What should or ought we be doing with this life?
wandering wonderer
Here we are, for a while, who knows how much longer (5 mins or 50
years). I mean you and I as individuals. None of us asked to be
born, it's not our fault we are here. Maybe it is our fault we are
still here.
If we believe science that there is no afterlife and this is the only
life we'll ever know, then what should we do while we're living this,
our only life?
Does it make any difference to anyone or anything what we do? Our
great grandchildren, if we have any, will likely not even know our
first name. Very few of us will even be a footnote in the most
specialized of histories.
Should we just try and seek pleasure, have fun, be happy. Should we
just use others to that end? Or, should we be concerned about others,
be interested in them, help them? Who, just loved ones and best
friends or others as well? What about all the suffering people of the
world, should we care about them or do anything to help them? Why?
Who says so? What difference will it make?
Again I ask, what should we do while we're here?
tg
wrote:
Obviously, we should be going around asking other people what to do.
Why examine ourselves when others can do it for us?
-tg
Half A Wannabee
> Why examine ourselves when others can do it for us?
Because it will give them pleasure?
> -tg
--
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCkYfYa8ePI
:)
Sir Frederick
Required :
1. Do what you can to promote the Singularity.
2. In the meanwhile, make up meaning giving stories
for your own and other's practice.
Optional :
1. Understand and resent the situation.
2. Breed.
(Breeding is well taken care off by inherited evolved insanities.)
Wordsmith
BernardZ
wonderin...@gmail.com says...
> If we believe science that there is no afterlife and this is the only
> life we'll ever know, then what should we do while we're living this,
> our only life?
>
>
How does belief in science mean there is no afterlife?
Don Stockbauer
The Global Brain looks like a singularity , thus the confusion between
the two (actually it's fully automatic, so we don't need to promote
it).
Errol
> In article <1182118843.854505.124...@q69g2000hsb.googlegroups.com>,
> wonderingwonde...@gmail.com says...
>
> > If we believe science that there is no afterlife and this is the only
> > life we'll ever know, then what should we do while we're living this,
> > our only life?
>
> How does belief in science mean there is no afterlife?
Simple! Just wait for the hard-core atheists (those with a scientific
background) latch onto any post suggesting there might be an
afterlife, demanding evidence, weight, colour, texture and taste,
molecular structure, and sworn affidavits by ten thousand witnesses
who have personally experienced an afterlife and have brought back non-
contestable evidence back with them.
mikeg...@xtra.co.nz
wrote:
>
> If we believe science that there is no afterlife and this is the only
> life we'll ever know, then what should we do while we're living this,
> our only life?
Demand the link to sensory evidence for ANY of man's ideas, concepts
and or theories, which are claimed to be of or about reality, because
if you dont, your mind becomes a sponge for ideas about ideas about
ideas about ideas, theories about theories about theories, subjects
about subjects about subjects e.g. any and all Kantian subject-ive
piffle, the mystic's god crap and leftist retard's, *the greater
good*.
Michael Gordge
johnt...@gmail.com
wrote:
> What should or ought we be doing with this life?
V
wrote:
Flourishing... as all animals 'try' to do.
I once heard a lecture by Alan Watts where he quoted Anton Van
Leeuwenhoek ( The father of the microscope) regarding this subject as;
"The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be
experienced."
Take Care,
V (Male)
Agnostic Freethinker
Practical Philosopher
For free access to my earlier posts on voluntary simplicity,
compulsive spending, debting, compulsive overeating and clutter write:
vf...@aol.com. Any opinion expressed here is that of my own and is not
the opinion, recommendation or belief of any group or organization.
andy-k
> What should or ought we be doing with this life?
Excellent question. What we should *not* do is to blindly
accept somebody else's opinion on this issue. Find out what
others have said and lay bare the deficiencies in their arguments.
Listen to the opinions of others, but ask the questions that they
failed to ask or were too afraid to ask. Be persistent with your
enquiry even when it seems there will be no resolution.
Make this question your koan.
Immortalist
But if all science is theoretical, hasn't it just weakened the
"theory" that there is an afterlife,? I have never seen honest science
negate the possibility of life after death. Maybe is has made past
expectations about such things weaker, while damaging the health-ful
aspects of believing such things. What if evidence that there could be
life after death increases? Would science be ready? What if in the
future we humans learned how used science to resurrect ourselves?
Would science be ready to change even if the atheists were not ready
to accept the increasingly persuasive evidence.
Immortalist
Is this an issue the pitts Kant against Ayn Rand, and why don't you
bring up both sides of the issue, lest you merely sound like your
stereotypically calling names like a racist or something.
