After due consideration I notibly.re-accept the deal, of appearing as if, taste was merely in my mouth.
Again, biggy, abrasiveness is not one of my worst qualities.
You really are a good guy. Impressions aside.
Alan Sokal to meno:
If we weren’t both compelled by the laws of nature to be entirely different people even I couldn’t tell us apart. I understand you as Sokal even less than I understand myself as you.
So, is it a “condition”? I’m pretty sure with me it’s not.
Ok. that’s understandeable , but I posed something similar in the ‘determination’ post and someone stopped me cold in something in some other context.
He said ‘petty good’ and i’m quite sure he meant ‘pretty good’
So when you say the you are pretty sure that it’s not your condition, that may be a bit off from saying you’re absolutely sure.
As far as I am concerned and all the stuff I said in various half baked forums, i am as well torn by seeking not to exclude myself from either posituation.
So at this point in my life, and actually at any point from birth uupward to the present time, I could not make enemies, even if I wanted to
So yes, I am fragmented somewhat like you , maybe more or less, but really we are not running a competition of sorts or are we able to approximate it.
But got to tell you one thing, whenever I come to your defense when you are assailed by some differing opinionated interpretation, I am ready to jump to your defense, therefore invoking the wrath of assailants.
So whoever I am typically or architypically, nature or Alan, you or just being myself , it really does not phase the source or the destination which I may or not identify through mine,or your, or anyone particular understanding
I hope that my will to overcome the direction of powerless individual distinctive perceptions that anyone could misapprehend.
Again, with my earnest hope of not willing or able to push this envelope any further then mutually limited by conditions beyond my or your control.
On The Soul
Mark Goldblatt gets animated about his self.
Here’s another place it all breaks down: in bringing it into focus “for all practical purposes”.
Clearly, the more immaterial something becomes, the more actually describing it lends itself to a “world of words”. My soul? Well, let me tell you about it. And trust me: what I am telling you about it is all that you need to know about it.
Or, to take another example, “let me tell you about God”.
Of course that’s just plain silly. But what about chimps and whales and dolphins and Ierrellus’s crows? And what of those human beings that are afflicted with all manner of what can become mind-boggling mental, emotional and psychological afflictions. Characters straight out of an Oliver Sachs narrative. Or what of those who succumb to dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. Are their souls still in there somewhere?
In fact, does God Himself have a soul?
On the other hand, in philosophy forums, even this can get problematic. After all, as some understand determinism, the human brain itself is just another one of nature’s vacuum cleaners. It thinks that it is making an actual autonomous distinction between encountering something and responding to it, but it was never able to not make it. Thus the soul here is, in turn, just another manifestation of the only possible reality in the only possible world.
Go figure, right?
On The Soul
Mark Goldblatt gets animated about his self.
And what makes this all the more fascinating are those who argue that the human brain – the human self – is no less artificial in that it is compelled by the laws of nature themselves merely to be deluded into thinking that it does care to win rather than lose.
But even in assuming human autonomy, there is no hard and fast rule that in playing chess one is obligated to want to win. Some play the game ruthlessly, but others just for the enjoyment and the challenge the game provides. If anything they are interested more in beating themselves by getting better and better at playing.
Okay, but the other point is that in lacking God given souls and/or human autonomy, it’s still just two entities programed to do only what they were never able not to do. They choose nothing. Unless I’m missing something here.
And then the part where this thought experiment involves nothing in the way of a moral conflict in which it is argued that the software companies are wrong to do this. That computer programs should not be created to compete against each other but only to cooperate.
On The Soul
Mark Goldblatt gets animated about his self.
Leaving aside the manner in which I construe the meaning of determinism here, that would be the crucial distinction, right? It’s one thing to be programed to win or lose a match, and another thing altogether for the program to acquire the actual capacity to want to win.
“For personal reasons”?
Then one might even imagine an “I” without the necessity to inhabit a flesh and blood body. A kind of “Spock’s Brain”…sans the brain itself. “I” would become the program itself.
Whatever “for all practical purposes” that means.
Up to and including all of the inputs that you or I would experience if we were playing chess. Though, again, technically, I have no background that enables me to really understand what that might entail.
And then the part where this AI “I” would be able to defend itself against anyone intent on doing it harm. It’s not like it could arm itself with guns and knives. Instead, it would have to be intertwined in something analogous to a Terminator movie environment. Machine intelligence creating other machine intelligence.
There you go. You create a system that clearly seems to be rooting to win. But how do you pin down beyond all doubt that it really is rooting to win.
