# Random Science / Philosophy Quotes



## Myosr

* / History Quotes​


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## Barakiel

I also like this really harsh quote from Ibn Sina (aka Avicenna) :b



> Anyone who denies the law of non-contradiction should be beaten and burned until he admits that to be beaten is not the same as not to be beaten, and to be burned is not the same as not to be burned.


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## Barakiel

Martin Heidegger on qualia:



> We never really first perceive a throng of sensations, e.g. tones and noises, in the appearance of things - as this thing-concept alleges; rather we hear the storm whistling in the chimney, we hear the three-motored plane, we hear the Mercedes in immediate distinction from the Volkswagen. Much closer to us than all sensations are the things themselves. We hear the door shut in the house and never hear acoustical sensations or even mere sounds. In order to hear a bare sound we have to listen away from things, divert our ear from them, i.e., listen abstractly.


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## Barakiel

I'm not done taking over this thread so here's a quote by the American pragmatist C.S. Peirce on the problem with Descartes' method of doubting everything until you find some piece of knowledge you can be absolutely sure about -



> We cannot begin with complete doubt. We must begin with all the prejudices which we actually have when we enter upon the study of philosophy. These prejudices are not to be dispelled by a maxim, for they are things which it does not occur to us can be questioned. Hence this initial skepticism will be a mere self-deception, and not real doubt; and no one who follows the Cartesian method will ever be satisfied until he has formally recovered all those beliefs which in form he has given up&#8230; A person may, it is true, in the course of his studies, find reason to doubt what he began by believing; but in that case he doubts because he has a positive reason for it, and not on account of the Cartesian maxim. Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts.


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## Barakiel

Myosr said:


> ...then intergroup male violence in hominins may have gone from frequent in the earliest species to infrequent when simple hunter-gatherer societies first emerged to *frequent again when human societies became larger, more complex, and more competitive.*
> 
> Source: The Human Career by Richard Klein (Really awesome book btw and works beautifully as a reference).


This is like how agriculture's to blame for so much of the inequality civilizations have right?  if that's true then I don't think even the invention of beer can make up for all the troubles it has brought us.


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## Barakiel

Myosr said:


> Oh, you're into phenomenology? That's interesting. Have you read any books on the philosophy of mind?


Yeah  Not books for the most part, but I have read a number of articles and things online related to analytic philosophy of mind. There's lots of important stuff in that general field don't get me wrong, but I got a bit tired of seeing reductionist talk about "C-fibers firing", among other things. Also I feel like ideas such as eliminative materialism, even if only supported by a small minority, is proof that analytic philosophy isn't something inherently more rational or superior to continential thought.



> In three short papers published in the early sixties,[16][17][18] Feyerabend sought to defend materialism against the supposition that the mind cannot be a physical thing. Feyerabend suggested that our commonsense understanding of the mind was incommensurable with the (materialistic) scientific view, but that nevertheless we ought to prefer the materialistic one on general methodological grounds.


This is the kind of thing that turned me to phenomenology u_u

Sorry my reply turned out to be so polemical. :blank to keep things positive I just remembered that I read Alva Noë a while back, you familiar with him? He has some interesting things to say about consciousness as an activity. He argues it can't be reduced to the brain anymore than dancing can be to the muscles, if that makes sense.



> You can look at the bright side. If the author is right and the environment did make us more violent overall, we can hope that in a future significantly altered by technology, we might become less violent somehow.


Sounds a bit transhumanist (I think?), also I wonder how much psychology could contribute to a better society as well (assuming you didn't include science under your def. of technology)



> I'm not sure whether I should use this thread as I initially wanted to or keep my weird interests and SAS separate. : /


It's impossible for me to to keep them seperate, so I just try to suspend all sense of shame whenever I post this stuff. :lol


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## Barakiel

I just posted some excerpts from this paper on tumblr. I have lots of conflicting feelings towards it - one of the contributors, Barry Smith, has spent the past decade or two applying metaphysical & scientific realist principles to designing ontologies and databases for scientific research, especially in the biomedical field. So clearly he's done a lot of good, but I can't blame anyone for being put off by the elitist attitude he has towards some philosophers (I have to say I agree with him on Derrida though :b)


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There's also a great quote from Russell in there -


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## Barakiel

I read a short biography of the phenomenologist Adolf Reinach, it's really cool how he anticipated so much later developments in analytic philosophy (like Wittgenstein's musings on language, states of affairs, and Austin's speech act theory). There's lots of entertaining bits as well.

Here's the Augustine/Wittgensteinesque discussion on how a child learns language and communication:


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on neo-Kantians:


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relatable:


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## Barakiel

Myosr said:


> Yeah, I like some of the quotes I find from phenomenologists sometimes. I think I was planning to read something by Merleau-Ponty at one point because I liked some of his quotes, but never got to doing it?


I'm reading an introduction to his thought by Lawrence Hass, and I'd highly recommend it if you're still interested in him 

Merleau-Ponty seems to advocate something similar to what Heidegger does in the quote I posted earlier, that qualia, sense-data, pure sensations are _not_ the fundamental building blocks of our perception, but at best, they're abstractions rooted in Cartesianism. The idea is that our perceptions are more holistic and unified and all that.

Also like Dennett he challenges the idea of the Cartesian theater (without using that term I'd imagine). There's a lot of comparisons with other thinkers so it's a neat and fairly short book.


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## Barakiel

“The cosmos is similar to a rave party in some abandoned warehouse along the Spree in East Berlin, where the individual rooms are each surprisingly isolated from all external sources of music, flashing lights, perfumed odors, and dominant moods-but in which it is quite possible to move from one space to the next, and in which the doorways are always flooded with faint premonitions and signals of what is to come.” - Graham Harman, Guerrilla Metaphysics


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## Barakiel

"Today, we live in an age characterized by digital sampling, ecological crises, and the emergence of the posthuman. Whitehead is deeply relevant to our contemporary concerns because he thinks about how novelty can emerge from selective repetition, how all the entities of the world are deeply interrelated and mutually dependent even in their separation from one another, and how nonhuman agents, no less than human ones, perform actions and express needs and values."

— Steven Shaviro, The Universe of Things


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## Barakiel

Werner Heisenberg said:


> I think that modern physics has definitely decided in favor of Plato. In fact the smallest units of matter are not physical objects in the ordinary sense; they are forms, ideas which can be expressed unambiguously only in mathematical language.


I'm not sure whether I agree with him about particles being ideas, but it makes sense to me that matter as we know it isn't simply made up of more matter. That's one of the big differences between classical materialism and modern physics - the ancient atomists conceived atoms as small bits of stuff that behaved exactly like the macroscopic things we encounter everyday, when the reality's far more exciting than that


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## GeomTech

Myosr said:


> It isn't an "either" "or" though. I think both materialism and idealism are anthropocentric. Neither the content of our minds, nor the things we evolved to perceive are the main building blocks of the universe. I think the "fabric of the universe" or whatever may be so alien to us that it's literally impossible for us to ever comprehend it.


