Philosophy (2 Viewers)

[Xe_Ln_Ag_A]

im very interested in philosophy, although it can sometimes make my head hurt.
as for illusion and mind, theres this philosophical thread that believes that instead of the matter creating life and the mind, the mind created life and matter. =D intriguing when you think about it.

XeL

 

[bazookajoe]

I find philosophy fascinating. It's interesting to have discusssions about the meaning of everything and existance itself.

 

[xeuyrawp]

I love phil, because it's interesting, and because I'm good at it as a subject. It's probably the most unusual thing to read in spare time; it's not easy to read, generally.

The first time I read Nietzsche, it sent shivvers up my spine.

 

[niteshade1312]

Thank God. Im not the only one...
If i'd bothered to find out what I was getting myself into, I would've settled for a pamphlet of the main ideas.

Edit: I could've got the vibe from google

YAY!!! There is someone out there who also is thoroughly confussed!

 

[xeuyrawp]

Yeerp. I'm a materialist. Every aspect of our consciousness and cognitive functions seems to be explained within the brain and so there is really no basis for believing in the immaterial soul. Descartes had a great argument for dualism to begin with but he let his blind hope for religion steer him into some of the most fundamentally flawed arguments in philosophical history.

Have you done the extended mind theory? It's pretty cool and plausible.

I love Carestian duality and the existence of the soul, but I have to agree that his argument did fall apart at times due to him having to include religious reasoning.

I haven't done the extended mind theory, but I've read a bit of it out of interest, very cool

 

[Keen]

Philosophy is to the real world as masturbation is to sex.

Goodbye, goodnight.



Keen

 

[king_of_boredom]

i have a question, i doubt its philosophy though but ill post it here anyway.


imagine drilling a hole through from one end of the earth to the other. if one were to be dropped through that hole, would they be suspended indefinitely in the centre of the earth? [assuming that person is wearing a jumpsuit immune to heat and pressure].


see how gravity acts in all directions?

 

[mimiian]

very interesting debate.

 

[mimiian]

Is human nature fundamentally good? bad? or neutral?

Is human nature fundamentally good? bad? or neutral?

some of the famous philosophers who argue that human nature is fundamentally good include Rousseau, Mencius and More. They contended that man was good by nature, a "noble savage" when in the state of nature (the state of all the "other animals", and the condition humankind was in before the creation of civilization and society), but is corrupted by society. They believe that it was society's influence, its lack of a positive cultivating influence, which caused bad character.

there were also philosophers who think human nature is neutral or malleable. a notable example is Pelagius, who was a British monk who denied original sin and affirmed the ability of humans to be righteous by the exercise of free will. He argued that humans in the state of nature are not tainted by original sin, but are instead fully capable of choosing good or evil.

last but not the least, they were philosophers who believe human nature is innately bad or sinned. these philsophers, include Hobbes, Xun Zi, and most of Christian theologists, taught that human beings are fundamentally selfish or sinned. this state of bad nature can be remedied by good government or divine intervention.


so what's your opinion on human nature? if there is one? why do you believe so?

 

[Ktulu-Spiral]

"Listen up, maggots. You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else."

"The things you own end up owning you."

"We just had a near-life experience." [Following a high-speed car crash.]

"Fuck off with your sofa units and serine green stripe patterns, I say never be complete, I say stop being perfect, I say let... let's evolve, let the chips fall where they may."

"First you have to give up, first you have to *know*... not fear... *know*... that someday you're gonna die."

"It's not until you've lost everything that you're free to do anything."

"Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off."

"You have to consider the possiblity that God does not like you. He never wanted you. In all probability, he hates you. This isn't the worst thing that can happen! We don't need him! Fuck damnation! Fuck redemption! We are God's unwanted children? SO BE IT!!!"

"We're consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don't concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy's name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra."

"You're not your job. You're not how much money you have in the bank. You're not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You're not your fucking khakis. You're the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world."

"In the world I see - you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway."

In Tyler we trust...

