Comments

  • The New Cradle of Western Philosophy (?)
    ↪Gus Lamarch
    I have studied them a bit. I like Egyptology. You must take into account that these texts are 3000 yr old or so, older than the Bible. So the level of discourse remains somewhat basic. What Thales got from them, I suspect, is essentially geometry. The Theorem of Thales in particular.

    I haven't read "The Dispute Between a Man and His Ba" which seems quite interesting. The Teachings of Ptahhotep and Ani are wisdom literature, exhorting one to be truthful, humble, etc. Interesting from a history of ideas standpoint but it's not going to blow your mind. The Satire of the Trades and similar (it's a genre) is basically a pro domo argument for the importance of scribes by a scribe. It's the dawn of the intellectual class, and this class develops a view of its own role in society (the best one, not too surprisingly...). So here what is interesting is the role of the written word, how it may influence society, given that for the antique Egyptians the written word is literally sacred (hiero-glyph as the Greeks put it) and magical. Signs have their own spirit. In particular, the animals depicted in hieroglyphs (eg in tombs) were seen as potentially dangerous, reason for which they are sometimes mutilated in the glyph. Eg the Horned viper (an alphabetic sign for the letter “f”). During some periods, scribes mutilated the sign so it could not kill the reader of a text. The sparrow too, an ideogram for "evil", is sometimes defaced or mutilated.
  • Help coping with Solipsism
    Though you are just asserting this here. — Coben
    Yes. But I think it may be the reason why the idea that the world we are immersed in is an illusion is so pregnant: because it is one, to a degree.
  • The New Cradle of Western Philosophy (?)
    it could eventually be considered that the cradle of Western philosophy wasn't located in classical Greece - as we are all used to - but in ancient Egypt — Gus Lamarch

    Yes to all that. Thales also said to have studied in Egypt.
  • Help coping with Solipsism
    I suppose in the background I also do not think one can prove that solipsism is not the case. — Coben
    No, but you can prove it's moot, that it makes no essential difference.

    Another way to solve the equation is to realize that indeed we do live in a simulation of sorts, but not the kind where one is all alone in an absurd universe: we ALL (you, darkneos and me) live in our mental landscapes, constructed from sensory inputs translated into qualia. The color red, or the music of your favorite band doesn't actually exist 'out there', it's a view of the mind. What seems to exist are air presure waves and quanta of light and stuff. And yet we can all enjoy music and share meaningfully about it; we can all enjoy a sunset and call the attention of others to its splending colors. So this simulation that our brain does based on sensory data is a pretty good one, as far as simulations go. It's both effective, beautiful, and most probably universal (by which I mean your qualia for red is by and large the same as my qualia for red).

    So we do live in a simulation of reality, but a good, trustable one.

    And in the final analysis, this simulation (or another) is necessary, because as Kant said, between the world 'as it is' and the human mind, there must be a form of translation, of representation, an intermediary. Minds cannot be 'intimate' with the rest of the world. There's by necessity a chasm between thebtwo, and therefore, a need for a bridge. As it turns out, our natural bridge is made of qualia. One can reject that particular bridge to reality 'out there', and decide to build another instead. But one will always need a bridge, and the bridge we have naturally is pretty good. So walk on it, embrace it, adopt it, love your simulation. It's the best you can get.
  • Help coping with Solipsism
    What would you need us for? — Coben
    Us?
  • Help coping with Solipsism
    I don't think the answer is in finding arguments. — Coben

    It helped Descartes and it helped me, so it can work.
  • Determinism, Reversibility, Decoherence and Transaction
    ↪Isaac
    I hope you guys invent time travel soon, cause I really liked the 80's.
  • Help coping with Solipsism
    It doesn't make them real or existent. As my quote from the thread I read says, we presuppose that this information comes from a source or that we are experiencing some "thing". — Darkneos

    Even in solipsism, the information comes from a source, and you ARE experiencing something alright, but you fear that what you experience is NOT REAL, that's is like a video game. Note that one experiences something when one is immersed in a video game.

