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  • Questioning the Idea and Assumptions of Artificial Intelligence and Practical Implications
    virtual afterlife ... simulation of resurrected bodiesJack Cummins
    Wtf :roll:
  • Questioning the Idea and Assumptions of Artificial Intelligence and Practical Implications
    It is questionable but it is a possiblity.Jack Cummins
    I don't think so. Conceivability –/–> possibility.

    I generally see artificial intelligence as problematic as being without reflective self.Jack Cummins
    Suppose "reflective self" (ego) is nothing but a metacognitive illusion¹ – hallucination – that persists in some kluge-like evolved brains? Meditative traditions focus on suspending / eliminating this (self-not self duality) illusion, no? e.g. Buddhist anattā, Daoist wúwéi, ... positive psychology's flow-state, etc.

    Suppose we "humans" are zombies which are unaware that we are zombies because human brains cannot perceive themselves directly (due to lack of sensory organs or perception within the brain)? If so, then "reflective self" might be just an exaptive glitch (spandrel) pecular to (some) higher mammals or just "humans", no?

    Well, I find the notion "conscious machines" (i.e. synthetic phenomenology) to be a problematic prospect of them learning from us "humans" to develop "consciously" (as reflective selves) into apex predators or worse. Dumb tools to smart tools to smart agents to "conscious" smart agents – the last developmental step, I suspect, would be an extinction-event.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_illusion [1]
  • What exactly is Process Philosophy?
    I believe absolute fundamentality can only really be found in the void itself...punos
    :fire: :up:
  • What exactly is Process Philosophy?
    Dunning-Krugers are in full effect. :zip:
  • Fascism in The US: Unlikely? Possible? Probable? How soon?
    I understand [fascism] to the extent that I see it as right wing populism. I don't see how it can be anything else. — Arcane Sandwich
    No doubt. To wit:
    Populists are politicians who appeal directly to the people when they should be consulting the political process, and who are prepared to set aside procedures and legal niceties when the tide of public opinion flows in their favor. Like Donald Trump, populists can win elections. Like Marine Le Pen in France and Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, they can disrupt the long-standing consensus of government. Or, like Nigel Farage and the Brexiteers in Britain, they can use the popular vote to overthrow all the expectations and predictions of the political class. But they have one thing in common, which is their preparedness to allow a voice to passions that are neither acknowledged nor mentioned in the course of normal politics. And for this reason, they are not democrats but demagogues — not politicians who guide and govern by appeal to arguments, but agitators who stir the unthinking feelings of the crowd. — Roger Scruton, 2017
  • What exactly is Process Philosophy?
    :sparkle: :lol:

    Direction¹ (entropy) =/= purpose (telos).

    [1] dissipative systems e.g. cosmogenesis, nucleogenesis, black hole evaporation, natural selection, autopoiesis ...
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    IMHO racism is best fought by emphasizing commonality and common goals rather than repeatedly emphasizing difference and/or prior victimhood within groups. The approach should be more future-oriented.BitconnectCarlos
    This sort of bourgeois-feel good ahistoricism is always futile. In order to "emphasize commonality and common goals","future-oriented" whites should stop disproportionately benefiting political economically asap from the centuries-long legacy of dispossessing, enslaving, exploiting and discriminating against nonwhites. After all, it's "racism" that (still) systematically "emphasizes difference" (re: ethnic/color supremacy) and antiracist survivors who have always "fought" for "commonality" (i.e. we are all equally human).
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    United States of Kakistan
    25January25

    Kristi Noem confirmed as Sec'y of DHS. — FOTUS 47's Cabinet
    :fear:
  • What exactly is Process Philosophy?
    What exactly is Process Philosophy?Darkneos
    IMHO, by reductive conceptual conflation of (e.g.) Heraclitean flux + Democritean ceaselessly swirling atoms in void + Spinozist conative infinite & finite modes (sub specie durationis) + Schopenhaurian Will + Bergsonian élan vital + Peircean-Deweyan truth as inquiry ... A.N. Whitehead produces a baroque panpsychist teleology he calls (the) "process" as the fundamental property, or ground, of reality – there are only happenings ("occasions of (possible?) experience") and their inter/relations (i.e. "complexes", or patterns of events); there aren't any static or unrelated 'things' (i.e. Aristotlean substances (or unmoved mover)). Yeah, okay. So an explicit "process philosophy" seems to me preposterously redundant (re: predecessors), and almost Heideggerian in its obscurant ponderings and neologisms (or Hegelian prolixity). But I'm a quixotic pandeist so what the hell do I know? :smirk:
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    United States of Kakistan
    24January25

    Pete Hegseth confirmed as Sec'y of Defense — FOTUS 47's Cabinet
    :rofl:
  • Why Philosophy?
    Addendum to
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/959747

    A post from a 2020 thread What has philosophy taught you? ...

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/331143

    Also: the what for my why ...
    Philosophy, as Wittgenstein points out, only describes how we use concepts (by which to interpretively frame 'experience') whereas unfalsified theories in science are used to explain – model the conditional causal relations of – transformations from one physical state-of-affairs to another. AFAIK, (fundamental) sciences are hypothetico-deductive (i.e. experimental) and not merely inductive (i.e. experiential) as per Popper vs Hume, et al. It's philosophy, in fact, that "explains nothing" about the world (i.e. existence & reality) but instead non-trivially interprets whatever we think we know about the world, etc.180 Proof
  • What are you listening to right now?
    T.G.I.F.


    "Talk to Me Baby (I Can't Hold Out)" (2:12)
    A-side single, 1960
    songwriter Willie Dixon, 1959
    performer Elmore James
  • A Thomistic Argument For God's Existence From Composition
    I don’t see how I’m committing a fallacy.Bob Ross
    :roll:
  • Questioning the Idea and Assumptions of Artificial Intelligence and Practical Implications
    Is mind a necessary condition for intelligence?RogueAI
    No. They seem to me unrelated capabilities.
  • AXIARCHISM as 21st century TAOISM
    I don't think we can avoid a human-centered morality, even if we avoid putting what is good for humans at the center. It is human beings who judge questions of morality.Fooloso4
    :up:
  • AXIARCHISM as 21st century TAOISM
    The Tao does not replace god, it comes before it. God is just one of the 10,000 things - the multiplicity of phenomena in our world brought into being by the Tao.T Clark
    :100:
  • AXIARCHISM as 21st century TAOISM
    Though these questions aren't addressed to me...
    Does atheism entail that the category of 'the sacred' is meaningless?Wayfarer
    I don't think so. For us, 'this world, this life' (i.e. nature red in tooth & claw) is "sacred" insofar as existing is tragicomic – the power to de/create "meaningful" lives (relationships).

    Does it entail that the 'mokṣa' of Hinduism or the 'Nirvāṇa' of Buddhism have no transcendent referent?
    Atheism, as I understand it, denotes (at minimum) lack of belief in any literal "transcendent referents" such as supernatural entities (or ideas) like god/s, angels/demons, miracles, curses, spells, heaven/hell, reincarnation, nirvana, etc.

    :cool:
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    United States of Kakistan
    22January25

    No mercy ...


    Speaking truth to power: "Have mercy".
    https://www.democracynow.org/2025/1/22/bishop_budde
  • AXIARCHISM as 21st century TAOISM
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiarchism :sparkle:

    ... reminds me of @Philosophim's old thread

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/15203/in-any-objective-morality-existence-is-inherently-good/p1

    A couple of thoughts:

    Given that the universe, or nature, has a causal aspect does not entail that the whole universe, or nature, is the effect of a (prior) cause. (pace Aristotle et al). Likewise, just because physical laws, for instance, are computable does not entail that the universe, or nature, is a "computer" or output of some (metaphysical? e.g. @Gnomon's quasi-creationism?) "program". Same goes for "meaning, purpose, value": there is an aspect of the universe, or nature, that instantiates "... value" doesn't entail that the whole universe, or nature, has "... value" as so-called axiarchism posits. This sort of invalid reductionism is a consequence of an (unwittingly) assumed compositional fallacy.

    From the dao (Laozi-Zhuangzi) to logos (Heraclitus) to swirling atoms in void (Democritus-Epicurus-Lucretius) to natura naturans (Spinoza) to the absurd (Zapffe-Camus) to the real (Nishida-Nishitani / C. Rosset) ... to the (modern) pandeus¹ is, so far, the least irrational as well as most scientific evidence-compatible (or soundest) speculative path I have found to reflectively explore nature (i.e. surface of the real with which (we) natural beings are inescapably entangled – ergo embodied – and that fundamentally encompasses – enables-constrains – whatever is knowable (by us) including reason itself). YMMV

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandeism [1] :fire:

    For an alternate atheistic take on Taoism , especially the thinking of Zhuangzi, I highly recommend the recently published book by Brook Ziporyn, one of the top translators of ancient Chinese texts. It is called ‘Experiments in Mystical Atheism: Godless Epiphanies from Daoism to Spinoza and Beyond‘.Joshs
    Much thanks for this and the podcast interview (I'll listen later)! :up:
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    I don't think that white supremacists liking his salute means he himself is a nazi.Christoffer
    I don't think he's a nazi either (btw, why does it matter?), just an über-rich, sociopathic, racist provocateur.
  • Questioning the Idea and Assumptions of Artificial Intelligence and Practical Implications
    Interesting, but your post isn't a direct reply to anything I've written on this thread as far as I can tell. And afaik Ai research / development has nothing to do either with "consciousness" (i.e. phenomenal self-modeling intentionality) or directly with B-M-I (transhumanist) teleprosthetics, etc. In the near term, AI tools (like e.g. LLMs, AlphaZero neural nets, etc) are end user-prompted autonomous systems and not yet 'human-independent agents' in their own right (such as prospective AGI systems).
  • On religion and suffering
    the definition of classical theism, which is considered rationally coherentTom Storm
    And yet it's only a "definition", not a publicly corroborating, sound argument that warrants believing "classical theism" is not just a (dogmatic) myth.

    :pray:
  • On religion and suffering
    God is good.Astrophel
    Which "God" do you mean?

    Btw, is this "God" all-good (loving) and all-powerful (just)?

    If, however, this "God" is not both all-good (loving) and all-powerful (just), then why call it "God"? And what makes it worthy of worship?

    Lastly, how do we know these things?
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    77 million Americans (+ 6 million Dems who stayed home), many knowingly but most ignorantly,voted for:

    Sieg Heil 2025!


    Former illegal immigrant from White South Africa and so-to-be trillionaire welfare queen & wannabe Bond-villain Elon Musk bought the US Presidency and took a huge step closer to Making Apartheid Great Again. Will there be blood after all? TBD.

    update:

    Far-right wingnut (racist, nativist) groups in both North America and Europe praise Elon Musk's "salute" ...

    https://apnews.com/article/musk-gesture-salute-antisemitism-0070dae53c7a73397b104ae645877535
  • Questioning the Idea and Assumptions of Artificial Intelligence and Practical Implications
    An excerpt from one of your recent threads, Jack...
    I imagine that AGI will not primarily benefit humans, and will eventually surpass us in every cognitive way. Any benefits to us, I also imagine (best case scenario), will be fortuitous by-products of AGI's hyper-productivity in all (formerly human) technical, scientific, economic and organizational endeavors.'Civilization' metacognitively automated by AGI so that options for further developing human culture (e.g. arts, recreation, win-win social relations) will be optimized – but will most of us / our descendants take advantage of such an optimal space for cultural expression or [will we] just continue amusing ourselves to death?180 Proof

  • Questioning the Idea and Assumptions of Artificial Intelligence and Practical Implications
    Get back to me when "AI" (e.g. ChatGPT) is no longer just a powerful, higher-order automation toy / tool (for mundane research, business & military tasks) but instead a human-level – self-aware or not – cognitive agent.

    :up:
  • A Thomistic Argument For God's Existence From Composition
    [C]omposed beings that are concrete are either composed of an infinite regress of concrete things or there must be a first cause which is not concrete.Bob Ross
    The suggestion that an abstract¹ – "not concrete" – being has a causal property, or causal relation to anything concrete (e.g. is "a first cause"), is a reification fallacy and thereby a misconception of an abstract (i.e. "not concrete") being.

    Also, Bob, you (Aristotleans, Thomists & premodern / pseudo-science idealists) assert a false dichotomy: A Third Option – in fact, demonstrated by quantum field theory (QFT) to be the case at the planck scale – that "composed beings" are effects of a-causal, or randomly fluctuating, events (i.e. excitations of vacuum² energy) as the entire planck-radius³ universe – its thermodynamically emergent constituents of "composed concrete beings" – happened to be at least c14 billion years ago.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_and_concrete [1]

    :smirk: kudos to classical atomists ...
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror_vacui_(physics) [2]

    https://simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_epoch [3]
  • Questioning the Idea and Assumptions of Artificial Intelligence and Practical Implications
    I don't think it [AI, LLMs] does raise any questions about intelligence or consciousness at all.Manuel
    :100:

    :up: :up:
  • On religion and suffering
    The choice can never be arbitrary, precisely because our attitudes, values and actions must always conditioned [...]Joshs
    Arbitrary doesn't imply 'unconditioned' so your point, sir, is a red herring / strawman. My point: a 'consistent relativist' forfeits all standards for deciding between competing or incommensurable truth-claims, ergo her preference is arbitrary.
  • A Thomistic Argument For God's Existence From Composition
    ... the OP is only targeting concretely existent objects.Bob Ross
    So then your conclusion ...
    41. The composed beings must subsist through an absolutely simple and actual being.
    42. Therefore, God exists.
    Bob Ross
    ... means that "God" is a "concretely existing object", which contradicts both theistic and deistic conceptions (Aristotle, B. Pascal, P. Tillich).