Sir Frederick
Whatever. The individual human brain we support today in the human
condition, is becoming inadequate for the complex tasks demanded.
Mechanical or biological, a Singularity is needed, such that
brain or brains and associated human and supra human functions
may be improved and expanded in real time.
jusholm
"wandering wonderer" <wonderin...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1182118843.8...@q69g2000hsb.googlegroups.com...
> What should or ought we be doing with this life?
>
> Here we are, for a while, who knows how much longer (5 mins or 50
> years). I mean you and I as individuals. None of us asked to be
> born, it's not our fault we are here.
As far as we know.
Maybe it is our fault we are
> still here.
>
> If we believe science that there is no afterlife and this is the only
> life we'll ever know, then what should we do while we're living this,
> our only life?
I suspect that shouldn't make any difference, which we beleive.
>
> Does it make any difference to anyone or anything what we do?
Yes, everything we do and many thinks we fail to do probably.
Our
> great grandchildren, if we have any, will likely not even know our
> first name. Very few of us will even be a footnote in the most
> specialized of histories.
Perhaps all of us leave a massive legacy not in big ways but lots of small
ways.
>
> Should we just try and seek pleasure, have fun, be happy. Should we
> just use others to that end? Or, should we be concerned about others,
> be interested in them, help them? Who, just loved ones and best
> friends or others as well? What about all the suffering people of the
> world, should we care about them or do anything to help them? Why?
> Who says so? What difference will it make?
There seems to be an assumption here that treating others well and helping
others is incompatible with having a good time and happiness. I would say it
is an essential part of a fulfilled and happy life.
mikeg...@xtra.co.nz
> On Jun 18, 4:08 am, mikegor...@xtra.co.nz wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Jun 18, 7:20 am, wandering wonderer <wonderingwonde...@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
>
> > > If we believe science that there is no afterlife and this is the only
> > > life we'll ever know, then what should we do while we're living this,
> > > our only life?
>
> > Demand the link to sensory evidence for ANY of man's ideas, concepts
> > and or theories, which are claimed to be of or about reality, because
> > if you dont, your mind becomes a sponge for ideas about ideas about
> > ideas about ideas, theories about theories about theories, subjects
> > about subjects about subjects e.g. any and all Kantian subject-ive
> > piffle, the mystic's god crap and leftist retard's, *the greater
> > good*.
>
> > Michael Gordge
>
> Is this an issue the pitts Kant against Ayn Rand,
If you cant link, or if you cant reduce right back down to an
irresducible and sensory level of perception, your ideas, theories and
or concepts which you claim are of or about reality, then they can
only have originated from inside your head, why? because reality is
real it aint imagined, e.g. the mystic's god, the leftist retard's
*the greater good*, the tree huggers, *man will make the globe colder
by producing 0.00000000000024% less atmospheric gas*, are all ideas
originating from inside evil, sad lonely desperate and control freak
minds.
> and why don't you
> bring up both sides of the issue,
I did and I have hundreds of times. e.g. Kant on the other hand wants
man to have knowledge of space and time, but not via his sense
perceptions, but rather as planted there by the knowledge fairy.
Michael Gordge
mikeg...@xtra.co.nz
> I have never seen honest science
> negate the possibility of life after death.
Because life after death is a contradiction, its oxymoronic Kantian /
mystical inspired piffle, science is not into oxymoron's Mortal.
Michael Gordge.
AlanS
>What should or ought we be doing with this life?
Fornicate. If you are too poor or unattractive to do so
satisfactorily, study and/or work hard for a short while and then
fornicate when you are rich or successful enough. I'd have assumed
everyone knew the basic recipe.
tooly
"Immortalist" <reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1182187140.3...@q19g2000prn.googlegroups.com...
Ah, Immort...always the impeccable mind. As far as brains go, hitting on
all cylinders...no pathology there I think. Good thing you are smart, and
therefore find some 'worthiness' of self among all the dribbling 'dogmatic'
embeciles that surround those so gifted. Imagine a life where you might
have to struggle some to gain that sense of worthiness. Ha...to be so
flawed...
When posed this question 'to myself' [about an afterlife], it always helps
if I consider all of time 'before I was born'...or perhaps 'time' is not the
proper term here. Whatever the substance of time 'is'..if it 'is' at all
[and not just a function of space]. Of course rationalists would argue time
starts with the big bang and the birth of this universe. I can't really
fathom 'non-existence'...and time as a function of BEing poses more an idea
of the 'infinite and eternal'. Time to me is more an experience and has no
relevance outside BEing.