    I had the same nagging thought as a teen. I believe it can lead people to madness (schizophrenia). The way I got out of it, was:

    1) by reasoning along Descartes: the idea implies that some god created a virtual world and chose you (and only you) to experience this simulation. A god doing such a thing would be a liar and also pretty stupid. After all, if a god can build a simulation of such a high quality, what is stopping him from building the real thing? He's lazy? He doesn't have enough money? Ergo the idea makes no sense from the creator's perspective.

    2) by realizing that the infinite richness of this world, in terms of sensory input (colors, smells, sounds), its strong internal coherence and the fact that I can't predict or control much of it, all this make this world very real. There is no essential difference between a real illusion and a real reality, if the illusion is so perfect. It makes no difference whether it is 'real' or 'virtual': it's the world I live in, it's beautiful and merciless at the same time, and there's no exit other than death.

    So assuming that God is not a lazy asshole, and understanding that there is no meaningful difference between a reality and its perfect simulation, I opted to put the question at rest and enjoy the ride.
  • A hybrid philosophy of mind
    ↪Pfhorrest
    Likewise, a rock can hurt you, and that demonstrates that you can receive an input from them.

    I just think that it's best to talk these things over. So as to avoid unecessary human-rocks violence.
  • A hybrid philosophy of mind
    [Rocks have] the capacity to receive input from other things, not just to act upon other things. — Pfhorrest
    Do you often talk to rocks?
  • Daniel Garber on Descartes
    ↪Philodescartes
    Why, yes. That was what the humanist movement was all about: assert people's reason and capacity to observe and understand nature without resorting to dogma.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_humanism
  • Descartes's mediator
    ↪Philodescartes
    Typo for ' meditation'?
  • History of Science Readings Needed
    ↪180 Proof
    Good for you. Science a fascinating story, but it's often told in a historical revisionist, eurocentric manner. Science 'history' books often read like hagiographies: glorified lives of the science saints. And the science saints must all be white, for some bizarre reason, and preferably Anglo-saxon. The contribution of antique Egypt to Greek science is therefore ignored; the contribution of the Arabs, passed on to us through Al Andalouz (Arabic Spain), is casually passed over; even the historical contribution of the Catholic Church to research and education in Europe is deleted from collective scientific "history".

    In short, I find science history books often more ideological than actually scientific.
  • Bannings
    How are people with these erroneous beliefs (or any erroneous beliefs) supposed to know better — DingoJones

    Open a book?
  • History of Science Readings Needed
    For physics, Popper's Logic of Scientific Discovery.

    For biology, I agree with
    ↪180 Proof
    on Monod's Chance and Necessity. Also Stephen Gould.

    For social sciences, it's a very different story. I don't know of a good overview in English.

    Something on Arabo-Judeo-Muslim science during the European middle age. Our debt to the Arabs, Jews and Persians is often ignored in the way history of science is told in the West. And yet algebra, alchemia, algorithm, average, azimuth, etc. etc. come from Arabic.
  • Bannings
    ↪Yohan
    But then they'd have to accept all the other wakos: the 9/11 truthers, the holocaust deniers, the young earthers, the flat earthers, the hollow earthers, the vaccers, the incel whiners, the chem trace snifers, the hunters of alien lizards, those unsure about global warming, the Pi-doubters, the Jesus mythicists, the perpetual motion specialists and the angry debunkers of Special Relativity...
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    I can understand a principled stand against voting for anyone (e.g. deal-breaking character traits). — Baden

    I understand. In fact I was once faced with such a choice (Chirac vs Le Pen 2002) and I abstained. But it's a matter of survival at this stage. If one is in a position to affect the election (voting in a potential swing state) then it's a choice between to die today, or to survive and fight another day. In this sense, votes can kill.
  • Happy Dyslexics
    O
    ↪Jack Cummins
    oh shoot, it dYslexic. Can I ask the mods to fix this?
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    Pragmatism vs principle. Hardly as uncontroversial as cutting your arm off to avoid dying. — Baden