Um, I might sound like an idiot or something; so don't hesitate to call me out, and additionally, I convey no feelings of malice. Just curious. I viewed the understanding of the universe as a giant moving variable with loops and unfoldings; with potential trans-humanism being a kind of multiplier; though, I could be wrong; as the understanding of our universe could be non-linear, and thereby using trans-humanism (brain implants, computer integration) could yield in going "off-course". So, we have the non-linear mapping of understanding that fluctuates, and meanders. But then, what of the are fluctuations in the universe as well? I'd probably get called out by referencing this, but I recall some fringe scientist referencing minute changes within the constants of the universe i.e speed of light, and the like. Given these alterations actually occur, I wonder to what extent these changes would change a given model. So, then we have the chasing of a moving target so to speak.

But additionally, what if there was a hypothetical way to somehow integrate enough of the perspectives and viewpoints regarding the universe i.e collaborations with extraterrestials to somehow spew out an abstract general view of the universe? Then, it would make the overarching view a little less anthroprocentric; but we run into another issue of making it life-centric? And who's to say that any of them are even remotely correct? But then, I suppose technological breakthroughs i.e practical applications stemming from the theoretical work could in turn give credence to some aspect of a given model? I would view this as another multiplier as well.

This is even more far-out, but maybe a kind of collaboration with beings in other universes assuming they even exist at all? Another multiplier.

And yes, I know, far-out hypothetical mumbo-jumbo; but maybe we could get at least a little closer if we were able to do the things aforementioned; given that advanced extraterrestials with their own GUT (Grand Unified Theories), and beings in other universes actually exists; and the assumption that we're even able to contact them.

Regarding consciousness; I was under the assumption that it was a pattern of brain activity; but really a kind of pattern of activity in general with emphasis on recursive feedback loops. And Pansychism would be interesting; the idea that everything has mental properties; or some kind of primordial proto-consciousness. Seems consciousness-centric, but oh well. Wonder if there's something else other than consciousness? If this is true, it makes me wonder about the states of other universes, given that they exist. Given that there's matter in those universes, does proto-conscious essence exist inside of it? Or maybe it's something entirely different, and like you mentioned earlier, something incomprehensible. And why would there be a protoconscious essence within matter anway? Maybe due to certain patterns of development in a given universe? And why are universes developing anyway? I don't know.

Sorry for the long-winded post, and sorry if this is annoying or dumb. I was just curious, and thought I could learn a thing or to and explore some ideas.


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## GeomTech

Myosr said:


> I don't want to sound pessimistic, but I actually don't think it's likely that we'll ever meet any aliens. I can't really prove this, but if I had to make a bet, I'd say there are no aliens anywhere in our galaxy or in any of the neighboring galaxies. And I think the reason is probably that some event responsible for our existence now is astronomically rare (Again, if I had to guess, I'd say abiogenesis, but I can't prove that either).
> 
> I'm not sure if you're familiar with the Fermi paradox? If the universe is full of aliens, why haven't we met them already? The Earth has been around for a long time, and there is no evidence that any aliens landed here. There is no evidence of "intelligent" radio transmission anywhere we can observe (and we can observe a large number of galaxies).
> 
> I think the idea that we might create a new form of life (AI or whatever) is much more likely than us actually meeting one that exists "out there".


Hmm... You raise some valid points. I know this point in particular is a weak point, however, couldn't it be possible that they are off exploring other extraterrestrial civilizations; and have thereby have no interest in visiting? Or perhaps their level of advancement is not as advanced as we would like to think? Or maybe they actually have visited us unbeknownst to us long ago without the presence of our modern technology, and hasn't been documented? Or maybe they did visit us, yet have not physically landed; similarly to admiring from afar? But then, one can go the conspiratorial route; which I'm not going to do. Or maybe they did land, explore around in the past, but were disenchanted by our primitivity, and just left to explore some other potential civilization up to their standards; likened to how one (assuming their not a scientist that studies ants) views ants?

And regarding the point about "intelligent" radio transmissions; couldn't it be possible that they use a hypothetical set of technologies seemingly a step above radio? Just pointing that out. Maybe we shouldn't expect technologies possible aliens may have as remotely resembling anything that we've currently churned out? If they are that advanced, then perhaps, given that they live far away; have in fact went through the stages of using radio wave broadcasting; but abandoned it thereafter finding something new; with the time for those radio wave to each our planet being very long?

And I don't know. What do you think of the idea panspermia? The idea that we actually originated from another solar system through the collisions of space rocks; with certain ones containing microbes from other planets?



Myosr said:


> Pansychism is not consciousness-centric at all. The reason I think pansychism makes more sense than idealism, is because idealism is by definition consciousness-centric (It's really hard to prove it wrong by the way!). What are the other options?


Maybe I just had the wrong idea of pansychism? Or I guess I didn't quite clarify or misworded. Perhaps, proto-consciousness - centric, maybe? So you have matter; but matter according to pansychism has the proto-consciousness essence that's pretty much prolific in just about everything. Could be wrong there. I only have a surface-level understanding of these matters, and probably need to read more regarding these topics.

Hmm.



Myosr said:


> Dualism? Well, that's extremely anthropocentric. What makes a human being more special than, say, a rock formation, or a star, to have this "extra thing that isn't really made of substance" (a soul or a spirit).


No disagreements there.



Myosr said:


> Materialism? (or Physicalism, the idea that the universe is made of whatever building blocks the Science of Physics tells us it's made of. And everything else can be completely reduced to those building blocks). My issue with Physicalism is that I've never seen anyone explain how consciousness can possibly emerge out of highly complex collections of physical particles. What is so special about complexity? How does the universe "know" that a human brain is much more "complex" than any random collection of physical particles. And how does the universe "know" that the human brain should have a single "I" or first person view? It's really hard for me to imagine how that can happen.


Hmm. Good points there. That's a tough one; I'd admit; or maybe I just lack understanding? Not a physicalist here, but, I would find that hard to counter. What came to mind was some interaction mechanism involving chaos theory? So, maybe not the collection of physical particles, but that there has to be kind of interaction going on between them; else, nothing arises? But then, one could ask why certain interactions occur; or what initially triggers it, and one could refer back to chaos theory? To be honest, that's a piss-poor explanation on my part. A futile attempt at avoiding saying "I really don't know"; and using the guise of "chaos theory"; as an explanation when it really isn't. I think I'm going to have to ponder a bit more about this.



Myosr said:


> Pansychism is an extremely vague position actually. Because no one really has any idea what proto-consciousness is, or particles interact, and what laws determine "which" systems are conscious and which systems are not.
> 
> Is an electronic functional replica of the human brain conscious? Are insects conscious? Are laptops? Are thermostats? Is a person's immune system, or their digestive system conscious? Is your spinal cord conscious? Is society conscious?
> 
> The intuitive answer to most of those is no. But for me I just don't see how a human being or a human brain is different from any of these systems. I think the laws that govern how consciousness arises must apply to everything, and it should be a completely blind process, depending on basic properties of the building blocks of the universe.


Understandable. And I'd add that perhaps the consciousness (assuming it's there) regarding those systems are differentiated into degrees of consciousness? Like, there exists a kind of "consciousness value" that is present within these different systems; however it seems like a black box to me. And I wouldn't know how to actually measure it either; which I think you address later on.



