Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[GaryLouisSmith]

The radio hardware would not exist if it were not for the electronic medium : the electronic medium would not exist if there were no hardware.

I was using an example from technology that comes out of a physicalist science. I was not claiming that radios prove the existence of non-material substances. I was pointing out that the relationship between the object that can shut off the programming for a naive user could easily confuse that user that when he shuts off the radio he is making, say, the musicians stop playing in what is actually a live broadcast.

There are other types of analogies that can explain correlation without identity between consciousness and bodies. That's just one.

Philosophy is now and always has been a mystical vision. It is not the servant of rational, middle-class domestic life as the present day lords of disenchantment would have it.

[GaryLouisSmith]

Doesn't possibility get a look in? There's not only kinetic energy there's also potential energy.

There exist not only actual facts, but also potential facts. Everything that presents itself to your mind's eye exists.

Yes, however some ideas are better than other ideas. What is your criterion for "better" ?

[GaryLouisSmith]

From the perspective of the eternal now consciousness and thought are constantly now. From the perspective of space-time consciousness and thought are not universals but are discrete events.

The vision of Parmenides is difficult. If I were to try and paraphrase it I would of course fail, so I think I will let it speak for itself and you can have your conversation with him, not me. All paraphrasing is a disaster.

[Belindi]

All paraphrasing is a disaster.

You don't trust the dialectic process then? I have learned from poets.

[GaryLouisSmith]

All paraphrasing is a disaster.

You don't trust the dialectic process then? I have learned from poets.

Have you tried to understand Shakespeare by reading Cliff Notes. Or Good News for Modern Man, the Bible translation for your dog.

[GaryLouisSmith]

Doesn't possibility get a look in? There's not only kinetic energy there's also potential energy.

There exist not only actual facts, but also potential facts. Everything that presents itself to your mind's eye exists.

Yes, however some ideas are better than other ideas. What is your criterion for "better" ?

Think of some piece of writing while you run the razor blade over you skin and if you feel a frisson run through you then that was good writing.

[Karpel Tunnel]

I was using an example from technology that comes out of a physicalist science. I was not claiming that radios prove the existence of non-material substances. I was pointing out that the relationship between the object that can shut off the programming for a naive user could easily confuse that user that when he shuts off the radio he is making, say, the musicians stop playing in what is actually a live broadcast.

There are other types of analogies that can explain correlation without identity between consciousness and bodies. That's just one.

Philosophy is now and always has been a mystical vision. It is not the servant of rational, middle-class domestic life as the present day lords of disenchantment would have it.

When in Rome....and this is Rome...I speak Latin, sometimes in any case.
i don't see it as a class issue, particularly. I think you can wander in from the proletariat or from the elites and throw down metaphors and filters from those perspectives. Disenchantment is the perfect word, however.

There is a force which has multiple agents, that wants to use reductionism, occam's razor, the pathologization of emotions and the axiom of deadness/non-sentience, to make everything
modular
essentially dead
for sale
empty

So they can buy sell make money off transactions and tweak everything. So that it all is looked at as mere software and hardware with them as the programmers. And the reasonists play right into this by role playing mature and rational. And they are neither.

[Belindi]

You don't trust the dialectic process then? I have learned from poets.

Have you tried to understand Shakespeare by reading Cliff Notes. Or Good News for Modern Man, the Bible translation for your dog.

Understanding the form helps me to understand the meaning. When I have written something I have been constrained by a form and this constraint has helped me to write down a meaning. It helped me to get ideas and pleasures from Shakespeare once I knew iambic pentameters.

When a teacher has instructed "Write a sonnet" the shape and the rhythm of the sonnet have made something and I can be free within the constraints. Your elbow joint depends on constraints for its proper functioning.

[GaryLouisSmith]

Philosophy is now and always has been a mystical vision. It is not the servant of rational, middle-class domestic life as the present day lords of disenchantment would have it.