    Isn't the first principle of life to try and survive?
  • Midgley vs Dawkins, Nietzsche, Hobbes, Mackie, Rand, Singer...
    None of those books were informed by evolutionary biology so much as by a visceral hatred of anything religious and weaponising biological theory to attack it. That was what Mary Midgely - who was also not a religious apologist of any stripe - was criticising. And she was right on the money, in my view. — Wayfarer
    :up:
  • Midgley vs Dawkins, Nietzsche, Hobbes, Mackie, Rand, Singer...
    Wise words from an astronomer:

    If you are teaching Muslim sixth formers in a school and you tell them they can't have their God and Darwin, there is a risk they will choose their God and be lost to science. — Martin Rees
  • Deep Songs
    ↪Mayor of Simpleton
    Their first album was a big blast. The sounds were out of nowhere.
  • Midgley vs Dawkins, Nietzsche, Hobbes, Mackie, Rand, Singer...
    Yes. It is at odds with the thesis of the book. In his forward to the second edition he expresses his regret for making that particular statement. — flaco

    Fair enough. It's still an odd mistake to make.

    The only other motive I can think of is religious. It's a bit far-fetched. The idea is that Darwin has always been used by atheists against religionists (as is fair I believe) not least by Dawkins. Now, Dawkins might have wanted to publish a book about Price and Hamilton's research on the theoretical heritability of altruist behaviors. The work was a conceptual breakthrough in sociobiology and deserved sharing. But no doubt that the publication of a book entitled "The Altruist Gene" would have given arguments to the ID folks, Dawkins' arch-enemies... They would have chanted "God gave use the genes of altruism, hallelujah" till kingdom come. Hence the thesis had to be presented in a cold, materialist manner, not in a manner that gives any hope to them "magic thinkers".
  • Deep Songs
    ↪Mayor of Simpleton
    Mais tu connais tout... :gasp:

    You know KaS Product too?

  • Are cells sentient?
    What is to be said for the foreign tissue cells themselves? — Benj96

    From their perspective, if they have any thing that can be described as such, they are in a dangerous situation: deprived of any immune system of their own, and surrounded by a foreign agent on all side. Surrounded with no weapon to fight.

    Transplant patient are often given much drugs to tame their immune system, sometimes for years. This gives their cells from two different individials some time to 'get accustomed to one another' I guess.
  • Midgley vs Dawkins, Nietzsche, Hobbes, Mackie, Rand, Singer...
    ↪Kenosha Kid
    why the title, do you think? Why this conclusion? ("We are born selfish") You've read the book, right? It didn't strike you as odd?

    It does strike me as odd. Even the idea of the zeitgeist doesn't quite cut it: I've read enough of his socio-political protestations to see that he doesn't sit easily with Milton and Thatcher... There must be something else.
  • Midgley vs Dawkins, Nietzsche, Hobbes, Mackie, Rand, Singer...
    By shifting emphasis to gene selection, Dawkins demonstrated how natural selection can support altruism. — flaco

    1. The demonstration was not his but from Hamilton and Price.

    2. Price's math is actually based on kin selection, a form of group selection. The exclusive focus on genes is misleading.

    3. For some yet unknown reason, Dawkins misrepresented the thesis in his book, turning a work on altruism into a book on the selfishness of genes.
  • A hybrid philosophy of mind
    Pan-psychists' being wrong about zombies doesn't make them right about pan-psychism. — bongo fury
    I disagree. Most zombies I know ARE right about pan-psychism.
  • Midgley vs Dawkins, Nietzsche, Hobbes, Mackie, Rand, Singer...
    So the whole problem with TSG is the title. — flaco
    I suppose this title represents the book's thesis, no? My point is that there is something fishy about his presentation of a theory about the possibility that altruism was selected naturally, under a title that says the exact opposite...

    think you are giving Dawkins and Darwin too much credit. We had eugenism, racism, slavery, nazism, etc. long before either (OK, maybe the Romans didn't call themselves Nazis). — flaco
    Yes but not a scientific theoretical basis for same.
  • Midgley vs Dawkins, Nietzsche, Hobbes, Mackie, Rand, Singer...
    ↪Srap Tasmaner
    Okay, cool.

