Philosophy Discussion Forums

thrasymachus wrote: ↑August 5th, 2023, 12:23 amWhere philosophy leaves off, Marion begins: the rabbit hole of presuppositions, leads to one place, and this is right before your waking eyes.

Thank you for your valuable insights. I've been following your defence of phenomenological philosophy in the face of criticism by users such as Faustus5 with great interest. Your posts are perhaps worthy of book-level quality insights that has made this forum's archive a great resource that should be preserved.

p.s. at some point I wondered whether the account of Faustus5 is a pseudonym of Daniel Dennett. He was often defending Dennett on a level of what he 'thinks'. What would be your idea, after hundreds of replies back and forth with him?

Hereandnow wrote: ↑August 24th, 2020, 12:38 pmThere is a LOT out there. You are just dismissive because your education is philosophically, ontologically rudderless, and this is because you don't read beyond science into science's and experience's underpinnings. Read Kant, Kierkegaard, Hegel (of whom I know less than others), Husserl, Fink, Levinas, Blanchot, Henry, Nancy (the French are extraordinary) Heidegger, Husserl, even Derrida, and others. THIS is where philosophy gets interesting.

Faustus5 wrote: ↑August 24th, 2020, 1:35 pmI have no interest at all in any of those folks. None whatsoever.

Faustus5 wrote: ↑September 1st, 2020, 7:34 amBabbling about ontology and metaphysics will only waste everyone's time and actually serves the interests of those for whom it is essential the rest of us stay alienated.

Faustus5 wrote: ↑August 31st, 2020, 11:03 am

Hereandnow wrote: ↑August 31st, 2020, 10:18 am To encounter the best ideas takes work, a tearing down of assumptions that everyday thinking imposes on thought.

When those assumptions enable human beings to solve real problems and answer real question, tearing down those assumptions seems to me a pointless academic exercise that produces nothing of value. Exactly the kind of thing that rightfully gives philosophy a bad reputation.

Faustus5 wrote: ↑August 31st, 2020, 3:36 pmPhilosophy, or at least any approach to philosophy that I'll take seriously, is supposed to aim for something higher than that. And especially if you are going to start a thread crying about the "hegemony" of one of humanity's most important intellectual achievements, your philosophical approach had damn well better be more substantial than the act of collecting stamps.

Hereandnow wrote: ↑August 31st, 2020, 10:58 pmGrrrr. Meaningless babble is insulting. Philosophers don't care about meaningless babble. Here is what meaningless babble is: it is what is produced when opinion exceeds understanding.

With regard his defence of the views of Daniel Dennett:

Faustus5 wrote: ↑September 7th, 2020, 5:01 pm
No, Dennett just thinks experiences don't have all the qualities that believers in qualia insist they do. He's more of a deflationist than an eliminativist.

Faustus5 wrote: ↑September 7th, 2020, 5:20 pm

Atla wrote: ↑September 7th, 2020, 5:09 pm We've been over this already. First thing anyone with some sense does, is use a deflated meaning of qualia. But that deflated qualia still has to be part of one's worldview, if one claims to have explained consciousness. Dennett just seems to deflate it into nonexistence, eliminate it.

You can't find him doing this in his own words, which right away should ring alarm bells if you have any intellectual honesty and think accurately representing views you disagree with is essential to being a good scholar.

I mean, common sense alone should dictate that if he squabbles with people who openly call themselves eliminativists over their eliminativism, it's kind of stupid to call him one.

Faustus5 wrote: ↑October 18th, 2020, 9:34 am

Atla wrote: ↑October 17th, 2020, 11:43 pm Dennett logic for the win..

You love making up crap, don't you?

I get it; it's literally all you have left.

Faustus5 wrote: ↑October 6th, 2020, 11:29 amWhat Dennett and I are saying is that qualia are not real, and that qualia are a bad theoretical flourish that is unnecessary, not that there are mental states that don’t exist. You can cheerfully say that people have conscious experiences, even that they have something we would allow were usefully called “raw feels,” without all the theoretical baggage that philosophers of mind have saddled these concepts with.
...
Basically, I agree with everything Dennett writes above 100%.

Faustus5 wrote: ↑September 7th, 2020, 3:33 pm

Hereandnow wrote: ↑September 7th, 2020, 2:58 pmI mean, there is a reason why Dennett tries to reduce consciousness to "layered computer programs running on the hardware of the brain". . .

Well, I know Dennett's work more than any philosopher on earth, probably better than anyone you've ever met...

Yes, Schopenhauer's will should be called energy, that is what modern physicists say, that is all there is. One might think of organisms as avatars of the energy called consciousness. That energy manifests in various forms, some of which can recognize life as consciousness, for consciousness is necessarily life and life is of necessity conscious energy. Apparent reality is dependent on biological consciousness.

I like Daniel Dennett's work. It's relatively easy to read (unlike a lot of philosophy) and I agree with much of what he says regarding free will. And he has some good ideas about consciousness, too.

As for grumpy old Schopenhauer, he was also a very good philosopher. The World as Will and Representation had a big effect on me. But he said, as far as I remember, nothing about consciousness being necessary for life or of consciousness being a necessary outcome of life. His two thesis were that we can know little of the world "in itself" - all was "representation" - and that the rest was about the relentless will to existence and the suffering that entailed. Somewhat pessimistic, but largely true, I think.

Lagayscienza,

Excellent post! A Schopenhauer quote, "The more intelligent you are, the more knowledgeable you become, the more you increase your sorrows."

popeye1945 wrote

Lagayscienza,

Excellent post! A Schopenhauer quote, "The more intelligent you are, the more knowledgeable you become, the more you increase your sorrows."

Agreed. And true, unless one is some disembodied intellect. That is the trouble with much of philosophy with all attention on the respectable logical rigor, and little on the actual world, which is profoundly messy and disturbing.

Hereandnow wrote: ↑November 10th, 2023, 1:05 pm

popeye1945 wrote

Lagayscienza,

Excellent post! A Schopenhauer quote, "The more intelligent you are, the more knowledgeable you become, the more you increase your sorrows."

Agreed. And true, unless one is some disembodied intellect. That is the trouble with much of philosophy with all attention on the respectable logical rigor, and little on the actual world, which is profoundly messy and disturbing.

Hereandnow,

Indeed, delusions are not always fatal, delusions can be life supporting, for the individual at least. Traditional religions would be an excellent example, perhaps not being good for the world at large, but good for the individual.

The most fundamental characteristic of life is its 'energetic organizing behavior' that in turn is fundamentally characterized by 'directionality'. It is that directionality, which can be seen as a deviation, that would enable one to assign either the term Will or energy.

Directionality by itself simply manifests as 'work' in the world, which is energy. Directionality by itself can also be seen as Schopenhauer's senseless Will.

Dark Matter and Energy represent that directionality, as they are concepts that are directly derived from observations related to the formation of cosmic structure. It is that structure by itself that Dark Matter and Energy intend to explain, and when examined as such, that require the same life-like 'directionality' type of energy to explain it.