You can ponder about my intentions as much as you want but it just draw my attention such a high expectation from a book, "a really comprehensive history of humanity... with a lot more detail and depth" is (or could become) a lifelong aspiration, not something to digest in a few hours. — Rafaelsanchez53

Actually you assumed that I was seeking some kind of shortcut. Quite the contrary, I am engaged in precisely the dedicated lifelong encyclopediac undertaking that you described. My 2020 reading list is in the Currently Reading thread here.

No matter how much you search or read, not even in 100 lifetimes you will get "a really comprehensive history of humanity, from its earliest beginnings to modernity... with a lot more detail and depth" but, taken as a whole, that's a project worthwhile to undertake during the time you have on this planet. If you read everything, from Chinese classical poetry to tweets and anything in between, and you do it in the proper way, (thinking as best as possible every time) you will then have the book you are searching for — Rafaelsanchez53

You like to play 'devil's advocate,' don't you? It's a tendency I used to be much dominated by myself. I think it arises out a legitimate aspiration to critical-dialectical thinking. But after many years, I found that, as much as it hones the critical faculty, it is also a real impediment to constructive discourse. I think that "Rogerian argument" is the evolution of the 'uncompromising dialectic.'

Physically rearranging a configuration of wooden blocks from a straight line to a ring is changing the information stored in that system of blocks without changing any block in its own reference frame. But the state of the block has changed in any fixed frame (position being part of something's state). Each block -- that is, each material constituent of the system -- has changed. — Kenosha Kid

True. But what renders a certain configuration as "informational" is something external to the configuration itself. Signs are arbitrary.The information content transcends mere physical state. Even if you are talking about physical entropy, some states may be more "improbable" than others, but that is a long way from containing meaningful information.

What are you grateful for?

Having the time to think? Having access to a forum such as this? Being sufficiently articulate that you can elicit sufficient interest, from a dozen people around the world, that they respond to your post?

Having enough to eat? Having shelter and warmth?

Company? Friendship? Love?

Having access to good books and sits that are worth reading?

Make a list. — Banno

:up:

Capitalism and communism are systems of political economy. Reducing those to a distinction between selfishness and altruism is a caricature unworthy of a serious philosophical discussion. — counterpunch

Altruism and egoism are human traits that far predate the appearance of capitalism and communism. Neither of which is any specific thing but rather an amalgam of philosophies professed by different personalities in different regions at different times to different effect. Whereas altruism and egoism have tangible human measures.

For example a comparison between someone who is kind and amiable but naive to the darker human side as they simply have never experienced it and don’t exhibit it in themselves - someone who sees the best in people and assumes that people are good verses someone who has the opposite feelings but hides and suppresses it for the desire to be like the aforementioned individual - kind and amiable. — Benj96

Saints are the paradigm of 'natural benevolence'. But there is a motif in hagiography (which is the study of the lives of the saints) of "enantiodromia" (that is, the tendency of something to be converted into its opposite). Many saints lived the opposite of saintly lives, selfish and dissolute, up until a moment of enantiodromia.

It is the tension between opposites which generates energy.

The age old question of selfishness versus altruism. There are plenty of examples of altruistic behaviour in the world. It remains to be seen whether the attitude gains wider acceptance as society gets more chaotic. I for one hope for a restoration of belief in the value of ideals.

200 years of capitalism suggests otherwise. The repeated, and often genocidal failures of communism, suggests otherwise. Man tends his own garden best. In 1776, Adam Smith explained that the self interested actions of rational economic actors are coordinated "as if by an invisible hand" - not by some conscious intention to serve the common good. — counterpunch

And this is the age-old question. Since we are nearing the tipping point of our global system, the intrinsic superiority of one or the other perspective will undoubtedly be empirically validated before long.

Your last equation doesn't work in real life, I can eat chocolate, have sex, have a drink... and get lots and lots of pleasure with little or no effort. — Rafaelsanchez53

I disagree. Hence the distinctions between hedonism, eudaimonism, and agathism. I'm not unfamiliar with sensual pleasures, they eventually wear thin.

Basically, Do you believe some people require a larger effort in self reflection, meditation and self-directed positive cognitive training to maintain the same good traits/values as someone who just does it in the first place without thinking? — Benj96

Everyone has different strengths and weaknesses. And yes, some people are just naturally more skilled in areas that are of high social value. But even those people who have a high EQ will also have areas of relative weakness. No one is exempt from the task, or the reward, of self-improvement. We are all human.

OK, one won't find the solution but could at least start to figure out how to tackle this kind of problems by discussing about them with others, I guess we both agree about this and I also share with you the good intentions. Your reasoning is of course correct but in the real world we both know the fate of saying to people "don't do this, do the opposite". — Rafaelsanchez53

Aristotle says people are wise who undertake to learn what is difficult. I think this is literally true in an existential sense. Each of us has capabilities and weaknesses. For someone with a great mathematical skill, learning advanced math and physics may be relatively easy, although, collectively, this might be regarded as relatively difficult, owing to the relative rarity of such gifts. I think the great challenge for each of us is to use what gifts we do possess for the collective good, but also to learn to recognize what are our own greatest weaknesses, and to work hard in those areas until those become strengths.