    One of the things that really dawns on you watching is how easy it is to misinterpret strange customs from afar, but also in all fairness, the efforts that those guys really invest in understanding what they see. They need to be able to explain the country to their family and friend when they come back (as any normal explorator must do, and you also see some of that restitution at home in the documentary), and therefore they really try to see a lot and probe their subject with questions. They try to be fair and evidence-based in their judgement.
  • Midgley vs Dawkins, Nietzsche, Hobbes, Mackie, Rand, Singer...
    ↪Srap Tasmaner
    Yes, he was making a reportage in Papuasia, stayed with them for a long time, and at some point the idea came up to reciprocate.
  • Midgley vs Dawkins, Nietzsche, Hobbes, Mackie, Rand, Singer...
    ↪Srap Tasmaner
    Yes, but the Reverse Exploration is not a fiction, it's a documentary, seen from the perspective of two Papuan chiefs exploring France. The guys constantly wonder out loud about what they are seeing. So like a movie about some white explorator in Papuasia would follow the thinking process of the explorator, you can follow their reasoning at all time.

    At one point they go with a group of French hunters dressed up in fluorescent garb to avoid killing one another (:pray:) and with a number of barking dogs, and then the two chiefs look at one another in disbelief, and one says: "Bunch of fools. They never going to kill anything dressed up like that. All the animals can see and hear them..."
  • Midgley vs Dawkins, Nietzsche, Hobbes, Mackie, Rand, Singer...
    his ode to his former way of life is very sure about its correctness. — Kenosha Kid
    And you are very sure of your own correctness too, so this is nor here nor there... The question of Wayfarer had to do with the meaning of life and final causes as potentially valid questions. It never was about doubting your way of life in some form of extreme existential angst... You keep losing the plot.
  • Midgley vs Dawkins, Nietzsche, Hobbes, Mackie, Rand, Singer...
    Two tribesmen from Papua New Guinea head off on an expedition in the heart of a strange and entirely new kind of civilization: they want to explore everything, taste everything, and try everything - an absurd and wonderful marathon to discover France.
  • Midgley vs Dawkins, Nietzsche, Hobbes, Mackie, Rand, Singer...
    ↪Kenosha Kid
    How is this difference bearing on your question?

    And how the heck are we supposed to know of a tribe who knows of no other existence??????
    :gasp:
  • Midgley vs Dawkins, Nietzsche, Hobbes, Mackie, Rand, Singer...
    I've seen zero evidence that hunter gatherers worry about the meanings of their lives. — Kenosha Kid

    What part of "This concept of life and its relations was humanizing and gave to the Lakota an abiding love. It filled his being with the joy and mystery of living; it gave him reverence for all life; it made a place for all things in the scheme of existence with equal importance to all" did you fail to see, read, or understand?
  • Midgley vs Dawkins, Nietzsche, Hobbes, Mackie, Rand, Singer...
    ↪Kenosha Kid
    Google is your friend. You should have researched your subject earlier.
  • Midgley vs Dawkins, Nietzsche, Hobbes, Mackie, Rand, Singer...
    ↪Kenosha Kid
    You're not listening anyway.
  • Midgley vs Dawkins, Nietzsche, Hobbes, Mackie, Rand, Singer...
    That hunter gatherers do not have existential crises about their ethical or executive freedoms. — Kenosha Kid

    Nope. You said:

    Like morality, the question of what meaning we should find for ourselves arises precisely because we are living in an environment starkly different from anything that had any bearing on our evolution, thus evolution cannot answer the question. Hunter-gatherers likely did not have these profound questions. — Kenosha Kid
    (my bolding)

    I presented quotes about the meaning of our lives, as parts of nature, from a Native American writer, including one directly impinging on the questions raised by this thread ("lack of respect for growing, living things soon lead to a lack of respect for humans").
  • Midgley vs Dawkins, Nietzsche, Hobbes, Mackie, Rand, Singer...
    ↪Kenosha Kid
    The problem is you keep forgetting what your thesis is.
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