And: the same with the self as a flesh and blood human being. You can be absolutely certain that you are choosing to read these words. But how would you go about demonstrating that it is not instead nature’s own laws of matter that programmed you to believe this?
On The Soul
Mark Goldblatt gets animated about his self.
Really. Just go up to someone and engage in a conversation. Where is their “self” here? For most it is always in the eyes. But what of those like Maia?
Or maybe the lips, where the words encompassing “I” come from? But what of those who are deaf? And what of those who are both blind and deaf? The Self in the things they touch?
Or go to a mirror and try to pin down your Self there.
It’s always that profound mystery between materialism and the myriad mental, emotional and psychological components of who we think we are at any particular point in time in any particular set of circumstances. Then things change and all the materials aggregated into the physical me react anew.
And then all of those who insist that they can imagine it. Not only that but if you don’t imagine it as they do you need to, among other things, read their Bible. Or their manifesto. Or join their Coalition Of Truth.
On The Soul
Mark Goldblatt gets animated about his self.
This of course takes most of us to places we are completely incompetent regarding…either to grasp or to pass judgment on. It’s the part where “I” becomes entangled in the actual evolution of matter from the lifeless “brute facticity” of nature’s laws, to consciousness to self-consciousness to the self manifesting itself among others given the interactions of the id, the ego and the superego “in a particular context”.
Not to mention all of the additional “categories” proposed by those like Jung, Skinner, Rogers, Pavlov, Piaget, Milgram, Binet, Horney, Fromm and on and on and on.
“I” as , “something akin to a radio signal, that emanates from a Source and is picked up by the circuitry of the brain”?
You tell me. Here we are as matter able to grasp the existence of actual radio waves; and through this understanding create simply mind-boggling technologies that enable “I” to communicate a wealth of information and knowledge to other selves using, among other things, this particular technology.
Is it really possible to imagine that all of this is wholly determined by what brought matter into existence re the Big Bang? And how is that any less “mystical” than the idea that it was all made possible by God?
On The Soul
Mark Goldblatt gets animated about his self.
We just don’t know if those who prefer the down-from-on-high approach or the ground-upwards approach either are or are not in the position of having the option to choose otherwise. Here in regard to “I” we are always stuck. Choose either deduction as the starting point for examining our soul/self or induction and you are still stuck with taking a more or less educated leap of faith to the autonomous “I”. And that’s before – given free will – “I” becomes entangled in dasein in the is/ought world.
How far back does the design go? And does it commence with Nature or with God?
As for the “reason it exists”, how can that not take us back to what is surely the most profound mystery of all: teleology.
Is there a reason that I/“I” exist? Is there a possible purpose that I can find in which to ground the behaviors I choose in?
Then all of the myriad abounding assumptions. Like this one…
Now all we need are of the equally myriad existential contexts – billions of them around the globe – to actually make this more substantial. How, for example, would you make it applicable to your own sense of identity out in the world with others?
Really, think about that…
The part where a “clump of cells” evolves to the point where in the womb you become conscious of existing itself. Existence without access to a language – a mind – able to grapple with what it means to become conscious of existing itself. Something out of Paddy Chayefsky’s Altered States.
“I” literally in the context of “all there is”.
Of course, some cannot settle for a “gut instinct”. They come here and situate their own Self in one or another more or less “thought out” objectivist font. Let’s call it, say, the Satyr Syndrome.
Films
Sci Fi & The Meaning of Life
Shai Tubali sees how non-human minds mirror our condition back to us
The theme – or, rather, my theme – being the limitations that may or may not exist in regard to grappling with and understanding “I” in regard further to understanding what it means to be human given the fact that even now we do not have access to the “nature of consciousness”.
Here you can start with Plato or Descartes or Kant or Berkeley or Wittgenstein or Neo. Or you can factor in the arguments I make in my signature threads. Or the fulminating and fanatical assumptions of our resident objectivists. Not all of which are pinheads.
Of course: AI and dasein.
Fortunately [or unfortunately] for those of my age, we will almost certainly not be around to grapple with the actual existential quandaries embedded in an identity “programed” into an artificial mind. On Her’s level. A mind [seemingly] not entangled in the need for food or water or clothing or sex. Virtual wars and virtual social interaction. Virtual politics.
What on earth then can a “self” be understood as here? And would they not have to evolve into something analogous to a Terminator world? After all, as long as they are linked to flesh and blood human beings, they can easily be deprogramed or reprogramed. Or the plugs themselves can be pulled.