 

[ameh]

I'd recommend J. Gaarder's Sophie's World as a decent, basic introduction to the history of philosophy cloaked in fictional guise.

 

[Enlightened_One]

Personally I don't believe in free will, and hence don't believe in good or bad. I think everything is causal in nature and is somewhat related. I believe the axe murderer kills his victims due to his neurobiological state and environment. Moreso, I don't believe morals exist unless we create them, but they are a necessary tool for progression and species survival.

Which presents a very interesting moral dilemma (although you believe morality to be a social creation). If, for the sake of argument, the world is predetermined (which I don't agree with) be it deterministic or fatalistic, then you are correct in your assertion that free will does not exist. If however, you are correct in your assertion that morals are a necessary tool for the survival of the human species then there exists a conundrum, perhaps even a paradox. Morals imply that there is the choice between right and wrong. Hence morals are dependent upon the existence, or asyou postulate, illusion, of free will. And without morals the species in doomed, or at least in trouble.
But, to state that there is no free will is to, hypothetically, attempt to influence others. If this influence was sufficient enough and people came to believe that free will did not exist then society would stagnate, or worse, collapse. How could people be held responsible for action such as murder and rape if they could not do otherwise?
Thus, it is imperative for the continuation of the current human way of life that the illusion of free will is maintained and, that being the case, why then run the risk of destroying society by claiming that everything is predetermined.

1.Free will does not exist
2.Humans needs the illusion of free will to survive
3.You know that premise 1 is true.
Problem: Should the truth be expounded?

If Yes: Then society collapses

If No: Then society remains

A way around this would be to state that what happened was predetermined to happen anyway etc, and all that. This is a cheap way out though.

 

[jasroopb]

QUOTE:
Is human nature fundamentally good? bad? or neutral?


joseph conrad's "heart of darkness" explores this question very thoroughly. he outlines the need for restraint, the ability to overide temptation and evil, which is the result of being corrupted by society's influence. in this case it is soceity's greed for wealth and resources. conrad presents human nature as essentially neutral, one must resist the evil way as we are presented with the choice of good or evil.

 

[Enlightened_One]

Morals do not imply that there is free will. You might get a person who is in a situation where he has to rescue his father or mother from a house fire but only one. They don't really choose, their choice is influenced by many things which are deterministic. Sure you think through a decision before making it, it doesn't mean you actually choose it. Whether the person rescues his mother or father could be predicted accurately.

Why would society stagnate if people came to believe free will does not exist?

I think some people confuse destiny with determinism (whatever it's called, I did not formally study this theory myself). Destiny implies that people will definitely do something (e.g. he was destined to be the hero who saved our world), even if there are obstables.

Most people are too dumb to even think about the existence of free will, let alone believe that there is no such thing. So even if we go telling everyone, not everyone will believe it.

There is Fatalism and Determinism, which is divided up into hard and soft determinism.

People would not have morals because (and you had this around the wrong way, but that I think is my fault) ethics and morals (which are different but influenced by each other) are dependant upon our ability to choose what is right, what we believe in or whatever (I am not going to define morals because that would start a whole different debate). If we had no choice in the matter than we would not be exercising our ethics.

 

[MoonlightSonata]

Morals do not imply that there is free will. You might get a person who is in a situation where he has to rescue his father or mother from a house fire but only one. They don't really choose, their choice is influenced by many things which are deterministic. Sure you think through a decision before making it, it doesn't mean you actually choose it. Whether the person rescues his mother or father could be predicted accurately.

But how is this act moral?

Of course morality implies that there is free will. Attributing moral value to our behaviour is entirely predicated on the notion that we can do otherwise -- that we can make choices between what is morally good and bad. If something is determined, it cannot do otherwise and is therefore incapable of praise or censure.

If you accept that determinism is true, you do not attribute moral blame or praise to humans for the same reason you do not say a computer is acting ethically when it produces good results - that's the way it's programmed. It did not consciously choose to do a particular act.