If the infinite and eternal exists...and time as a condition of BEing
stretches far beyond the confines of universal physics, then I have to
consider that as much time that ever will exist, "HAS ALREADY EXISTED". All
this really does is point out the arrogance of my small pitiful attempt to
understand gargantuan things and 'humbles' me back to a more 'real' stance
of understanding that "I really have no idea what the fuck this all about"
(science does not save me in other words). And so, afterlifes carry as much
significanse as nothingness...except that functionally, in the here and now
as a mortal in this world, it seems 'wiser' to embrace the more useful
visage of the two possibilities. If nothing exists, then why the fuck am I
here...now? And if I 'CAN' be here and now...then I say 'shitfeathers'...an
'afterlife' is as plausible as anything else and makes my short stay here
nicer. Of course, I have to recognize that in some transitional stage, I
have to become 'worm food' at some point. It is just, I entertain the idea
that such 'point' is only a point upon a long line I cannot understand from
any single point, much as I am even 'now'. As my body passes on from the
material, time ceases as anything I can 'know' now...and becomes an
'experience' I can only dream about now. BEing, after all, cannot be
measured in 'time', but only in 'experience'.
Ah...but then, there are those as of late who seem to be embracing the
argument that even WE do not exist, and BEing is all an illusion of material
determinant forces, and we but mirages of neural conditionally pathed
circuitry. I dunno. Sure seems real to me. It's the pain and fear you
see.
Immortalist
I have never heard and honest scientist deny or affirm that death is
either the end or the beginning of more death or life. Again you seem
to have a hard time differentiating between the necessity and
contingency. Plus you seem to be extending the denotation of the
definition of life/death and proposing that it is necessary that life
can or cannot happen after death, but you propose that death can
follow life. But you seem to express your preference in the matter as
if it were some sort of necessity.
> Michael Gordge.
Immortalist
Are you saying that it is possible to have experience beyond the
sensory surface., even if Dreams, Hallucinations, and Visual Illusions
clearly indicate that the world of experience is not the same thing as
the world itself? If it is possible to be mistaken about the giveness
of perception how can you say perceptions are "always" true or false
when the concepts formed are remotely connected to the hardware?
No one knows: perceptual beliefs are true/false?
...suppose that two people are looking through different windows. The
first person reports that there is a sphere on a table outside her
window; she sees the sphere to be green. She sees this no matter from
what vantage point she views things. Suppose further that the second
person, looking through her own window, sees and reports the very same
thing. Each person has exactly the same justification for claiming to
know that there is a green sphere outside his window. Each is in just
as good a position to know this as the other. Surely, the only correct
conclusion to reach is that either each person knows there is a green
sphere outside her window or that neither of them knows this. It would
be entirely arbitrary, and hence unreasonable, to say that one person
knows this and the other does not.
However, it is perfectly possible that one of these people is mistaken
and the other is not. Suppose the first person sees what she does
because there is a green sphere outside her window. On the other hand,
suppose the second sees what she does because she is being tricked
with mirrors and drawings-there is no green sphere outside her window
at all. Moreover, the deception is so excellent that from behind the
windows no one could detect any difference in what is seen through
each. This shows that the first person, who is in fact not mistaken,
could have been mistaken. The second person was mistaken, and the
first person had no better evidence for what she believed than the
second person did. Since having this evidence did not keep the second
person from being mistaken, the first person, too, could have been
mistaken. What was so in the one case could have been so in the other.
The only reasonable conclusion is that neither person has knowledge.
What we have just imagined has perfectly general implications. The
experiences a person has, when he or she sees something that really
exists, can always be duplicated by the experiences of another person
who is being deceived. Because the experiences in question provide the
only evidence a person has for believing what she does, if one person
fails to know what she believes, so must the other. If one is mistaken
in believing something, then another person who has a similar belief
based on similar experiences surely could have been mistaken-even if
in fact she is not. Since this duplication of experiences is always
possible, it is always possible that a perceptual belief based on
sensory experience is mistaken. The argument for skepticism requires
no other assumption.
2) The Modified Skeptical Argument
We may conclude, then, with a slightly modified formulation of the
argument for skepticism. The first two premises of the argument, which
differ from the initial premises of the preceding skeptical argument,
are as follows:
1. The experiences of a person who has a true perceptual belief may be
exactly duplicated by the experiences of a person whose perceptual
belief is exactly similar but false.
2. If the experiences of a person who has a true perceptual belief may
be exactly duplicated by the experiences of a person whose perceptual
belief is exactly similar but false, then it is always logically
possible that our perceptual beliefs are false.