Everybody loves to enjoy rewards, but what is gotten without effort can never be more than superficially enjoyed. The harder something is to achieve, the greater the enjoyment when it is.

A good idea indeed but...wait... isn't he now asking for help from others in order to improve himself? — Rafaelsanchez53

Precisely. It is fundamental to what we are. One strategy for people who are consumed with the depths of their own problems (and I'm not ascribing this to the OP but as a general observation) is to focus on helping others. And the best way to help others is to improve yourself, since your new capabilities can be applied to the universal benefit.

Is there an actual purpose or point to life or living? — Mtl4life098

Improving oneself in order to help others.

I would say that consciousness and unconsciousness are probably interrelated in a very complex way. They cannot be separated and and consciousness is probably the outer manifestation of the unconscious. What do you think about this? — Jack Cummins

I've studied the unconscious from the Freudian superego-ego-id, eros-thanatos perspective and the Jungian perspective. Honestly, I don't know. I wonder if the unconscious is just a blanket term we employ for whatever hidden mechanisms we have trouble excavating?

An early iteration of my personal philosophy centered around cognitive biases, which could be lumped in with the unconscious inasmuch as they are unseen determinants of conscious thought. Much of that effort was focused on excavating and identifying hidden prejudices. I've read many times that our shared lifeworld consists of preconceptions that are so fundamental, they resist direct inspection or conceptualizaion.

I'm quite convinced that consciousness operates at a collective level. Trivially insect colonies do. I think that currently humankind is on the cusp of transitioning to a self-aware social consciousness. When I was younger I had an active distaste for the social; now it is the focus of all my energies and efforts at self-improvement.

The thing is: In adopting an unique "mentality" or "school of thought", you're only proving my point. — Gus Lamarch

I don't think there is any such school of thought - I would characterize my statement as a self-characterization. Another perspective I endorse is systems philosophy, which doesn't contradict the symbiosis of the metaphysical and the physical you describe.

Is the main function of facts to shape shared experience? Civilization is just people sharing experience, in the mode of either agreement or disagreement. And whether or not this is the end of civilization is probably precisely determined by the prevalence of agreement over disagreement.

Edit: That's why, as I mentioned elsewhere, I'm a melioristic optimist. It seems to me most rational choice to prefer agreement.

Oh, I was not dismissing the material world Jack, far from it. However I was pointing out the link with the mental dimension and its relative importance. Whatever our relationship with matter is, it is hugely shaped by our mutual agreements and disagreements with respect to it, contests over resources, disputes over boundaries, not only between things, but between the natures of things.

I think that, whatever the material world is isn't so important, in the big picture, as that fact that we are agreeing and disagreeing about it.

But the so-called material world that we actually inhabit is shot-through with meaning, information, none of which is itself material. The symbolic historical significance of material structures carries meaning that can evoke real actions in people that have nothing whatsoever to do with the materiality of those structures. The real world is also symbolic, and that is a fact as undeniable as materiality.

As I said in the other thread, the premise of the material world is a metaphysical assumption.

Ok, well my answer to both your questions I can phrase again in something I just read.

Each individual perspective in the Phenomenological/Weltanschauung tradition has its own "truth", wherein "intuitions of essence are always dependent on the historical background of the subject." Moreover these phenomenological "essential inutitions" are the "Supra-temporally valid truths", such as the Kantian's hold. So, again, it is overlapping conceptual realms. Mannheim calls them "constellations". The historical-material, the ideal.

I like how Habermas stresses the importance of being polite in showing respect for others' ideas in the interest of establishing a true communication, which is the ultimate "validator". I demonstrate the substance of my own opinions to the extent I respect yours.

I am all about "inclusivism." The Karl Mannheim essays I'm currently reading actually detail a tri-partite perspective on the sociology of knowledge, comparing alignments with and between "formal validity" (Kant), "scientific validity" (Positivism), and "historicism" (Phenomenology/Weltanschauung).

In a way I feel like a lot of what I am doing is just "learning a vocabulary," fleshing out mere signs with an ever-enriching field of lexical-syntactical content or meaning. We talk "around" concepts in order to develop (and create I guess) a richer understanding of them. Not so much finding an answer as...participating in discussion.

This question presupposes that you can actually define what is the material world. Once upon a time we could have answered "matter" and effected a confident reduction. However quantum physics has stretched the definition of matter to the point that saying "reality" and "the material world" are equivalent does not really mean anything. I personally adopt a systems theoretic viewpoint which doesn't slice up reality along traditional mind-matter lines.

The objective - within the thought that progressing the entropy of the Universe is the only purpose for humanity - would be to make your body, by consuming oxygen, die a little more, and with each step you take, create microscopic wounds on the ground where you walk. When sitting on the bench, your weight would bend - even if minimally - the material that made up the bench, causing it to decay just alittle more, and thus, sooner than later, cause the total end of existence - death in its absolute -. — Gus Lamarch

It seems as though you are stuck in a materialist metaphysic?