 

[Rekkusu]

Hmm, sorry this might be out of topic to well...what's currently being discussed, but has anyone taken PHIL1010? - Thinking about reasoning? Since, I might consider taking either this course, or the one McLake mentioned in the earlier pages PHIL1007. XD Also is it true that you seriously just need to take 3 class tests? Or is this the case only for History & philosophy courses?

Cheers

 

[Weeping Brook]

And of course Free Will is the crux of the argument against the Problem of Evil.

What about this:

Avoidability condition on freedom: I do something freely iff I could have acted otherwise.

"In whatever manner man is considered, he is connected to universal nature, and submitted to the necessary and immutable laws that she imposes on all the beings she contains, according to their particular essences...Man's life is a line that nature commands him to describe upon the surface of the earth, without his ever being able to swerve from it, even for an instant..."

This law of causality Holbach speaks of is more or less what is known today as:
Determinism: Whatever happens is determined by prior events.

Human choices and actions are no exception. Whatever you decide to do, your decision was inevitable given prior conditions. Granted the decision feels free but this is an illusion. (Such illusions are not unknown. Post-hypnotic suggestion: subject on hands and knees, I was wondering about the quality of the tile etc.) And if the decision is not free -- if you couldn’t have chosen differently -- then neither is the resulting action. For you couldn’t have acted any differently than in fact you did.

Hard determinism is the view that first, determinism is true, and second, this shows that freedom is an illusion. Here is the basic argument.


(1) Whatever happens is determined by prior events. (Determinism)


(2) I act freely only if I'm able to act otherwise. (Avoidability Condition)


(3) If my action is determined, I'm unable to act otherwise.


(4) Therefore, I don’t ever act freely. (1,2,3).

Seeing this argument, you might argue that the best strategy is simply to deny determinism. But does that solve the problem? Is indeterminism any more compatible with freewill?

Indeterminism: Some events are not determined by prior events.

Consider the freewill dilemma (see also p. 387-8 of Reason and Responsibility):


(1) If determinism is true, we can never do other than what we do; so we are not free.


(2) If indeterminism is true, then some events--possibly some actions--are random; but if they are random, we are not their authors. So we are not free.


(3) Either determinism or indeterminism is true.


(4) Therefore, we never act freely.

It appears that denying determinism is no help in preserving for us some space for genuine freedom.

I'm not saying I agree with it. Determinism is obviously very controversial, but it has a point. Being morally inclined myself I'd like to believe in Free Will. Whether it exists or not is an entirely impossible question to answer. Of course, everything in philosophy is.

 

[Peteage]

hmm. If a tree falls in the woods and nobody is around to here it, does it still make a sound?

 

[Weeping Brook]

Haha no, I didn't write that! Sorry if I didn't make that clear enough, they're just some good lecture notes on the topic.

However I consider myself a proponent of Determinism, albeit with a Wittgenstein-ian caveat. Perhaps I'd think differently if I weren't so determined to be a rationalist.

On the subject itself, the operative word is obviously choice. Since I think since it's impossible to make a choice based on experiences/backgrounds we don't have, Free Will is limited to the bounds of Determinism.

 

[MonkEE]

Well, I am a design guy, I was researching about interaction design and it lead me to the idea of "Causal". I am pretty much a noob on philosophy but its somewhat interesting. Anyways what I understang about "Causal" is that is is about cause and effect, if you hate, you piss people off, if you eat noodles, you will be full, if you have alot of kids or the human population increases, the world gets warmer.

What's different in each case is the amount or degree to which cause/effect takes place. Is it better to be neutrual or to advocate for large proportion of effect that places alot of emphasize on change?

Well in nature, speaking from design's perspective, there is an idea called "The Golden Proportion/section", you might want to look it up, its pretty well recognised throughout hitory. It is basicly a proportion of cause/effect of exacly 1.618033988, that dictates the perfect/the most beautiful/the ideal/ the just right rate of evolution, length of a rectangle, the shape of a leaf, whatever it might be, but it occurs the most in nature. It sounds like a load of bs but it's true.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio