IJBM Refugee
Even if some scientist empirically proves that my sense of self is an illusion and I don't have free will, that won't change my perception that I have them. It would impact what I do and feel about as much as infallible proof that I do notexist. Sure, you may be correct, but I feel that I exist, and I feel that I have free will.
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I think everyone on this post is kind of assuming these things are in Science's ability to "prove". After all, how would we know everything we think is a lie if, in fact, the people thinking that are thinking a lie?
Personally? I think this is hilarious. It's yet another "science will destroy us! Oh nooes!1!!! situation. Science merely proves what is. And, hate to say this, if science proved it... that meant it was always there.
We'll be the same people we were when science figures this shit out- if it can, do make note of that- we'll just know more than we did then. It's hilarious.
It also suffers from a second problem. People are extremely varied and diverse; most "science" along these lines assumes people are a clinically provable group with much the same patterns and functioning. Given the diversity of the world, which contains people like Tongpu, people like me, and people like Fast Eddie, I highly doubt that everybody functions the same when it comes to brain patterns.
As for nihilism, it kind of makes me sad. Nihilism could be so freeing. If nothing exists, then it's party time! Nothing to stop you from doing it, no reason not to do it. No reason to do it, people say; but that's looking at it from a silly perspective. Just as there is no reason to do it, there is no reason to not do it, and if it's fun, if it enlivens the body and makes one happy, why not do it? Doesn't matter either way!
Nihilism could be a tremendously freeing philosophy, but it's really only the fallback for people who want to make their Jerkass tendencies more palatable to others. They want to be jerks, and so claim to believe in nothing. That's why nihilists are almost without exception either teenagers who accidentally discovered the phrase online, or people of relatively high intelligence and relatively low maturity.
The former think it makes them sound smart to use the phrase to be the selfish narcissists they are; the latter are smart enough to realize that other people won't put up with them if they don't have an excuse. A "true" nihilist is a lot like a unicorn- they don't exist.
Hell, even Nietzsche came up with a better idea, and he was a moron.
edited 29th Sep '10 4:30:27 PM by Mr.Cales
The Ant King
I'd like to point out that people didn't stop talking about the sun rising and falling when it was proved that the earth orbited it rather than the other way around.
Kill all math nerds
The Ant King
Not Actually Indie
Even if some scientist empirically proves that my sense of self is an illusion and I don't have free willCan you describe what would actually constitute an empirical disproof of your conceptions of such?
...eventually, we will reach a maximum entropy state where nobody has their own socks or underwear, or knows who to ask to get them back.
Who Am I?
Fighteer/Tongpu: are you seriously suggesting that people who have trouble accepting the latest breakthroughs in neuroscience deserve to be manipulated without their knowledge or approval?
Snowbull: the danger is that these beliefs will make you vulnerable to sub-conscious manipulation.
Mr. Cales: "They want to be jerks, and so claim to believe in nothing. That's why nihilists are almost without exception either teenagers who accidentally discovered the phrase online, or people of relatively high intelligence and relatively low maturity."
Are you concerned at all that these latest advances in neuroscience give these immature jerks power over the rest of us?
"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."
The Ant King
Can you describe what would actually constitute an empirical disproof of your conceptions of such?
Lost in Space
Fighteer/Tongpu: are you seriously suggesting that people who have trouble accepting the latest breakthroughs in neuroscience deserve to be manipulated without their knowledge or approval?
@ De Marquis: No. The thing is, the latest advancements in neuroscience, to give those people power, would 1.) Have to be controlled by them, which isn't happening, and 2.) Be accurate, which is up in the air.
Remember, science once "knew" things that we now know are false. Science Marches On. So the latest advancements may be pure truth, or they could be sort of true, or completely false. Only time will tell.
For nihilists to gain power from them, regardless of this, however, the nihilists would have to control these advances. The very idea is ludicrous.