The next premise is the same as in the earlier argument:
3. If it is always logically possible that our perceptual beliefs are
false, then no one ever knows that any of our perceptual beliefs are
true.
>From these three premises we can deduce the skeptical conclusion.
4. No one ever knows that any of our perceptual beliefs are true.
Philosophical Problems and Arguments: An Introduction
by James W. Cornman, Keith Lehrer, George Sotiros Pappas
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0872201244/
http://www-philosophy.ucdavis.edu/phi102/tk.htm
> > and why don't you
> > bring up both sides of the issue,
>
> I did and I have hundreds of times. e.g. Kant on the other hand wants
> man to have knowledge of space and time, but not via his sense
> perceptions, but rather as planted there by the knowledge fairy.
>
The theory with the most evidence about how nerve cells got planted is
the theory of evolution. But you promote mystical fairies.
As for Kant please point out where he mentions fairies;
If we remove from our empirical concept of a body, one by one, every
feature in it which is [merely] empirical, the colour, the hardness or
softness, the weight, even the impenetrability, there still remains
the space which the body (now entirely vanished) occupied, and this
cannot be removed. Again, if we remove from our empirical concept of
any object, corporeal or incorporeal, all properties which experience
has taught us, we yet cannot take away that property through which the
object is thought as substance or as inhering in a substance (although
this concept of substance is more determinate than that of an object
in general). Owing, therefore, to the necessity with which this
concept of substance forces itself upon us, we have no option save to
admit that it has its seat in our faculty of a priori knowledge.
Time is not an empirical concept that has been derived from any
experience. For neither coexistence nor succession would ever come
within our perception, if the representation of time were not
presupposed as underlying them a priori. Only on the presupposition of
time can we represent to ourselves a number of things as existing at
one and the same time (simultaneously) or at different times
(successively).
Time is a necessary representation that underlies all [A31/P075]
intuitions. We cannot, in respect of appearances in general, remove
time itself, though we can quite well think time as void of
appearances. Time is, therefore, given a priori. In it alone is
actuality of appearances possible at all. Appearances may, one and
all, vanish; but time (as the universal condition of their
possibility) cannot itself be removed.
Time itself does not alter, but only something which is in time. The
concept of time thus presupposes the perception of something existing
and of the succession of its determinations; that is to say, it
presupposes experience.
http://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Philosophy/Kant/cpr/
http://www.bright.net/~jclarke/kant/index.html
http://www.hkbu.edu.hk/~ppp/cpr/toc.html
http://www.4literature.net/Immanuel_Kant/Critique_of_Pure_Reason/
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/ethics/kant/reason/ch01.htm
That space and time are only forms of sensible intuition, and so only
conditions of the existence of things as appearances; that, moreover,
we have no concepts of understanding, and consequently no elements for
the knowledge of things, save in so far as intuition can be given
corresponding to these concepts; and that we can therefore have no
knowledge of any object as thing in itself, but only in so far as it
is an object of sensible intuition, that is, an appearance...Thus it
does indeed follow that all possible speculative knowledge of reason
is limited to mere objects of experience. ...though We cannot know
these objects as things in themselves, we must yet be in position at
least to think them as things in themselves; otherwise we should be
landed in the absurd conclusion that there can be appearance without
anything that appears.
> Michael Gordge- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
mikeg...@xtra.co.nz
> On Jun 18, 3:07 pm, mikegor...@xtra.co.nz wrote:
>
> > On Jun 19, 2:19 am, Immortalist <reanimater_2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > > I have never seen honest science
> > > negate the possibility of life after death.
>
> > Because life after death is a contradiction, its oxymoronic Kantian /
> > mystical inspired piffle, science is not into oxymoron's Mortal.
>
> I have never heard and honest scientist deny or affirm that death is
> either the end or the beginning of more death or life.
Phew thats a relief Mortal, who'd trust any scientist who would even
think that death has other meanings than the end of life.
But then I guess Kantian mytsics and other retards would consider it
life after death, when cows drop dead and the carcass is carted away
in big trucks and then minced and then boiled away until it all turns
into a fine powder, (Blood and Bone fertilizer) which can then be
sprinkled onto potatoe and tomatoe crops to make them grow really
really big.
Michael Gordge
mikeg...@xtra.co.nz
>
> Are you saying that it is possible to have experience beyond the
> sensory surface.
What's a "sensory surface"?
MG
Immortalist
A theory about the extent of sensory apperatus.
> MG
Immortalist
> On Jun 19, 1:25 pm, Immortalist <reanimater_2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > On Jun 18, 3:07 pm, mikegor...@xtra.co.nz wrote:
>
> > > On Jun 19, 2:19 am, Immortalist <reanimater_2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > > > I have never seen honest science
> > > > negate the possibility of life after death.
