If determinism were true, to what extent would it dismiss blame/responsibility? — camus-enthusiast

depends what is meant by 'determinism'.....

Ok, if you made the statement 'if it were true that a system/model is basically mechanical, like a clockwork machine, to what extent would it dismiss blame/responsibility?"
I would say how could a machine be to blame for its workings, or responsible for anything, however it behaved?
Would you blame the cuckoo on a cuckoo clock for making too much noise?

As for determinism, I think the word doesn't have much meaning in terms of how life and the universe work, as there is no way to stand outside reality, and view it as a machine, or as a non machine.

in terms of living the life I would have wanted, and in that context being the person I had wanted to be, then that ship sailed over a quarter of a century ago for me... :D

But I would say that maybe what I wanted to be wasn't what I would have wanted to be these days....it might have been more fun, but these days I think maybe I'd have set different goals, if I could go back...

Maybe you can become something better than what you wanted/want to be....maybe what you wanted to be was based upon some naive thinking, or unrealistic, or less mature than what you might have wanted to be, say in ten years..

one of the real problems in the art world is that art is often used simply as a way to invest money; it is also sometimes used for money laundering.

This can lead to artists, who make their art look esoteric,and bound up in some kind of mysterious high-minded philosophy which is hard to criticised, more popular...these paintings, sculptures etc, are worth millions, and there has to be a way to defend these high prices. And the defence opted for is in something which is portrayed as being beyond the understanding of mere ordinary people....this process also has the feedback effect of making rich people seem highly sophisticated, and above everybody else.....this approach to art is simply a bubble which needs popping.

one could argue that your reasons for not spending any research money on this thing because it isn't mainstream enough means that if say a billionaire did happen to invest in this research and it proved that the hypothesis of a pig-chimp hybrid did turn out to be quite likely, and overturned some mainstream consensus, that this could be the very reason that it is worthy of research, potentially anyway.

If mainstream science is only prepared to invest in the present consensus, then how is mainstream consensus ever going to change?

I realise that you might now want to argue that 'should science invest in every crazy little hypothesis?' well obviously no, it couldn't do that, that is why I said it was 'potentially' a good line of research...it would need to cross some kind of threshold I suppose, of likelyhood.

'stupidity' is a relative term, I would say....it must be a term that compares one person or set of people to some kind of 'non-stupid' level of intelligence.

Agreed, up to a point. Dr. McCarthy went beyond that point. You point out that he is qualified, but so are the great majority of biologists and geneticists who scoff at the idea. — T Clark

but in the balance for these geneticists and their future career, they might not considerer it worthwhile even lending a bit of credulity to the idea.

Scientists are human after all, and a career for them will be a pretty valuable thing to want to hold on to, and not let be even slightly tainted.

This is one of the problems for many out-off-the-box ideas in science.

So I think it is a weak argument to say the majority scoff at any idea.

well for one thing, whatever system one adopts, I think it is a good idea to recognise that it is the individual who has chosen to adopt that system, and that others may adopt other systems, and the one you adopt may only be relevant to you, and not an objective way to view society....also to recognise that it is just a model, and not really how society might work.

People may not even exist on the same grid system, but there may be systems, that link together to form the whole model, with no simple measure or value distant between two points in the whole model..

I was really sort of angling for a more relativistic approach to modelling society, in the OP...ie that everyone has their own frame of reference and will/might see things differently, to other people.

what may be more problematic for some people than the idea of pig/boar influence on human development, is the idea of the development and subsequent evolution of pigs.....may be a bit cannibalistic for some to eat pigs if our ancestors kind of crossed paths in the night millions of years ago.

yes, that makes sense.

But as well as that I think people see society as a kind of simplistic grid, with themselves existing at simple co-ordinates on that grid.

This makes it easier for them to build internal models about how society works, and where they fit in with it. It also leads to a very dysfunctional way of looking at society, I think.

Maybe a lot of people unwittingly belong to the Flat Society Society.... :D

I thought it was 'people are strange'...specifically when 'you're a stranger'...

my view is that there are at least two ways of thinking. 1 is creative, and intuitive, the other is more logic based...I don't think you have to favour one over the other, the thing which is important to me is a a toing and froing between these ways of thinking, a kind of dialectics, which you can follow externally and internally....

Is the political spectrum a myth?