Also agreeing with ^, above me, on Transhumanism. If it works, which I doubt (it strikes me as flying car bullshit and Futurehype, really), then yeah. Normal, baseline humans will be totally overwhelmed by the transhumans. Hard to compete with people who are, literally, better than you.
Still, I'm not totally sure about it making them irrelevant. Transhumanism- again with the caveat about it working or not- will almost certainly be very expensive. So the rich and powerful will be transhuman. The average person? No. The mass of humanity will still be, well, human, but their masters won't be.
So in the future, being rich will be even more awesome, since you'll be a whole new species. Literally.
Wow. Transhumanism makes a Dystopia when thought about like that.
Wow, just read that Internet article. Tom Wolfe is the biggest fucking idiot I've ever seen. Does... does nobody in the scientific community actually read history? Or... my God. I was actually sort of worried that neuroscience might prove something... now I'm just saddened by a scientific wild goose chase. Wolfe's an idiot.
Wow.
Edit: Now that I've had time to formulate thoughts. First off, written in 1996. What's happened since then? Nothing he's predicted, for starters. A site entitled "Orthodoxy Today" is a terrible place to get science info. Terribly mistated views of theology (though, to be fair, that was Nietzsche's fuck-up, not this guy's). Too much reliance on Nietzsche and stretching metaphors, as ever when people decide someone was a prophet. Religion's still pretty powerful, so that's also wrong (in many ways, it's stronger now than it was in 1996, though unfortunately it's also more right-wing and crazier). Nurture v. Nature is not a finished battle. Darwinism is still very very much dominant.
I mean, wow. That's just off the top of my head, and I've got a humanities degree, not science.
edited 29th Sep '10 8:16:18 PM by Mr.Cales
are you seriously suggesting that people who have trouble accepting the latest breakthroughs in neuroscience deserve to be manipulated without their knowledge or approval? Keep in mind, though, that this all was merely a response to one of your previous statements, regarding the hypothetical scenario where your dystopian predictions come true. The point being made was that the dangers of which you speak aren't really all that bad.
The fact of the matter is that I don't even believe that the dangers of which you speak are significant, if even extant. There will not be an overclass of Neil Cassidys ruling over everyone else. What I believe will happen is that today's "latest breakthroughs" will become tomorrow's "common knowledge". Provided these breakthroughs are accurate, they one day will be taught in Psy 101. Children will be born and raised in a world where knowledge of these facts is as widespread as knowledge that the Earth revolves around the sun.
In short, what I suggest is that, either way you look at it, these breakthroughs aren't really a big deal. There are no Things Man Was Not Meant to Know.
edited 29th Sep '10 9:14:14 PM by Tongpu
^ My God, I agree with Tongpu's above point. Holy shit.
Who Am I?
Actually, so do I. I was just being the Devil's advocate, because I felt that Myrmidon's OP wasn't being discussed seriously enough.
Is agreeing with Tongpu one of the seven signs of the apocalypse?
@Mr. Cales: Fair enough, however regarding "For nihilists to gain power from them, regardless of this, however, the nihilists would have to control these advances. The very idea is ludicrous."
Actually, no, it would only be necessary that they be the only ones who can contemplate the implications of that research without illusions interfering with their actions.
Also: "First off, written in 1996. What's happened since then?"
See my link in post #26.
Which I just discovered doesn't work. I went back and fixed it. The article summarizes the research in this area and presents new findings. It's dated 2007.
edited 30th Sep '10 8:57:51 AM by DeMarquis
"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."
The Ant King
The Argument was first developed, as Thomas remembers, when he and Neil were undergraduates; they invoked it as a kind of party trick, in order to out-argue, and thereby disconcert and humiliate, English and other humanities majors. After all, if we are just puppets of neurochemical processes, then literary works have no intrinsic value apart from their ability to trigger certain neural responses and thereby pull our strings; and all the claims of literature, philosophy, and art either to insight or morality are bogus.
Ah, that article was interesting. It also kind of makes one... hmm. Odd. I'll have to digest this for a bit. The research you point to in Article #26 is... fascinating.
