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  • Property Dualism
    The reason I go this route is, of course, that the particles we are made of are indistinguishable from any other particles in the universe. So what is in us that makes us conscious must be in all the other particles. — Patterner
    Hasty generalization & compositional fallacies. :eyes:

    What "makes us conscious" is the (rarified) arrangements of our constituent "particles" into generative cognitive systems embedded-enactive within eco-systems of other generative systems. Afaik, all extant evidence warrants that 'consciousness' is an emergent activity (or process) of complex biological systems and not a fundamental (quantum) property like charge, spin, etc.
  • Do you think AI is going to be our downfall?
    ↪Darkneos
    So you believe that there isn't any aspect of suffering that is a fact of the human condition (i.e. hominin species)?
  • PROCESS COSMOLOGY --- a worldview for our time
    If the universe was "born" in a Big Bang, don't you think it's reasonable to determine its paternity? — Gnomon
    :roll:
    Planck scale pre-spacetime (vacuum) consists of random – a-causal – fluctuations (events), ergo no "first cause"; spacetimes (nonrandom event-patterns (e.g. universes)) do emerge rarely as it's reasonable to expect (re: law of very large numbers ... of random events), etc. A god-fairytale (e.g. "prime mover", "enformer / programmer", etc) is not needed and does not explain anything – even in principle; it just begs the question as a woo-of-the-gaps appeal to ignorance. — 180 Proof
  • Do you think AI is going to be our downfall?
    Everything on that list is subjective feelings — Darkneos
    Nonsense. Human facticity is not "subjective". Being raped or starved, for example, are not merely "subjective feelings" just like loss of sustanence, lack of shelter, lack of sleep, ... lack of hygiene, ... lack of safety .... injury, ill-health, disability ... maladaptive habits ... those vulnerabilities (afflictions) are facts of suffering.
  • Property Dualism
    ↪Patterner
    Semantics.
  • What is faith
    What is faith? (OP)

    IME, "faith" is a path (bias/habit à la Žižek's 'ideology') of least cognitive effort:

    1. (worldview) folk belief – fantasy – that impossible things (can) happen (e.g. supernaturals, spirits, superstitions, magic).

    2. (religion) unconditional obedience (devotion, self-sacrifices) to hearsay accounts (e.g. myths, rituals, laws) about a deity (i.e. an "absolute" authority).
  • Property Dualism
    No, they are not proto-conscious. One of their properties is proto-consciousness, which means they have subjective experience. — Patterner
    :roll:
  • Pathetic Arguments for Objective Morality...
    ↪DifferentiatingEgg
    "Divine command theory" (defeated by Plato's Euthyphro dilemma, etc).
  • Property Dualism
    zombie kitten — bert1
    In fiction ...
  • What caused the Big Bang, in your opinion?
    ↪T Clark
    :100: :up:
  • Property Dualism
    ↪Patterner
    Seems like a (grandiose) composition fallacy to me: atoms which constitute strawberries do not themselves in any way taste, smell or feel like strawberry, for example ... just as particles of (any) X are not "proto-conscious". To me it makes more sense – is more parsimonious – to conceive of property dualism as a descriptive-modeling complementarity of – bodily & mental (kinetic & affective) ways of talking about – the exhibited / manifest predicate(s) of any concrete object (or system). E.g. 'a bowl of strawberries' exhibit kinetic properties but not affective properties and is adequately described without affective properties; by contrast, 'a kitten' exhibits both bodily (such as chasing string, meowing/purring) & mental (such as instincts, playfulness) properties, so that describing 'a kitten' without both manifest properties is inadequate.

    There is something it is like to be a human.
    Insofar as "like" denotes a comparison, a human being cannot say what "it is like to be human" because s/he has never been – can not be – in fact, anything other than a human being. One / unique data point, no comparisons (i.e. subjectivity, first-person ephemera).
  • Do you think AI is going to be our downfall?
    these pleasures are extras — Vera Mont
    Yes, and they are consistent with, or not excluded by, what Epicurus (or disutilitarianism) says about pleasure as a moral concept and practice.

    Suffering is a subjective ... — Philosophim
    Which of the following are only "subjective" (experiences) and not objective, or disvalues (i.e. defects) shared by all h. sapiens w i t h o u t exception (and therefore are knowable facts of our species):

    re: Some of h. sapiens' defects (which are self-evident as per e.g. P. Foot, M. Nussbaum): vulnerabilities to

    - deprivation (of e.g. sustanence, shelter, sleep, touch, esteem, care, health, hygiene, trust, safety, etc)

    - dysfunction (i.e. injury, ill-health, disability)

    - helplessness (i.e. trapped, confined, or fear-terror of being vulnerable)

    - stupidity (i.e. maladaptive habits (e.g. mimetic violence, lose-lose preferences, etc))

    - betrayal (i.e. trust-hazards)

    - bereavement (i.e. losing loved ones & close friends), etc ...