When in Rome....and this is Rome...I speak Latin, sometimes in any case.
i don't see it as a class issue, particularly. I think you can wander in from the proletariat or from the elites and throw down metaphors and filters from those perspectives. Disenchantment is the perfect word, however.

There is a force which has multiple agents, that wants to use reductionism, occam's razor, the pathologization of emotions and the axiom of deadness/non-sentience, to make everything
modular
essentially dead
for sale
empty

So they can buy sell make money off transactions and tweak everything. So that it all is looked at as mere software and hardware with them as the programmers. And the reasonists play right into this by role playing mature and rational. And they are neither.

I love this response. It is poetry.

[GaryLouisSmith]

Have you tried to understand Shakespeare by reading Cliff Notes. Or Good News for Modern Man, the Bible translation for your dog.

Understanding the form helps me to understand the meaning. When I have written something I have been constrained by a form and this constraint has helped me to write down a meaning. It helped me to get ideas and pleasures from Shakespeare once I knew iambic pentameters.

When a teacher has instructed "Write a sonnet" the shape and the rhythm of the sonnet have made something and I can be free within the constraints. Your elbow joint depends on constraints for its proper functioning.

I agree totally. I have always been one to assert that Form exists. Platonic Form. That is my realism. It is not something imposed by a mind. Rather it is an imposition on the mind. (I think that's the first time I used the word "impose" ontologically. I'll see where it goes.)

[Sy Borg]

The radio hardware would not exist if it were not for the electronic medium : the electronic medium would not exist if there were no hardware.

I was using an example from technology that comes out of a physicalist science. I was not claiming that radios prove the existence of non-material substances. I was pointing out that the relationship between the object that can shut off the programming for a naive user could easily confuse that user that when he shuts off the radio he is making, say, the musicians stop playing in what is actually a live broadcast.

There are other types of analogies that can explain correlation without identity between consciousness and bodies. That's just one.

Is the brain a generator, a receiver, or both to what extent? It's a standing debate.

Logically, if arguably, the idea of the brain being a generator of consciousness/sentience would seem likely.

However, oddly enough, I lean towards Gary's side here. My general impression is that consciousness is so not much as generated by the brain as enabled by it, that the human brain is currently the most sensitive "instrument" for more subtly expressing and filtering what I think of as "the primal mind" - basic primal tendencies found everywhere in nature, in both life and the non-living, eg.

- any homogeneous field will eventually particulate, that is, concentrate in zones with ever thinner "space" between, eg, molecular clouds (stellar "nurseries"), protoplanetary discs, evolution (from single celled to multicellular), communities/colonies/cities, wealth distribution.

- when the particulation or concentration occurs, there will be hierarchies - the big will consume or destroy the small. This is as true with the concentration of wealth as it was as true in the protoplanetary disc where the planets formed from clouds of rocks and dust.

- that which persists for the longest has the strongest influence on environment. Bigger things last the longest, eg. galaxies. So aggregation is favoured.

We play these same dynamics out at subtle levels in our minds. It's all just the creative interaction of order and entropy. I see the roots of artificial intelligence, not in robots but, in networked human minds that come together to create something with its own interests, eg. companies. In the end those networks may well become autonomous and no longer require human minds.

Where's God in this model? The guy with the red, stripey ... no, not him ... God is order, Satan is entropy/chaos.

If we were to be less western about it then or one might say Brahma is the creator, eg. stellar ignition, the creation of the Earth by gravity, the emergence aspect or order. Then Vishu the preserver would represent growth the Sun's and Earth's stable middle age eras while Shiva the destroyer/renewer represents entropy and destruction that ultimately facilitates new creation and growth.

[Felix]

GaryLouisSmith: "I follow David Hume is thinking that causation is only patterned regular association. Pain is associated with certain nerve processes. Perception of color correlates with certain optic nerve excitation. But none of that shows that pain and color are or are identical with nerve stimulus. That is simple analysis."