Films
Sci Fi & The Meaning of Life
Shai Tubali sees how non-human minds mirror our condition back to us
Here of course sci-fi films allow us to imagine intelligent life forms from other worlds altogether. But given that we have never actual been in contact with such creatures, speculation that is largely anthropocentric is going to prevail. Still, given that subsistence and wants and needs would seem to be a prerequisite for all intelligent life forms, why not?
They are likely to be preoccupied with the same questions as we are. And thus for me the questions would always revolve around the extent to which what they know – if they are far in advance of us re the either/or world – has enabled them to pin down more definitive answers to the God question or “I” in the is/ought world.
Either way, it would truly be fascinating to explore my own understanding of dasein re flesh and blood human beings here and now. Could an AI intelligence grapple with “I” at the intersection of identity, value judgments, conflicting goods and political economy in a way that would boggle my mind? Or an extraterrestrial intelligence: “Yeah, Biggy, we once struggled ourselves with moral nihilism, until we discovered that…”
And yes this part: Evil.
Evil relative to what frame of mind? What moral standards? What rational assessment of conflicting goods?
Films
Sci Fi & The Meaning of Life
Shai Tubali sees how non-human minds mirror our condition back to us
Come on, to compare the enormous gap between what our own species is both capable of remembering and then reconfiguring back into the behaviors we choose in the “here and now”, to what other animals – and plants? – do seems to narrow that gap far, far more than I ever would.
And the memories of replicants [as I recall] are still basically programed by those flesh and blood folks who have memories derived from actual experiences. Instead, the main bone of contention revolved not around the past but the future…that four year life span.
Here’s what I’m waiting for: An A.I. themed film in which there unfolds a discussion between the flesh and blood programmer and his or her A.I. creation in which the discussion gets around to, say, the morality of abortion. Not loneliness and romance but the sort of things I probe here in regard to connecting the dots between morality here and now and immorality there and then. A.I. and the meaning of life…or the meaning of death? In Blade Runner the replicants were all about sticking around. Not to do good deeds, but merely to survive beyond their expiration date.
Or is death itself merely “programmed” out of this new consciousness:
Ah, the role that dasein might play here! Nature programming us biologically, us programming A.I. technologically. The “self”/Self given all of the many, many convoluted permutations that might be beyond our even imagining now.
Again, if that is ever likely to be pinned down, it will eventually come down to the reaction of an A.I. “self”/Self when confronting conflicting goods. How is “I” here not the embodiment of dasein when so much of what constitutes experience/memory is merely programmed by a flesh and blood mind bursting at the seams with the implications of dasein.
Films
Sci Fi & The Meaning of Life
Shai Tubali sees how non-human minds mirror our condition back to us
Well, you all know how far I take this: to “the gap” and to “Rummy’s Rule”. And, of course, to the part that revolves around whether we have free will at all here.
It’s just that, in the is/ought world, I bring it in a lot closer to the lives that we live from day to day. You can experience any number things in which your behaviors will be challenged by others. What then are the limitations of what you are conscious of?
Of course, some might fantasize about not having a body at all. And that is because for all the body provides us in the way of pleasure, it is more than capable of pummeling us with all manner of pain. And our sense of identity is often in a tug of war between one or the other. Let them crave the “friction” between consciousness and body when the body is making what one is conscious of a living hell.
Also, what is “pure consciousness” anyway? And how would having one impact on the arguments I make in regard to dasein, conflicting goods and political power? For now, this can only be imagined in the sci-fi world. In a “world of words”.
Only, once again, what can be an ineffable gap between what that means to me, and what that means to you. Whose dreams? And what happens when, in achieving your dreams, others are prevented from achieving theirs? Others, in fact, are harmed, even destroyed, when you achieve yours.
Films
Sci Fi & The Meaning of Life
Shai Tubali sees how non-human minds mirror our condition back to us
The Spock Syndrome let’s call it. Although he was supposedly half-human you would never know it in most of the episodes. It was all logic, logic, logic.
Or, as I once encompassed it…
Whenever I come upon this sort of [brain/heart/spirit] quandary, I am reminded of a particular scene from the Star Trek IV movie.
One of the sub-plots in the film revolved around the perennial squabble between Kirk and Spock over the role of emotion in human interaction. I say human interaction because, again, as those who enjoy immersing themselves in the Star Trek universe know, Spock was half human and half Vulcan. The Vulcan half was basically bereft of emotional reactions. A Vulcan’s reaction to the world was always logical, supremely rational. Thus the human half of Spock was, apparently, something he kept buried deep down in his psyche.