    ... in effect, any involuntary decrease, irreparable loss or final elimination of human agency.     — 180 Proof

    also, my reply to you (2024) ...
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/903818

    Why assume that "AI" (i.e. AGI) has to "reference" our morality anyway and not instead develop its own (that might or might not be human-compatible)?
    — 180 Proof

    What you're saying is that morality is purely subjective.     — Philosophim
    This is precisely the opposite of what I've said. Maybe this old post clarifies my meaning ...

    Excerpts from from a recent [2024] thread Understanding ethics in the case of Artificial Intelligence ...

    I suspect we will probably have to wait for 'AGI' to decide for itself whether or not to self-impose moral norms and/or legal constraints and what kind of ethics and/or laws it may create for itself – superceding human ethics & legal theories? – if it decides it needs them in order to 'optimally function' within (or without) human civilization.
    — 180 Proof

    My point is that the 'AGI', not humans, will decide whether or not to impose on itself and abide by (some theory of) moral norms, or codes of conduct; besides, its 'sense of responsibility' may or may not be consistent with human responsibility. How or why 'AGI' decides whatever it decides will be done so for its own reasons which humans might or might not be intelligent enough to either grasp or accept.— 180 Proof     — 180 Proof
  • PROCESS COSMOLOGY --- a worldview for our time
    My amateur[pseudo] philosophical thesis postulates ... Energy (negative entropy) — Gnomon
    :rofl: :lol: :sweat: :smirk: :roll: :chin: :sad:
  • Do you think AI is going to be our downfall?
    Are those meanings the same in ancient Greek and modern English? — Vera Mont
    Close enough for this discussion.

    I think Epicurus had a wider vocabulary of pleasures, or pleasurable experiences, than can be accessed via drugs.
    I don't follow you, Vera. I referred to pleasure as a concept, not particular instances or "experiences" (and "accessed via drugs" has nothing to do with Epicurus – check the three links I provided for clarification in the context of my response).
  • "Substance" in Philosophical Discourse
    Substance dualism does not deny a medium of interaction. The medium is the third element ... — Metaphysician Undercover
    If so, what is it? (i.e.bad hoc substance(s) like e.g. aether? phlogiston? divine will?) Btw, "the third element" means something other than – more than – "substancce dualism". Multiply(ing) entities beyond necessity (Ockham). :roll:
  • Do you think AI is going to be our downfall?
    We have no objective morality that AI can reference, therefore ... — Philosophim
    1. What do you mean here by "morality"?

    2. In what way does suffering-focused ethics fail to be "objective" (even though, like the fact Earth is round, there is (still) not universal consensus)?

    3. Why assume that "AI" (i.e. AGI) has to "reference" our morality anyway and not instead develop its own (that might or might not be human-compatible)?

    I don't think human purpose is a problem to be solved. — Vera Mont
    :100:

    pleasure is simple and fleeting; happiness is sustained and complex
    In the Epicurean (or disutilitarian) sense, "pleasure" is synonymous with aponia and "happiness" with ataraxia (i.e. eudaimonia) such that "pleasure" is the means to the end "happiness". I agree they are not equivalent, as you suggest, but in this sense they do seem correlated strongly.
  • "Substance" in Philosophical Discourse
    ↪Janus
    :up: :up:
  • "Substance" in Philosophical Discourse
    ↪T Clark
    :up:

    ↪Metaphysician Undercover
    It's less inconsistent and more parsimonious, it seems to me, to conceive of "physical" and "mental" as two properties – ways of describing / modeling – substance than positing them as "two substances" (which do not share a medium by which to interact with one another). Property dualism, for example, does not have "substance dualism's" interaction problem.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind%E2%80%93body_dualism#Arguments_against_dualism
  • "Substance" in Philosophical Discourse
    ↪Wayfarer
    You've omitted Spinoza from your survey of "shiting meanings"; what do you think of his (post-Aristotlean/post-Cartesian) conception of substance?