No. — ssu

well that it is an important way to view political things? Is that a myth?

do you agree that to the extent that the political spectrum is defined by the people who self identify with locations on it, that it is much less useful a way to view political thinking?

if a chimp crossed with a pig to produce a female hybrid, then the hybrid will have mostly pig mitochondrial DNA, won't it...? Is that part of what happened? I'm not sure how much mitochondrial DNA is passed on by a male father....I think there is mitochondrial DNA from the father present in the sperm, but not sure if any of that ends up in the offspring..

. No pig ever fucked a chimpanzee — T Clark

more likely the other way around.


monkeys do seem to have some kinds of relationships with pigs/boars..

https://youtu.be/qOkalW6krEs

for a few years, I have thought that there might be some weird connection between pigs and humans....this is interesting idea about hybridization. Maybe the first offspring would have been a more pig-like female, that then gave rise to a more chimp-like pig-chimp-male...

I don't know....that or aliens doing weird experiments on our ancestors....

It doesn't really matter how intelligent someone potentially is if they don't apply that intelligence to things...I sort of feel most people are pretty smart about understanding the people around them, and being able to interact with them, but often don't feel the need to apply much thinking to build a philosophy about how the greater world around them works.
Partly this may be because they fear reaching conclusions that would make them unpopular with the people around them.....so it is much easier to pick up perspectives and narratives from the people around them and the stuff in the media, and not question it too much.

Most people probably learn this approach at a young age, and it mostly works for them, and allows them to function in a society which generally does the same....great for them, but this attitude may just lead society onto paths which are ultimately dangerous....still never mind...

I think consequentialism requires us to be omniscient which is impossible. — TheMadFool

I wonder if it is even possible to be omniscient.

So there has to be a decision about what to do with the railway point handle,.

If you decide course A, then what lead you to decide that course?
If you decide course B then the same.

If you assume the choice you made is rooted in something, then the whole set-up could be rooted in the same....I think this fits in with my idea that you can't stand outside reality and view it independently, so a potential candidate for omniscience(maybe God) is still part of the system, and can't differentiate himself from it, and so can't know everything, including the outcome of a decision.
If that makes sense..

ok, maybe my first post was too simplistic... I don't particularly agree with the philosophy that the greater the number in a group the more value it has, compared to a smaller group.

I would also take the position that I hadn't ask to be in the position of being able to chose following events....most likely I would run away from the points lever, or swap it back and forth.. :)

you could ask the murderer for a cup of tea and a chat about how he sees his future panning out and what he is doing with his life.

I'm not sure that lying to the murderer would be using him in any way really.

The meme's-eye view purports to be an alternative to this normal perspective. What is tautological for it is:

Meme X spread among the people because X is a good replicator. — Dennett, pg. 363

but some people think that memes spread because they are useful to the person or people that it exists in....this doesn't necessarily follow.

do either of these models explain why people would have these traits?

it seems to address a problem like the shootings, one might have to address the cause; as to why the person did them.

but you'd have to know what truth was to know if you were getting any closer to it or not....like the kids game you'd have to have someone say 'you're getting hotter' or 'colder'...otherwise you'd never know how close you got.

This is not my source. However if may be of were got it, however he also had more source like a book on fossils wich said there are no fossils that confirm evolution. — hachit

depends what he means by 'confirm'.......there is only evidence in science....'confirm' might mean he is referring to proof, which there wouldn't be..

Would he be able to confirm that poodles were bred from something more wolf like?

What evidence would there be for that?

Would he deny that poodles were actually bred, deliberately by humans over many generations from another type of dog?

here's an idea, and not a very pleasant one....what if as the brain/mind gradually shuts down, one's experience of time slowed down, so eg if half the brain/mind had shut down, then a minute feels like 2minutes; as the next half of what is left shuts down then a minute feels like 4minutes etc etc, until you are left with the feeling that 1minute feels like a million years....
not a nice idea, but this would mean in that case that you would never really be nothing, only that time just stretched out with less and less cognitive ability........this is not what I believe happens though...well it might be similar, but eventually one leaves the material world behind, and goes to a non-'material' system...

in your idea of death, how do you see the process of going from 'being' to 'not being'?
The brain/mind is a complex thing/process...so maybe parts of it shut down before others...maybe you have thought processes going on right until the last moment....what might those thoughts be? Might it be like HAL in the movie 2001 gradually feeling himself going? At some point the brain has ceased functioning along with the rest of the body, but it isn't usually an on off process, unless one dies in a plane crash or something.

what sort of evidence would there be? A series of thousands of fossils that show how an animal when from having no horns to having horns for example, like a cow?