>
> > > Because life after death is a contradiction, its oxymoronic Kantian /
> > > mystical inspired piffle, science is not into oxymoron's Mortal.
>
> > I have never heard and honest scientist deny or affirm that death is
> > either the end or the beginning of more death or life.
>
> Phew thats a relief Mortal, who'd trust any scientist who would even
> think that death has other meanings than the end of life.
>
The theory of death doesn't extend that far. That the body stops
functioning is a pretty good hypothesis, but what happens after that
is rather speculative, lest you have added faith along with your
further theorization about it.
> But then I guess Kantian mytsics and other retards would consider it
> life after death, when cows drop dead and the carcass is carted away
> in big trucks and then minced and then boiled away until it all turns
> into a fine powder, (Blood and Bone fertilizer) which can then be
> sprinkled onto potatoe and tomatoe crops to make them grow really
> really big.
>
What is a Kantian mystic and other retards? Please explain so we can
stop you from appearing bigoted and dogmatic.
> Michael Gordge
mikeg...@xtra.co.nz
>
> The theory of death doesn't extend that far.
The theory of death doesn't extent to being the end of life? are you
serious?
Where are you getting this crap from Mortal?
MG
mikeg...@xtra.co.nz
>
> - Show quoted text -
So now you're asking me.
"Are you saying that it is possible to have experience beyond the
theory of the extent of sensory apperatus?"
You better try again Mortal because honestly that doesn't make any
sense at all.
Define *experience* as you have used it in that piffle.
MG
Immortalist
> On Jun 20, 1:19 am, Immortalist <reanimater_2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > The theory of death doesn't extend that far.
>
> The theory of death doesn't extent to being the end of life? are you
> serious?
>
The theory of death merely deals with the cessation of metobolic
functioning in cellular organisms. It makes no claim either way as to
what happens after cessation. Or as Kant would say, they don't
"determine" it either way. In this way the extension stops with the
biological processes. After that we move into thantology.
The Straw Man fallacy is committed when a person simply ignores a
person's actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or
misrepresented version of that position.
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/straw-man.html
> Where are you getting this crap from Mortal?
>
>From logic I have read. I was dealing with aspects of necessity and
contingency, can you explain what they mean?
> MG
Immortalist
Sure, experience is probably more that sensory apperatus,probably the
activities of the basal ganglia, the cingulate gyrus, the brain stem
and limbic system, and these nerve fibers feed into thes areas where
experience is created. Unless you believe these areas of the brain
have any access to the external world besides these sensory apperatus
please tell us about them. Some people thing fairies and psychic
powers allow them to bypass the senses, is that what your saying?
Immortalist
> On Jun 19, 1:57 pm, mikegor...@xtra.co.nz wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Jun 20, 1:15 am, Immortalist <reanimater_2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > > On Jun 19, 12:03 am, mikegor...@xtra.co.nz wrote:
>
> > > > On Jun 19, 1:35 pm, Immortalist <reanimater_2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > > > > Are you saying that it is possible to have experience beyond the
> > > > > sensory surface.
>
> > > > What's a "sensory surface"?
>
> > > A theory about the extent of sensory apperatus.
>
> > > > MG- Hide quoted text -
>
> > > - Show quoted text -
>
> > So now you're asking me.
>
> > "Are you saying that it is possible to have experience beyond the
> > theory of the extent of sensory apperatus?"
>
Sorry about the misspellings for I am typin in the dark & crunkin. You
are asking if I am shifting the burden of proof. Well I am asking you
about something you seem to be asserting by attempted negation. I is
usually a valid move in debate class to ask someone to defend their
assertions.
> > You better try again Mortal because honestly that doesn't make any
> > sense at all.
>
> > Define *experience* as you have used it in that piffle.
>
> Sure, experience is probably more that sensory apperatus,probably the
> activities of the basal ganglia, the cingulate gyrus, the brain stem
> and limbic system, and these nerve fibers feed into thes areas where
> experience is created. Unless you believe these areas of the brain
> have any access to the external world besides these sensory apperatus
> please tell us about them. Some people thing fairies and psychic
> powers allow them to bypass the senses, is that what your saying?
>
I mean that the best theory in science is that the activities of some
nerve cells in the brain is experience. But the nerve fibers coming in
from the senses are not the location of those experiences,and the
parts of the brain which when active are experience have no known way
to sense the world.