Myosr said:


> So, to give an example. A ball has mass, and it exerts gravitational force following the same law that governs how a planet attracts objects. The gravity of a planet doesn't "emerge" simply because we added a lot of particles to a small region of space. Every particle exerts a gravitational force. It just only becomes noticeable if you have a huge mass.
> 
> So, I'm not saying that every electron has a personality, or that particles are aware of their existence. I'm just saying that whatever makes us conscious, is probably rooted in some property in fundamental particles that we cannot describe using Physics. And that we can never study the laws that govern how that property "adds up" to form conscious creatures like ourselves using Physics. (We probably can't study those laws, period. Since I don't think consciousness can be detected or differentiated from blind empty-from-the-inside intelligent behavior).
> 
> I think another theory that makes more sense to me than Dualism or Physicalism is called Monism, which says that both the physical and the mental are made of the same stuff. (which sounds very close to Panpsychism imo).
> 
> I am of course a layman, and I my understanding of these things is probably inaccurate. So, don't take my word for any of this.
> 
> I think the philosopher that made me really skeptical of the prevailing Physicalist worldview is David Chalmers. I really like some of his writings.


I see the dilemma now. A can of worms so speak. Lol.


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## GeomTech

Myosr said:


> I have no idea if other universes exist. If I had to guess, I'd say there is probably an infinite number of universes. Why do I say that? Mostly because of how it seems like the Physical constants seem fine-tuned in our universe? Also, the fact that it doesn't go infinitely back in time. These two facts make me wonder about our existence. It seems pretty unlikely if only one universe ever existed, and isn't eternal. I mean what are the odds?
> 
> Of course speaking of odds and probability when talking about universes is probably not very meaningful. I just find it more intuitive to assume that there's an infinite number of universes popping into existence all the time, and that there's nothing really special about our universe (where stars can form) or our existence (see: the Anthropic principle).
> 
> Anyway, I think regardless of whether or not other universes exist, I think that we will never know the answer or come into contact with them. (because if we do, it means those are just parts of the same universe). I think for something to qualify as a separate universe, it has to be unreachable by definition. Otherwise, it's not a very useful distinction.


I see what you're doing, or at least I think? Pardon me if I'm wrong, but you're using the universe as a variable for what we know or what we know to be accessible in respect to a certain time? So if we were in the days of ancient civilizations, the prevailing "universe" at that time would be analogous to the solar system; as they were aware of nearby planets; and probably nothing else; or at least they thought it encompassed everything?

Hmm. Well, I had the impression that we could simply apply another meta-level, and call the entire system a "multi-verse"; therein housing a variable number (possibly infinite like you said) universes. Likened to a kind of nesting mechanism that just regresses (not sure)? Upon thinking further about this, I am curious at to why something has to qualify as a separate universe, it has to be unreachable? Not sure how valid doing this is (probably a fallacy); but I used the analogy of a planet in relation to a solar system could be likened to a universe inside of a multi-verse. However, what properties of a universe bar us from doing that; assuming it's incorrect to do so. Maybe these structures in of themselves aren't entirely correct in the first place?

Um, also another question. This may be a dumb question, but given that there are other universes, and they are popping in and out of existence; why is this? Is there some kind of morphing mechanism that makes a universe unreachable, because we cannot capture dynamism in a single snapshot? Or is there some kind of multiplicative effect going on? Appears to be a giant experiment with whatever parameters are general with respect to a given universe.



Myosr said:


> It's okay, lol. I haven't formally studied philosophy or cosmology. I'm pretty sure my opinions on these issues are mostly intuitions and impressions rather than justifiable philosophical positions. But anyone can have an opinion, right? : P


I suppose so.


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## GeomTech

GeomTech said:


> I see what you're doing, or at least I think? Pardon me if I'm wrong, but you're using the universe as a variable for what we know or what we know to be accessible in respect to a certain time? So if we were in the days of ancient civilizations, the prevailing "universe" at that time would be analogous to the solar system; as they were aware of nearby planets; and probably nothing else; or at least they thought it encompassed everything?
> 
> Hmm. Well, I had the impression that we could simply apply another meta-level, and call the entire system a "multi-verse"; therein housing a variable number (possibly infinite like you said) universes. Likened to a kind of nesting mechanism that just regresses (not sure)? Upon thinking further about this, I am curious at to why something has to qualify as a separate universe, it has to be unreachable? Not sure how valid doing this is (probably a fallacy); but I used the analogy of a planet in relation to a solar system could be likened to a universe inside of a multi-verse. However, what properties of a universe bar us from doing that; assuming it's incorrect to do so. Maybe these structures in of themselves aren't entirely correct in the first place?
> 
> Um, also another question. This may be a dumb question, but given that there are other universes, and they are popping in and out of existence; why is this? Is there some kind of morphing mechanism that makes a universe unreachable, because we cannot capture dynamism in a single snapshot? Or is there some kind of multiplicative effect going on? Appears to be a giant experiment with whatever parameters are general with respect to a given universe.
> 
> I suppose so.


Oh, and one other thing. I acknowledge that all of my musings about advanced ETs, and multiverses are just far-out conjectures. There is no evidence of either of these things, but I wanted to share a plan (crappy one at that) as to how one might be able to slither ever so closely to accounting for as to how the universe (seemingly finite collections of galaxies and much more) may function.

Still wondering about physicalism, and thinking through those glaring holes present within it, however. What of emergentism; or the idea that the reducible parts of a system is not the system itself? Ah, but it still falls short in that the boundary or "sweet spot" in which consciousness is said to emerge according to the theory itself is still ambiguous at best. Perhaps there is a dimension between the two extremes of no consciousness and consciousness; given that such a scale exists.

Still doesn't explain why complexity is so special, however. I was thinking it vaguely resembled a splintering, fluctuating, symbiotic interaction between non-linearity and order with a scale in between the ideal extremes. It still evades the question, however.

Or maybe the universe doesn't "know"that something is complex or not; likened to an experiment like say, evolution (which we are a product of). What comes first is the figurative force of non-linearity; but the interaction of an instance of non-linearity somehow meshes with an instance of order, or the structuring of systems. I truly don't know. And I don't know why there is emergence, or any of this, to be frank.

As for the theory of panspermia; perhaps what is actually rare is the yielding of intelligent conscious life like that of ourselves, and not the permeation of microbes and bacteria in the cosmos. Perhaps what happens is a seeming asynchronous, cyclical pattern in which intelligent life does develop; and the lifeforms may or may not leave their home planet. After a while, either due to cosmic disaster or collective disharmony amongst the lifeforms, they are eventually wiped out. If the lifeforms do splinter off, and happens to colonize other planets, I predict the pattern may repeat in that case as well. Through the destruction of a given planet, the fragmented remnants of the planet meanders throughout space; colliding with other objects in the cosmos until the pattern repeats once again. But what most likely happens is that if there does happen to be extraterrestial life, it's most likely "unintelligent" animals that never happen to leave their home planet or better yet, develop any kind of civilization at all.


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## Persephone The Dread

Myosr said:


> I should've added " / History" to the title, but whatever.
> 
> ---
> 
> I was reading a book on life in ancient Egypt, and I came across this quote from Herodotus (the Greek historian):
> 
> I thought for a moment that he was saying the men were feminized, but the last sentence he said they weren't allowed to be priests, so he probably just thought the people had weird habits. Still sounds funny though.


