ahead.To me it's even to be expected. Darwin etc. — plaque flag
Oh, right, I have a couple of his books, which I've only dipped into. It was the "Nobby" which threw me — Janus
There is also the fact that death, or rather dying, is associated with loss of faculties and capacities, pain and indignity, and loss of everything familiar, so maybe the fear is not entirely irrational. — Janus
We keep cheating extinction just because we can, because unlike the other animals we can come up with strategies, plan ahead. — Janus
If one was to put a teleological bent on it, perhaps it is the Will "needing" its playground, but then this is akin to some sort of theism. — schopenhauer1
The idea that the brain imposes the forms of time and space is absurd, for the brain is understood in terms of time and space from the beginning. — plaque flag
I'd wager that most scientists would reject the ideality of space and time (they idea that they aren't real but somehow products of a nervous system which is situated where after all ?) — plaque flag
Such realistic assumptions so pervade our normal use of concepts that the claims of transcendental idealism disclose their own non-absurdity only after difficult consideration, whereas criticisms of them at first appear cogent which on examination are seen to rest on confusion. We have to raise almost impossibly deep levels of presupposition in our own thinking and imagination to the level of self-consciousness before we are able to achieve a critical awareness of all our realistic assumptions, and thus achieve an understanding of transcendental idealism which is untainted by them. This, of course, is one of the explanations for the almost unfathomably deep counterintuitiveness of transcendental idealism, and also for the general notion of 'depth' with which people associate Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy. Something akin to it is the reason for much of the prolonged, self-disciplined meditation involved in a number of Eastern religious practices.
In other words, there is no absolute time or space, existing independently of any observer - the observer furnishes the perspective which makes time a meaningful concept. — Wayfarer
Au contraire, there’s a distinct kind of neuroscientific idealism visible in modern discourse. — Wayfarer
When you assert that ‘the brain is situated in time and space’, you’re tacitly assuming a viewpoint from outside your own perception of the world. — Wayfarer
You’re speaking from the ‘God’s eye view’ which presumes that the world you perceive is real independently of your mind. — Wayfarer
That is what Bryan Magee in his book on Schopenhauer describes as 'the assumptions of the inborn realism which arise from the original disposition of the intellect.' — Wayfarer
Such realistic assumptions so pervade our normal use of concepts
But where and when is this observer ? Kant is justly famous, but this is one of his clunkers. It just doesn't make sense. — plaque flag
But here you are talking to me, apparently assuming that I exist outside your mind — plaque flag
In the very first sentence, you're wanting to objectify the observer, locate the observer in time and space. — Wayfarer
And there's a reason that the transcendental aesthetic is at the very start of the critique, because the remainder rests on it. If it is a 'clunker' then the whole project fails. — Wayfarer
I'm not addressing you as an object, but as a subject like myself. — Wayfarer
If we filtered out all of that pain and humiliation, I'd wager that many would still feel from death. But yeah the association of death is aging and accidents and violence isn't the best marketing for it. — plaque flag
I also thought it was pretty good. I especially liked the performance of Rufus Sewell.Just watched the series The Man in the High Castle (haven't read the book). I thought it was pretty good. — Janus
Every philosopher fails. But the pieces are picked up and a new arrangement is tried. — plaque flag
If we are just rudely blurting out opinions, then I think you aren't very good at distinguishing flowery rhetoric and a host of noobdazzling fallacies from an actual argument.I think it's more likely that it is the understanding that is fragmentary. — Wayfarer
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