God, why am I in this thread, I am a humanities major :D. I'll get back in a bit after I thunk it over.
Who Am I?
Yeah, I get 'ya. On the surface it seems so mundane, yet when you get to pondering the implications, it's a little freaky.
"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."
The Ant King
As for nihilism, it kind of makes me sad. Nihilism could be so freeing. If nothing exists, then it's party time! Nothing to stop you from doing it, no reason not to do it. No reason to do it, people say; but that's looking at it from a silly perspective. Just as there is no reason to do it, there is no reason to not do it, and if it's fun, if it enlivens the body and makes one happy, why not do it? Doesn't matter either way!
The Ant King
“My own view is that despite its fundamentally reactionary tenor, the objection above registers a genuine difficulty, and that it is unrealistic and a little panglossian to insist that we will remain ‘human’ much as we are now even after the explanatory ‘reduction’ of experience. My conviction is that the sources and structures of human experience can and will be understood scientifically, but this integration of experience into the scientific worldview will entail a profound transformation in our understanding of what it means to be human—one as difficult for us to comprehend from within the purview of our current experience as the latter would have been for our hominid ancestors
The Ant King
I realize no one will respond to this, but.
The Argument draws on research in cognitive psychology (with its claims about non-conscious computational processes in the brain, and its studies of the delusional nature of human self-understanding), neurobiology (with its understanding of the actual physical processes that underly various forms of thought), and (alas, also) evolutionary psychology (with its dubious claims that human values, feelings, understandings, and tendencies to act are “hardwired” adaptations from the Pleistocene). The findings of these research programs are taken as proof that nearly all speculation (philosphical, psychological, fictional, or whatever) on the nature of the mind and of humanity dating from before 1970 or so is utterly worthless, a form of self-congratulatory self-delusion and unwarranted belief. Science is distinguished from all other forms of understanding on the basis that it alone forces us to accept unwanted and dislikable conclusions, because it “doesn’t give a damn about what we want to be true”
Not Actually Indie
Not to be rude, but what point are you trying to make here? I'm curious, and a bit skeptical, as to what sort of conception of "sense of self" he might have that could be empirically falsified.
...eventually, we will reach a maximum entropy state where nobody has their own socks or underwear, or knows who to ask to get them back.
Lost in Space
Science is distinguished from all other forms of understanding on the basis that it alone forces us to accept unwanted and dislikable conclusions, because it “doesn’t give a damn about what we want to be true” In any event, it's worthless as people self-evidently have a sense of self. Explaining it in terms of mechanical processes doesn't make it any less a real thing.
edited 8th Oct '10 8:43:02 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
The Ant King
Who Am I?
"“My own view is that despite its fundamentally reactionary tenor, the objection above registers a genuine difficulty, and that it is unrealistic and a little panglossian to insist that we will remain ‘human’ much as we are now even after the explanatory ‘reduction’ of experience. "
We can just as easily argue that we are not now "human" now in the same way as our ancestors were hundreds or thousands of years ago. There is a whole school of thought that says we invented the concept of the private self sometime in the Middle Ages.
"The findings of these research programs are taken as proof that nearly all speculation (philosphical, psychological, fictional, or whatever) on the nature of the mind and of humanity dating from before 1970 or so is utterly worthless, a form of self-congratulatory self-delusion and unwarranted belief."
Doesn't follow. We don't ignore Newton just because we now have Eisenstein.
Hah- responded!
edited 8th Oct '10 7:31:24 PM by DeMarquis
"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."
IJBM Refugee
I'm curious, and a bit skeptical, as to what sort of conception of "sense of self" he might have that could be empirically falsified.I was speaking hypothetically. I doubt it would be possible to do that.
I should watch this from the sidelines. This is all too high level for me.
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POST REMOVED FOR SAFETY'S SAKE, THOUGH I STILL HOPE TONGPU STUBS ALL HIS TOES
edited 29th Sep '10 2:08:05 PM by Charlatan