    e.g.
    https://medium.com/thedialogues/spinoza-on-why-there-can-only-be-one-substance-f86842057158

    https://iep.utm.edu/substanc/#H3
  • PROCESS COSMOLOGY --- a worldview for our time
    There was no “beginning” in the absolute sense. The universe is a creative advance into novelty. It has always been becoming. — PoeticUniverse
    :cool: ... just as there is no edge to a sphere, no beginning of a circle (or Möbius loop) and no first random vacuum fluctuation.
  • Do you think AI is going to be our downfall?
    The only way computing could bring about a utopian - or at least, reasonable - arrangement for humans is if it were genuinely intelligent and took over control of the economic and political organization of society. But it won't bring about our downfall, either: we're doing that ourselves. — Vera Mont
    :up: :up:

    ↪180 Proof I don’t think those posts hold any water, especially given how ai is lately. — Darkneos
    Okay, you didn't read the posts or the thread.
  • Do you think AI is going to be our downfall?
    [deleted]
  • Do you think AI is going to be our downfall?
    ↪Darkneos
    Imho, "Skynet" is more likely to save us from our worst selves as a species – a much more complex and interesting problem to solve even for its higher order of intelligence – than enslave & terminate us. :nerd:

    Consider these recent posts from a topic-related thread:

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/964651

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/965021
  • What caused the Big Bang, in your opinion?
    ↪jkop
    :up:
  • Autonomous Government + Voluntary Taxation
    ↪T Clark
    :up:
  • Making meaning
    ↪Sam26
    :up:.
  • PROCESS COSMOLOGY --- a worldview for our time
    ↪Gnomon
    More of your typical run-on non sequiturs and ad hominems pathetically failing to deflect from my straightforward criticisms (of your "enformer"-of-the-gaps pseudo-scientistic woo-woo sermons) which you cannot invalidate or counter soundly. You're smugly satisfied that you already have The Answer (à la your "Meta-Physics" "personal belief-system" "worldview") but as all of us, except you (a poor Dunning-Kruger kid :sweat:), are aware: for years you've been Answering the wrong (or pseudo) question(s). :lol:

    Anyway, like most of your critics, Gnomon, I'm just an elliptical orbits kinda guy (Copernican) and apparently you're an epicycles kinda guy (Ptolemyan) who hasn't yet groked the cosmological memo. Maybe you can't. Well, I aim to find out which it is. Gnōthi Seauton, man. :victory: :cool:

    ↪PoeticUniverse
    :fire:
  • Making meaning
    For me, meaning is semantic (i.e. contextual) and purpose is pragmatic (i.e. functional), thereby not synonymous or necessarily dependent on each other.
  • What caused the Big Bang, in your opinion?
    ↪an-salad

    As for me - It's not clear the big bang was caused at all. — T Clark
    :up:

    ↪MoK
    :up:
  • PROCESS COSMOLOGY --- a worldview for our time
    180's own "woo-of-the-gaps" is the metaphysical belief that Matter (clay) can create Mind (idea) by rubbing atoms together. — Gnomon
    Evidence – how facts (signals) are distinguished from fantasies (noise) – of im-material (i.e. dis-embodied) "Mind" is profoundly lacking. And my Democritean "woo", Mr. Enformer, is far more evident (i.e. much less of an arbitrary / transcendent(al) gap-filler) than your pseudo-scientific "intelligent designer", or Aristotlean-Thomistic, "Woo". :smirk:
  • PROCESS COSMOLOGY --- a worldview for our time
    ↪180 Proof seems to think that Whitehead and Gnomon are disguising primitive Animism and Spiritualism under the more sciency label of Process[ghost in the machine] — Gnomon
    [Energy] its insubstantial substance
    i.e. Woo-of-the-gaps :sparkle: :smirk:
  • On the substance dualism
    ... you ever teach before? — DifferentiatingEgg
    Not professionally.

    ... some book recommendations?
    Suggest a topic.
  • PROCESS COSMOLOGY --- a worldview for our time
    ↪Gnomon
    :yawn:
  • On the substance dualism
    e.g. "Water is wet and wobbly. Therefore water is wet." — bert1
    That's a tautology, nothing implicit is made explicit (i.e. new information is not learned / concluded after the "therefore").

    ↪MoK
    Assertions without argument are just as easily dismissed without argument. Try again.
  • On the substance dualism
    ↪MoK
    A conclusion does not follow from a single statement but from an argument (i.e. string of valid inferences). Make an argument.
  • PROCESS COSMOLOGY --- a worldview for our time
    Eternity or Block-Time — Gnomon
    is, of course, a physical theory. :smirk:

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternalism_(philosophy_of_time)

    Btw, a less speculative version, or alternative, is the Growing Block Universe theory.