That is absolute true, the very necessity of trying to understand the end is a symptom of fear of it but because we are above anything curious of nature, death is a undetailable subject to discuss... and the understanding of it may bring some comfort to such delicade creatures as we are. — Filipe

say when you die, you enter a dark room, a room with no light, and you sit on a chair in that room for a million years, and then get to be brought back into the world, as a new creature, maybe another human; you grow up and say you have no memories of being in that dark room, but does that mean you weren't in that dark room, along for a million years...maybe humming to yourself to keep yourself sane..?

b) (the future) We often think at least on the west part of the world that after your life comes to a inevitable end we will transcend to a heaven/hell and all the others variations of it or in some cases we think that once that we die our consciousness will be stuck in a dark loop of dark and nothing, but what we fail to observe is that nothing is nothing it is not a feeling of some sort, but indeed the absence of everything is the defition of "not being", is a substential part of being, the other side of the coin. We would never understand/feel/experience "Being" if there was not "not being". — Filipe

all my life I have ''not been' a donkey(of the literal type)...I have also not been a kangaroo...there are many things I have not been....but I feel like I derive a sense of being from my own experience of being.

As to not having existed before being brought into this life; how do you know you didn't exist?

Do you think that because you have no memories of existing millions of years ago?

If so, do you remember being a baby, or around 1-2years old?

I do in fact have a memory of being around a few month old, and I'm pretty sure it is a genuine memory, but most of my memories from that era aren't accessible to me, yet I did exist.

true but you can do whatever you want in a simulation as long as you set the rules. — hachit

if they set the program to accurately mimic the theory of evolution then you have provided some evidence that complexity can emerge within a Darwinian model.

The presentation however was against the Idea that life could add complexity because there was no evidence of it. Not Wether or not there was a creator. — hachit

it is possible to run evolution-type computer simulations.

In these simulations complexity does seem to arise by the process of random changes in the DNA-type version in the computer simulation, and the selection process that happens when some versions of the computer simulation species survive to reproduce, and some don't.

I know that was not what the theory was about. the last point is not about his theory. It simply stated that Darwin gave us an Idea that if true could allow for the absence of a creator. This was a ground breaking idea a at the time of it's creation. — hachit

well since a creator might still be needed to initiate life, all his theory says it a creator may not be needed for life to become more diversified and complex.

4. Dawin's legacy was that he created a world without need for a divine creator. However we don't have proof of his world so we're going to need to change how we think. — hachit

Darwin's theory is just about the way organisms adapt genetically, and diverge into different species, via evolution....this may or may not involve a divine creator...what may be needed for life to start is some kind of supernatural force to create the first single celled organisms...but Darwin's theory wasn't about that,.

Well yes, but that's politics, not philosophy. What I was asking is where the philosophical question is? — Isaac

well I suppose, if you agree that there has to be some non-law based forces in society, then the question is how strong do you let these forces get before they should be raised to the level of being put into law?

Basically, why your behaviour and not theirs? — Isaac

it takes time for things to be moved to the status of law.

So some discussion about how people should behave is probably the best way to go.

The OP might want some discussion about his idea, and can form groups with people who agrees with him, and gradually move his idea and try to raise it to the formal level of law.

No, it's ok....I just think that the term 'pseudoscience' gets misused too much, and can lead to the shutting down of discussion.

Gravity is obviously a thing...we all experience it at macro level, but neurochemicals are a thing as well, but are a lot smaller and the whole system is more involved...I think it is ok to use terms from science to refer to things which have scientific consensus, but using these terms doesn't mean the person is claiming the wider discussion is in the full realm of science, and scientific discussion.

Gravity is a place-holder for something which seems to happen. Relativity posits space-time in its model for a mechanism for how gravity works, but itself is also a place holder for what is really going on.
I gather it is fairly well excepted that science will always only have models for how things work, and will always rely on place-holders....more and more useful models, but models and place-holders, all the same,

Sounds like pseudoscience babble to me I’m afraid. — I like sushi

If not really claiming it a more holisticly scientific model....a model like this would have to become more developed, to the point where some aspects can be falsified, for it to become more scientific...