In the course of the movie, the Kirk [emotional], Spock [rational] conflict ebbed and flowed. But in a climactic scene near the end, the crew of the Enterprise are in a jam. One of their comrades, Chekov, is isolated from the rest of them. He is in a primitive 20th century hospital sure to die if not rescued. But if the crew goes after him they risk the possibility of not completing their mission. And if they don’t complete their mission every man, woman and child on earth will die.
Spock’s initial reaction is purely calculated: It is clearly more important – more rational and thus more ethical? – to save the lives of all planet earth’s inhabitants than to risk these lives in the effort to save just one man.
But Kirk intervenes emotionally and reminds everyone that Chekov is one of them. So, naturally, this being a Hollywood movie, Spock ends up agreeing that saving Chekov is now the #1 priority. And, naturally, this being a Hollywood film, they still have time to rescue planet earth from the whale-probe. Barely.
But think about the ethical dilemma posed in the film. Is it more rational [ethical] to save Chekov, if it means possibly the destruction of all human life on earth?
What are the limits of ethical inquiry here in deciding this? Can it even be decided ethically?
Consider it in two ways:
In the first, we can rescue our beloved friend knowing there might still be time to rescue everyone else.
In the second, we can rescue our beloved friend knowing that, if we do, there is no time left to rescue everyone else.
Maybe someday we will actually come upon an intelligent species more along the lines of Vulcans. Until then though we’re stuck being us: a subjunctive species ever forced to reconcile what we think and what we feel. And [as I see it] philosophy can never be “serious” until it acknowledges the implications and the consequences of that “out in the world” of actual human interactions in conflict.
So, the human heart. As with most things, it depends on the context. But with the heart comes that aspect of “I” more in sync with the primitive parts of the brain: instinct, drives, libido.
Are the logical aliens, perhaps, better off not going there? After all, the human “spirit” might find a “point” to life. But what happens when those points come into conflict?
Dasein and Being-in-the-world – Heidegger
at the Eternalised: In Pursuit of Meaning website
In other words, from birth to death, what does it mean to be “there” and not “here”. To be “here” or “there” now and not before or later. Existence relative to being out in a particular world at a particular time.
What could possibly be more obvious? And yet, clearly, depending on the individual, some will explore this in depth while others will barely consider it at all. At least not philosophically. In fact, most leave all that to the ecclesiastics. It becomes a religious matter and there may be any number of Scripts “out there” in their own particular world to choose from.
Again, does one have to be a philosopher to come to conclusions of this sort? Human beings not only exist but in a free will world it is going to dawn on most that they “exist here”, they “exist now”. And then, rooted in the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein, individuals may or may not ask themselves the sort of questions that philosophers do. They may or may not come to the conclusions that I do regarding the distinction between I in the either/or world and “I” in the is/ought world.
What is relevant or irrelevant to us not in regard to erupting volcanoes so much as in regard to erupting pandemics or wars or civil strife.
Or holocausts. Heidegger’s Dasein and my own dasein then.
Dasein and Being-in-the-world – Heidegger
at the Eternalised: In Pursuit of Meaning website
Tell me that we don’t need a few actual existential contexts here in order to make this effable.
And it’s peculiar to human beings only in the sense that no other species on Earth has evolved to the point where they are able to invent such things as philosophy and computers and the internet. And though often described as a “social being”, historically and culturally, the emphasis has often shifted back and forth between “I” and “we” and “them”.
As for the “a priori structures that make possible particular modes of Being”, you tell me. Given a set of circumstances that will allow you to “illustrate the text”.
Instead…
How is an assessment of this sort not perhaps an important reason why so few have an interest in philosophy? If, after noting something like this, an author then went on to examine how it is applicable to human interactions from day to day…how it pertains to his or her own personal experiences out in the world with others…it might at the very least allow others to grasp how it is applicable “for all practical purposes” to the “human condition” they encounter in the course of living their lives.
A “thing in itself” may actually be beyond the reach of both philosophers and scientists. It may instead only be grasped by what may or may not be an existing God. For mere mortals on this planet there are always going to be “lens”. Philosophy being just one of them. And, even here, grasped through the lens of free will. An assumption derived wholly through the lens of a mechanical nature.
Errybody after Descartes thinks they’re improving on him when they’re actually parroting or garbling.
Next up: Everybody after Jesus Christ.
Or after Muhammad ibn Abdullah?
Buddha?
transcultural Golden Rule cuz eternal. but only one lived to … um … you could prolly write this part better
Of course: back to the inane gibberish that is now actually prized here at The New ILP. 
Note to meno:
How inept, I know. Show her how it’s done!! 