    My worldview is both immanent and Transcendent ...
    ... both real X and Not Real X (i.e. self-contradictory, or necessarily false). Good job! :clap:
  • Misogyny, resentment and subterranean norms
    Enjoy it while you can. — Tobias
    I would prefer not to, but ...

    ↪Tzeentch

    ↪unenlightened


    And thus spoke the little old woman: You go to women? Do not forget the whip! — Thus Spoke Zarathustra

    It delights me to note from year to year how long it takes for much that happens to one to become inner experience. It is only in old age that this process is completed, and for this reason it is right and proper to grow truly old, despite the less pleasant reverse side in the shape of infirmity. It seems to be that this is true even in matters of the intellect, not only in the emotional life. — Letter to Freud
  • PROCESS COSMOLOGY --- a worldview for our time
    @Gnomon
    Read Stenger and Dawkings[Hawking] and 180 Proof and Poetic Universe! — PoeticUniverse
    :cool: :up:

    'Nothing' cannot even be meant.
    :smirk:

    Btw, Keiji Nishitani's Religion and Nothingness is a great meditation on ...!
  • PROCESS COSMOLOGY --- a worldview for our time
    All philosophies & religions have postulated some First Cause or Prime Mover ... — Gnomon
    False (again). :roll:

    But the God Hypothesis is a Causal explanation — Gnomon
    Planck scale pre-spacetime (vacuum) consists of random – a-causal – fluctuations (events), ergo no "first cause"; spacetimes (nonrandom event-patterns (e.g. universes)) do emerge rarely as it's reasonable to expect (re: law of very large numbers ... of random events), etc. A god-fairytale (e.g. "prime mover", "enformer / programmer", etc) is not needed and does not explain anything – even in principle; it just begs the question as a woo-of-the-gaps appeal to ignorance. Physical cosmogeny only circumstantially suggests stages of spacetime development not "the ultimate origin of" anything. As many others besides myself have pointed out for years, your scientistic reduction of metaphysics, Gnomon, amounts to a risibly dogmatic pseudo-theology (on par with astrology & alchemy). Do yourself (us) a favor and read God: The Failed Hypothesis by physicist and philosopher Victor Stenger.

    https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/God:_The_Failed_Hypothesis :fire:
  • Misogyny, resentment and subterranean norms
    Re: legacy of absentee / abusive fathers reinforced by pervasive religious-cultural misogyny — 180 Proof
    Is there such a legacy really? — Tobias
    Yes, especially among the urban (& suburban) poor, working & lower middle classes in post-1950s America, where most (black brown & white) children are raised in homes without both parents (usually unwed single mothers).

    The pervasive religious and cultural misogyny I understand, but what happened to the fathers in your opinion?
    Too many fathers were raised without fathers in the home by unwed single mothers, etc. Simplistically, my guess is that boys tend to grow-up more feminized (submissive, lower self-esteem) whereas girls grow-up de-feminized (dominant, lower self-esteem) by the 'genders imbalanced' example of their husbandless mothers and women teachers primarily in authority throughout primary school.

    There may well be a link. Before the second world war fathers were regularly absent, drinking in the bars. I do not know what happened in the 1960s or 1970s. There might well be something there, but how have the sins of the father [& the mother] influenced our current state as men and women?
    IME, there is clearly "a link" – strong correlation – in the United States at least since the 1970s and 'gender antagonisms' have been ratcheted-up by ubiquitous, incessant social media since the 2000s. In sum: collapse / delay of marriage and explosion of intentional single motherhood by unwed young women and adolescent girls. Generational vicious cycle (re: social pathologies).

    Why would someone [@Gregory] that studies philosophy go off into such an odd absolutist reading of femininity and masculinity?
    (cue apt Freddie quote)

    "It has gradually become clear to me what every great philosophy up till now has consisted of – namely, the confession of its originator, and a species of involuntary and unconscious autobiography; and moreover that the moral (or immoral) purpose in every philosophy has constituted the true vital germ out of which the entire plant has always grown. [ ... ] Accordingly, I do not believe that an “impulse to knowledge” is the father of philosophy; but that another impulse, here as elsewhere, has only made use of knowledge (and mistaken knowledge!) as an instrument." (BGE)

    Well, people are strange, when you're a stranger...
    "Women seem wicked / When you're unwanted" :smirk:

    * * *

    In @Gregory's disHonor
    (food for 'contrarian' thought):

    Patriarchy (=/= misogyny?) is a lesser, or necessary, evil?

    male authority over women =/= male superiority (contra the "Western" myth of equality)? :chin:
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