Once again;
Representationalism is the philosophical position that the world we
see in conscious experience is not the real world itself, but merely a
miniature virtual-reality replica of that world in an internal
representation. Representationalism is also known (in psychology) as
Indirect Perception, and (in philosophy) as Indirect Realism, or
Epistemological Dualism.
Dreams, Hallucinations, and Visual Illusions clearly indicate that the
world of experience is not the same thing as the world itself.
http://cns-alumni.bu.edu/~slehar/Representationalism.html
If you oppose that I would be entitled to ask you how this experience
gets information about the world besides the senses and what about pre-
wired aspects of our brains that make it easier to use the information
from the senes in some ways than others. Kant might call them internal
categories...
>
>
> > MG- Hide quoted text -
>
> > - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
mikeg...@xtra.co.nz
Snipped
Gosh this is getting worse than a dog's breakfast Mortal, back to your
question
You asked me:
"Are you saying that it is possible to have experience beyond the
sensory surface?"
I didn't understand the question, so I asked, what a sensory surface
is, you replied:
"A theory about the extent of sensory apperatus."
I replaced *sensory surface* with YOUR meaning and so you are asking
me:
"Are you saying that it is possible to have experience beyond the
theory of the extent of sensory apperatus?"
I still dont understand the question Mortal, perhaps, as this is your
idea, you could give me an example of HOW one goes about **having an
experience beyond the theory of the extent of sensory apperatus**
If you were honest then you would know that on a thousand previous
occasions, I have said, in repect of HOW man goes about gaining ALL of
his knowledge,
*That no matter matters not.*
I have said, that when a claim of reality is made, then UNLESS there
is sensory evidence AND identified WITHOUT CONTRADICTION, then the
claim is OF THE MIND.
I have said that man trusts ANY such ideas, theories concepts AT HIS
PERIL.
I have given examples of what I mean as matter-less ideas of PIFFLE.
The mystic's god crap
The leftist retards *the greater good*
The commie fucking tree huggers
man makes the globe hot.
Kants version of HOW man gains his knowledge of space and time
as ALL being examples of "OF THE MIND IDIOTIC PIFFLE"
Michael Gordge
ZerkonX
> Again I ask, what should we do while we're here?
It is really, "what should 'I' be doing" right?
You must start with what you are doing right now. 'Should' is potential
and can always be applied. When do you say "what I am doing is what I
should be doing"? Can you say that about what you are doing right now
and if you can not then are you able to change this?
The answer to the big question comes with the answers to the many
small ones, it seems.
Immortalist
I have a hard time understanding your motives and incentives here.
Maybe that is our problem when communicating. I am looking at the
wonderful stuff science is coming up with and then comparing this new
knowledge with past philosophers. You seem to be interested in some
turf war. This makes it hard to see the simularities in our views. You
seem to be dishonest in many ways, snipping and posturing, but I have
no real problem with that since the latest science is generally immune
to these crude and dirty human instincts. That shit used to work in
the past, but times is a changin my brother.
You are in very much dangerous position philosophically if you judge
any new science results and discard the Kantian looking stuff and keep
the Randian stuff. You mistake my heros friend.
http://www.noelkingsley.com/blog/archives/Charles%20Darwin%20cropped%201258.jpg
http://www.neuralgourmet.com/drupalfiles/images/darwin-head.jpg
Darwin and then philosophers not Kant then Darwin.
Don Stockbauer
What should or ought we be doing with this life?
**********************
Comfortably surviving.
Michael Gordge
>
> http://www.neuralgourmet.com/drupalfiles/images/darwin-head.jpg
>
> Darwin and then philosophers not Kant then Darwin.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
Stop the Strawmanning Mortal, and get back to YOUR question.
You asked:
"Are you saying that it is possible to have experience beyond the
sensory surface?"
I didn't understand the question, so I asked, what a sensory surface
is,
you replied:
"A theory about the extent of sensory apperatus."
I replaced *sensory surface* with YOUR meaning of it and so you are
asking me:
"Are you saying that it is possible to have experience beyond the
theory of the extent of sensory apperatus?"
I have no idea what that question is asking me, please explain.
Michael Gordge
Immortalist
> What should or ought we be doing with this life?
>
Well if you come to such a question with no expectations it would seem
obvious that you should do what is good and virtuous or evil and
harmful. You probably have been primed with such questions and then
led to believe crap about the meaninglessness of life which allowed
you to jump to the conclusion that nothing is worth doing. Maybe not,
I don't know you well enough. Nonetheless we come into this life with
various drives and impulses to join society and organize our lives in
particular ways, in families, freinds etc.... We can try and ignore
the easy way of doing things which is to go with our social instincts
and put more effort into doing things the opposite way against our
drives. I suppose Socrates would claim that such an approach would
harm your health. Even if there is no meaning or worth to life, there
is the happiness that conforming to our human nature provides, many
rewards. Could one be born with a doubful attitude needed to ask such
questions without learning? Perhaps the meaning is something that
evolved before words and language evolved. I like to think that future
generations may learn to bring us back to life, however far out that
prospect, if it were true, wouldn't leading a productive life
contribute to what would eventually discover a way to go on living for
at least billions of years. Just one possible world, a world we back
here in time, cannot yet conceive clearly. Who knows?