One could take early discussions about gravity and they might look a bit pseudoscience....but these things take development, for example Newton's models of gravity, which can then be compared to how real objects react to what is called gravity...this is how models start....at the discussion stage...it isn't really pseudo anything really...I think that it is just the begining point of the development of scientific models......If I said this discussion was 'scientific', at that point a counter claim could be made that it was 'pseudoscintific'.....so I think the proponent of a line of argument has to first make the claim.....
this is often how the misuse of the term 'pseudoscience' comes about....before anyone even mentioned something as being ;scientific'.

I think it is important to recognise that we all form a world view from our experiences. This should motivate us to maybe find more empirical evidence to support various aspects of this world view, and motivate us to find discussion and debate around aspects of this world view...this should lead to people forming groups that share similar world views debating and involved in dialectics with each other, and others outside these vaguely defined groups.

In this way various world views can be formed into larger groups and the prevalence of associated world views, with also various people in those groups trying to find more empirical evidence, and even trying to generate such evidence with their own research.

Without this system of gathering strong groups, but more reliant on weaker structured groupings, you might get individuals falling back on 'life experience', and trying to defend that simple mechanism as enough to promote better world views.....this is kind of lazy advocacy.....sure your personal experience might be very important, important to you, but you should use that to reach out and form groups with a higher capacity to develop a better world view......you can't always provide empirical evidence for specific things, but if you are part of a general group with wide ranges in knowledge, and mental skills, there will be more opportunity to connect models of how the world work, with empirical evidence..

Someone might have had an experience where they witnessed what they thought was a ghost.....as an anecdote there really isn't much empirical evidence that they can provide to convince people that what they saw was actually a ghost, and even then what a ghost actually is isn't very clearly defined....but if this person reaches out into society to try to find other people who have maybe had a similar experience or are at least interested in the subject, then the whole philosophy and world view about such things as ghosts can become more developed, with possible connections to research, scientific and other, to connect the individuals experience with a more widespread experience of life.

I think boredom can be very bad...it can lead someone into a position of seeing only Hobson choices....a range of options most of which could lead to bad outcomes......the devil makes work for idle hands etc.

What does this mean? “Supernatural networks” meaning what exactly? — I like sushi

well I just think of atoms and systems based upon those as lower developed meme systems, that connect with higher formed meme system.
This enabled the forming of the firsts sinlge self replicating cells, which developed into more complex meme systems.....the need to generate more and more complex memes, lead to the developmet of the first nervous systems, and eventually the brain...so the brain was already a combination of the lower so called material meme system...with its neural structures, and chemicals like neurotransmitters....neurostransmitters will also transpor their associated higher meme systems(also known as the so called supernatural)....maybe when a neurotransmitter leaves a neuron it takes away a replica of the whole neuron, and when it gets to another neuron, becomes part of that system, which can then copy and be sent on as another neurotransmission package to other neurons..in this way networks of meme-packages will form a network throughout the nervous system, which are all linked back to every cell in the body, and back to the other systems in the world.

maybe the dolphins were among the first high ranking meme generators on the planet — wax

I could maybe argue that the tiny mammals that live in the world of the dinosaur were the highest ranking meme generators, and the emergence of memes for this sort of demanded a change and mapped out into the meme universe onto means to wipe out the dinosaurs.....so the mice type beings actually brought in the meteor that change the world....there is a demand I think from meme generation, for change, and development, and the dinosaurs by dominating the land, were holding it up.

I think of the ancent meme systems is working towards making full contact with their origins in the ultimate meme generator, that could be God....they were branching out towards a kind of bridge back to God, which lead to the ending of the dinosaurs, and allowing the highest ranking meme generators to develop further in this aim........which lead to tree climbing animals in the meme matrix, and eventually to chimp-like animals and eventually the first humans, leading ultimately to the creating of the final bridge in the name of the memetic system known as Jesus...:) In this idea, I would guess the God and his memes were reaching out towards the meme systems that make up Earth...so I think that maybe this bridge was first connected and made in the womb of the meme system know as Mary, and a very special zygote was formed...a zygote that connects the two meme systems, and that devolved into the meme system foetus and later the chap who wandered around talking about God, and generating very powerful memes, that would lead to meme people through history connecting with him

He was the final bridge back to the ultimate meme generator and origin of memes, and anyone who connects memetically to him in the right way gets to cross that bridge to another meme matrix know as heaven I guess.... :)

This idea sort of works for me.