I'm just reading some Mannheim, who notes that "The error of materialism consists merely in its wrong metaphysics which equates 'Being' or 'reality' with matter."(The Problem of a Sociology of Knowledge)

Transcending this belief allows for the possibility of a melioristic optimism; I am a "melioristic optimist."

My point was to concoct something less sophistical than what you posted. And I think I succeeded. Honestly your OP transcends sophistry to the depths of the shitpost. — Garth

That's not very polite. I utilized two of the most venerable philosophical dictums as the major and minor premises of a syllogism. So, the content was not shit, neither was the structure. It was concise and unambiguous. If you lack the philosophical depth to intuit the connection maybe you should just read more, and post less until you have.

Naturally, the past is not contemporaneous with the present. The past did exist, when it was the present. And it didn't "stop existing," it became the present. As GMBA rightly points out. It was almost a nice bit of sophistry though.

I think I refuted your second premise and your defense was "the point is debatable".

The reason why OLP becomes self-contradictory, or hypocritical, is that the activity of philosophy, as a quest to dispel misunderstanding in favour of understanding, is itself a specialized activity with a particular goal. — Metaphysician Undercover

So this was also fundamentally my position. As soon as you descend (ascend?) to meta-analysis you are no longer doing anything that deserves to be characterized as "Ordinary Language." Ordinary language philosophy is more naturally "self-exemplifiying." Viz my earlier comments:

The business of language is to express or explain; if language cannot explain itself, nothing else can explain it. (R.G. Collingwood)

You either use language in its most fundamentally expressive way, or you don't. OLP may be a good way of identifying what is not ordinary language, but the best way of discovering what is is through the use of...ordinary language. As I mentioned elsewhere, there is the typical, and there is the exemplary. And both are in a sense ordinary. But they are also different.

It only makes sense that an inquiry into the nature of ordinary language usage should be an application of the principles of ordinary language. In any dialogue, there is always a "meaning differential" whose resolution is "conversational." The inquiry into meaning is conducted casually and the ongoing conversation is itself the mutual consensus as to ordinary usage.

The point is that, on the grand scale of the Universe, where time guides everything that exists towards the complete entropic annihilation, both the ideas of "Utopia" and "Dystopia" would be nothing more than the conscious or unconscious actions of humanity to act accordingly with the progress of universal entropy. — Gus Lamarch

Isn't this just a prosaic way of saying "nothing really matters"?

↪Pantagruel The point is debatable but you must admit my argument is a lot stronger than OPs. — Garth

If I thought that I wouldn't have made the comment.

2. The past does not exist — Garth

This is not true. The past is a previous state of the present. When a physical object moves through space, its current position and trajectory can be plotted as a vector, which includes its motion through time. It is only our limited perspective which restricts us to perceiving current states of affairs in a temporally restricted fashion. Think of the intellect as an organ for perceiving "temporal depth."

Nice. Thanks for taking the time. :up:

I would also not recommend Russel. He is very much into the analytic tradition, which is not where existentialism comes from. — Tobias

If you really want to understand something, you need to understand what it is not, and where it came from. The first two philosophy books I ever read at age 17 were Being and Nothingness, and Beyond Good and Evil. I wish that I had taken a more balanced approach then. All authors have a perspective. On the whole, I find Russell to be reasonably balanced, and an excellent writer. If you only ever read what you prefer, you will quickly develop myopia.

This completely sidesteps existentialism. Russell didn't consider it important. — Kenosha Kid

It certainly does, since the book was written while existentialism was essentially in the process of self-definition by Sartre. As I said, a good way to establish a background. It still covers Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, etc. I think building up a context for existentialism that predates the explicit self-formulations of existentialism is a sensible and balanced approach.

If you want to start building a background then Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy would be my suggestion. In order to understand existentialism you also need to understand the traditions from which it arose.

In fact, that people can pass the reverse Turing test is why we're all still members of this forum, having outwitted the moderators into thinking we're not human or that we're state-of-the-art chatbots capable of a decent conversation with another human being and not ruffling anyone's feathers along the way. — TheMadFool

:lol:

A generalization that plays a role in my thesis: No chatbots can simulate emotions. Where's the "faulty" generalization? — TheMadFool

Well, in the reverse, that there could be a 'reverse turning test'. The Turing Test targets chatbots, but the reverse Turing Test doesn't target all 'real human beings' but only the set whose exaggerated emotions rise to the level of unreasonable display. So you aren't leaving behind only a "machine-like" residue. It's a faulty generalization.

Instead of doing a Turing test and weeding out chat-bots, they're actually conducting a Reverse Turing Test and expelling real people from internet forums and retaining members that are unfeeling and machine-like. — TheMadFool

Since you put this in the philosophy forum as opposed to the lounge I'm going to point out this is a faulty generalization. Just because 'bots cannot simulate feelings does not imply that those who are not 'bots are not necessarily like 'bots in respect of not having feelings.There is a whole spectrum between being too passionate, to the point where emotion compromises reason, and having no feelings at all.