The idea that doing wrong harms the doer is a prominent Socratic idea,
yet it is puzzling. Socrates says, "Wrongdoing is in every way harmful
and shameful to the wrongdoer." It is so harmful, counsels Socrates in
the Platonic dialogue Crito, that even if somebody else hurts us
first, "we should never do wrong in return, nor injure any man,
whatever injury we have suffered at his hands." But precisely how are
we hurt if we do something wrong? How are we harmed if we hurt
somebody else, especially if they have already wronged us? And what is
it that we have to lose?
At stake here is what Socrates calls "that part of ourselves that is
improved by just actions and destroyed by unjust actions." Today we
call this our character, or our personality, or our self. As you saw
earlier, the Greeks called it the soul. Whatever we call it, it is
that essence which we feel is most uniquely who we really are, and
Socrates takes it to be far more important than our bodies.
Because Socrates believes that moral virtue is all we need to be
happy, the only thing he sees as harmful is something that makes us
less able to be virtuous - and therefore less able to be happy.
Unethical actions corrupt us and break down our ability to act
virtuously. Thus, each unethical act makes it more likely that we will
act unethically in the future by weakening those capacities and
faculties we need in order to act more morally.
At first, Socrates' belief that doing wrong hurts the wrongdoer may
strike you as odd. Hurting other peopleâ?"that seems obvious. But
hurting ourselves - that seems unlikely.
Yet take a simple example. Most people think there is something wrong
with telling lies. (Virtually all of us do it at one time or another,
but we still believe something is not quite right about it.) Think
back to your first lie. It was probably after you had disobeyed your
parents and knew you'd be in trouble if they found out. That first lie
was probably hard to tell, and you probably felt guilty afterwards.
But if your parents believed you, you found out that lying can get you
out of some tough spots. Now think of your second lie, your third lie,
and on down the line. Odds are that it got easier and you felt less
guilty the more you did it. At this point in your life, you probably
feel that lying is not as wrong as you once thought it was, and you
probably feel less guilty when you do it.
The question here is, what has happened to you? Socrates would say
that you've been corrupted by this whole, gradual process. You haven't
turned into Jack the Ripper, but you are less likely now to tell the
truth than you were before. You've lost some ground. Getting away with
lying lowers our resistance to it in the future. It makes it easier to
do, and increases the odds that we will do it again in tight spots. It
also changes our thinking about how wrong it is. Most people come to
feel that there is some good in any act that gets you out of
trouble.
How did this happen to you? Did someone force this on you? No, you
chose it each time, little by little, by doing what you did. Your
allegiance to the truth lessened, even if only to a small degree, with
each falsehood. Socrates would argue that you harmed, or weakened,
yourself each time by acting unethically. He would claim that it's now
less likely and more difficult for you to do the right thing and tell
the truth in a tight spot.
Whether or not you agree that you've been harmed or weakened in this
process, you have been changed by it. What you do and what you think
about what you do have been changed by actions that were initially at
odds with your original values. So Socrates' argument has a common-
sense validity. We haven't seen enough specifics about precisely how
you were harmed for you to judge whether you completely accept this
notion, but you can probably agree that the process actually
exists.
Discovering Philosophy, Brief Edition by Thomas I. White
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0135080037/
> **********************
>
> Comfortably surviving.
Immortalist
The Straw Man fallacy is committed when a person simply ignores a
person's actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or
misrepresented version of that position.
Did I substitute another version of your argument? If so please point
that out. The one who asserts must alway be prepared to defend if
required.
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/straw-man.html
> You asked:
>
> "Are you saying that it is possible to have experience beyond the
> sensory surface?"
>
> I didn't understand the question, so I asked, what a sensory surface
> is,
>
> you replied:
>
> "A theory about the extent of sensory apperatus."
>
> I replaced *sensory surface* with YOUR meaning of it and so you are
> asking me:
>
> "Are you saying that it is possible to have experience beyond the
> theory of the extent of sensory apperatus?"
>
>
> I have no idea what that question is asking me, please explain.