Yes, it's possible to interpret sensations differently than how we habitually react to them, e.g., I found that when I observed pain closely, it was no longer hurtful, but felt as a strong and variable sensation. To study this, I had any dental work I needed, crowns put on or whatever, done without an anesthetic (no, I am not a masochist). The same can be done with visual and auditory signals, they can be interpreted differently. I have done that with sound and music. It is an intense practice, few are willing to persist at it.

Is that the nexus you spoke of, the psychic space between what the world presents to us and what we make of it?

To quote Rimbaud:
“A poet makes himself a visionary through a long, boundless, and systematized disorganization [sometimes translated as “derangement”] of all the senses. All forms of love, of suffering, of madness; he searches himself, he exhausts within himself all poisons, and preserves their quintessences. Unspeakable torment, where he will need the greatest faith, a superhuman strength, where he becomes all men the great invalid, the great criminal, the great accursed – and the Supreme Scientist! For he attains the unknown! Because he has cultivated his soul, already rich, more than anyone! He attains the unknown, and if, demented, he finally loses the understanding of his visions, he will at least have seen them! So what if he is destroyed in his ecstatic flight through things unheard of, unnameable: other horrible workers will come; they will begin at the horizons where the first one has fallen!”

[GaryLouisSmith]

GaryLouisSmith: "I follow David Hume is thinking that causation is only patterned regular association. Pain is associated with certain nerve processes. Perception of color correlates with certain optic nerve excitation. But none of that shows that pain and color are or are identical with nerve stimulus. That is simple analysis."

Yes, it's possible to interpret sensations differently than how we habitually react to them, e.g., I found that when I observed pain closely, it was no longer hurtful, but felt as a strong and variable sensation. To study this, I had any dental work I needed, crowns put on or whatever, done without an anesthetic (no, I am not a masochist). The same can be done with visual and auditory signals, they can be interpreted differently. I have done that with sound and music. It is an intense practice, few are willing to persist at it.

Is that the nexus you spoke of, the psychic space between what the world presents to us and what we make of it?

To quote Rimbaud:
“A poet makes himself a visionary through a long, boundless, and systematized disorganization [sometimes translated as “derangement”] of all the senses. All forms of love, of suffering, of madness; he searches himself, he exhausts within himself all poisons, and preserves their quintessences. Unspeakable torment, where he will need the greatest faith, a superhuman strength, where he becomes all men the great invalid, the great criminal, the great accursed – and the Supreme Scientist! For he attains the unknown! Because he has cultivated his soul, already rich, more than anyone! He attains the unknown, and if, demented, he finally loses the understanding of his visions, he will at least have seen them! So what if he is destroyed in his ecstatic flight through things unheard of, unnameable: other horrible workers will come; they will begin at the horizons where the first one has fallen!”

No, that's not what I had in mind when I spoke of Nexus, but it is interesting anyway. What I had in mind in not important. You can interpret my words any way you want. After my words leave my typing fingers they take on a life of their own with no regard to what i had in mind. What does it mean to say they are "my" words? Nothing. In general, for any piece of writing, I think the authors intentions are of no importance at all. It is language speaking, not the one who put words up on a screen.

[GaryLouisSmith]

However, oddly enough, I lean towards Gary's side here.

It's interesting (I can't think of any other word) being the odd man out here. Greta then goes on to speak of something I don't recognize at all. I wonder just what it is in my ideas that makes them odd. I mean, I really don't mind being odd, but it is interesting. What is it?

[Felix]

GaryLouisSmith: "I wonder just what it is in my ideas that makes them odd."

I'd have to understand them to know if they are "odd" or not. Your writing is disjointed and it's not always clear what point you're trying to make.

You had said: "I contend that we are directly, phenomenologically, aware of the various Nexus. Other philosophers of my ilk say we aren't and we must only infer their existence."

And when I asked about that, you replied, "What I had in mind is not important." Then why write it?