That's very interesting, especially the part about toilet stuff (not sure if that's accurate or if he was assuming that based on other things.)


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## Barakiel

I'm getting all of this from the Wikipedia page on Graham Harman (the article seems well-researched so hope that's not a problem :um)



> According to Harman, everything is an object, whether it be a mailbox, a shadow, spacetime, a fictional character, or the Commonwealth of Nations.
> 
> Harman defines real objects as inaccessible and infinitely withdrawn from all relations and then puzzles over how such objects can be accessed or enter into relations: "by definition, there is no direct access to real objects. Real objects are incommensurable with our knowledge, untranslatable into any relational access of any sort, cognitive or otherwise. Objects can only be known indirectly. And this is not just the fate of humans - it's the fate of everything. Fire burns cotton stupidly ..."





> Central to Harman's philosophy is the idea that real objects are inexhaustible: "A police officer eating a banana reduces this fruit to a present-at-hand profile of its elusive depth, as do a monkey eating the same banana, a parasite infecting it, or a gust of wind blowing it from a tree. Banana-being is a genuine reality in the world, a reality never exhausted by any relation to it by humans or other entities." (Harman 2005: 74). Because of this inexhaustibility, claims Harman, there is a metaphysical problem regarding how two objects can ever interact. His solution to this problem is to introduce the notion of "vicarious causation", according to which objects can only ever interact on the inside of an "intention" (which is also an object).





> Cutting across the phenomenological tradition, and especially its linguistic turn, Harman deploys a brand of metaphysical realism that attempts to extricate objects from their human captivity and metaphorically allude to a strange subterranean world of "vacuum-sealed" objects-in-themselves: "The comet itself, the monkey itself, Coca-Cola itself, resonate in cellars of being where no relation reaches."





> Expressing strong sympathy for panpsychism, Harman proposes a new philosophical discipline called "speculative psychology" dedicated to investigating the "cosmic layers of psyche" and "ferreting out the specific psychic reality of earthworms, dust, armies, chalk, and stone."





> Harman rejects scientism on account of its anthropocentrism: "For them, raindrops know nothing and lizards know very little, and some humans are more knowledgeable than others."


I love how the speculative realists have all these interesting theories about ordinary things and objects. It's the same appeal phenomenology had for Sartre -


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## novalax

Barakiel said:


> I'm getting all of this from the Wikipedia page on Graham Harman (the article seems well-researched so hope that's not a problem :um)
> 
> I love how the speculative realists have all these interesting theories about ordinary things and objects. It's the same appeal phenomenology had for Sartre -
> 
> 
> * *


seems almost like platonic forms.


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## Barakiel

novalax said:


> seems almost like platonic forms.


Personally I was reminded of Kantian "things-in-themselves" but that makes sense too. There's another quote from Harman that sheds more light on that -



> Then contra Husserl, the usual manner of things is not to appear as phenomena, but to withdraw into an unnoticed subterranean realm. Heidegger says that we generally notice equipment only when it somehow fails. [&#8230;] For there is already a failure of sorts when I simply turn my attention towards entities, reflecting consciously on my bodily organs or the solid floor of my home. [&#8230;] There will always be aspects of these phenomena that elude me [&#8230;]. No matter how hard I work to become conscious of things, environing conditions still remain of which I never become fully aware. [&#8230;] This reality slips from view into a perceptually veiled underworld, leaving me with only the most frivolous simulacra of these entities. In short, the phenomenal reality of things for consciousness does not use up their being. The readiness-to-hand of an entity is not exhaustively deployed in its presence-at-hand.


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## Barakiel

It annoys me when people who claim to be "pro-science" only have in mind physics, chemistry, and molecular biology (looking at u Alexander Rosenberg). I'd argue that a respectful view of science presupposes a belief in granularity or emergentism in nature. The "only atoms and the void" viewpoint is as much of an attack on ecology, linguistics, and astronomy as it is on common sense.


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## discoveryother

​


Barakiel said:


> It annoys me when people who claim to be "pro-science" only have in mind physics, chemistry, and molecular biology (looking at u Alexander Rosenberg). I'd argue that a respectful view of science presupposes a belief in granularity or emergentism in nature. The "only atoms and the void" viewpoint is as much of an attack on ecology, linguistics, and astronomy as it is on common sense.


why? its instrumental. it doesn't need to be common sense.

why granularity and emergentism? emergence is bs.


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## Barakiel

andy1984thesecond said:


> ​
> why? its instrumental. it doesn't need to be common sense.
> 
> why granularity and emergentism? emergence is bs.


I had in mind Sir Eddington's "two tables" argument:



> In his Gifford Lectures of 1927, he talked about two tables. First, the table of everyday experience: it is comparatively permanent, it is coloured, and above all it is substantial. Second, the table of science: it is mostly emptiness with numerous, sparsely-scattered electric charges rushing about with great speed.


There's the implication that he saw the everyday commonsense table as a convenient fiction at best. This would be an attack on not just commonsense, but the kinds of sciences I mentioned. That's why I feel some form of nonreductionism is necessary if you wanna take the existence of forests, languages, or galaxies seriously.


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## discoveryother

Barakiel said:


> I had in mind Sir Eddington's "two tables" argument:
> 
> There's the implication that he saw the everyday commonsense table as a convenient fiction at best. This would be an attack on not just commonsense, but the kinds of sciences I mentioned. That's why I feel some form of nonreductionism is necessary if you wanna take the existence of forests, languages, or galaxies seriously.


seems like playing esoteric games to me. system building. metaphysics. making stuff up. I don't see the point in it.


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## Barakiel

andy1984thesecond said:


> seems like playing esoteric games to me. system building. metaphysics. making stuff up. I don't see the point in it.


I'm not sure who you're criticising here - the reductionist who insists everyday objects don't 'really exist', someone like Graham Harman (or me) who wants to defend their reality, or perhaps all of us for taking up positions on a metaphysical issue?

The thing is though, I like metaphysics! Old school metaphysical concepts (like that of particulars vs universals) have useful applications in areas like applied ontology. Even if elaborate systems aren't your thing, I think there are some basic metaphysical assumptions you just can't help but make when you get up in the morning and proceed to move about thru the world.


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## discoveryother

Barakiel said:


> I'm not sure who you're criticising here - the reductionist who insists everyday objects don't 'really exist', someone like Graham Harman (or me) who wants to defend their reality, or perhaps all of us for taking up positions on a metaphysical issue?
> 
> The thing is though, I like metaphysics! Old school metaphysical concepts (like that of particulars vs universals) have useful applications in areas like applied ontology. Even if elaborate systems aren't your thing, I think there are some basic metaphysical assumptions you just can't help but make when you get up in the morning and proceed to move about thru the world.


yeah ok. I wasn't criticizing anything. I don't play soccer either. its just not my thing.

my basic idea is that I'm not interested in what people suppose they are talking about when they talk about some "thing". the only Things I know are what I experience. it even pains me to say that. language lives in language land, things live in thing land. what I mean is there are personal things directly experienced, and part of the content of that experience is where language and talking about things reside. whatever content gets created - thoughts about things, whatever - its not verifiable against the brute fact things of experience. its just a supposed interaction between pieces of content. but interpretation of anything as an interaction is itself a piece of content, because we infer interaction, we don't experience it directly.

so there's that. and since we're talking pleasantly, we're not in thing land, this is all content, language. I can verify that it exists as an object of my consciousness, I can create more content about that content (those ideas about some supposed thing) eg that they are correct ideas about a really existing thing. but I can't elevate any content above any other content because all I can say is it exists, I am experiencing it. the content itself can say just about whatever it likes - that jesus came back to life, that a dingo ate my baby, any ****ing thing. just because it exists doesn't make it true, and just because some other content exists which says the previously mentioned content is true doesn't make this content true.

so yes I reduce the true true to lived experience, and the personal true to whatever the particular person thinks is true, and the objective true to whatever the people concerned agree on.

and then also, getting out of bed doesn't require any logic at all. a cat can get off a bed, so can a flea. they both move about just fine.


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## novalax

andy1984thesecond said:


> seems like playing esoteric games to me. system building. metaphysics. making stuff up. I don't see the point in it.


I see we have a logical positivist. I always liked the grand thoughts of system building, makes for a fun read.


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## discoveryother

novalax said:


> I see we have a logical positivist. I always liked the grand thoughts of system building, makes for a fun read.


am not :b

I'm a spiritualist. if you're gonna make stuff up its better to go all in


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## novalax

andy1984thesecond said:


> am not :b
> 
> I'm a spiritualist. if you're gonna make stuff up its better to go all in


Darn, Im down with logical positivism. Nothing against spiritualism though lol


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## 0589471




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## Barakiel

So I've looked a bit into evolutionary psychology in the past, reading articles and blog posts by people like Robert Kurzban addressing some of the common criticisms. Based on what I've read -

1. Evopsychologists explicitly deny making claims about the behavior or intentions of individuals (i.e. even if cultural activities like music and science evolved through sexual selection, that doesn't give you the right to say that all musicians and scientists are "only in it to get laid" or w/e).

2. The average evopsychologist probably isn't trying to legitimize reactionary politics. There certainly have been a few before, but other evopsychologists are usually quick to denounce them. 

Nevertheless there are still some ways they live up to common stereotypes, like there are actual academic articles analyzing sexy song lyrics, the popularity of romance novels, the way females and males speak to each other etc. and trying to draw evolutionary conclusions based on cultural phenomena. If my understanding of natural selection in general is correct, then I'd say the legitimate objects of evopsych research involve perceptual systems, cognitive abilities, problem solving, things we mostly share with other species and have for as long as we've been around. Yet there are some evopsychologists who seem eager to explain absolutely everything cultural in evolutionary terms.

If even the most recent adaptations are still in the process of developing after thousands of years (lactose tolerance), then why should cultural changes that take place over centuries or decades be open to direct evolutionary explanation?


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## Barakiel

@Myosr I suppose the virtue of this "narrow sense" is that it has some clear, predefined limits.
I wonder then what advocates of this narrow-sense think of those who engage in broad-sense theorizing then, like do they see that kind of activity (analyzing song lyrics or romance novel sells) as a legitimate counterpart to what they're doing or more as something that gives EP a bad name?

Also the Robert Kurzban fellow I mentioned earlier is an advocate of the modular mind hypothesis, if I remember correctly he thinks it can explain hypocrisy and double standards. Apparently the ability for us to hold conflicting views is evidence of the mind being divided in such a way (so the brain engages in literal compartmentalization basically), not sure how I feel about that though.


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## Barakiel

Random thought for today - I think it's interesting the way we can have perspectives on abstract concepts in a way roughly parallel with how we view 3D objects. To use an example from Dan Zahavi, "Niels Bohr's hometown" and "the capital of Denmark" is the abstract equivalent of viewing the same statue from different angles.


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## Barakiel

The ontologist Barry Smith has some really interesting articles on common sense. I totally agree with him that common sense is a fallible but indispensable key to making any sense of reality, and personally I feel like thinkers should stop treating the violation of common sense as if it were an inherent virtue.

Towards an Ontology of Common Sense



> Philosophers from Plotinus to Paul Churchland have yielded to the temptation to embrace doctrines which contradict the core beliefs of common sense. Philosophical realists have on the other hand sought to counter this temptation and to vindicate those core beliefs. The remarks which follow are to be understood as a further twist of the wheel in this never-ending battle. They pertain to the core beliefs of common sense concerning the external reality that is given in everyday experience -the beliefs of folk physics, as we might call them. Just as critics of Churchland et al. have argued that the folk-psychological ontology of beliefs, desires, etc. yields the best explanation we can have of the order of cognitive phenomena conceived from the perspective of first-person experience, so we shall argue that (1) the commonsensical ontology of folk physics yields the best explanation we can have of our externally directed cognitive experience and that (2) an ontology of mesoscopic things, events and processes must play a role, in particular, in our best scientific theory of human action.


Structures of the Common-Sense World



> While contemporary philosophers have devoted vast amounts of attention to the language we use in describing and finding our way about the world of everyday experience, they have, with few exceptions, refused to see this world itself as a fitting object of theoretical concern. In what follows I shall seek to show how the commonsensical world might be treated ontologically as an object of investigation in its own right. At the same time I shall seek to establish how such a treatment might help us better philosophically to understand the structures of both physical reality and cognition.


Do Mountains Exist? Towards an Ontology of Landforms



> The authors begin the paper with the question 'Do mountains exist?' They show that providing an answer to this question is surprisingly difficult and that the answer that one gives depends on the context in which the question is posed. Mountains clearly exist as real correlates of everyday human thought and action, and they form the archetype for geographic objects. Yet individual mountains lack many of the properties that characterize bona fide objects, and 'mountains' as a category also lacks many of the properties that characterize natural kinds. In the context of scientific modeling of the environment, especially of such phenomena as surface hydrology and fluvial erosion and deposition, mountains are not picked out as constituents of reality in their own right at all; rather, they are just parts of the field of elevations whose gradients shape the direction of runoff and influence the intensity of erosion. Thus, although an object-based ontology of mountains and other landforms is required to do justice to our everyday conceptions of the environment and to support spatial reasoning and natural language processing, topographic databases designed to support environmental modeling can be field-based at geographic scales.





> Do mountains exist? The answer to this question is surely: yes. In fact, 'mountain' is the example of a kind of geographic feature or thing most commonly cited by English speakers (Mark et al., 1999; Smith and Mark 2001), and this result may hold across many languages and cultures. But whether they are considered as individuals (tokens) or as kinds (types), mountains do not exist in quite the same unequivocal sense as do such prototypical everyday objects as chairs or people.


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## Barakiel

Apparently the Necker cube is supposed to be ambiguous, but I almost always see this particular one as facing southwest. I can see it the other way with enough concentration, but I can never 'hold' that view for very long. What about y'all?


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## Barakiel

There's a certain Youtuber/Redditor who has a lot of informative philosophy videos with (as far as I'm aware) no experience in academic philosophy. He's also a Pyrrhonist skeptic who claims to suspend judgement on _everything._ In other words he claims not to believe or disbelieve in anything. For example, in a Reddit post he says he doesn't believe that he will die, and he doesn't believe he will live forever either. He suspends judgement on this as he does with everything else (supposedly) and says this brings him _ataraxia_. By doing this he's going much further than Sextus Empiricus ever did, who thought the skeptical attitude was limited to controversial theoretical/scientific/philosophical issues, not our everyday beliefs.

There's something disturbing about this right? I've seen him approach political and social issues with great care and understanding, and yet if he is to be consistent, he must suspend judgement on whether or not other people even exist (I haven't come across anything by him discussing this specifically though).

There's an objection that a skeptic, when faced with an on-coming car in the middle of the road, will jump out of the way just like everyone else, and so we can conclude that he holds at least a few beliefs himself. This person's response is to say that skeptics can act on 'proclivities' without necessarily acting on beliefs, enabling the skeptic to avoid danger all while remaining philosophically consistent.

My own objection is that he's assuming that proclivities are something entirely different from and independent of beliefs, and if the skeptic is to be consistent, they should suspend judgement on this issue. But then they're left with no defense (which they shouldn't have in the first place going by their own rules).

I really think cases like these, as with radical eliminativists who insist there's no such thing as meaning whatsoever (including semantic or "purely subjective" meaning), demonstrate that reason has her limits, and that we have to have faith in _something_ if we're to make sense of anything at all. This is basically what St. Augustine argued and I completely agree, though his 'something' was God, and I'm not entirely sure what mine is.


----------



## MadnessVertigo

"Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim." -George Santayana


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## Barakiel

Myosr said:


> I read a book a long time ago that was based on this guy's idea of root metaphors / World hypotheses. I really like the idea (that everyone has a "root metaphor"), though I never could get hold of the actual book by Stephen Pepper.
> 
> The guy is fairly obscure though. His Wikipedia page is empty, and he's barely mentioned in a few Stanford Encyclopedia articles. :roll


My therapist is lending me that very book actually, and I've been meaning to return it since I'm probably gonna switch to somebody else soon :um

I suppose you mention him 'cause of his takedown of the "utter skeptic" in the first chapter? That's the only part of the book I read in full tbh, everything else I know comes from skimming later chapters or reading reviews.

Yeah, it's always disappointing to stumble across some interesting thinker only to learn how obscure their work is. His book has over 3000 citations according to Google Scholar, which isn't all that bad so I wonder why the articles on him are so empty.

I like the way he ends the book:

"_Am I not dogmatically undogmatic?_ I leave that for the reader to judge from the evidence".


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## Barakiel

I ordered a book by Avrum Stroll that's all about Surfaces, the kind of thing cubes, tables, planets, and lakes all seem to have. "...a surface-analysis, paradoxically enough, can carry us to the deepest levels of these problems" - problems dealing with perception, common-sense and the like.

I think this is a fascinating example of how philosophy can shed light on even the most mundane of things. Also I'm curious how many surface puns are in the book (already in the intro you have: "But even these queries scratch only the surface"), guess I'll have to wait and find out. :um


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## Barakiel

I'd never heard of Henri Atlan before, but the subtitle of this book was enough to catch my attention and led me to decide right then and there that I had to take it home with me.



















One of the blurbs on the back talks about him reconciling freedom and determinism, so I figured he was a compatibilitist. But I was disappointed to learn that he ultimately considers free will to be illusory and, like Spinoza, he believes that realizing this and learning more about our determined fate is what 'true freedom' really consists of. Or something like that.

Is it bad that this kind of killed my interest in reading the book? I did give it another try today, but got stuck and confused with one section about Jewish mythology.


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## Barakiel

Tonight my biology professor told us how much he enjoyed the Creation Museum we have here, how he was fascinated by their arguments without believing in them, and it was completely sincere. I’m always amazed by how open minded other people turn out to be, and it makes me feel real ashamed of how frequently I’m simply annoyed by opposing views.


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## Barakiel

I think the main thing that disturbs me about behaviorism (besides its denial of free will) is its desire to completely erase the concept of _reason(s)_ from any consideration into human or animal behavior.

When you read anything written by a behaviorist, you're likely to find the term 'folk psychology' or 'mentalism' tossed around purely as an pejorative. It seems like it's the part of training of any professional behaviorist to develop an antipathy towards folk psychology, i.e. our everyday way of thinking about and explaining our behavior.

If I say, "I want to go to the movies" and end up going to the movies, most of us would agree that my wanting or desire to go had _something_ to do with me actually going to the movies. This is a folk psychological explanation, which behaviorists have absolutely no respect for. They wouldn't deny that I wanted to go, but they would deny that it had _anything_ to do with me going - behavior is to be explained purely in terms of environmental variables basically, if that makes sense. So I think there's a lot of truth to the stereotype that they see us and animals in a really mechanical way.

The thing is, behaviorists regularly complain in their journals about being misunderstood by mainstream cognitive psychology, and to a certain extent they're right. I've seen several philosophers or psychologists declare "behaviorism is dead" only to be mocked by behaviorists for saying that (in an academically acceptable kind of way of course). I came across an article that was dedicated entirely to examining introductory psychology textbooks, and complaining about the misconceptions of behaviorism in there. Many mainstream psychologists simply don't know that behaviorism is still a thriving school of psychology (although behaviorists prefer "science of behavior" or "behavioral analysis" to "psychology) - they may know about applied behavior analysis (ABA) and how it's a common treatment for autistic children (itself a pretty controversial thing I think), but they aren't aware of the growing number of behaviorists who are attacking the very foundations of their field, mainstream psychology, in their own journals.

To elaborate on that last point - behaviorists see mainstream psychology as being too much influenced by folk psychology. A lot of the concepts behind mainstream therapies like CBT are criticized for relying on "hypothetical constructs", basically another pejorative you'll find in behaviorist papers. For example I came across an article by a behaviorist complaining about the distinction between "intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation" and basically the concept of "motivation" in general being used to explain behavior, because again behaviorists don't like the idea of behavior being caused by thoughts or feelings.

I did come across one behaviorist (M. Jackson Marr) who seems to have a bit more respect than others for our ordinary ways of talking and thinking about ourselves, it was relieving to see a behaviorist say things like this:



> These essential aspects of human behavior [wants, intentions, and purposes] referred to by Hacker, and many others, are facts, not fictions, and the task of a behavioral science is not to dismiss them as wrong-headed, but to incorporate them properly and attempt to understand the controlling variables, including verbal history, that bring them about.





> ...to deny the role of, say, contemplating, recollecting, day-dreaming, and much of what we call problem solving as activities with causal outcomes would be perverse. Because we spend most of our waking hours in such activities, there are numberless examples. How, for example, would we account for the moves we see in a chess match? Would we say that the players were doing nothing between moves because we saw no overt movements? Perhaps *even worse* is to assert something like, "We can never know exactly what the players were doing (whatever it is, it's not "external"), so we must
> dismiss such 'private events' as being improper in a science of behavior."





> Let's face it, "mind" and "mental" do have proper uses in the
> language and cannot be dismissed tout court, especially by a behavioral science
> which claims to be "thoroughgoing."


found at: https://www.researchgate.net/public...CAPE_OF_METAPHYSICS_COMMENTARY_ON_BURGOS_2016

But still, the fact that he has to come out and defend innocent words like "mind" and "mental" really demonstrates how his fellow behaviorists view those concepts as explanations for behavior.

This is partly why I'm interested in phenomenology, or those articles by Barry Smith examining common sense in a respectful way (folk psychology would fall under common sense). Our ordinary ways of thinking about the world (and that includes us) are far from infallible, but they are an indispensable and precious part of how we make sense of anything, science being just one way we do that. The idea that things are "out there" and continue to exist even when we aren't observing them is just one example of how common sense and science overlap. The similarities cognitive psychology shares with folk psychology shouldn't be thought of as the result of bad theory, but rather just another way science and common sense mutually depend on each other.


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## Barakiel

Sorry for the late reply @Myosr , I read your post but had some trouble replying to it.



Myosr said:


> How do you imagine 'human beings' would be understood scientifically, say, 500 years from now (assuming a steady scientific progress)?


I really can't imagine the details, but I can at least say that I'd expect a revolution or paradigm shift in (neuro)psychology. Or perhaps more than a few of those, considering how there's already quite a few paradigms competing against each other at the moment.



> My personal bet would not be on either theories about the mental or behavioral, but on studying the brain itself, and not as a biological organ, *but in terms of information* and the correlation of that information with behavior and with verbal reports about mental states (that sounds like some kind of behaviorism too, right? : P ).


My understanding is this is basically the whole idea behind cognitive neuroscience. I did mention behaviorists having a mechanistic view of us, but at the same time they're non-reductionistic in that they see behavior as something a whole organism does. We may not be able to walk without our legs, but that doesn't mean it's really our legs that walk, walking's ultimately something we do. They believe the same thing about thinking and perceiving, that those are behaviors we engage it. I mention this 'cause a lot of neuroscientists seem to believe that brains themselves do the thinking, seeing, etc, and perhaps that might be the main conflict between behaviorism and what you describe.

Btw a while back I came across a positive review of that "World Hypotheses" book by a couple of behaviorists who found it relevant. They identified behaviorism as belong both to a "mechanistic" and "contextualist" worldview if I remember correctly.

Also, I think I basically understand what you say about us knowing each other far better than computers do, and how perhaps that's the main reason computers being able to calculate large numbers so quickly doesn't really faze us or make us feel inadequate or something.

One of the articles by Barry Smith I posted about earlier talks about the task of teaching AI naive physics, the whole idea being that if you want a robot to interact with doors or anything like humans do everyday, it would be more fruitful to teach it the kind of unconscious understanding of physics we rely on than the more sophisticated, mathematical kind. I guess I'm not too worried about the future you describe because in order for AI to surpass humanity, I'm convinced they would have to become human themselves in a way - and folk psychology wouldn't necessarily be discarded (Hopefully that made sense).


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## Gunarchist

If an act isn't immoral, it shouldn't be illegal.


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## Barakiel

Alfred North Whitehead said:


> ... There is clear evidence that certain operations of certain animal bodies depend upon the foresight of an end and the purpose to attain it. It is no solution of the problem to ignore this evidence because other operations have been explained in terms of physical and chemical laws. The existence of a problem is not even acknowledged. It is vehemently denied. Many a scientist has patiently designed experiments for the*purpose*of substantiating his belief that animal operations are motivated by no purposes. He has perhaps spent his spare time in writing articles to prove that human beings are as other animals so that "purpose" is a category irrelevant for the explanation of their bodily activities, his own activities included. Scientists animated by the purpose of proving that they are purposeless constitute an interesting subject for study.


/


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## Barakiel

I've been relating to Darwin a bit lately..



















"But I am very poorly today and very stupid and hate everybody and everything."

https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwi...nd-the-terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-day


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## 8888




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## Persephone The Dread

I posted this in the general discussion quote thread before remembering this thread:



> Sample 4 also included feeling thermometer ratings of frogs and robots. *Although robots and frogs are not the typical targets of prejudice,* their inclusion allows us to examine whether Agreeableness was associated with negative interpersonal or intergroup attitudes specifically,





> In Sample 4, Agreeableness was unrelated to "prejudice" ratings of frogs, r(480) = .04, p = .462, and was weakly and positively related to "prejudice" ratings of robots, r(483) = .09, p = .041 (this weak positive relationship is opposite of what one would expect if low Agreeableness is associated with a general negativity bias).


https://sci-hub.se/10.1177/0146167219832335

:haha

I don't know why the frog thing just makes me laugh. Kekistanis will be happy.

Are cats liquid?



> Historically, the popular distinction between states of matter has been made based on qualitative differences in bulk properties. Solid is the state in which matter maintains a fixed volume and shape; liquid is the state in which matter maintains a fixed volume but adapts to the shape of its container; and gas is the state in which matter expands to occupy whatever volume is available. Following these common sense definitions, a meta-study untitled "Cats are liquids" was recently published on boredpanda.com. I propose here to check if the panda's claim that the cats are liquid is solid, by using the tools of modern rheology.


https://www.drgoulu.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Rheology-of-cats.pdf


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## Barakiel

Gunarchist said:


> If an act isn't immoral, it shouldn't be illegal.


I agree, but what about the opposite? I think adultery is immoral, but I don't think it should be illegal. It oughta be a legally recognized ground for divorce, but that isn't the same as being criminal. Am I being inconsistent for thinking this way? :um


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## Barakiel

*reposting this from my tumblr*

Here are two competing views on the topic of essence in mathematics. I think Aristotle would argue that whenever we ask _what_ something _is_, we're interested in its essence.

Timothy Gowers:


* *















emphasis on the last paragraph:

* *















Adolf Reinach:


* *















Summary of his lecture:

* *















I think this might be one of the problems people have with mathematics - they really want to know "what" they're dealing with but don't get those answers. "It is the pride of mathematicians not to know - in its material essence - that of which they speak".

When I first read Gowers' "Very Short Introduction" to Mathematics I was disappointed with how he just gave the algorithm for getting logarithms and purposely didn't explain 'what' a logarithm actually is I feel like a got a better understanding of that when I googled it and found a short definition. :/


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## Barakiel

@SorryForMyEnglish


----------



## SorryForMyEnglish

Barakiel said:


> @SorryForMyEnglish


No, thanks. I'd rather stick to books because there's much more interesting stuff in them. This is for kids who hate philosophy and can't wait to finish the class.


----------



## sanpellegrino

We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry. - W.B. Yeats


----------



## Barakiel

Karl Popper said:


> "It is important to realize that science does not make assertions about ultimate questions - about the riddles of existence, or about man's task in the world. This has often been well understood. But some great scientists, and many lesser ones, have misunderstood the situation. The fact that science cannot make any pronouncement about ethical principles has been misinterpreted as indicating that there are no such principles while in fact the search for truth presupposes ethics." (Karl Popper, Dialectica 32: 342)


Hilary Putnam makes the point that science presupposes _epistemic_ values like clarity, relative simplicity, explanatory power, etc. I'm not sure about morality unless Popper is using 'ethics' in a broad sense.