>
You seemed to imply that it is possible to have experience of the
world without any sense data from the senses. Here is the "surface"
reference, but I would change it to make it logically correct;
-----------------
Original:
The Epistemological Fact: It is impossible to have experience beyond
the sensory surface.
Reanimated:
The Epistemological Necessity: It is theoratically a contradiction to
assume that we either can or cannot have experience beyond the sensory
surface or layer, since any evidence we can produce seems
inconclusive.
-------------------------------
As incredible as it might seem intuitively, representationalism is the
only alternative that is consistent with the facts of perception.
The Epistemological Fact: It is impossible to have experience beyond
the sensory surface.
Dreams, Hallucinations, and Visual Illusions clearly indicate that the
world of experience is not the same thing as the world itself.
The observed Properties of Phenomenal Perspective clearly indicate
that the world of experience is not the same as the external world
that it represents.
http://cns-alumni.bu.edu/~slehar/Representationalism.html#WHATISREP
The historically most central epistemological issue concerning
perception is whether and how beliefs about physical objects and about
the physical world generally can be justified or warranted on the
basis of sensory or perceptual experience-where it is internalist
justification, roughly having a reason to think that the belief in
question is true, that is mainly in question (see the entry
justification, epistemic: internalist vs. externalist conceptions of).
This issue, commonly referred to as "the problem of the external
world," divides into two closely related sub-issues, which correspond
to the first two main sections below. The first of these issues has to
do with the nature of sensory experience and its relation to the
physical world; it is typically (though as we shall see not altogether
perspicuously) formulated as the question of what are the immediate
objects of awareness in sensory experience or, in a variant but
essentially equivalent terminology, of what is given in such
experience. Perhaps the most historically standard, though not
currently the most popular answer to this question has been that it is
sense-data (private, non-physical entities that actually have the
immediately experienced sensory qualities) that are the immediate
objects of awareness or that are given. The second issue has to do
with the way in which beliefs about the physical world are justified
on the basis of such sensory experience. If it is concluded that
physical objects are not themselves given, the two main answers to
this question are representationalism or indirect realism (the view
that the immediate objects of experience represent or depict physical
objects in a way that allows one to infer justifiably from such
experience to the existence of the corresponding "external" objects)
and phenomenalism (the view that physical objects are reducible to or
definable in terms of the occurrence and obtainability of such
experience). A third alternative view that has received much attention
in recent discussion is direct realism: the view that physical objects
are after all themselves directly or immediately perceived in a way
that allegedly avoids the need for any sort of justificatory inference
from sensory experience to physical reality. In addition to these
views concerning the internalist justification of beliefs about
physical objects, there are also externalist accounts of how such
beliefs are justified; these will be briefly considered at the end of
the article.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-episprob/
>
> Michael Gordge
kmurp...@houston.rr.com
On 17-Jun-2007, wandering wonderer <wonderin...@gmail.com> wrote:
> What should or ought we be doing with this life?
>
> Here we are, for a while, who knows how much longer (5 mins or 50
> years). I mean you and I as individuals. None of us asked to be
> born, it's not our fault we are here. Maybe it is our fault we are
> still here.
>
> If we believe science that there is no afterlife and this is the only
> life we'll ever know, then what should we do while we're living this,
> our only life?
We should devote our lives to science, of course. Don't believe science,
devote your life to science instead.
--
It's not possible to turn a ho' into a housewife but by the same measure, it
is not possible to debase what is noble.
Philosophy is a thought experiment which ends the moment you turn in your
final exam.
kmurp...@houston.rr.com
On 18-Jun-2007, mikeg...@xtra.co.nz wrote:
> Path:
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> From: mikeg...@xtra.co.nz
> Newsgroups: alt.philosophy
> Subject: Re: What should or ought we be doing with this life?
> Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2007 04:08:53 -0700
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> On Jun 18, 7:20 am, wandering wonderer <wonderingwonde...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> >
> > If we believe science that there is no afterlife and this is the only
> > life we'll ever know, then what should we do while we're living this,
> > our only life?
>
> Demand the link to sensory evidence for ANY of man's ideas, concepts
> and or theories, which are claimed to be of or about reality, because
> if you dont, your mind becomes a sponge for ideas about ideas about
> ideas about ideas, theories about theories about theories, subjects
> about subjects about subjects e.g. any and all Kantian subject-ive
> piffle, the mystic's god crap and leftist retard's, *the greater
> good*.
Descartes thought experiment is not just a concept, it's a validation tool
for other concepts.
Michael Gordge
> You seemed to imply that it is possible to have experience of the
> world without any sense data from the senses.
Point to the post where you obtained that view from.
Michael Gordge