Martha Nussbaum said:


> One sentence in Leviticus condemns some (male) homosexual acts. Hundreds of sentences in both Testaments condemn greed. And yet we do not hear that the greedy, or those who perform greedy acts, are an infestation in our community, that they are subverting our cherished values, and that a compelling interest in public morality leads us to deny them equal civil rights.
> - Martha Nussbaum, Hiding from Humanity


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## Barakiel

On holding on to anger:

“…By doing this you are like a man who wants to hit another and picks up a burning ember or excrement in his hand and so first burns himself or makes himself stink.”
Buddhaghosa, Visuddhimagga IX, 23

I want to try keeping this in mind from now on, I have a bad habit of getting burnt and stinky tbh.


----------



## Barakiel

Peter Hacker and Maxwell Bennett on Aristotle, the soul, and modern neuroscience:

* *

























David Woodruff Smith on how Husserl's ontology unites our physical, conscious, and cultural selves:


* *


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## Barakiel

T.L. Short, Peirce's Theory of Signs:


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## Barakiel

"My book is dedicated to Thomas Prufer because so much of it is a record of my conversation with him. His suggestions about details have removed blemishes, satisfied some deficiencies, and improved expression; the thoughts that support the book I have learned from or with him. As the Philosopher says, 'with friends men are more able to think and to act.'"

Just about every philosopher I've read recently credits casual conversation with people like this, it's one of the many things that I find inspiring yet makes me loathe my social isolation all the more.


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## Barakiel

Erwin Straus about 50 years ago -



> The physiology of the brain&#8230;ignores the possessive-relationship; it replaces-generally without giving an account of it-my, your, or his [her] brain with a or with the brain&#8230;the reference to the possessive relationship may not be dismissed as a sentimental claim&#8230;the elimination of the possessive relationship distorts the phenomena, narrows down the problem area, and thus tacitly anticipates a theoretical judgment. If my, your, or his [her] brain is replaced by the brain, then the brain is generally viewed not as an organ of an experiencing being, but rather as a steering apparatus of a movable body&#8230;In every anatomical and physiological observation of the brain, two brains are involved: the brain of the observer and the observed brain. The elimination of the possessive relationship compels one to ignore this fundamental fact&#8230;The violence in the way behavior has been treated finds a necessary compensation in an anthropomorphic interpretation of the brain [e.g., the unacceptable term "the schizophrenic brain" is surely a scientific category error with consequences involving imprecise, reductionistic trends]. One grants less to behavior than is due to it, and gives the brain more than belongs to it.


oof.


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## 8888




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## Barakiel

^ this is still far better than me :um


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## Myosr

Haven't posted in this thread for ages. Let's try.

I've always had a weird fascination with the idea of what Frege called "propositional content". I feel like I've actually thought of a similar concept before I knew the philosophical term (not sure). :con

I'm not even sure why I like the idea.



> There are mind-independent, objective propositional contents. These
> contents are not ideas or mental images or conscious episodes of any
> kind. They are not the products of mental processes or inner acts.
> A propositional content does not belong to any one particular person,
> it is not created by anyone, and it does not vary from one person to
> another. Propositional contents are sharable, in the sense that many
> people can think or entertain the very same content. They are repeatable, in the sense that one person can entertain the same content on many different occasions. But propositional contents do not depend on being thought or entertained for their existence. They were there before anyone ever thought about them, "just as a desolate island in the Arctic Ocean was there long before anyone had set eyes on it" (Frege 1979, 133).
> 
> Truth and falsity are, in the first instance, properties of these mind independent propositional contents. Their possession of these properties
> is independent of our recognition of them as true or false. It is independent of our thinking of them at all. There are true propositions that no one has ever recognized as true, and there are true propositions that no one has ever entertained. We cannot make propositions true, or
> change their truth-values, by entertaining or judging them. Judgment
> does not generate entities with the properties of being true and false.
> Propositional contents are already there, with their truth-values, waiting
> to be entertained and judged.
> 
> There are other things that have the properties of truth and falsity, but
> they have these properties in a way that is secondary or derivative from
> the truth and falsity of propositions. Sentences, judgments, beliefs, and
> assertions are true and false, but only because they express propositions,
> or have propositions as their contents. The truth conditions and truth values of these other things are just the truth conditions and truth-values of the propositions they have as contents. A proposition is true or false in
> itself. Sentences, judgments, beliefs, and assertions are true or false
> because of the relations they bear to propositions.


This quote is from a book called "Propositional contents" that seems to be against the idea, haven't really understood the author's objection, but maybe I'm not as interested in the philosophical stuff, mostly the poetic idea of it?

Also the idea of the "third realm" very poetic, lol. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Realm

you can ignore my signature for this post, lol.


----------



## Persephone The Dread

Barakiel said:


> ^ this is still far better than me :um


Haha that's basically what I do (except to a more extreme degree.) I just skim read google books now and then (and other books,) and read online stuff. I mean not with philosophy, but in general.


----------



## Barakiel

Myosr said:


> Haven't posted in this thread for ages. Let's try.
> 
> I've always had a weird fascination with the idea of what Frege called "propositional content". I feel like I've actually thought of a similar concept before I knew the philosophical term (not sure). :con
> 
> I'm not even sure why I like the idea.
> 
> This quote is from a book called "Propositional contents" that seems to be against the idea, haven't really understood the author's objection, but maybe I'm not as interested in the philosophical stuff, mostly the poetic idea of it?


Propositions were tied with boundaries as one of my favorite philosophical subjects last year and I need to explore them again. Something that intrigued me about Peirce's semiotics in particular was the idea that (say) the bright colors of an animal express a proposition as much as "sentences, judgments, beliefs, and assertions" do. Whether the animal in question is actually poisonous or merely a case of Batesian mimicry determines whether the proposition (or 'dicisign' in Peirce's terminology) is true or false, or at least accurate or misleading. And similar things can be said of diagrams, maps, pictures people share on social media, etc..



> Also the idea of the "third realm" very poetic, lol.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Realm


Same.


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## Myosr

Barakiel said:


> Propositions were tied with boundaries as one of my favorite philosophical subjects last year and I need to explore them again. Something that intrigued me about Peirce's semiotics in particular was the idea that (say) the bright colors of an animal express a proposition as much as "sentences, judgments, beliefs, and assertions" do. Whether the animal in question is actually poisonous or merely a case of Batesian mimicry determines whether the proposition (or 'dicisign' in Peirce's terminology) is true or false, or at least accurate or misleading. And similar things can be said of diagrams, maps, pictures people share on social media, etc..


Interesting. I've never heard of this before, but looks like something I might want to look up.


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## Barakiel

Some of the things I've read this past year or so have given me "reasons for living happily" -


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Hence his charming, funny, or sublime "proems" on water, potatos, dung, snails, etc.

I like G.K. Chesterton's theistic outlook too but not sure if it'd be worth posting three longer excerpts if no one's interested in them.


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## Barakiel

Hans Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life


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## Barakiel

I think it's wonderful that this excerpt comes from a philosophy book published in 1974 and written by a priest.








I have trouble expressing myself without images, symbols, or gestures in general or without resorting to other people's words tbh.

Alfred Lord Tennyson had similar concerns about writing down one's experiences -


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